The pursuit was almost at an end. He was now enveloped, enfolded. Already everything to him--even his love for Margaret--was trivial in comparison with the effect of some atmosphere that was beginning to hem him in on every side.
But against all this was the other Olva--the Olva who desired physical strength, love, freedom, health.
Well, let it all be as confusing as it might, he would play his game. But as he walked into the Pavilion he knew that the prelude to his real life had only a few more hours to run. . . .
As he passed, with the rest of the team, up the field, he observed two things only; one thing was Margaret, standing on the left side of the field just below the covered stand--he could see her white face and her little black hard hat.
The other thing was that on the horizon where the wall at the further end of the field cut the sky there were piled, as though resting on the top of the wall, high white clouds. For a moment these clouds, piled in mountain shape of an intense whiteness with round curving edges, held his eyes because they exactly resembled those clouds that had hung above him on the day of his walk to Sannet Wood--the day when he had been caught by the snowstorm. These clouds brooded, waiting above him; their dazzling white had the effect of a steady, unswerving gaze.
They lined out. He took his place as centre three-quarter with Cardillac outside left and Tester and Buchan on the other wing. Old Lawrence was standing, a solid rock of a figure, back. There was a great crowd present. The tops of the hansom cabs in the road beyond rose above the wall, and he could hear, muffled with distance, shots from the 'Varsity firing range.
All these things focussed themselves upon his brain in the moment before the whistle went; the whistle blew, the Dublin men had kicked off, Tester had fielded the ball, sent it back into touch, and the game had begun.
This was to be the game of his life and yet he could not centre his attention upon it. He was conscious that Whymper--the great Whymper--was acting as linesman and watching every movement. He knew that for most of that great crowd his was the figure that was of real concern, he knew that he was as surely battling for his lady as though he had been fighting, tournament-wise, six hundred years ago.