Colin Craven

“ Most men would have ridden away, unable to fulfil the demands of friendship, unwilling to bear the continued sting which the sight of her brought them. She saw now that his one aim had always been to make her happy, he himself had always come in a poor second. Gilbert had wanted her [354] to make him happy, and she had chosen—Gilbert!
“Oh, Colin!” she cried, “I don’t deserve that you should have gone on caring for me all this time.”
“Claudia, I can’t believe it. I’ve hungered for your love so long that, like a starving man, I can’t eat. I tried to be content with your friendship. ”

“ She must not be gloomy when Pat was coming down to announce her engagement. True, her own experience of married life had not been ideal, but Colin was different, and anyway, one had no right to dash the hopes of the newly-engaged. Some married couples are happy. She must be glad. She was glad. If it were not that inflated windbag, the vicar, it must be the remembrance of her own happy anticipations when she had first become engaged to Gilbert that made her feel blue. The sun to-day did not seem brilliant and wonderful, but only tiresomely hot. ”

“ Her eyes and Colin’s met, and his thanked her silently, but a little shake of the head told her not to trouble to argue, that it was only beating her head against a brick wall.
“My dear Claudia, you are a woman and belong to the emotional, impressionable sex. But, for Heaven’s sake, don’t you join any of these crank movements,” he went on impatiently—“for if I am going into Parliament, I don’t want to be saddled with my wife’s partisanships. It’s quite enough to fight the cranks in the House, I don’t want any on my own hearthrug.” ”

“ She thought of telephoning, and then some instinct warned her that Gilbert would think it trivial. Gilbert not being available, Claudia found the idea of a quiet sunny afternoon with Colin Paton quite pleasing. One never had to be politely talkative and interested in him. One talked or one didn’t talk, just as one pleased. Sometimes one found oneself talking particularly well, helped by the right word or the appreciative smile. Claudia thought of him in a sort of revolving roundabout with Gilbert, as she took her bath, and tried to find the right word to express him. ”

“ It had, in fact, nothing in common with cold baths, marmalade, rugby football, and musical comedy.
On the present occasion the remark was especially unpleasant because Craven had made it in so odd a manner. During the last few weeks it had been very generally noticed that Craven had not been himself—so pleasant and healthy a fellow he had always been, but now this Carfax business was too much for him. "Look out for young Craven" had been the general warning, implied if not expressed. Persons who threatened to be unusual were always marked down in Cambridge. ”

“ With a broken whisper Craven caught his frail burden closer, as though seeking by the strength and warmth of his own body to animate the fragile limbs lying so cold and lifeless in his arms, and he bent low over the pallid lips he craved and yet did not dare to kiss. ”

“ A few noblemen and gentlemen had the courage to remain in London and face the evil. Among these was Lord Craven. We are told that his servants packed his luggage and brought his coaches into the court-yard of his house; but to their dismay he told them they could go if they chose, every one of them, but he should remain and do what he could to stay the evil which surrounded them.
"A man can die but once," he said. He had faced death ofttimes on the battlefield, he was not going to turn his back on it now ”

“ In the dimly lit hall, standing at the foot of the staircase with his hand clenched on the oaken rail, Craven watched with tortured eyes the slender drooping figure move slowly upward, battling with himself, praying for strength to let her go—for he knew that if she even turned her head his self-control would shatter. It was weakening now and the sweat broke out in heavy drops on his forehead as he strove to crush an insidious inward voice that bade him forget the past and take what was his. “Only one life,” it seemed to shout in mocking derision, “live while you can, take what you can! ”

“ And today the sight of the men's straining limbs and heaving chests moved him more than usual. He used a rickshaw of necessity, and had never overcome his distaste for them.
Emerging from a grove of pines they neared the little gateway and as the men flung themselves backward with a deep grunt at the physical exertion of stopping, Craven leaped out and dashed up the path, panic-driven. He took the verandah steps in two strides and then stopped abruptly, his face whitening under the deep tan. ”

“ His fingers clenched on the soft hat he held.
“But it does not do at all,” she was saying, and the racking cough that accompanied her words struck through Craven's heart like a knife, “it is the expression that is wrong. If you look like that I can never believe that you are what you say you are. ”

“ These things Olva liked in him, and had the boy not been so intimate with Cardillac and Carfax, Olva might have made advances, Craven took a man of the Carfax type with extreme simplicity; he thought his geniality and physical strength excused much coarseness and vulgarity. He was still young enough to have the Public School code—the most amazing thing in the history of the British nation—and because Carfax bruised his way as a forward through many football matches, and fought a policeman on Parker's Piece one summer evening, Rupert Craven thought him a jolly good fellow. ”

“ It was the Garden of Enchantment, peopled with a thousand djinns and demons of Old Japan. The atmosphere was mysterious, the air was saturated with sweet heavy scents.
Craven was a passionate lover of the night. The darkness, the silence, the mystery of it appealed to him. He was familiar with its every phase in many climates. It enticed him for long solitary rambles in all the countries he had visited during the ten years of his wanderings. Nature, always fascinating, was then to him doubly attractive, doubly alluring. ”

“ I also reflected that no one was born with a gun in his hand, and that Craven might not have had opportunity of acquiring dexterity; that there was a beginning to everything, and that it was the business of the more experienced to help the ignorant. So I continued to be as useful to him as I possibly could.
Suddenly, after a particularly provoking miss, Craven exclaimed: "It is all your fault, you stupid dog; you never turn the bird out where one expects it. ”

“ CUTHBERTSON (emphatically) . So it is, Craven, so it is.
CHARTERIS. Exactly. That's what keeps it so select: nobody but people whose reputations are above suspicion dare belong to it. If we once got a good name, we should become a mere whitewashing shop for all the shady characters in London. Better join us, Craven. Let me put you up.
CRAVEN. What! Join a club where there's some scoundrel who guaranteed my daughter to be an unwomanly woman! If I weren't an invalid, I'd kick him. ”

“ The author of a History and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven in Yorkshire, gives it as a tradition, that Lord Craven's father, a lord-mayor, was born of such poor parents that they sent him when a boy by a common carrier to London, where he became a mercer or draper. His son was a distinguished officer under Gustavus Adolphus, was ennobled, attached himself to the King and Queen of Bohemia, and is supposed, as we have seen, to have married the king's widow. ”

“ Miss Margaret Craven had not yet come in, but would Mr. Dune, perhaps, go up and see Mrs. Craven? The old woman's teeth chattered in the cold little hall. "We are dead, all of us dead here," the skins on the walls seemed to say; "and you'll be dead soon . . . oh! yes, you will."
Olva went up to Mrs. Craven. The windows of her room were tightly closed and a great fire was blazing; before this she lay stretched out on a sofa of faded green—her black dress, her motionless white hands, her pale face, her moving eyes. ”

“ By some strange hap it chanced that Sir James Craven, excited with drink, the bile of his saturnine temper stirred to malignity by heavy losses at cards, alighted from his four in hand at White’s shortly after Volney. Craven’s affairs had gone from bad to worse very rapidly of late. He had been playing the races heavily and ruin stared the man in the face. ”

“ I did myself credit, and my master did me justice, and I was happy in my ignorance of coming events. Craven shot and missed, and shot and missed again; but my master's laugh stopped him whenever he was beginning to lay the blame on dog or gun.
"Bad workmen always find fault with their tools, Craven," said my master. "Take better aim."
John tried to teach him, but he would listen to no advice.
It is seldom that a person's fault or folly injures himself alone, and, alas for me! I was the victim of Craven's conceit and obstinacy. ”

“ Here Pauline met her future husband, Augustus Craven, who was then attaché to the British embassy. His father, Keppel Richard Craven, the well-known supporter of Queen Caroline, objected to his son’s marriage with a Catholic; but his scruples were overcome, and immediately after the marriage (1834) Augustus Craven was received into the Roman Catholic Church. Mrs Craven, whose family life as revealed in the Récit d’une sœur was especially tender and intimate, suffered several severe bereavements in the years following on her marriage. ”

“ CHAPTER VII.—ON THE ADVANTAGES OF A FULL MOON. WHY the fact of his having made up his mind to ask Miss Craven who, without being an American, still possessed many qualities which are generally accepted as tending to married happiness, should cause him to feel a great longing to leave Castle Innisfail, its occupants, and its occupations behind him for evermore, it is difficult to explain on any rational grounds. That feeling was, however, upon him, and he strode away across the billowy moorland in the direction of the cliffs of the fjord known as Lough Suangorm. ”

“ The Great Summons for which Miss Craven had been so calmly prepared had come more suddenly, more tragically even than she had anticipated. She had passed over as she would have wished, had she been given the choice, not in the awful loneliness of death but one of a company of heroic souls who had voluntarily and willingly stood aside that others might have the chance to live. ”

“ But with Craven it was otherwise and he had no liking for the thought that should the morrow's venture go against them his friend's blood would, virtually, be upon his hands! So far had his Francophile tendencies taken him. And the more he dwelt upon the uncomfortable fact the less he liked it. He turned his attention more directly upon the man himself and he noted changes that surprised and disturbed him. The stern weary looking face was not the careless smiling one he remembered. The man he had known had been vividly alive, care-free and animated ”

“ As the last notes of the clock in Outer Court striking five died away Rupert Craven came in. If he had seemed tired and worn-out before, now the overwhelming impression that he gave was of an unhappiness from which he seemed to have no outlet. He was young enough to be tormented by the determination to do the right thing; he was young enough to give his whole devotion to his sister; he was young enough to admire, against all determination, Olva's presence and prowess and silence; he was young enough to be haunted, night and day, by the terrors of his imagination ”

“ There was a pause, and then with a sudden surprising force, Craven almost appealed—
"Dune, you can help me. You can make a great difference. I am ill; it's quite true. I'm not myself a bit and I'm tortured by imaginations—awful things. I suppose Carfax has got on my nerves and I've had absurd fancies. You can help me if you'll just answer me one question—only one. I don't want to know anything else, I'll never ask you anything else—only this. Where were you on the afternoon that Carfax was murdered?" ”

“ Then his gaze travelled slowly beyond her to the model who stood on the little dais, and he understood in a flash the reason of the old concierge's vigilance as he saw the manner of man she was painting. The slender darkly clad youth with head thrust forward and sunk deep on his shoulders, with close fitting peaked cap pulled low over his eyes shading his pale sinister face was a typical representative of the class of criminal who had come to be known in Paris as les apaches; no artist's model masquerading as one of the dreaded assassins, but the genuine article. Of that Craven was convinced. ”

“ A magnificent black stallion was led up to Craven, and the Sheik soothed the beautiful quivering creature, caressing his shapely head with trembling nervy fingers. “He is my favourite, he will carry you well,” he murmured with a proud smile as he watched Craven handling the spirited animal. Mounted Craven bent down and wrung Mukair Ibn Zarrarah's hand and in another moment he found himself riding between Omar and Saïd at the head of the troop as it moved off followed by the ringing shouts of those who were left behind. ”

“ And then some brute kills him—he's done for—and you don't care a damn . . . it's beastly—it makes one sick."
"Where do you think he is, Craven?" Olva asked quietly from his shadowy corner.
Craven flung up his head. "Perhaps you can tell us," he cried. There was such hostility in his voice that the whole room was startled. Poor Craven! He really was very unwell. The sight of his tired eyes and white cheeks, the shadow of his hand quivering on his knee—here were signs that all was not as it should be. ”