The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prelude to Adventure, by Hugh Walpole
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Title: The Prelude to Adventure
Author: Hugh Walpole
Release Date: August 20, 2006 [EBook #19085]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE ***
Produced by Andrew Hodson
Transcriber's Note: Errors found: A name is sometimes spelt 'Med. Tetloe' and
sometimes 'Med-Tetloe' & Cleopatre maybe wrong. So that just 7 bit text
is used the accented & ligatured words are repeated here with numbers
for codepages 437 & 850: Acute e 130 é: blasé, chasméd, Cléopatre, élite
& unperturbéd i with 2 (or 3) dots 139 ï: daïs & daïs ea ligature 145
æ: mediæval u with 2 dots 129 ü: Dürer's 'The Hound of Heaven' poem, The
letter to father and separate 'All things betray Thee Who betrayest Me.'
quote are in a smaller font.
THE PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE
BY HUGH WALPOLE AUTHOR OF "MR. PERRIN AND MR. TRAILL"
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED, ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
_New Edition September_,1919
TO MY FRIEND R. A. STREATFIELD
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. LAST CHAPTER
II. BUNNING
III. THE BODY COMES TO TOWN
IV. MARGARET CRAVEN
V. STONE ALTARS
VI. THE WATCHERS
VII. TERROR
VIII. REVELATION OF BUNNING (I)
IX. REVELATION OF BUNNING (II)
X. CRAVEN
XI. FIFTH OF NOVEMBER
XII. LOVE TO THE "VALSE TRISTE"
XIII. MRS. CRAVEN
XIV. GOD
XV. PRELUDE TO A JOURNEY
XVI. OLVA AND MARGARET
XVII. FIRST CHAPTER
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbed pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat--and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet--
All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.
The Hound of Heaven.
16 HALLAM STREET,
_October_ 11, 1911.
CHAPTER I
LAST CHAPTER
1
"There _is_ a God after all." That was the immense conviction that
faced him as he heard, slowly, softly, the leaves, the twigs, settle
themselves after that first horrid crash which the clumsy body had made.
Olva Dune stood for an instant straight and stiff, his arms heavily at
his side, and the dank, misty wood slipped back once more into silence.
There was about him now the most absolute stillness: some trees dripped
in the mist; far above him, on the top of the hill, the little path
showed darkly--below him, in the hollow, black masses of fern and weed
lay heavily under the chill November air--at his feet there was the
body.
In that sudden after silence he had known beyond any question that might
ever again arise, that there was now a God--God had watched him.
With grave eyes, with hands that did not tremble, he surveyed and then,
bending, touched the body. He knelt in the damp, heavy soil, tore open
the waistcoat, the shirt; the flesh was yet warm to his touch--the
heart was still. Carfax was dead.
It had happened so instantly. First that great hulking figure in front
of him, the sneering laugh, that last sentence, "Let her rot . . . my
dear Dune, your chivalry does you credit." Then that black, blinding,
surging rage and the blow that followed. He did not know what he had
intended to do. It did not matter--only in the force that there had been
in his arm there had been the accumulated hatred of years, hatred that
dated from that first term at school thirteen years ago when he had
known Carfax for the dirty hypocrite that he was. He could not stay now
to think of the many things that had led to this climax. He only knew
that as he raised himself again from the body there was with him no
feeling of repentance, no suggestion of fear, only a grim satisfaction
that he had struck so hard, and, above all, that lightning certainty
that he had had of God.
His brain was entirely alert. He did not doubt, as he stood there, that
he would be caught and delivered and hanged. He, himself, would take no
steps to prevent such a catastrophe. He would leave the body there as it
was: to-night, to-morrow they would find it,--the rest would follow. He
was, indeed, acutely interested in his own sensations. Why was it that
he felt no fear? Where was the terror that followed, as he had so often
heard, upon murder? Why was it that the dominant feeling in him should
be that at last he had justified his existence? In that furious blow
there had leapt within him the creature that he had always been--the
creature subdued, restrained, but always there--there through all
this civilized existence; the creature that his father was, that his
grandfather, that all his ancestors, had been. He looked down. The
hulking body that had been Carfax made a hollow in the wet and broken
fern. The face was white, stupid, the cheeks hanging fat, horrible, the
eyes staring. One leg was twisted beneath the body. Still in the air
there seemed to linger that startled little cry--"Oh!"--surprise,
wonder--and then fading miserably into nothing as the great body fell.
Such a huge hulking brute; now so sordid and useless, looking at last,
after all these years, the thing that it ought always to have looked.
Some money had rolled from the pocket and lay shining amongst the fern.
A gold ring glittered on the white finger, seeming in the heart of that
silence the only living note.
Then Olva remembered his dog--where was he? He turned and saw the fox
terrier down on all fours amongst the fern, motionless, his tongue out,
his eyes gazing with animal inquiry at his master. The dog was waiting
for the order to continue the walk. He seemed, in his passivity, merely
to be resting, a little exhausted perhaps by the heavy closeness of the
day, too indolent to nose amongst the leaves for possible adventure:
Olva looked at him. The dog caught the look and beat the grass with his
tail, soft, friendly taps to show that he only waited for orders. Then
still idly, still with that air of gentle amusement, the dog gazed at
the thing in the grass. He rose slowly and very delicately advanced a
few steps: for an instant some fear seemed to strike his heart for he
stopped suddenly and gazed into his master's face for reassurance. What
he saw there comforted him. Again he wagged his tail placidly and half
closed his eyes in sleepy indifference.
Then Olva, without another backward glance, left the hollow, crashed
through the fern up the hill and struck the little brown path. Bunker,
the dog, pattered patiently behind him.
2
Olva Dune was twenty-three years of age. He was of Spanish descent,
and it was only within the last two generations that English blood had
mingled with the Dune stock. He was of no great height, slim and dark.
His hair was black, his complexion sallow, and on his upper lip he wore
a small dark moustache. His ears were small, his mouth thin, his chin
sharply pointed, but his eyes, large, dark brown, were his best feature.
They were eyes that looked as though they held in their depths the
possibility of tenderness. He walked as an athlete, there was no spare
flesh about him anywhere, and in his carriage there was a dignity that
had in it pride of birth, complete self-possession, and above all,
contempt for his fellow-creatures.
He despised all the world save only his father. He had gone through
his school-life and was now passing through his college-life as a man
travels through a country that has for him no interest and no worth but
that may lead, once it has been traversed, to something of importance
and adventure. He was now at the beginning of his second year at
Cambridge and was regarded by every one with distrust, admiration,
excitement. His was one of the more interesting personalities at that
time in residence at Saul's.
He had come with a historical scholarship and a great reputation as a
Three-quarter from Rugby. He was considered to be a certain First Class
and a certain Rugby Blue; he, lazily and indifferently during the course
of his first term, discouraged both these anticipations. He attended
no lectures, received a Third Class in his May examinations, and was
deprived of his scholarship at the end of his first year. He played
brilliantly in the Freshmen's Rugby match, but so indolently in the
first University match of the season that he was not invited again. Had
he played merely badly he would have been given a second trial, but
his superior insolence was considered insulting. He never played in
any College matches nor did he trouble to watch any of their glorious
conflicts. Once and again he produced an Essay for his Tutor that
astonished that gentleman very considerably, but when called before the
Dean for neglecting to attend lectures explained that he was studying
the Later Roman Empire and could not possibly attend to more than one
thing at a time.
He was perfectly friendly to every one, and it was curious that, with
his air of contempt for the world in general, he had made no enemies. He
wondered at that himself, on occasions; he had always been supposed, for
instance, to be very good friends with Carfax. He had, of course, always
hated Carfax--and now Carfax was dead.
The little crooked path soon left the dark wood and merged into the long
white Cambridge road. The flat country was veiled in mist, only, like
a lantern above a stone wall, the sun was red over the lower veils of
white that rose from the sodden fields. Some trees started like spies
along the road. Overhead, where the mists were faint, the sky showed the
faintest of pale blue. The long road rang under Olva's step--it would be
a frosty night.
When the little wood was now a black ball in the mist Olva was suddenly
sick. He leant against one of the dark mysterious trees and was
wretchedly, horribly ill. Slowly, then, the colour came back to his
cheeks, his hands were once more steady, he could see again clearly. He
addressed the strange world about him, the long flat fields, the hard
white road, the orange sun. "That is the last time," he said aloud, "the
last weakness."
He definitely braced himself to face life. There would not be much of
it--to-morrow he would be arrested: meanwhile there should be no more of
these illusions. There was, for instance, the illusion that the body was
following him, bounding grotesquely along the hard road. He knew that
again and again he turned his head to see whether anything were there,
and the further the little wood was left behind the nearer did the body
seem to be. He must not allow himself to think these things. Carfax was
dead--Carfax was dead--Carfax was dead. It was a good thing that Carfax
was dead. He had saved, he hoped, Rose Midgett--that at any rate he had
done; it was a good thing for Rose Midgett that he had killed Carfax.
He had, incidentally, no interest on his own account in Rose Midgett--he
scarcely knew her by sight--but it was pleasant to think that she would
be no longer worried. . . .
Then there was that question about God. Now the river appeared, darkly,
dimly below the road, the reeds rising spire-like towards the faint blue
sky. That question about God--Olva had never believed in any kind of a
God. His father had defied God and the Devil time and again and had been
none the worse for it. And yet--here and there about the world people
lived and had their being to whom this question of God was a vital
question; people like Bunning and his crowd--mad, the whole lot of
them. Nevertheless there was something there that had great power. That
had, until to-day, been Olva's attitude, an amused superior curiosity.
Now it was a larger question. There had been that moment after Carfax
had fallen, a moment of intense silence, and in that moment something
had spoken to Olva. It is a fact as sure as concrete, as though he
himself could remember words and gesture. There had been Something
there. . . .
Brushing this for an instant aside, he faced next the question of his
arrest. There was no one, save his father, for whom he need think. He
would send his father word saying--"I have killed a beast--fairly--in
the open"--that would be all.
He would not be hanged--poison should see to that. Dunes had murdered,
raped, tortured--never yet had they died on the gallows.
And now, for the first time, the suspicion crossed his mind that
perhaps, after all, he might escape--escape, at any rate, that order of
punishment. Here on this desolate road, he had met no living soul; the
mists encompassed him and they had now swallowed the dripping wood and
all that it contained. It had always been supposed that he was good
friends with Carfax, as good friends as he allowed himself to be with
any one. No one had known in which direction he would take his walk;
he had come upon Carfax entirely by chance. It might quite naturally be
supposed that some tramp had attempted robbery. To the world at large
Olva could have had no possible motive. But, for the moment, these
thoughts were dismissed. It seemed to him just now immaterial whether he
lived or died. Life had not hitherto been so wonderful a discovery
that the making of it had been entirely worth while. He had no tenor of
disgrace; his father was his only court of appeal, and that old rocky
sinner, sitting alone with his proud spirit and his grey hairs, in his
northern fastness, hating and despising the world, would himself slay,
had he the opportunity, as many men of the Carfax kind as he could find.
He had no terror of pain--he did not know what that kind of fear was.
The Dunes had always faced Death.
But he began, dimly, now to perceive that there were larger, crueller
issues before him than these material punishments. He had known since
he was a tiny child a picture by some Spanish painter, whose name he had
forgotten, that had always hung on the wall of the passage opposite his
bedroom. It was a large engraving in sharply contrasted black and white,
of a knight who rode through mists along a climbing road up into
the heart of towering hills. The mountains bad an active life in the
picture; they seemed to crowd forward eager to swallow him. Beside the
spectre horse that he rode there was no other life. The knight's face,
white beneath his black helmet, was tired and worn. About him was the
terror of loneliness.
From his earliest years this idea of loneliness had pleasantly seized
upon Olva's mind. His father had always impressed upon him that the
Dunes had ever been lonely--lonely in a world that was contemptible. He
had always until now accepted this idea and found it confirmed on every
side. His six years at Rugby had encouraged him--he had despised, with
his tolerant smile, boys and masters alike; all insincere, all weak, all
to be used, if he wanted them, as he chose to use them. He had thought
often of the lonely knight--that indeed should be his attitude to the
world.
But now, suddenly, as the scattered Cambridge houses with their dull
yellow lights began to creep stealthily through the mist, upon the road,
he knew for the first time that loneliness could be terrible. He
was hurrying now, although he had not formerly been conscious of it,
hurrying into the lights and comforts and noise of the town. There might
only be for him now a night and day of freedom, but, during that time,
he must not, he must not be alone. The patter of Bunker's feet beside
him pleased him. Bunker was now a fact of great importance to him.
And now he could see further. He could see that he must always now, from
the consciousness of the thing that he had done, he alone. The actual
moment of striking his blow had put an impassable gulf between his soul
and all the world. Bodies might touch, hands might be grasped,
voices ring together, always now his soul must be alone. Only, that
Something--of whose Presence he had been, in that instant, aware--could
keep his company. They two . . . they two. . . .
The suburbs of Cambridge had closed about him. Those dreary little
streets, empty as it seemed of all life, facing him sullenly with their
sodden little yellow lamps, shivering, grumbling, he could fancy, in
the chill of that November evening, eyed him with suspicion. He walked
through them now, with his shoulders back, his head up. He could fancy
how, to-morrow, their dull placidity would be wrung by the discovery of
the crime. The little wood would fling its secret into the eager lap
of these decrepit witches; they would crowd to their doors, chatter it,
shout it, pull it to pieces. "Body of an Undergraduate . . . Body of an
Undergraduate. . . ."
He turned out of their cold silence over the bridge that spanned the
river, up the path that crossed the common into the heart of the town,
Here, at once, he was in the hubbub. The little streets were mediaeval
in their narrow space, in their cobbles, in the old black, fantastic
walls that hung above them. Beauty, too, on this November evening, shone
through the misty lamplight. Beauty in the dark purple of the evening
sky, beauty in the sudden vista of grey courts with lighted windows,
like eyes, seen through stone gateways. Beauty in the sudden golden
shadows of some corner shop glittering through the mist; beauty in the
overshadowing of the many towers that were like grey clouds in mid-air.
The little streets chattered with people--undergraduates in Norfolk
jackets, grey flannel trousers short enough to show the brightest
of socks, walked arm in arm--voices rang out--men called across the
streets--hansoms rattled like little whirlwinds along the cobbles---many
bells were ringing--dark bodies, leaning from windows, gave uncouth
cries . . . over it all the mellow lamplight.
Into this happy confusion Olva Dune plunged. He shook off from him, as
a dog shakes water from his back, the memory of that white mist-haunted
road. Once he deliberately faced the moment when he had been sick--faced
it, heard once again the dull, lumbering sound that the body had made as
it bundled along the road, and then put it from him altogether. Now for
battle . . . his dark eyes challenged this shifting cloud of life.
He went round to the stable where Bunker was housed, chattered with the
blue-chinned ostler, and then, for a moment, was alone with the dog. How
much had Bunker seen? How much had he understood? Was it fancy, or did
the dog crouch, the tiniest impulse, away from him as he bent to pat
him? Bunker was tired; he relapsed on to his haunches, wagged his
tail, grinned, but in his eyes there seemed, although the lamplight was
deceptive, to be the faintest shadow of an apprehension.
"Good old dog, good old Bunker." Bunker wagged his tail, but the tiniest
shiver passed, like a thought, through his body.
Olva left him.
As he passed through the streets he met men whom he knew. They nodded or
flung a greeting. How strange to think that to-morrow night they would
be speaking of him in low, grave voices as one who was already dead. "I
knew the fellow quite well, strange, reserved man--nobody really knew
him. With these foreigners, you know . . ."
Oh! he could hear them!
He passed through the gates of Saul's. The porter touched his hat. The
great Centre Court was shrouded in mist, and out of the white veil the
grey buildings rose, gently, on every side. There were lights now in
the windows; the Chapel bell was ringing, hushed and dimmed by the heavy
air. Boots rang sharply along the stone corridors. Olva crossed the
court towards his room.
Suddenly, from the very heart of the mist, sharply, above the sound of
the Chapel bell, a voice called--
"Carfax! Carfax!"
Olva stayed: for an instant the blood ran from his body, his knees
quivered, his face was as white as the mist. Then he braced himself--he
knew the voice.
"Hullo, Craven, is that you?"
"Who's that? . . . Can't see in this mist."
"Dune."
"Hullo, Dune. I say, do you know what's happened to Carfax?"
"Happened? No--why?"
"Well, I can't find him anywhere. I wanted to get him for Bridge. He
ought to be back by now."
"Back? Where's he been?"
"Going over to see some aunt or other at Grantchester--ought to be back
by now."
An aunt?--No, Rose Midgett.
"No--I've no idea--haven't seen him since yesterday."
"Been out for a walk?"
"Yes, just took my dog for a bit."
"See you in Hall?"
"Right--o!"
The voice began again calling under the windows--"Carfax! Carfax!"
Olva climbed the stairs to his rooms.
CHAPTER II
BUNNING
1
He went into Hall. He sat amongst the particular group of his own year
who were considered the _elite_. There was Cardillac there, brilliant,
flashing Cardillac. There was Bobby Galleon, fat, good-natured, sleepy,
intelligent in an odd bovine way. There was Craven, young, ardent,
hail-fellow-well-met. There was Lawrence, burly back for the University
in Rugby, unintelligent, kind and good-tempered unless he were drunk.
There were others. They all sat in their glory, noisily happy. Somewhere
in the distance on a raised dais were the Dons gravely pompous. Every
now and again word was brought that the gentlemen were making too much
noise. The Master might be observed drinking elaborately, ceremoniously
with some guest. Madden, the Service Tutor, flung his shrill treble
voice above the general hubbub--
"But, my dear Ross, if you had only observed---"
"Where is Carfax?" came suddenly from Lawrence. He asked Craven, who
was, of course, the devoted friend of Carfax. Craven had large brown
eyes, a charming smile, a prominent chin, rather fat routed cheeks and
short brown hair that curled a little. He gave the impression of eager
good-temper and friendliness. To-night he looked worried. "I don't
know," he said, "I can't understand it. He said this morning that he'd
be here to-night and make up a four at Bridge. He went off to see an
aunt or some one at Grantchester!"
"Perhaps," said Bobby Galleon gravely, "he had an exeat and has gone up
to town."
"But he'd have said something--sure. And the porter hasn't seen him. He
would have been certain to know."
Olva was never expected to talk much. His reserve was indeed rather
popular. The entirely normal and ordinary men around him appreciated
this mystery. "Rum fellow, Dune . . . nobody knows him." His high dark
colour, his dignity, his courtesy had about it something distinguished
and romantic. "He'll do something wonderful one day, _you_ bet. Why, if
he only chose to play up at footer there's nothing he couldn't do."
Even the brilliant Cardillac, thin, dark, handsome leader of fashion and
society, admitted the charm.
Now, however, Olva, looking up, quietly said--
"I expect his aunt's kept him to dinner. _He'll_ turn up."
But of course he wouldn't turn up. He was lying in the heart of that
crushed, dripping fern with his leg doubled under him. It wasn't often
that one killed a man with one blow; the signet ring that he wore on the
little finger of his right hand--a Dune ring of great antiquity--must
have had something to do with it.
He turned it round thoughtfully on his finger. Robert, an old, old
trembling waiter, said in a shaking voice--
"There's salmi of wild game, sir--roast beef."
"Beef, please," Olva said quietly.
He was considering now that all these men would to-morrow night have
only one thought, one idea. They would remember everything, the very
slightest thing that he had done. They would discuss it all from every
possible point of view.
"I always knew he'd do something. . . ." He suddenly knew quite sharply,
as though a voice had spoken to him, that he could not endure this
any longer. There was gathering upon him the conviction that in a few
minutes, rising from his place, he would cry out to the hall--"I,
Olva Dune, this afternoon, killed Carfax. You will find his body in the
wood." He repeated the words to himself under his breath. "You will find
his body in the wood. . . ." "You will find . . ."
He finished his beef very quietly and then got up.
Craven appealed to him. "I say, Dune, do come and make a four--my rooms,
half-past eight--Lawrence and Galleon are the other two."
Olva looked down at him with his grave, rather melancholy smile.
"Afraid I can't to-night, Craven; must work."
"Don't overdo it," Cardillac said.
The eyes of the two men met. Olva knew that Cardillac--"Cards" as he was
to his friends, liked him; he himself did not hate Cardillac. He was the
only man in the College for whom he had respect. They were both of them
demanding the same thing from the world. They both of them despised
their fellow-creatures.
Olva, climbing the stairs to his room, stood for a moment in the dark,
before he turned on the lights. He spoke aloud in a whisper, as though
some one were with him in the room.
"This won't do," he said. "This simply won't do. Your nerves are going.
You've only got a few hours of it. Hold on--Think of the beast that he
was. Think of the beast that he was."
He walked slowly back to the door and turned on the electric lights. He
did not sport his oak--if people came to see him he would rather like
it: in some odd way it would be more satisfactory than that he should go
to see them--but people did not often come to see him.
He laid out his books on the table and sat down. He had grown fond of
this room. The walls were distempered white. The ceiling was old and
black with age. There was a deep red-tiled fireplace. One wall had low
brown bookshelves. There were two pictures: one an Around reprint of
Matsys' "Portrait of Aegidius"--that wise, kind, tender face; the other
an admirable photogravure of Durer's "Selbstbildnis." The books were
mainly to do with his favourite historical period--the Later Roman
Empire. There was some poetry--an edition of Browning, Swinburne's
_Poems and Ballads_, Ernest Dowson, Rossetti, Francis Thompson. There
was an edition of Hazlitt, a set of the _Spectator_, one or two novels,
_Henry Lessingham_ and _The Roads_ by Galleon, _To Paradise_ by Lester,
Meredith's _One of Our Conquerors_ and _Diana of the Crossways, The
Ambassadors_ and _Awkward Age_ of Henry James.
On the mantelpiece above the fireplace there were three deep blue bowls,
the only ornaments in the room. Beyond the little diamond-paned windows,
beyond the dark mysteries of the Fellows' garden, a golden mist rose
from the lamps of the street, there were stars in the sky.
He faced his books. For a quarter of an hour he saw before him the
hanging, baggy cheeks, the white, staring eyes, the glittering ring on
the weak finger. His hands began to tremble. . . .
There was a timid knock on the door, and he was instantly sure that the
body had been found, and that they had come to arrest him. He stood
back from the door with his hand pressing on the table. It was almost a
relief to him that the summons had come so soon--it would presently all
be over.
"Come in," he said, and gave one look at the golden mist, at the stars,
at the tender face of Aegidius.
The door was opened slowly with fumbling hands, and there stood there
a large, fat, clumsy, shapeless creature, with a white face, a hooked
nose, an open, foolish mouth.
The reaction was hysterical. To expect a summons to death and public
shame, to find--Bunning. Bunning--that soft, blithering, emotional,
religious, middle-class maniac--Bunning! "Soft-faced" Bunning, as he was
called, was the man of Olva's year in whom the world at large found most
entertainment. The son of some country clergyman, kicked and battered
through the slow, dreary years at some small Public School, he had come
up to Saul's with an intense, burning desire to make a mark. He was
stupid, useless at games, having only somewhere behind his fat ugly body
a longing to be connected with some cause, some movement, some person of
whom he might make a hero.
He had, of course, within the first fortnight of his arrival, plunged
himself into dire disgrace. He had asked Lawrence, coming like a young
god from Marlborough, in to coffee; they had made him drunk and laughed
at his hysterical tears: in his desire for popularity he had held a
gathering in his room, with the original intention of coffee, cakes and
gentle conversation; the evening had ended with the arrival of all his
furniture and personal effects upon the grass of the court below his
windows.
He had been despised by the Dons, buffeted and derided by his fellow
undergraduates. Especially had Carfax and Cardillac made his life a
burden to him, and whenever it seemed that there was nothing especial
to do, the cry arose, "Let's go and rag Bunning," and five minutes later
that fat body would tremble at the sound of many men climbing the wooden
stairs, at the loud banging on his wooden door, at the cry, "Hullo,
Bunning--we've come for some coffee."
Then, towards the end of the first year, the Cambridge Christian Union
flung out its net and caught him. His attempt at personal popularity had
failed here as thoroughly as it had failed at school--now for his soul.
He found that the gentlemen of his college who were members of the
Christian Union were eager for his company. They did not laugh at his
conversation nor mock his proffered hospitalities. They talked to him,
persuaded him that his soul was in jeopardy, and carried him off during
part of the Long Vacation to the Norfolk Broads, where prayer-meetings,
collisions with other sea-faring craft, and tinned meats were the order
of the day.
Olva had watched him with that amused incredulity that he so frequently
bestowed upon his fellow-creatures. How was this kind of animal, with
its cowardice, its stupidity, its ugliness, its uselessness, possible?
He had never spoken to Bunning, although he had once received a
note from him asking him to coffee--a piece of very considerable
impertinence. He had never assisted Carfax and Cards in their raiding
expeditions, but that was only because he considered such things
tiresome and childish.
And now, behold, there in his doorway--incredible vision!--was the
creature--at this moment of--all others!
"Come in," said Olva again.
Bunning brought his large quivering body into the room and stood there,
turning his cap round and round in his hands.
"Oh, I say---" and there he stopped.
"Won't you sit down?"
"No--thanks--I----"
"In what way can I be of use to you?"
"Oh! I say---"
Senseless giggles, and then Bunning's mouth opened and remained open.
His eyes stared at Dune.
"Well, what is it?"
"Oh--my word--you know---"
"Look here," said Olva quietly, "if you don't get on and tell me what
you want I shall do you some bodily damage. I've got work to do. Another
time, perhaps, when I am less busy----"
Bunning was nearly in tears. "Oh, yes, I know--it's most awful
cheek--I----"
There was a desperate silence and then he plunged out with--"Well,
you know, I--that is--we-I--sort of wondered whether, you know, you'd
care--not if you're awfully busy of course--but whether you'd care
to come and hear Med. Tetloe preach to-night. I know it's most awful
cheek----" He was nearly in tears.
Olva kept an amazed silence. Life! What an amusing thing!--that he, with
his foot on the edge of disaster, death, should be invited by Bunning to
a revival meeting. He understood it, of course. Bunning had been sent,
as an ardent missionary is sent into the heart of West Africa, to invite
Olva to consider his soul. He was expecting, poor creature, to be kicked
violently down the twisting wooden stairs. On another occasion he would
be sent to Lawrence or Cardillac, and then his expectations would be
most certainly fulfilled. But it was for the cause--at least these
sinners should be given the opportunity of considering their souls. If
they refused to consider them, they must not complain if they find the
next world but little to their fancy.
No one had ever attacked Olva before on this subject. His reserve had
been more alarming to the Soul Hunters than the coarse violence of a
Cardillac or a Carfax. And now Bunning--Bunning of all people in this
ridiculous world--had ventured. Well, there was pluck necessary for
that. Bunning, the coward, had done a braver thing than many more
stalwart men would have cared to do. There was bravery there!
Moreover, why should not Olva go? He could not sit alone in his room,
his nerves would soon be too many for him. What did it matter? His last
evening of freedom should be spent as no other evening of his life had
been spent. . . . Moreover, might there not be something behind this
business? Might he not, perhaps, be shown to-night some clue to the
presence of that Power that had spoken to him in the wood? Through all
the tangled confusion of his thoughts, through the fear and courage
there ran this note-where was God? . . . God the only person to Whom he
now could speak, because God knew.
Might not this idiot of a Bunning have been shown the way to the
mystery?
"Yes," said Olva, smiling. "I'll come, if you won't mind sitting down
and smoking for a quarter of an hour, while I finish this--have a drink,
will you?"
Bunning's consternation at Olva's acceptance was amusing. He dropped his
cap, stopped to pick it up, gasped. That Dune should really come!
"You'll come?" he spluttered out. Never in his wildest imaginings had he
fancied such a thing. Dune, the most secret, reserved, mysterious man in
the college--Dune, whose sarcastic smile was considered more terrifying
than Lawrence's mailed fist--Dune, towards whom in the back of his mind
there had been paid that reverence that belongs only to those who are of
another world.
Never, in anything that had happened to him, had Bunning been so
terrified as he had been by this visit to Dune. Watson Morley, the
Christian Union man, had insisted that it was his duty and therefore
he had come, but it had taken him ten minutes of agony to climb those
stairs. And now Dune had accepted. . . .
The colour flooded his cheeks and faded again. He sat down clumsily in
a chair, felt for a pipe that he smoked unwillingly because it was the
manly thing to do, spurted some Apollinaris into a glass and over
the tablecloth, struck many matches vainly, dropped tobacco on to the
carpet. His heart was beating like a hammer!
How men would stare when they saw him with Dune. In his heart was the
uneasy knowledge that had Dune proposed staying there in his rooms
and talking instead of going to Little St. Agnes and listening to the
Reverend Med. Tetloe, he would have stayed. This was not right, it was
not Christian. The world gaped below Bunning's heavy feet.
At last Dune said: "I'm ready, let's go." They went out.
2
Little St. Agnes was apparently so named because it was the largest
church in Cambridge. It was of no ancient date, but it was grim, grey,
dark--admirably suited to an occasion like the present. Under the high
roof, lost in a grey cloud, resolving themselves into rows of white,
intense faces, sat hundreds of undergraduates.
They were seated on uncomfortable, unstable chairs, and the noise of
their uneasy movements sent squeaks up and down the building as though
it had been a barn filled with terrified rats.
Far in the distance, perched on a high pulpit, was a little white
figure--an old gaunt man with a bony hand and a grey beard. Behind him
again there was darkness. Only, in all the vast place, the white body
and rows of white faces raised to it.
Olva and Bunning found seats in a corner. A slight soft voice said, with
the mysterious importance of one about to deliver an immense secret,
"You will look in the Mission Books, Hymn 330. 'Oh! for the arms of
Jesus.' I want you to think for a moment of the meaning of the words
before you sing."
There followed the rustling of many pages and then a heavy, emotional
silence. Olva read the words and found them very sentimental, very bad
verse and rather unpleasantly fall of blood and pain. Every one stood;
the chairs creaked from one end of the building to the other, an immense
volume of sound rose to the roof.
Olva felt that the entire church was seized with emotion. He saw that
Bunning's hand was trembling, he knew that many eyes were filled with
tears. For himself, he understood at once that that distant figure in
white was here to make a dramatic appeal--dramatic as certainly as the
appeal that a famous actor might make in London. That was his job--
he was out for it---and anything in the way of silence or noise, of
darkness or light, that could add to the effect would be utilized. Olva
knew also that nine-tenths of the undergraduates were present there for
the same purpose. They wished to have their emotions played upon; they
wished also to be reassured about life; they wished to confuse this
dramatic emotion with a sincere desire for salvation. They wished, it is
true, to be good, but they wished, a great deal more, to be dramatically
stirred.
Olva was reminded of the tensity of the atmosphere at a bull-fight that
he had once seen in Madrid. Here again was the same intensity. . . .
He saw, therefore, in this first singing of the hymn, that this place,
this appeal, would be of no use in his own particular need. This
deliberate evoking of dramatic effect had nothing to do with that silent
consciousness of God. This place, this appeal, was fantastic, childish,
beside that event that had that afternoon sent Carfax into space. Let
these men hurry to the wood, let them find the sodden body, let them
face then the reality of Life. . . .
Again, as before in Hall, he was tempted to rise and cry out: "I have
killed Carfax. I have killed Carfax. What of all your theories now?"
That trembling ass, Bunning, singing now at the top of his voice,
shaking with the fervour of it, let him know that he had brought a
murderer to the sacred gathering--again Olva had to concentrate all his
mind, his force, his power upon the conquest of his nerves. For a moment
it seemed as though he would lose all control; he stood, his knees
quivering beneath him--then strength came back to him.
After the hymn the address. There was tense, rapt silence. The little
voice went on, soft, low, sweet, pleading, very clear. There must be
many men who had not yet found God. There were those, perhaps, in the
Church tonight who had not even thought about God. There were those
again who, maybe, had some crime on their conscience and did not know
how to get rid of it. Would they not come to Christ and ask His help?
Stories were told. Story of the young man who cursed his mother, broke
his leg, and arrived home just too late to see her alive. Story of the
friend who died to save another friend, and how many souls were saved
by this self-sacrifice. Story of the Undergraduate who gambled and drank
and was converted by a barmaid and eventually became a Bishop.
All these examples of God's guidance. Then, for an instant, there is a
great silence. The emotion is now beating in waves against the wall. The
faces are whiter now, hands are clenched, lips bitten. Suddenly there
leaps upon them all that gentle voice, now a trumpet. "Who is for the
Lord? Who is for the Lord?"
Then gently again,--"Let us pray in silence for a few minutes." . . .
A great creaking of chairs, more intense silence. At last the voice
again--"Will those who are sure that they are saved stand up?" Dead
silence--no one moves. "Will those who wish to be saved stand up?" With
one movement every one--save only Olva, dark in his corner--stands up.
Bunning's eyes are flaming, his body is trembling from head to foot.
"Christ is amongst you! Christ is in the midst of you!"
Suddenly, somewhere amongst the shadows a voice breaks out--"Oh! my God!
Oh! my God!" Some one is crying--some one else is crying. All about the
building men are falling on to their knees. Bunning has crashed on to
his--his face buried in his hands.
The little gentle voice again--"I shall be delighted to speak to any of
those whose consciences are burdened. If any who wish to see me would
wait. . . ."
The souls are caught for God.
Prayers followed, another hymn. Bunning with red eyes has contemplated
his sins and is in a glow of excited repentance. It is over.
As Olva rose to leave the building he knew that this was not the path
for which he was searching. Not here was that terrible Presence. . . .
The men poured in a black crowd out into the night. As Olva stepped into
the darkness he knew that the terror was only now beginning for him.
Standing there now with no sorrow, remorse, repentance, nevertheless
he knew that all night, alone in his room, he would be fighting with
devils. . . .
Bunning, nervously, stammered--"If you don't mind--I think I'm going
round for a minute."
Olva nodded good-night. As he went on his way to Saul's, grimly, it
seemed humorous that "soft-faced" Bunning should be going to confess his
thin, miserable little sins.
For him, Olva Dune, only a dreadful silence. . . .
CHAPTER III
THE BODY COMES TO TOWN
1
And after all he slept, slept dreamlessly. He woke to the comfortable
accustomed voices of Mrs. Ridge, his bedmaker, and Miss Annett, her
assistant. It was a cold frosty morning; the sky showed through the
window a cloudless blue.
He could hear the deep base voice of Mrs. Ridge in her favourite phrase:
"Well, I _don't_ think, Miss Annett. You won't get over me," and Miss
Annett's mildly submissive, "I should think _not_ indeed, Mrs. Ridge."
Lying back in bed he surveyed with a mild wonder the fact that he had
thus, easily, slept. He felt, moreover, that that body had already, in
the division of to-day from yesterday, lost much of its haunting power.
In the clean freshness of the day, in the comfort of the casual
voices of the two women in the other room, in the smell of the coffee,
yesterday's melodrama seemed incredible. It had never happened; soon he
would see from his window Carfax's hulking body cross the court. No,
it was real enough, only it did not concern him. He watched it, as a
spectator, indifferent, callous. There _was_ a change in his life, but
it was a change of another kind. In the strange consciousness that he
now had of some vast and vital Presence, the temporal fact of the thing
that he had done lost all importance. There was something that he had
got to find, to discover. If--and the possibility seemed large now in
the air of this brilliant morning--he were, after all, to escape,
he would not rest until he had made his discovery. Some new life was
stirring within him. He wanted now to fling himself amongst men; he
would play football, he would take his place in the college, he would
test everything--leave no stone unturned. No longer a cynical observer,
he would be an adventurer . . . if they would let him alone.
He got out of bed, stripped, and stood over his bath. The cold air beat
upon his skin; he rejoiced in the sense of his fitness, in the movement
of his muscles, in the splendid condition of his body. If this were to
be the last day of his freedom, it should at any rate be a splendid day.
He had his bath, flung on a shirt and trousers and went into his
sitting-room, bright now with the morning sun, so that the blue bowls
and the red tiles shone, and even the dark face of Aegidius was lighted
with the gleam.
Mrs. Ridge was short and stout, with white hair, a black bonnet, and the
deepest of voices. Her eagerness to deliver herself of all the things
that she wanted to say prevented full-stops and commas from being of any
use to her. Miss Annett was admirably suited as a companion, being long,
thin and silent, and intended by nature to be subservient to the more
masterful of her sex. With any man she was able easily to hold her own;
with Mrs. Ridge she was bending, bowed, humility.
Mrs. Ridge grinned like a dog at the appearance of Olva. "Good mornin',
sir, and a nice frosty cold sort o' day it is with Miss Annett just
breakin' one of your cups, sir, 'er 'ands bein' that cold and a cup
bein' an easy thing to slip out of the 'and as you must admit yourself,
sir. Pore Miss Annett is _that_ distressed."
Miss Annett did indeed look downcast. "I can't think---" she began.
"It's quite all right, Miss Annett," said Olva. "I think it's wonderful
that you break the things as seldom as you do. The china was of no kind
of value."
It was known in the college that Mr. Dune was the only gentleman of
whom Mrs. Ridge could be said to be afraid; she was proud of him and
frightened of him. She said to Miss Annett, when that lady made her
first appearance--
"And I can tell _you_, Miss Annett, that you need never 'ave no fear of
bein' introjuced to Royalty one of these days after bein' with that Mr.
Dune, because it puts you in practice, I can tell you, and a nice spoken
gentleman 'e is and _quiet_--never does a thing 'e shouldn't, but wicked
under it all I'll be bound. 'E's no chicken, you take it from me. Born
yesterday? I _don't_ think. . . ."
The women faded away, and he was left to himself. After breakfast he
thought that he would write to his father and give him an account of
the thing that he had done; if he escaped suspicion he would tear it up.
Also he was determined on two things: one was that if he were accused
of the crime, he would at once admit everything; the other was that he
would do his utmost, until he was accused, to lead his life exactly as
though he were in no way concerned. He had now an odd assurance that it
was not by his public condemnation that he was intended to work out the
results of his act. Why was he so assured of that? What was it that was
now so strangely moving him? He faced the world, armed, resolved. It
seemed to him that it was important for him, now, to live. This was
the first moment of his life that existence had appeared to be of any
moment. He wanted time to continue his search.
He wrote to his father---
MY DEAR FATHER,---
I have just been arrested on the charge of murdering an undergraduate
here called Carfax. It is quite true that I killed him. We met
yesterday, in the country, quarrelled, and I struck him, hitting him on
the chin. He fell instantly, breaking his neck. He was muck of the worst
kind. I had known him at Rugby; he was always a beast of the lowest
order. He was ruining a fellow here, taking his money, making him drink,
doing for him; also ruining a girl in a tobacconist's shop. All this was
no business of mine, but we had always loathed one another. I think when
I hit him I wanted to kill him. I am not, in any way, sorry, except that
suddenly I do not want to die. You are the only person in the world for
whom I care; you will understand. I have not disgraced the name; it was
killing a rat. I think that you had better not come to see me. I face it
better alone. We have gone along well together, you and I. I send you my
love. Good-bye, OLVA.
As he finished it, he wondered, Would this be sent? Would they come for
him? Perhaps, at this moment, they had found the body. He put the letter
carefully in the pocket of his shirt. Then, suddenly, he was confronted
with the risk. Suppose that he were to be taken ill, to faint, to forget
the thing. . . . No, the letter must wait. They would allow him to
write, if the time came.
He took the letter, flung it into the fire, watched it burn. He felt as
though, in the writing of it, he had communicated with his father. The
old man would understand.
2
About eleven o'clock Craven came to see him. Craven's father had been
a Fellow of Trinity and Professor of Chinese to the University. He had
died some five years ago and now the widow and young Craven's sister
lived in Cambridge. Craven had tried, during his first term, to make
a friend of Olva, but his happy, eager attitude to the whole world
had seemed crude and even priggish to Olva's reserve, and all Craven's
overtures had been refused, quietly, kindly, but firmly. Craven had not
resented the repulse; it was not his habit to resent anything, and as
the year had passed, Olva had realized that Craven's impetuous desire
for the friendship of the world was something in him perfectly natural
and unforced. Olva had discovered also that Craven's devotion to his
mother and sister was the boy's leading motive in life. Olva had only
seen the girl, Margaret, once; she had been finishing her education in
Dresden, and he remembered her as dark, reserved, aloof--opposite indeed
from her brother's cheerful good-fellowship. But for Rupert Craven this
girl was his world; she was obviously cleverer, more temperamental than
he, and he felt this and bowed to it.
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. Carfax also had had probably, at the bottom of
his dirty, ignoble soul, more honest affection for Craven than for
any one in the world. He had tried to behave himself in that ingenuous
youth's company.
Now young Craven, disturbed, unhappy, anxious, stood in Olva's door.
"I say, Dune, I hope I'm not disturbing you?"
"Not a bit."
"It's a rotten time to come." Craven came in and sat down. "I'm awfully
worried."
"Worried?"
"Yes, about Carfax. No one knows what's happened to him. He may have
gone up to town, of course, but if he did he went without an exeat.
Thompson saw him go out about two-thirty yesterday afternoon---was
going to Grantchester, because he yelled it back to Cards, who asked him
where he was off to--not been heard or seen since."
"Oh, he's sure to be all right," Olva said easily.
"He's up in town!"
"Yes, I expect he is, but I don't know that that makes it any better.
There's some woman he's been getting in a mess with I know--didn't say
anything to me about it, but I heard of it from Cards."
"Well--" Olva slowly lit his pipe--"there's something else too. He was
always in with a lot of these roughs in the town--stable men and the
rest. He used to get tips from them, he always said, and he's had awful
rows with some of them before now. You know what a temper he's got,
especially when he's been drinking at all. I shouldn't wonder if he
hadn't a fight one fine day and got landed on the chin, or something,
and left."
"Oh! Carfax can look after himself all right. He's used to that kind of
company."
Olva gazed, through the smoke of his pipe, dreamily into the fire.
"You don't like him," Craven said suddenly.
Olva turned slowly in his chair and looked at him. "Why! What makes you
say that?"
"Something Carfax told me the other day. We were sitting one evening in
his room and he suddenly said to me, 'You know there _is_ one fellow in
this place who hates me like poison--always has hated me.' I asked him
who it was. He said it was you. I was immensely surprised, because I'd
always thought you very good friends--as good friends as you ever are
with any one, Dune. You don't exactly take any of us to your breast, you
know!"
Dune smiled. "No, I think I've made a mistake in keeping so much alone.
It looks as though I thought myself so damned superior. But I assure you
Carfax was--is--quite wrong. We've been friendly enough all our days."
"No," said Craven slowly, "I don't think you do like him. I've watched
you since. He's an awfully good fellow---really---at heart, you know.
I do hope things are all right. I sent off a wire to his uncle in town
half an hour ago to ask whether he were there. I don't know why I'm so
anxious. . . . It's all right, of course, but I'm uneasy."
"Well, you're quite wrong about my disliking Carfax," Olva went on. "And
I think, altogether, it's about time I came off my perch. For one thing
I'm going to take up Rugger properly."
"Oh, but that's splendid! Will you play against St. Martin's to-morrow?
It will relieve Lawrence like anything if you will. They've got Cards,
Worcester and Tundril, and they want a fourth Three badly. My word,
Dune, that would be splendid. We'll have you a Blue after all."
"A little late for that, I'm afraid."
"Not a bit of it. They keep on changing the Threes. Of course Cards is
having a good shot at it, but he isn't down against the Harlequins on
Saturday, and mighty sick he is about it." Craven got up to go. "Well,
I must be moving. Perhaps Carfax is back in his rooms. There may be word
of him anyway."
Olva's pipe was out. The matchbox on the mantelpiece was empty. He felt
in his pocket for the little silver box that he always carried. It was
a box, with the Dune arms stamped upon it, that his father had given to
him. He had it, he remembered, yesterday when he set out on his walk.
He felt in all his pockets. These were the clothes that he was wearing
yesterday. Perhaps it was in his bedroom. He went in to look, and Craven
meanwhile watched him from the door.
"What have you lost?"
"Nothing."
It was not in the bedroom. He felt in the overcoat that he had been
wearing. It was not there.
"Nothing. It's a matchbox of mine--must have dropped out of a pocket."
"Sorry. Daresay it will turn up. Well, see you later."
Craven vanished; then suddenly put his head in through the door.
"Oh, I say, Dune, come in to supper to-morrow night. Home I mean. My
sister's back from Dresden, and I'd like you to know her. I'm sure you'd
get on."
"Thanks very much, I'd like to come." Olva stood in the centre of the
room, his hands clenched, his face white. He must have dropped the box
in the wood. He had it on his walk, he had lit his pipe. . . . Of course
they would find it. Here then was the end. Now for the first time
the horror of death came upon him, filing the room, turning it black,
killing the fire, the colour. His body was frozen with horror--already
his throat was choking, his eyes burning. The room swung slowly round
him, turning, turning. "They shan't take me. . . . They shan't take
me." His face was cruel, his mouth twisted. He saw the little silver box
lying there, open, exposed, upon the grass, glittering against the dull
green. He turned to the window with desperate, hunted eyes. Already he
fancied that he heard their steps upon the stair. He stood, his body
flung back, his hands pressing upon the table. "They shan't take me.
. . . They shan't take me." The door turned, slowly opened. It was Mrs.
Ridge with a duster. He gave a little sigh and rolled over, tumbling
back against the chair, unconscious.
3
"There, sir, now I _do_ 'ope as you'll be all right. Too much book-work,
_that's_ what it is, but if a doctor----"
Olva was lying in his chair now, very pale, his eyes closed.
"No, thank you, Mrs. Ridge. It's all right now, thank you--quite all
right. Yes, I'm ready for lunch--very silly of me."
Mrs. Ridge departed to fetch the luncheon-dish from the College kitchens
and to tell the porter Thompson all about it on the way. "Pore young
gentleman, there 'e was as you might say white as a sheet all of a 'eap.
It gave me a turn _I_ can assure you, Mr. Thompson."
His lunch was untasted. It seemed to him that he had now lost all power
of control. He could only face the inevitable fact of his approaching
capture. The sudden discovery of the loss of the matchbox had clanged
the facts about his ears with the discordant scream of closing gates.
He was captured, caught irretrievably, like a rat in a trap. He did
not wish to be caught like a rat in a trap. This was a free world.
Air, light, colour were about him on every side. To die, fighting, on
a hill-top, in a battle-field, that was one thing. To see them crowding
into his room, to be dragged into a dark airless place, to be caught by
the neck and throttled. . . .
Mrs. Ridge cleared away the lunch with much shaking of the head. Olva
lay in his chair watching, with eyes that never closed nor stirred, the
crackling golden fire. Beyond the window the world was of blue steel. He
could fancy the still gleaming waters of the lake that stretched beyond
the grass lawns; he could fancy the red brick of the buildings that
clung like some frieze to the horizon. Along the stone courtyard rang
the heavy football boots of men going to the Upper Fields. He could
see their red and blue jerseys, their short blue trousers, their tight
stockings--the healthy swing of their bodies as they tramped. Men would
be going down to the river now--freshmen would be hearing reluctantly,
some of them with tears, the coarse and violent criticism of the
Third Year men who were tabbing them. All the world was moving. He was
surrounded, there in his silent room, with an amazing sense of life. He
seemed to realize, for the first time, what it was that Cambridge was
doing . . . all this physical life marching through the cold bright air,
strength, poetry, the great stir and enthusiasm of the Young Blood of
the world . . . and he, waiting for those steps on the stair, for those
grim faces in the open door. The world left him alone. As the afternoon
advanced, the tramp of the footballers was no longer heard, silence,
bound by the shining frost of the beautiful day, lay about the grey
buildings. Soon a melody of thrumming kettles would rise into the air,
in every glowing room tea would be preparing, the glorious luxury
of rest after stinging exercise would fill the courts with worship,
unconsciously driven, skywards, to the Powers of Health. And then, after
years of time, as it seemed, faintly through the closed windows at
last came the single note of St. Martin's bell. That meant that it was
quarter to five. Almost unconsciously he rose, put on his cap and gown
and passed through the twilit streets that were stealing now into a dim
glow under their misty lamps. The great chapel of St. Martin's, planted
like some couchant animal grey and mysterious against the blue of the
evening sky, flung through its windows the light of its many candles.
He found a seat at the back of the dark high-hanging ante-chapel. He
was alone there. Towards the inner chapel the white-robed choir moved
softly; for a moment the curtains were drawn aside revealing the misty
candle-light within; the white choir passed through--the curtains Fell
again, leaving Olva alone with the great golden trumpeting angels above
the organ for his company.
Then great peace came upon him. Some one had taken his soul, softly,
with gentle hands, and was caring for it. He was suddenly freed from
responsibility, and as the soothing comfort stole about him he knew that
now he had simply to wait to be shown what it was that he must do. This
was not the strange indifference of yesterday, nor the physical strength
of the morning . . . peace, such peace as he had never before known, had
come to him. From the heart of the darkness up into the glowing beauty
of the high roof the music rose. It was Wednesday afternoon and the
voices were un accompanied. Soon the _Insanae et Vanae_ climbed in wave
after wave of melody, was caught, held, lingered in the air, softly died
again.
Olva was detached--he saw his body beaten, imprisoned, tortured, killed.
But he was not there. He was riding heaven in quest of God.
4
At the gates of his college the news met him. He had been waiting for
it so long a time that now he had to act his horror. It seemed to him an
old, old story--this tale of a murder in Sannet Wood.
Groups of men were waiting in the cloisters, waiting for the doors to
open for "Hall." As Olva came towards the gates an undergraduate, white,
breathless, brushed past him and burst into the quiet, murmuring groups.
"My God, have you heard?"
Olva passed through the iron gates. The groups broke. He had the
impression of many men standing back--black in the dim light--waiting,
listening.
There was an instant's silence. Then, the man's voice breaking into a
shrill scream, the news came tumbling out. It seemed to flash a sudden
glare upon the blackness.
"It's Carfax--Carfax--he's been murdered."
The word was tossed, caught, flung against the stone pillars--
"Murdered! Murdered! Murdered!"
"They've just brought his body in now, found it in Sannet Wood
this evening; a working man found it. Been there two days. His neck
broken----"
The mysterious groups scattered into strange fantastic shapes. There was
a pause and then a hundred voices began at once. Some one spoke to Olva
and he answered; his voice low and stern. . . . On every side confusion.
But for himself, like steel armour encasing his body, was the strange
calm--aloof, unmoved, dispassionate--that had come to him half an hour
ago.
He was alone--like God.
CHAPTER IV
MARGARET CRAVEN
1
It is essential to the maintenance of the Cambridge spirit that there
should be no melodrama. Into that placid and speculative air real
life tumbles with a resounding shock and the many souls that have been
building, these many years, with careful elaboration, walls of defence
and protection find themselves suddenly naked and indecent before the
world. For that army of men who use Cambridge as a gate to the world
in front of them the passage through the narrow streets is too swift to
afford more in after life than a pleasant reminiscence. It is because
Cambridge is the bridge between stern discipline and pleasant freedom
that it is so happily remembered; but there are those who adopt
Cambridge as their abiding home, and it is for these that real life is
impossible.
Beneath these grey walls as the years pass slowly the illusions grow.
Closer and closer creep the walls of experience, softer and thicker
are the garments worn to keep out the cold, gentler and gentler are
the speculations born of a good old Port and a knowledge of the Greek
language. About the High Tables voices softly dispute the turning of a
phrase, eyes mildly salute the careful dishes of a wisely chosen cook,
gentle patronage is bestowed upon the wild ruffian of the outer world.
Many bells ring, many fires are burning, many lamps are lit, many leaves
of many books are turned--busily, busily hands are raising walls of
self-defence; the world at first regretted, then patronized, is now
forgotten . . . hush, he sleeps, his feet in slippers, his head upon
the softest cushion, his hand still covering the broad page of his
dictionary. . . . Nothing, not birth nor love, nor death must disturb
his repose.
And here, in the heart of the Sannet Wood, is death from violence,
death, naked, crude, removed from all sense of life as we know it. The
High Tables avoid Carfax's body with all possible discretion; for an
hour or two the Port has lost its flavour, Homer is hidden by a
cloud, the gentle chatter is curtailed and silenced. Amongst the lower
order--those wild and turbulent undergraduates--it is the only topic.
Carfax is very generally known; he had ridden, he had rowed, he had
played cricket. A member of the only sporting club in the University, he
had been known as a "real sportsman and a damned good fellow" because he
was often drunk and frequently spent an evening in London . . . and now
he is dead.
In Saul's a number of very young spirits awake to the consciousness of
death. Here is a red-faced hearty fellow as fit as anything one moment
and dead the next. Never before had the fact been faced that this might
happen to any one. Let the High Table dismiss it easily, it is none
so simple for those who have not had time to build up those defending
walls. For a day or two there is a hush about the place, voices are
soft, men talk in groups, the mystery is the one sensation. . . . The
time passes, there are other interests, once more the High Table can
taste its wine. Death is again bundled into noisier streets, into a
harder, shriller air. . . .
2
Olva, on the morning after the discovery of the body, heard from Mrs.
Ridge speculations as to the probable criminal. "You take _my_ word, Mr.
Dune, sir, it was one of them there nasty tramps--always 'anging round
they are, and Miss Annett was only yesterday speakin' to me of a ugly
feller comin' round to their back door and askin' for bread, weren't
you, Miss Annett?"
"I was, indeed, Mrs. Ridge."
"And 'im with the nastiest 'eavy blue jaw you ever saw on a man, 'adn't
'e, Miss Annett?"
"He had, indeed, Mrs. Ridge."
"Ah, I shouldn't wonder--nasty-sort-o'-looking feller. And that
Sannet Wood too--nasty lonely place with its old stones and
all--comfortable?--I _don't_ think."
Olva made inquiries as to the stones.
"Why, ever so old, they say--before Christ, I've 'eard. Used to cut up
'uman flesh and eat it like the pore natives, and there's a ugly lookin'
stone in that very wood where they did it too, or so I've 'eard. Would
you go along that way in the dark, Miss Annett?"
"Not much--I grant _you_, Mrs. Ridge."
"Oh yes! not likely on a dark night, I _don't_ think!--and that pore Mr.
Carfax--well, all I say is, I 'opes they catch 'im, that's all _I_ say
. . ." with further reminiscence concerning Mrs. Birch who had worked
on Carfax's staircase the last ten years and never "'ad no kind of luck.
There was that Mr. Oliver---"
Final dismissal of Mrs. Ridge and Miss Annett.
Meanwhile, strange enough the relief that he felt because the body was
actually removed from that wood. No longer possible now to see it lying
there with the leg bent underneath, the head falling straight back, the
ring on the finger. . . . Curious, too, that the matchbox had not been
discovered; they must have searched pretty thoroughly by now--perhaps
after all it had not been dropped there.
But over him there had fallen a strange lassitude. He was outside,
beyond it all.
And then Craven came to see him. The event had wrought in the boy a
great change. It was precisely with a character like Craven's that such
an incident must cleave a division between youth and manhood. He had,
until last evening, considered nothing for himself; his father's death
had occurred when he was too young to see anything in it but a perfectly
natural removal of some one immensely old. The world had seemed the
easiest, the simplest of places, his years at Rugby had been delight.
Fully free from shocks of any kind. Good health, friendship, a little
learning, these things had made the days pass swiftly. Rupert Craven had
been yesterday, a child precisely typical of the system in which he
had been drilled; now he was something different. Olva knew that he was
capable of depths of feeling because of his extraordinary devotion to
his sister. Craven had often spoken of her to Olva--"So different
from me, the most brilliant person in the world. Her music is really
wonderful----people who know, I mean, all say so. But you see we're the
same age--only two of us. We've always been everything to one another."
Olva wondered why Craven had told him. It was not as though they had
ever been very intimate, but Craven seemed to think that Olva and his
sister would have much in common.
Olva wondered, as he looked at Craven standing there in the doorway, how
this sister would take the change in her brother. He had suddenly, as he
looked at Craven, a perception of the number of lives with whose course
his action had involved him. The wheel was beginning to turn. . . .
The light had gone from Craven's eyes. His vitality and energy had
slipped from him, leaving his body heavy, unalert. He seemed puzzled,
awed; there were dark lines under his eyes, his cheeks were pale and his
mouth had lost its tendency to smile, its lines were heavy; but, above
all, his expression was interrogative. Finally, he was puzzled.
For an instant, as he looked at him, Olva felt that he could not
face him, then with a deliberate summoning of the resources of his
temperament he strung himself to whatever the day might bring forth.
"This is awful----"
"Yes."
"Of course it doesn't matter to you, Dune, as it does to me, but I knew
the fellow so awfully well. It's horrible, horrible. That he should have
died--like that."
Olva broke out suddenly. "After all not such a bad way to die--swift
enough. I don't suppose Carfax valued life especially."
"Oh! he enjoyed it--enjoyed it like anything. And that it should be
taken so trivially, for no reason at all. It seems to be almost certain
that it was some tramp or other--robbery the motive probably, and then
he was startled and left the money--it was all lying about on the grass.
But then Carfax was mixed up with so many ruffians of one kind and
another. It may have been revenge or any-thing. I believe they are
searching the wood now, but they're not likely to bring it home to
any one. Misty day, no one about, and the man simply used his fist
apparently--he must have been most awfully strong. Have you ever heard
of any one killing a man with one blow--except a prize-fighter?"
"It's simply a knack, I believe, if you catch a fellow in a certain
spot."
Supposing that some wretched tramp were arrested and accused? Some dirty
fellow from behind a hedge? All the tramps, all the ruffians of the
world were now a danger. The accusation of another would bring the truth
from him of course. His dark eyes moved across the room to Craven's
white, tired face. Within himself there moved now with every hour
stirring more acutely this desire for life. If only they would let him
alone . . . let the body alone . . . let it all alone. Let the world
sink back to its earlier apathy.
His voice was resentful.
"Carfax wasn't a good fellow, Craven. No, I know--_Nil nini bonum_ . . .
and all the rest of it. But it looks a bit like a judgment--judgment
from Heaven."
Craven broke in.
"But now--just now when his body's lying there. I know there were things
he did. He was a bit wild, of course----"
"Yes, there was a girl, a girl in Midgett's tobacconist's shop--his
daughter. Carfax ruined her, body and soul . . . ruined her. He boasted
of it. Looks like a judgment."
"I don't care." Craven sprang up. "Carfax may have done things, but he
was a friend of mine, and a good friend. They _must_ catch the man, they
_must_. It's a duty they owe us all. To have such a man as that hanging
about. Why, it might happen to any of us. You must help me, Dune."
"Help you?"
"Yes--help them to catch the murderer. We must think of everything that
could make a clue. Perhaps this girl. I _had_ heard something about her,
of course; but perhaps there was another lover, a rival or something, or
perhaps her father----"
"Well," Dune said slowly, "my advice to you, Craven, is not to think too
much about the whole business. A thing like that is certain to get on
one's nerves--leave it alone as much as you can----"
"What a funny chap you are! You're always like that. As detached from
everything as though you weren't alive at all. Why, I believe, if you'd
committed the murder yourself you wouldn't be much more concerned!"
"Well, we've got to go on as we're made, I suppose, only _do_ take my
advice about not getting morbid over it. By the way, I see I'm playing
against St. Martin's this afternoon."
"Yes. I thought at first I wouldn't play. But I suppose it's better to
go on doing one's ordinary things. You're coming in to-night, aren't
you?
"Are you sure you want me after all this disturbance?
"Why, of course; my mother's expecting you. Half-past seven. Don't
dress." He raised his arms above his head, yawning. He was obviously
better for the talk. His eyes were less strained, his body more alert.
"I'm tired to death. Didn't get a wink of sleep last night--saw poor
Carfax in the dark--ugh! Well, we meet this afternoon."
When the door closed Olva had the sensation of having been on his trial.
Craven's eyes still followed him. Nerves, of course . . . but they had
strangely reminded him of Bunker.
3
Olva had never been to Craven's house before. It stood in a little
street that joined Cambridge to the country. At one end of the prim
little road the lamps stopped abruptly and a white chalk path ran
amongst dark common to a distant wood.
At the other end a broader road with tram-lines crossed. The house was
built by itself, back from the highway, with a tiny drive and some dark
laurels. It was always gloomy and apparently unkept. The autumn leaves
were dull and sodden upon the drive; the bell and knocker upon the heavy
door, from which the paint was worn in places, were rusty. No sound came
from the little road beyond.
The place seemed absolutely without life. Olva now, as he sent the
bell pealing through the passages, knew that this dark desertion had an
effect upon his nerves. A week ago he would not have noticed the place
at all--now he longed for lights and noise and company. He had played
foot-ball that afternoon better than ever before; that, too, had been a
defence, almost a protest, an assertion of his right to live.
As he waited his thoughts pursued him. He had heard them say to-night
that no clue had been discovered, that the police were entirely at
a loss. It was impossible to trace foot-marks amongst all that
undergrowth. No one had been seen in that direction during the hours
when the murder must have been committed . . . so on--so on . . . all
this talk, this discussion. The wretched man was dead--no one would miss
him--no one cared--leave him alone, leave him alone. Olva pulled the
bell again furiously. Why couldn't they come? He wanted to escape from
this dark and dismal drive; these hanging laurels, the cold little
road, with its chilly lamps. An old and tottering woman, her nose nearly
touching her chin and her fingers in black mittens, opened at last and
led Olva into the very blackest and closest little hall that he had ever
encountered. The air was thick and musty with a strangely mingled smell
of burning wood, of faded pot-pourri, of dried skins. The ceiling was
low and black, and the only window was one of a dull red glass that
glimmered mournfully at a distance. The walls were hung with the
strangest things, prizes apparently that the late Dr. Craven had
secured in China--grinning heathen gods, uncouth weapons, dried skins of
animals. Out of this dark little hall Olva was led into a drawing-room
that was itself nearly as obscure. Here the ceiling was higher, but the
place square and dark; a deep set stone fireplace in which logs were
burning was the most obvious thing there. For the rest the floor seemed
littered with old twisted tables, odd chairs with carved legs, here a
plate with sea shells, here a glass case with some pieces of ribbon,
old rusty coins, silver ornaments. There were many old prints upon the
walls, landscapes, some portraits, and stuck here and there elaborate
arrangements of silk and ribbon and paper fans and coloured patterns.
Opposite the dark diamond-paned window was an old gilt mirror that
seemed to catch all the room into its dusty and faded reflections, and
to make what was old and tattered enough already, doubly dreary. The
room had the close and musty air of the hall as though windows were but
seldom opened; there was a scent as though oranges had recently been
eaten there.
At first Olva had thought that he was alone in the room; then when
his eyes had grown more accustomed to the light he saw, sitting in a
high-backed chair, motionless, gazing into the fire, with her fine white
hands lying in her lap, a lady. She reminded him, in that first vision
of her, of "Phiz's" pictures of Mrs. Clennam in _Little Dorrit_, and
always afterwards that connection remained with him. Her thin, spare
figure had something intense, almost burning, in its immobility, in the
deep black of her dress and hair, in the white sharpness of the outline
of her face.
How admirably, it seemed to him, she suited that room. She too may
have thought as she turned slowly to look at him that he fitted his
background, with the spare dignity of his figure, his fine eyes, the
black and white contrast of his body so that his cheeks, his hands,
seemed almost to shine against the faded air. It is certain that they
recognized at once some common ground so that they met as though they
had known one another for many years. The old minor caught for a moment
the fine gravity and silence of his approach to her as he waited for her
to greet him.
But before she could speak to him the door had opened and Margaret
Craven entered. In her gravity, her silence, she seemed at once to claim
kinship with them both. She had the black hair, the pale face, the sharp
outline of her mother. As she came quietly towards them her reserve was
wonderful, but there was tenderness in the soft colour of her eyes,
in the lines of her mouth that made her also beautiful. But beyond the
tenderness there was also an energy that made every move seem like an
attack. In spite of her reserve there was impatience, and Olva's first
judgment of her was that the last thing in the world that she could
endure was muddle; she shone with the clean-cut decision of fine steel.
Mrs. Craven spoke without rising from her chair.
"I am very glad to see you, Mr. Dune, Rupert has often told us about
you."
Margaret advanced to him and held out her hand. She looked him straight
in the eyes.
"We have met before, you know."
"I had not forgotten," he answered her gravely.
Then Rupert came in. It was strange how one saw now, when he stood
beside his mother and sister, that he had some of their quality of stern
reserve. He had always seemed to Olva a perfectly ordinary person of
natural good health and good temper, and now this quality that had
descended upon him increased the fresh attention that he had already
during these last two days demanded. For something beyond question the
Carfax affair must be held responsible. It seemed now to be the only
thing that could hold his mind. He spoke very little, but his white
face, his tired eyes, his listless conversation, showed the occupation
of his mind. It was indeed a melancholy evening.
To Olva, his nerves being already on edge, it was almost intolerable.
They passed from the drawing-room into a tiny dining-room--a room that
was as dingy and faded as the rest, with a dull red paper on the walls
and an old blue carpet. The old woman waited; the food was of the
simplest.
Mrs. Craven scarcely spoke at all. She sat with her eyes gravely fixed
in front of her, save when she raised them to flash them for an instant
at Olva. He found this sudden gaze extraordinarily disconcerting; it was
as though she were reasserting her claim to some common understanding
that existed between them, to some secret that belonged to them alone.
They avoided, for the most part, Carfax's death. Once Margaret Craven
said: "One of the most astonishing things about anything of this kind
seems to me the bravery of the murderer--the bravery I mean that is
demanded of any one during the days between the crime and his arrest.
To be in possession of that tremendous secret, to be at war, as it
were, with the world, and yet to lead, in all probability, an ordinary
life--that demands courage."
"One may accustom oneself to anything," Mrs. Craven said. Her voice was
deep and musical, and her words seemed to linger almost like an echo in
the air.
Olva thought as he looked at Margaret Craven that there was a strength
there that could face anything; it was more than courage; it might,
under certain circumstances, become fanaticism. But he knew that whereas
Mrs. Craven stirred in him a deep restlessness and disquiet, Margaret
Craven quieted and soothed him, almost, it seemed, deliberately, as
though she knew that he was in trouble.
He said: "I should think that his worst enemy, if he have any
imagination at all, must be his loneliness. I can conceive that the
burden of the secret, even though there be no chance whatever of
discovery, must make that loneliness intolerable."
Here Rupert Craven interrupted as though he were longing to break away
from the subject.
"You played the finest game of your life this afternoon, Dune. I
never saw anything like that last try of yours. Whymper was on the
touch-line--I saw him. The 'Varsity's certain to try you again on
Saturday."
"I've been slack too long," Olva said, laughing. "I never enjoyed
anything more than this afternoon."
"I played the most miserable game I've ever played--couldn't get this
beastly thing out of my head."
Olva felt as though he were almost at the end of his endurance. At that
moment he thought that he would have preferred them to burst the doors
and arrest him. He had never known such fatigue. If he could sleep he
did not care what happened to him.
The rest of the evening seemed a dream. The dark, crowded drawing-room
flickered in the light from the crackling fire. Mrs. Craven, in her
stiff chair, never moving her eyes, flung shadows on the walls. Some
curtain blew drearily, with little secret taps, against the door. Rupert
Craven sat moodily in a dark corner.
At Olva's request Margaret Craven played. The piano was old and needed
attention, but he thought that he had never heard finer playing. First
she gave him some modern things--some Debussy, _Les Miroires_ of Ravel,
some of the Russian ballet music of _Cleopatre_. These she flung at him,
fiercely, aggressively, playing them as though she would wring cries of
protest from the very notes.
"There," she cried when she had finished, flashing a look that was
almost indignant at him. "There is your modern stuff--I can give you
more of it."
"I would like something better now," he said gravely.
Without a word that mood left her. In the dim candle-light her eyes
were tender again. Very softly she played the first two movements of the
"Moonlight" sonata.
"I am not in the mood for the last movement," she said, and closed the
piano. Still about the old silver, the dark walls, the log fire, the old
gilt mirror, the sweet, delicate notes lingered.
Soon afterwards he left them. As he passed down the chill, deserted
street, abandoning the dark laurelled garden, he saw behind him the
stern shadow of Mrs. Craven black upon the wall.
But the loneliness, the unrest, walked behind him. Silence was beginning
to be terrible. God--this God--this Unknown God--pursued him. Only a
little comfort out of the very heart of that great pursuing shadow came
to him--Margaret Craven's grave and tender eyes.
CHAPTER V
STONE ALTARS
1
Carfax was buried. There had been an inquest; certain tramps and
wanderers had been arrested, examined and dismissed. No discovery had
been made, and a verdict of Wilful "Wilful murder against some person or
persons unknown" had been returned. It was generally felt that Carfax's
life had not been of the most savoury and that there were, in all
probability, amongst the back streets of Cambridge several persons who
had owed him a grudge. He appeared, indeed, in the discoveries that were
now made on every side, to be something better dead than alive. A stout
and somnolent gentleman, with red cheeks and eyes half closed, was the
only mourner from the outside world at the funeral. This, it appeared,
was an uncle. Father dead, mother divorced and leading a pleasant
existence amongst the capitals of Europe. The uncle, although
maintaining a decent appearance of grief, was obviously, at heart,
relieved to be rid of his nephew so easily. Poor Carfax! For so rubicund
and noisy a person he left strangely little mark upon the world. Within
a fortnight the college had nearly lost account of his existence. He
lent to Sannet Wood a sinister air that caused numberless undergraduates
to cycle out in that direction. Now and again, when conversation
flagged, some one revived the subject. But it was a horse that needed
much whipping to make it go. It had kicked with its violent hoof upon
the soft walls of Cambridge life. For a moment it had seemed that it
would force its way, but the impression had been of the slightest.
Even within the gates and courts of Saul's itself the impression that
Carfax had left faded with surprising swiftness into a melodramatic
memory. But nothing could have been more remarkable than the resolute
determination of these young men to push grim facts away. They were
not made--one could hear it so eloquently explained--for that kind of
tragedy. The autumn air, the furious exercise, the hissing kettles, the
decent and amiable discussions on Life reduced to the importance of a
Greek Accent--these things rejected violently the absurdity of Tragic
Crudity.
They were quite right, these young men. They paid their shining pounds
for the capture--conscious or not as it might be--of an atmosphere, a
delicate and gentle setting to the crudity of their later life. Carfax,
when alive, had blundered into coarse disaster but had blundered in back
streets. Now the manner of his death painted him in shrieking colours.
The harmony was disturbed, therefore he must go.
Of more importance to this world of Saul's was the strange revival--as
though from the dead--of Olva Dune. They had been prepared, many of
them, for some odd development, but this perfectly normal, healthy
interest in the affairs of the College was the last thing that his
grave, romantic air could ever have led any one to expect. His football
in the first place opened wide avenues of speculation. First there had
been the College game, then there had been the University match against
the Harlequins, and it was, admittedly, a very long time since any
one had seen anything like it. He had seemed, in that game against the
Harlequins, to possess every virtue that should belong to the ideal
three-quarter--pace, swerve, tackle, and through them all the steady
working of the brain. Nevertheless those earlier games were yet
remembered against him, and it was confidently said that this
brilliance, with a man of Dune's temperament, could not possibly last.
But, nevertheless, the expectation of his success brought him up, with
precipitation, against the personality of Cardillac, and it was this
implied rivalry that agitated the College. It is only in one's second
year that a matter of this kind can assume world-shaking importance.
The First-year Undergraduate is too near the child, the Third-year
Undergraduate too near the man. For the First-year man School, for the
Third-year man the World looms too heavily. So it is from the men of
the Second year that the leaders are to be selected, and at this time in
Saul's Cardillac seemed to have no rival. He combined, to an admirable
degree, the man of the world and the sportsman; he had an air that was
beyond rubies. He was elegant without being effeminate, arrogant without
being conceited, indifferent without being blase. He had learnt, at
Eton, and at the knee of a rich and charming mother, that to be crude
was the unforgivable sin. He worshipped the god of good manners and
would have made an admirable son of the great Lord Chesterfield. Finally
he was the only man in Saul's who had any "air" at all, and he had
already travelled round the world and been introduced by his mother to
Royalty at Marienbad.
The only man who could ever have claimed any possible rivalry was Dune,
and Dune had seemed determined, until now, to avoid any-thing of
the kind. Suddenly the situation leapt upon the startled eyes of the
attentive world. Possibility of excitement. . . .
2
Olva, himself, was entirely unconcerned by this threatened rivalry. He
was being driven, by impulses that he understood only too well, into the
noisiest life that he could manage to find about him. The more noise the
better; he had only a cold fear at his heart that, after all, it would
penetrate his dreaded loneliness too little, let it be as loud a noise
as he could possibly summon.
He had not now--and this was the more terrible--any consciousness of
Carfax at all; there was waiting for him, lurking, beast-like, until its
inevitable moment, something far more terrible.
Meanwhile he made encounters. . . . There was Bunning. The Historical
Society in Saul's was held together by the Senior Tutor. This gentleman,
a Mr. Gregg, was thin, cadaverous, blue-chinned, mildly insincere. It
was his view of University life that undergraduates were born yesterday
and would believe anything that you told them. In spite, however, of
their tender years there was a lurking ferocity that must be checked by
an indulgent heartiness of manner, as one might offer a nut to a monkey.
His invariable manner of salutation--"_Come_ along, Simter--the very man
I wanted to see"--lost its attraction through much repetition, and the
hearty assumption on the amiable gentleman's part that "we are all
boys together" froze many undergraduates into a chill and indifferent
silence. He had not taken Holy Orders, but he gave, nevertheless, the
effect of adopting the language of the World, the Flesh and the Devil in
order that he might the better spy out the land. He attracted, finally,
to himself certain timid souls who preferred insincere comfort to none
at all, but he was hotly rejected by more able-bodied persons.
Nevertheless the Historical Society prospered, and Olva one evening,
driven he knew not by what impulse, attended its meeting. When he
entered Mr. Gregg's room some dozen men were already seated there. The
walls were hung with groups in which a younger and even thinner Mr.
Gregg was displayed, a curious figure in "shorts." On one side of the
room two oars were hung and over the mantelpiece (littered with pipes)
there were photographs of the "Mona Lisa" and Da Vinci's "Last Supper."
The men in the room were embarrassed and silent. Under a strong light a
minute undergraduate with enormous spectacles sat, white and trembling;
it was obviously he who was to read the paper.
Mr. Gregg came forward heartily. "Why, Dune, this is quite splendid! The
very man! Why, it is long since you've honoured our humble gathering.
Baccy? That's right. Help yourself. Erdington's going to read to us
about the Huns and stand a fire of questions afterwards, aren't you,
Erdington?"
The youth in spectacles gulped.
"_That's_ right. _That's_ right. Comfortable now, Dune? Got all you
want? _That's_ right. Now we can begin, I think. Minutes of the last
meeting, Stevens."
Olva placed himself in a corner and looked round the room. He found that
most of the men were freshmen whose faces he did not know, but there,
moving his fat body uneasily on a chair, was Bunning, and there, to his
intense surprise, was Lawrence. That football hero was lounging with
half-closed eyes in a large armchair. His broad back looked as though
it would burst the wooden arms, and his plain, good-natured face beamed,
through a cloud of smoke, upon the company. Below his short, light
grey flannel trousers were bright purple socks. He had the body of a
bullock--short, thick, broad, strong, thoroughly well calculated to
withstand the rushes of oncoming three-quarters. Various freshmen flung
timid glances at the hero every now and again; it was to them an event
that they might have, for a whole hour, closely under their observation,
this king among men.
Olva wondered at his presence. He remembered that Lawrence was taking
a "pass" degree in History. He knew also that Lawrence somewhere in the
depths of his slow brain had a thirst for knowledge and at the same time
a certain assurance that he would never acquire any. His slow voice, his
slow smile, the great, heavy back, the short thick legs attracted Olva;
there was something simple and primeval here that appealed to the Dune
blood. Moreover, since the afternoon when Olva had played against
the Harlequins and covered himself with glory, Lawrence had shown a
disposition to make friends. Old Lawrence might be stupid, but, as a
background, he was the most important man in the College. His slow,
lumbering body as it rolled along the Court was followed by the eyes of
countless freshmen. His appearance on the occasion of a College concert
was the signal for an orgy of applause. Cardillac might lead the
College, but he was, nevertheless, of common clay. Lawrence was of the
gods!
Swift contrast the fat and shapeless Bunning! As the tremulous and
almost tearful voice of little Erdington continued the solemn and dreary
exposition of the Huns, Olva felt increasingly that Bunning's eye was
upon him. Olva had not seen the creature since the night of the revival,
and he was irritated with himself for the persistence of his interest.
The man's pluck had, in the first place, struck him, but now it seemed
to him that they were, in some undefinable measure, linked together. As
Olva watched him, half contemptuously, half sarcastically, he tried
to pin his brain down to the actual, definite connection. It seemed
ultimately to hang round that dreadful evening when they had been
together; it was almost---although this was absurd--as though Bunning
knew; but, in spite of the certain assurance of his ignorance Olva
felt as he moved uneasily under Bunning's gaze that the man himself was
making some claim upon him. It was evident that Bunning was unhappy;
he looked as though he had not slept; his face was white and puffy, his
eyes dark and heavy. He was paying no attention to the "Huns," but was
trying, obviously, to catch Olva's eye. As the reading progressed Olva
became more and more uneasy. It showed the things that must be happening
to his nerves. He had now that sensation that had often come to him
lately that some one was waiting for him outside the door. He imagined
that the man next to him, a spotty, thin and restless freshman, would
suddenly turn to him and say quite casually--"By the way, you killed
Carfax, didn't you?" Above all he imagined himself suddenly rising in
his place and saying---"Yes, gentlemen, this is all very well, very
interesting I'm sure, but I killed Carfax."
His tortured brain was being driven, compelled to these utterances.
Behind him still he felt that pursuing cloud; one day it would catch him
and, out of the heart of it, there would leap . . .
And all this because Bunning looked at him. It was becoming now a
habit--so general that it was instinctive--that, almost unconsciously,
he should, at a point like this, pull at his nerves. "They are watching
you; they are watching you. Don't let them see you like this; pull
yourself together. . . ."
He did. Little Erdington's voice ceased. Mr. Gregg was heard saying:
"It has always occurred to me that the Huns . . . " and then, after many
speeches: "How does this point of view strike you, Erdington?"
It didn't strike Erdington very strongly, and there was no other person
present who seemed to be struck in any very especial direction. The
discussion, therefore, quickly flagged. Olva escaped Bunning's pleading
eyes, found his gown amongst a heap in the corner, and avoiding Mr.
Gregg's pressing invitation to stay, plunged down the stairs. Behind
him, then, making his heart leap into his mouth, was a slow, thick
voice.
"I say, Dune, what do you say to a little drink in my room after
all that muck?" Above him, in the dark shadow of the stair, loomed
Lawrence's thick body.
"I shall be delighted," Olva said.
Lawrence came lumbering down. He always spoke as though words were a
difficulty to him. He left out any word that was not of vital necessity.
"Muck that-awful muck. What do they want gettin' a piffler like that kid
in the glasses to read his ideas? Ain't got any--not one--no more 'an I
have."
They reached the Court--it swam softly in the moonlight--stars burnt,
here and there, in a trembling sky.
Lawrence put his great arm through Olva's. "Rippin' game that o' yours
yesterday. Rippin'." He seemed to lick his lips over it as a gourmet
over a delicate dish.
Lawrence pursued his slow thoughts.
"I say, you know, you--re one of these clever ones--thinkin' an' writin'
an' all that--an' _yet_ you play footer like an archangel--a blarsted
archangel. Lucky devil!" He sighed heavily. "Every time I put on my
footer boots," he pursued, "I say to myself, 'What you'd be givin',
Jerry Lawrence, if you could just go and write a book! What you'd give!
But it ain't likely--my spellin's somethin' shockin'."
Here there was interruption. Several men came rattling; laughing and
shouting, down the staircase behind Lawrence and Olva.
"Oh, damn!" said Lawrence, slowly turning round upon them. Cardillac was
there, also Bobby Galleon, Rupert Craven, and one or two more.
Cardillac shouted. "Hul_lo_, Lawrence, old man. Is it true, as they say,
that you've been sitting at the feet of our dearly beloved Gregg? How
splendid for you!"
"I've been at our Historical Society hearin' about the Huns, and
therefore there's compellin' necessity for a drink," Lawrence said,
moving in the direction of his room.
"Oh! rot, don't go in yet. We're thinking of going round and paying
Bunning a visit in another ten minutes. He's going to have a whole lot
of men in for a prayer-meeting. Thompson's just brought word."
Thompson, a wretched creature in the Second Year, who had, during his
first term, been of the pious persuasion and had since turned traitor,
offered an eager assurance.
The news obviously tempted Lawrence. He moved his body slowly round.
"Well," he said slowly, then he turned to Olva. "You'll come?" he said.
"No, thanks," said Olva shortly. "Bunning's been ragged about enough.
There's nothing the matter with the man."
Cardillac's voice was amused. "Well, Dune, I daresay we can get on
without you," he said.
Lawrence said slowly, "Well, I don't know. P'raps it's mean on the man.
I want a drink. I don't think I'm havin' any to-night, Cards."
Cardillac was sharper. "Oh, nonsense, Lawrence, come along. It doesn't
do the man any harm."
"It frightens the fellow out of his wits," said Dune sharply. "You
wouldn't like it yourself if you had a dozen fellows tumbling down upon
your rooms and chucking your things out of the window."
Rupert Craven said: "Well, I'm off anyhow. Work for me." He vanished
into the shadow.
Lawrence nodded. "Good-bye, Cards, old man. Go and play your old bridge
or something--leave the wretched Bunnin' to his prayers."
Lawrence and Olva moved away.
3
The first thing that Lawrence said when they were lounging comfortably
in his worn but friendly chairs hit Olva, expecting peace here at any
rate, like a blow.
"Fellers have forgotten Carfax damn quick."
In that good-natured face there was no suspicion, but Olva seemed to see
there a curiosity, even an excitement.
"Yes," he said, "they have."
"Fellers," said Lawrence again, "aren't clever in this College. They get
their firsts in Science--little measly pups from Board Schools who don't
clean their teeth--and there are one or two men who can row a bit and
play footer a bit and play cricket a bit--I grant you all that--but
they _aren't_ clever--not what I call clever."
Olva waited for the development of Lawrence's brain.
"Now at St. Martin's they'll talk. They'll sit round a fire the whole
blessed evenin' talkin'--about whether there's a God or isn't a God,
about whether they're there or aren't there, about whether women are
rotten or not, about jolly old Greece and jolly old Rome--_I_ know.
That's the sort o' stuff you could go in for--damn interestin'. I'd like
to listen to a bit of it, although they'd laugh if they heard me say so,
but what I'm gettin' at is that there ain't any clever fellers in this
old bundle o' bricks, and Carfax's death proves it."
"How does it prove it?" asked Dune.
"Why, don't you see, they'd have made more of Carfax. Nobody said a
blessed thing that any one mightn't have said."
Lawrence thought heavily for a moment or two, and then he brought out--
"Carfax was a stinker--a rotten fellow. That's granted, but there was
more in it than just Carfax. Why, any one could give him a knock on the
chin any day and there's no loss, but to have a feller killed in Sannet
Wood where all those old Druids---"
As the words came from him Lawrence stopped.
"Druids?" said Olva.
"Why, yes. I wish I were a clever feller an' I could say what I mean,
but if I'd been a man with a bit of grey matter that's what I'd have
gone in for--those old stones, those old fellers who used to slash your
throat to please their God. My soul, there's stuff there. _They_ knew
what fighting _was--they'd_ have played footer with you. Ever since I
was a tiny kid they've excited me, and if I'd been a brainy feller I'd
have known a lot more, but the minute I start reactin' about them I
get heavy, can't keep my eyes to it. But I've walked miles--often and
often--to see a stone or a hill, don't yer know, and Sannet Wood's one
o' the best. So, says I, when I hear about young Carfax bein' done
for right there at the very place, I says to myself, 'You may look and
look--hold your old inquests--collar your likely feller--but it wasn't a
man that did it, and you'll have to go further than human beings if you
fix on the culprit.'"
This was, in all probability, the longest speech that Lawrence had ever
made in his life. He himself seemed to think so, for he added in short
jerks: "It was those old Druids--got sick--o' the sight--o' Carfax's
dirty body--bangin' about in their preserves--an' they gave him a chuck
under the chin," and after that there was silence.
To Olva the effect of this was uncanny. He played, it seemed, a
spiritual Blind Man's Buff. On every side of him things filled the air;
once and again he would touch them, sometimes he would fancy that he was
alone, clear, isolated, when suddenly something again would blunder up
against him. And always with him, driving him into the bustle of his
fellow men, flinging him, hurling him from one noise to another noise,
was the terror of silence. Let him once be alone, once waiting in
suspense, and he would hear. . . . What would he hear?
He felt a sudden impulse to speak.
"Do you know, Lawrence, in a kind of way I feel with you. I mean
this--that if--I had, at any time, committed a murder or were indeed
burdened by any tremendous breaking of a law, I believe it would be the
consciousness of the Maker of the law that would pursue me. It sounds
priggish, but I don't mean man. The laws that man has made
nothing--subject to any temporary civilization, mere fences put up for a
moment to keep the cattle in their proper fields. But the laws that God
made--if you break one . . ."
Lawrence tuned heavily in his chair.
"Then you believe in God?"
"Yes, I believe in God."
After that there was silence. Both men felt uncomfortable. Led by some
sudden, ungovernable impulse, they had both gone further than their
slight acquaintance justified. Olva was convinced that he had made a
fool of himself, that he had talked like a prig. Lawrence was groping
hopelessly amongst a forest of dark thought for some little sensible
thing that he might say. He found nothing and so relapsed, with false,
uncomfortable easiness, into--
"I say, old man, have a drink."
The rest of that conversation concerned football.
CHAPTER VI
THE WATCHERS
1
He was running--running for his life. Behind stretched the long white
road rising like a great bloated, warning finger out of the misty trees.
Heavy cushions of grey cloud blotched the sky; through the mist ridges
of ploughed field rose like bars.
The dog, Bunker, was running beside him, his tongue out, body solid grey
against the lighter, floating grey around. His feet pattered beside his
master, but his body appeared to edge away and yet to be held by some
compelling force.
Olva was running, running. But not from Carfax. There in the wood it
lay, the leg doubled under the body, the head hanging limply back. . . .
But that was nought, no fear, no terror in that. It could not pursue,
nor in its clumsy following, had it had such power, would there have
been any horror. There was no sound in the world save his running and
the patter of the dog's feet. Would the lights never come, those sullen
streets and at last the grateful, welcome crowds?
He could see one lamp, far ahead of him, flinging its light forward to
help him. If he might only reach it before the pursuer caught him. Then,
behind him, oh! so softly, so gently, with a dreadful certainty, it
came. If he did but once look round, once behold that Shadow, his defeat
was sure. He would sink down there upon the road, the mists would crowd
upon him, and then the awful end. He began to call out, his breath came
in staggering gasps, his feet faltered.
"O, mercy, mercy--have mercy." He sank trembling to his knees.
"Dune, Dune, wake up! What's the matter? You've been making the most
awful shindy. Dune, Dune!"
Slowly he came to himself. As his eyes caught the old familiar objects,
the little diamond-paned window, the books, the smiling tenderness
of "Aegidius," the last evening blaze lighting the room with golden
splendour, he pulled himself together.
He had been sitting, he remembered now, in the armchair by the fire.
Craven had come to tea. They had had their meal, had talked pleasantly
enough, and then Olva had felt this overpowering desire for sleep come
down upon him. He knew the sensation of it well enough by now, for his
nights had often been crowded with waking hours, and this drowsiness
would attack him at any time--in hall, in chapel, in lecture. Sometimes
he had struggled against it, but to-day it had been too strong for him.
Craven's voice had grown fainter and fainter, the room had filled
with mist. He had made one desperate struggle, had seen through his
hall-closed eyes that Craven was looking at a magazine and blowing,
lazily, clouds of smoke from his pipe . . . then he had known no more.
Now, as he struggled to himself, he saw that Craven was standing over
him, shaking him by the arm.
"Hullo," he said stupidly, "I'm afraid I must have dropped off. I'm
afraid you must have thought me most frightfully rude."
Craven left him and went back to his chair.
"No," he said, "that's all right--only you _did_ talk in the most
extraordinary way."
"Did I?" Olva looked at him gravely. "What did I say?"
"Oh--I don't know--only you shouted a lot. You're overdone, aren't you?
Been working too hard I expect." Then he added, slowly, "You were crying
out about Carfax."
There was a long pause. The clock ticked, the light slowly faded,
leaving the room in shadow. Craven's voice was uncomfortable. He said at
last--
"You must have been thinking a lot about Carfax lately."
"What did I say?" asked Olva again.
"Oh, nothing." Craven turned his eyes away to the shadowy panes. "You
were dreaming about a road--and something about a wood . . . and a
matchbox."
"I've been sleeping badly." Olva got up, filled his pipe and relit it.
"I expect, although we don't say much about it, the Carfax business has
got on all our nerves. You don't look yourself, Craven."
He didn't. His careless, happy look had left him. Increasingly, every
day, Olva seemed to see in him a likeness to his mother and sister. The
eyes now were darker, the tines of the mouth were harder.
Meanwhile so strong bad the dream's impression been that Olva could not
yet disentangle it from his waking thoughts. He was in his room and yet
the white road stretched out of it--somewhere there by the
bookcase--oil through the mist into the heart of the dark wood.
He had welcomed during these last days Craven's advances towards
friendship, partly because he wanted friends now, and partly, he was
beginning now to recognize, there was, in the back of his mind, the
lingering memory of the kind eyes of Margaret Craven. He perceived, too,
that here was sign enough of change in him--that he who had, from
his earliest days, held himself proudly, sternly aloof from all human
companionship save that of his father, should now, so readily and
eagerly, greet it. Craven had been proud of him, eager to be with him,
and had shown, in his artless opinions of men and things, the simplest,
most innocent of characters.
"Time to light up," said Olva. The room had grown very dark.
"I must be going."
Olva noticed at once that there was a new note in Craven's voice. The
boy moved, restlessly, about the room.
"I say," he brought out at last, laughing nervously, "don't go asleep
when I'm in the room again. It gives one fits."
Both men were conscious of some subtle, vague impression moving in the
darkness between them.
Olva answered gravely, "I've been sticking in at an old paper I've been
working on--no use to anybody, and I've been neglecting my proper work
for it, but it's absorbed me. That's what's given me such bad nights, I
expect."
"I shouldn't have thought," Craven answered slowly, "that anything ever
upset you; I shouldn't have thought you had any nerves. And, in any
case, I didn't know you had thought twice about the Carfax business."
Olva turned on the electric light. At the same moment there was a loud
knock on the door.
Craven opened it, showing in the doorway a pale and flustered Bunning.
Craven looked at him with a surprised stare, and then, calling out
good-bye to Olva, walked off.
Bunning stood hesitating, his great spectacles shining owl-like in the
light.
Dune didn't want him. He was, he reflected as he looked at him, the
very last person whom he did want. And then Bunning had most irritating
habits. There was that trick of his of pushing up his spectacles
nervously higher on to his nose. He bad a silly shrill laugh, and he
had that lack of tact that made him, when you had given him a shilling's
worth of conversation and confidence, suppose that you had given him
half-a-crown's worth and expect that you would very shortly give him
five shillings' worth. He presumed on nothing at all, was confidential
when he ought to have been silent, and gushing when he should simply
have thanked you with a smile. Nothing, moreover, to look at. He had the
kind of complexion that looks as though it would break into spots at the
earliest opportunity. His clothes fitted him badly and were dusty at the
knees; his hair was of no colour nor strength whatever, and he bit his
nails. His eyes behind his spectacles were watery and restless, and
his linen always looked as though it had been quite clean yesterday and
would be quite filthy to-morrow.
And yet Olva, as he looked at him seated awkwardly in a chair, was
surprisingly, unexpectedly touched. The creature was so obviously
sincere. It was indeed poor Bunning's only possible "leg," his ardour.
He would willingly go to the stake for anything. It was the actual death
and sacrifice that mattered---and Bunning's life was spent in marching,
magnificently and wholeheartedly, to the sacrificial altars and then
discovering that he had simply been asked to tea.
Now it was evident that he wanted something from Olva. His tremulous
eyes bad, as they gazed at Dune across the room, the dumb worship of a
dog adoring its master.
"I hear," he said in that husky voice that always sounded as though
he were just swallowing the last crumbs of a piece of toast, "that you
stopped Cardillac and the others coming round to my rooms the other
night. I can't tell you how I feel about it."
"Rot," said Olva brusquely. "If you were less of an ass they wouldn't
want to come round to your rooms so often."
"I know," said Bunning. "I am an awful ass." He pushed his spectacles up
his nose. "Why did you stop them coming?" he asked.
"Simply," said Olva, "because it seems to me that ten men on to one is a
rotten poor game."
"I don't know," said Bunning, still very husky, "If a man's a fool he
gets rotted. That's natural enough. I've always been rotted all my life.
I used to think it was because people didn't understand me--now I know
that it really is because I am an ass."
Strangely, suddenly, some of the burden that bad been upon Olva now for
so long was lifted. The atmosphere of the room that had lain upon him
so heavily was lighter--and he seemed to feel the gentle withdrawing of
that pursuit that now, ever, night and day, sounded in his ears.
And what, above all, had happened to him? He flung his mind back to a
month ago. With what scorn then would he have glanced at Bunning's ugly
body--with what impatience have listened to his pitiful confessions. Now
he said gently--
"Tell me about yourself."
Bunning gulped and gripped the baggy knees of his trousers.
"I'm very unhappy," he said at last desperately--"very. And if you
hadn't come with me the other night to hear Med-Tetloe--I'm sure I
don't know why you did--I shouldn't have come now---"
"Well, what's the matter?"
Bunning's mouth was full of toast. "It was that night--that service. I
was very worked up and I went round afterwards to speak to him. I could
see, you know, that it hadn't touched you at all. I could see that, and
then when I went round to see him he hadn't got anything to say--nothing
that I wanted--and--suddenly--then--at that moment--I felt it was all
no good. It was you, you made me feel like that---"
"I?"
"Yes. If you hadn't gone--like that--it would have been different. But
when you--the last man in College to care about it-went and gave it its
chance I thought that would prove it. And then when I went to him he was
so silly, Med-Tetloe I mean. Oh! I can't describe it but it was just no
use and I began to feel that it was all no good. I don't believe there
is a God at all--it's all been wrong--I don't know what to do. I don't
know where to go. I've been wretched for days, not sleeping or anything.
And then they come and rag me--and--and--the Union men want me to take
Cards round for a Prayer Meeting--and--and--I wouldn't, and they said.
. . . Oh! I don't know, I don't know _what_ to do--I haven't got
any-thing left!"
And here, to Olva's intense dismay, the wretched creature burst into the
most passionate and desperate tears, putting his great hands over his
face, his whole body sobbing. It was desolation--the desolation of a
human being who had clutched desperately at hope after hope, who had
demanded urgently that he should be given something to live for and had
had all things snatched from his hands.
Olva, knowing what his own loneliness was, and the terror of it,
understood. A fortnight ago he would have hated the scene, have sent
Bunning, with a cutting word, flying from the room, never to return.
"I say, Bunning, you mustn't carry on like this--you're overdone or
something. Besides, I don't understand. What does it matter if you
_have_ grown to distrust Med-Tetloe and all that crowd. They aren't the
only people in the world--that isn't the only sort of religion."
"It's all I had. I haven't got anything now. They don't want me at home.
They don't want me here. I'm not clever. I can't do anything. . . . And
now God's gone. . . . I think I'll drown myself."
"Nonsense. You mustn't talk like that--God's never gone."
Bunning dropped his hands, looked up, his face ridiculous with its
tear-stains.
"You think there's a God?"
"I know there's a God."
"Oh!" Bunning sighed.
"But you mustn't take it from me, you know. You must think it out for
yourself. Everybody has to."
"Yes--but you matter--more to me than--any one."
"I?"
"Yes." Bunning looked at the floor and began to speak very fast. "You've
always seemed to me wonderful--so different from every one else. You
always looked--so wonderful. I've always been like that, wanted my hero,
and I haven't generally been able to speak to them--my heroes I mean. I
never thought, of course, that I should speak to you. And then they
sent me that day to you, and you came with me--it was so wonderful--I've
thought of nothing else since. I don't think God would matter if you'd
only let me come to see you sometimes and talk to you--like this."
"Don't talk that sort of rot. Always glad to see you. Of course you may
come in and talk if you wish."
"Oh! you're so different--from what I thought. You always looked as
though you despised everybody--and now you look--Oh! I don't know--but
I'm afraid of you---"
The wretched Bunning was swiftly regaining confidence. He was now, of
course, about to plunge a great deal farther than was necessary and to
burden Olva with sell-revelations and the rest.
Olva hurriedly broke in--
"Well, come and see me when you want to. I've got a lot of work to do
before Hall. But we'll go for a walk one day. . . ."
Bunning was at once flung back on to his timid self. He pushed his
spectacles back, blushed, nearly tumbled over his chair as he got up,
and backed confusedly out of the room.
He tried to say something at the door--"I can't thank you enough. . ."
he stuttered and was gone.
As the door closed behind him, swiftly Olva was conscious again of the
Pursuit. . . .
He turned to the empty room--"Leave me alone," he whispered. "For pity's
sake leave me alone."
The silence that followed was filled with insistent, mysterious urgency.
2
Craven did not come that night to Hall. Galleon had asked him and Olva
to breakfast-the next morning. He did not appear.
About two o'clock in the afternoon a note was sent round to Olva's
rooms. "I've been rather seedy. Just out for a long walk--do you mind my
taking Bunker? Send word round to my rooms if you mind.--R. C." Craven
had taken Bunker out for walks before and had grown fond of the dog.
There was nothing in that. But Olva, as he stood in the middle of his
room with the note in his hand, was frightened.
The result of it was that about five o'clock on that afternoon Olva paid
his second visit to the dark house in Rocket Road. His motives for going
were confused, but he knew that at the back of them was a desire that he
should find Margaret Craven, with her grave eyes, waiting for him in the
musty little drawing-room, and that Mrs. Craven, that mysterious woman,
should not be there. The hall, when the old servant had admitted him,
once again seemed to enfold him in its darkness and heavy air with an
almost active purpose. It breathed with an actual sound, almost with
a melody . . . the "Valse Triste" of Sibelius, a favourite with Olva,
seemed to him now to be humming its thin spiral note amongst the skins
and Chinese weapons that covered the walls. The House seemed to come
forward, on this second occasion, actively, personally. . . . His wish
was gratified. Margaret Craven was alone in the dark, low-ceilinged
drawing-room, standing, in her black dress, before the great deep
fireplace, as though she had known that he would come and had been
awaiting his arrival.
"I know that you will excuse my mother," she said in her grave, quiet
voice. "She is not very well. She will be sorry not to have seen you."
Her hand was cool and strong, and, as he held it for an instant, he was
strangely conscious that she, as well as the House, had moved into more
intimate relation with him since their last meeting.
They sat down and talked quietly, their voices sounding like low notes
of music in the heavy room. He was conscious of rest in the repose of
her figure, the pale outline of her face, the even voice, and above
all the grave tenderness of her eyes. He was aware, too, that she was
demanding from him something of the same kind; he divined that for her,
too, life had been no easy thing since they last met and that she wanted
now a little relief before she must return. He tried to give it her.
All through their conversation he was still conscious in the dim rustle
that any breeze made in the room of that thin melody that Sibelius once
heard. . . .
"I hope that Mrs. Craven is not seriously ill?
"No. It is one of her headaches. Her nerves are very easily upset. There
was a thunder-storm last night. . . . She has never been strong since
father died."
"You will tell her how sorry I am."
"Thank you. She is wonderfully brave about it. She never complains--she
suffers more than we know, I think. I don't think this house is good
for her. Father died here and her bedroom now is the room where he died.
That is not good for her, I'm sure. Rupert and I both are agreed
about it, but we cannot get her to change her mind. She can be very
determined."
Yes--Olva, remembering her as she sat so sternly before the fire, knew
that she could be determined.
"And I am afraid that your brother isn't very well either."
She looked at him with troubled eyes. "I am distressed about Rupert. He
has taken this death of his friend so terribly to heart. I have never
known him morbid about anything before. It is really strange because I
don't think he was greatly attached to Mr. Carfax. There were things I
know that he didn't like."
"Yes. He doesn't look the kind of fellow who would let his mind dwell on
things. He looks too healthy."
"No. He came in to see us for an hour last night and sat there without a
word. I played to him--he seemed not to hear it. And generally he cares
for music."
"I'm afraid"--their eyes met and Olva held hers until he had finished
his sentence--"I'm afraid that it must seem a little lonely and gloomy
for you here--in this house--after your years abroad."
She looked away from him into the fire.
"Yes," she said, speaking with sudden intensity. "I hate it. I have
hated it always--this house, Cambridge, the life we lead here. I love
my mother, but since I have been abroad something has happened to change
her. There is no confidence between us now. And it is lonely because she
speaks so little--I am afraid she is really very ill, but she refuses to
see a doctor. . . ."
Then her voice was softer again, and she leant forward a little towards
him. "And I have told you this, Mr. Dune, because if you will you can
help me--all of us. Do you know that she liked you immensely the other
even big? I have never known her take to any one at once, so strongly.
She told me afterwards that you had done her more good than fifty
doctors--just your being there--so that if, sometimes, you could come
and see her----"
He did not know what it was that suddenly, at her words, brought the
terror back to him. He saw Mrs. Craven so upright, so motionless,
looking at him across the room--with recognition, with some implied
claim. Why, he had spoken scarcely ten words to her. How could he
possibly have been of any use to her? And then, afraid lest his
momentary pause had been noticeable, he said eagerly---
"It is very kind of Mrs. Craven to say that. Of course I will come
if she really cares about it. I am not a man of many friends or many
occupations. . . ."
She broke in upon him--
"You could be if you cared. I know, because Rupert has told me. They all
think you wonderful, but you don't care. Don't throw away friends, Mr.
Dune--one can be so lonely without them."
Her voice shook a little and he was suddenly afraid that she was going
to cry. He bent towards her.
"I think, perhaps, we are alike in that, Miss Craven. We do not make our
friends easily, but they mean a great deal to us when they come. Yes,
I _am_ lonely and I _am_ a little tired of bearing my worries alone, in
silence. Perhaps I can help you to stand this life a little better if I
tell you that--mine is every bit as hard."
She turned to him eyes that were filled with gratitude. Her whole
body seemed to be touched with some new glow. Into the heart of their
consciousness of the situation that had arisen between them there came,
sharply, the sound of a shutting door. Then steps in the hall.
"That's Rupert," she said.
They both rose as he came into the room. He stood back in the shadow for
a moment as though surprised at Olva's presence. Then he came forward
very gravely.
"I've found something of yours, Dune," he said. It lay, gleaming, in his
hand. "Your matchbox."
Dune drew a sharp breath. Then he took it and looked at it.
"Where did you find it?"
"In Saunet Wood. Bunker and I have been for a walk there. Bunker found
it."
As the three of them stood there, motionless, in the middle of the dark
room, Olva caught, through the open door, the last sad fading breath of
the "Valse Triste."
CHAPTER VII
TERROR
1
That night the cold fell, like a plague, upon the town. It came,
sweeping across the long low flats, crisping the dark canals with white
frosted ice, stiffening the thin reeds at the river's edge, taking each
blade of grass and holding it in its iron hand and then leaving it an
independent thing of cold and shining beauty. At last it blew in wild
gales down the narrow streets, throwing the colour of those grey walls
against a sky of the sharpest blue, making of each glittering star a
frozen eye, carrying in its arms a round red sun that it might fasten
it, like a frosted orange, against its hard blue canopy.
Already now, at half-past two of the afternoon, there were signs of the
early dusk. The blue was slowly being drained from the sky, and against
the low horizon a faint golden shadow soon to burn into the heart of the
cold blue, was hovering.
Olva Dune, turning into the King's Parade, was conscious of crowds of
people, of a gaiety and life that filled the air with sound. He checked
sternly with a furious exercise of self-control his impulse to creep
back into the narrow streets that he had just left.
"It's an Idea," he repeated over and over, as he stood there. "It's an
Idea. . . . You are like any one else--you are as you were . . . before
. . . everything. There is no mark--no one knows."
For it seemed to him that above him, around him, always before him and
behind him there was a grey shadow, and that as men approached him this
shadow, bending, whispered, and, as they came to him, they flung at him
a frightened glance . . . and passed.
If only he might take the arm of any one of those bright and careless
young men and say to him, "I killed Carfax--thus and thus it was." Oh!
the relief! the lifting of the weight! For then--and only then--this
pursuing Shadow, so strangely grave, not cruel, but only relentless,
would step back. Because that confession--how clearly he knew it!--was
the thing that God demanded. So long as he kept silence he resisted
the Pursuer--so long as he resisted the Pursuer he must fly, he must
escape--first into Silence, then into Sound, then back again to Silence.
Somewhere, behind his actual consciousness: there was the knowledge
that, did he once yield himself, life would be well, but that yielding
meant Confession, Renunciation, Devotion. It was not because it was
Carfax that he had killed, but it was because it was God that had spoken
to him, that he fled.
A fortnight ago he would have been already defeated--the Pursuer should
have caught him, bound him, done with him as he would. But now--in that
same instant that young Craven had looked at him with challenge in his
eyes, in that instant also he, Olva, had looked at Margaret.
In that silence, yesterday evening, in the dark drawing-room the two
facts had together leapt at him--he loved Margaret Craven, he was
suspected by Rupert Craven. Love had thus, terribly, grimly, and yet so
wonderfully, sprung into his heart that had never, until now, known its
lightest touch. Because of it--because Margaret Craven must never know
what he had done--he must fight Craven, must lie and twist and
turn. . . . His soul must belong to Margaret Craven, not to this
terrible, unperturbed, pursuing God.
All night he had fought for control. A very little more and he would
rush crying his secret to the whole world; slowly he had summoned calm
back to him. Rupert Craven should be defeated; he would, quietly, visit
Sannet Wood, face it in its naked fact, stand before it and examine
it--and fight down once and for all this imagination of God.
Those glances that men flung upon him, that sudden raising of the eyes
to his face . . . a man greeted him, another man waved his hand always
this same suspicion . . . the great grey shadow that bent and whispered
in their ears.
He saw, too, another picture. High above him some great power was
seated, and down to earth there bent a mighty Hand. Into this Hand
very gently, very tenderly, certain figures were drawn--Mrs. Craven,
Margaret, Rupert, Bunning, even Lawrence. Olva was dragging with him,
into the heart of some terrible climax, these so diverse persons; he
could not escape now--other lives were twisted into the fabric of his
own.
And yet with this certainty of the futility of it, he must still
struggle . . . to the very end.
On that cold day the world seemed to stand, as men gather about a
coursing match, with hard eyes and jeering faces to watch the hopeless
flight. . . .
2
He fetched Banker from the stable where he was kept and set off along
the hard white road. He had behaved very badly to Bunker, a but the dog
showed no signs of delight at his release. On other days when he had
been kept in his stable for a considerable time he had gone mad with joy
and jumped at his master, wagging his whole body in excitement. Now he
walked very slowly by Olva's side, a little way behind him; when
Olva spoke to him he wagged his tail, but as though it were duty that
impelled it.
The air grew colder aid colder--slowly now there had stolen on to the
heart of the blue sky white pinnacles of cloud--a dazzling whiteness,
but catching, mysteriously, the shadow of the gold light that heralded
the setting sun. These clouds were charged with snow; as they hung there
they seemed to radiate from their depths an even more piercing coldness.
They hung above Olva like a vast mountain range and had in their outline
so sharp and real an existence that they were part of the hard black
horizon, rising, immediately, out of the long, low, shivering flats.
There was no sound in all the world; behind him, sharply, the Cambridge
towers bit the sky--before him like a clenched hand was the little
wood.
The silence seemed to have a rhythm and voice of its own so that if one
listened, quite clearly the tramp of a marching army came over the level
ground. Always an army marching--and when suddenly a bird rose from the
canal with a sharp cry the tramping was caught, with the bird, for an
instant, into the air, and then when the cry was ended sank down again.
The wood enlarged; it lay upon the cold land now like a man's head; a
man with a cap. Spaces between the trees were eyes and it seemed that he
was lying behind the rim of the world and leaning his head upon the edge
of it and gazing. . . .
Bunker suddenly stopped and looked up at his master.
"Come on," Olva turned on to him sharply.
The dog looked at him, pleading. Then in Olva's dark stern face he
seemed to see that there was no relenting--that wood must be faced. He
moved forward again, but slowly, reluctantly. All this nonsense that
Lawrence had talked about Druids. We will soon see what to make of
that. And yet, in the wood, it did seem as though there were something
waiting. It was now no longer a man's head--only a dark, melancholy band
of trees, dead black now against the high white clouds.
There had risen in Olva the fighting spirit. Fear was still there,
ghastly fear, but also an anger, a rage. Why should he be thus
tormented? What had he done? Who was Carfax that the slaying of him
should be so unforgettable a sin? Moreover, had it been the mere vulgar
hauntings of remorse, terrors of a frightened conscience, he could
have turned upon himself the contempt that any Dune must deserve for so
ignoble a submission.
But here there were other things--some-thing that no human resolution
could combat. He seized then eagerly on the things that he could
conquer--the suspicions of Rupert Craven, the rivalry of Cardillac,
the confidences of Bunning, . . . the grave tenderness of Margaret
Craven . . . these things he would clutch and hold, let the Pursuing
Spirits do what they would.
As he entered the dark wood a few flakes of snow were falling. He
knew where the Druid Stones lay. He had once been shown them by some
undergraduate interested in such things. They lay a little to the right,
below the little crooked path and above the Hollow.
The wood was not dripping now--held in the iron hand of the frost the
very leaves on the ground seemed to be made of metal; the bare twisted
branches of the trees shone with frosty--the earth crackled beneath his
foot and in the wood's silence, when he broke a twig with his boot the
sound shot into the air and rang against the listening stillness.
He looked at the Hollow, Bunker close at his heels. He could see the
spot where he had first stood, talking to Carfax--there where the ferns
now glistened with silver. There was the place where Carfax had fallen.
Bunker was smelling with his head down at the ground. What did the dog
remember? What had Craven meant when he said that Bunker had found the
matchbox?
He stood silently looking down at the Hollow. In his heart now there was
no terror. When, during these last days, he had been fighting his fear
it had always seemed to him that the heart of it lay in this Hollow. He
had always seen the dripping fern, smelt the wet earth, heard the sound
of the mist falling from the trees. Now the earth was clear and hard and
cold. The great white mountains drove higher into the sky, very softly
and gently a few white flakes were falling.
With a great relief, almost a sigh of thank-fulness, he turned back
to the Druids' Stones. There they were--two of them standing upright,
stained with lichen, grey and weather-beaten, one lying flat, hollowed
a little in the centre. The ferns stood above them and the bare branches
of the trees crossed in strange shapes against the sky.
Here, too, there was a peaceful, restful silence. No more was God in
these quiet stones than He had been in that noisy theatrical Revival
Meeting--Lawrence was wrong. Those old religions were dead. No more
could the Greek Gods pass smiling into the temples of their worshippers,
no more Wodin, Thor and the rest may demand their bloody sacrifice.
These old stones are dead. The Gods are dead--but God? . . .
He stayed there for a while and the snow fell more heavily. The golden
light had faded, the high white clouds had swallowed the blue. There
would soon be storm.
In the wood--strangest of ironies--there had been peace.
Now he started down the road again and was conscious, as the wood
slipped back into distance, of some vague alarm.
3
The world was now rapidly transformed. There had been promised a blaze
of glory, but the sun, red and angry, had been drowned by the thick
grey clouds that now flooded the air--dimly seen for an instant outlined
against the grey--then suddenly non-existent, leaving a world like a
piece of crumpled paper white and dark to all its boundaries.
The snow fell now more swiftly but always gently, imperturbably--almost
it might seem with the whispering intention of some important message.
Olva was intensely cold. He buttoned his coat tightly up to his ears,
but nevertheless the air was so biting that it hurt. Bunker, with his
head down, drove against the snow that was coming now ever more thickly.
The peace that there had been in the little wood was now utterly gone.
The air seemed full of voices. They came with the snow, and as the
flakes blew more closely against his face and coat there seemed to press
about him a multitude of persons.
He drove forward, but this sense of oppression increased with every
step. The wood had been swallowed by the storm. Olva felt like a man who
has long been struggling with some vice; insidiously the temptation has
grown in force and power--his brain, once so active in the struggle, is
now dimmed and dulled. His power of resistance, once so vigorous, is
now confused--confusion grows to paralysis--he can only now stare,
distressed, at the dark temptation, there have swept over him such
strong waters that struggle is no longer of avail--one last clutch at
the vice, one last desperate and hateful pleasure, and he is gone. . . .
Olva knew that behind him in the storm the Pursuit was again upon him.
That brief respite in the wood had not been long granted him. The
snow choked him, blinded him, his body was desperately cold, his soul
trembling with fear. On every side he was surrounded--the world had
vanished, only the thin grey body of his dog, panting at his side, could
be dimly seen.
God had not been in the wood, but God was in the storm. . . .
A last desperate resistance held him. He stayed where he was and shouted
against the blinding snow.
"There _is_ no God. . . . There _is_ no God."
Suddenly his voice sank to a whisper. "There _is_ no God," he muttered.
The dog was standing, his eyes wide with terror, his feet apart, his
body quivering.
Olva gazed into the storm. Then, desperately, he started to run. . . .
CHAPTER VIII
REVELATION OF BUNNING (I)
1
On that evening the College Debating Society exercised its mind over the
question of Naval Defence.
One gentleman, timid of voice, uncertain in wit, easily dismayed by
the derisive laughter of the opposite party, asserted that "This House
considers the Naval policy of the present Government fatal to the
country's best interests." An eager politician, with a shrill voice
and a torrent of words, denied this statement. The College, with the
exception of certain gentlemen destined for the Church (they had been
told by their parents to speak on every possible public occasion in
order to be ready for a prospective pulpit), displayed a sublime and
somnolent indifference. The four gentlemen on the paper had prepared
their speeches beforehand and were armed with notes and a certain
nervous fluency. For the rest, the question was but slightly assisted.
The prospective members of the Church thought of many things to say
until they rose to their feet when they could only remember "that the
last gentleman's speech bad been the most preposterous thing they had
ever had the pleasure of listening to--and that, er--er--the Navy was
all right, and, er--if the gentleman who had spoken last but two
thought it wasn't, well, all they--er--could say was that it reminded
them--er--of a story they had once heard (here follows story without
point, conclusion or brevity)--and--er--in fact the Navy was all right.
. . ."
The Debate, in short, was languishing when Dune and Cardillac entered
the room together. Here was an amazing thing.
It was well known that only last night Cardillac and Dune had both
been proposed for the office of President of the Wolves. The Wolves, a
society of twelve founded for the purpose of dining well and dressing
beautifully, was by far the smartest thing that Saul's possessed. It was
famous throughout the University for the noise and extravagance of its
dinners, and you might not belong to it unless you had played for the
University on at least one occasion in some game or another and unless,
be it understood, you were, in yourself, quite immensely desirable.
Towards the end of every Christmas term a President for the ensuing year
was elected; he must be a second year man, and it was considered by
the whole college that this was the highest honour that the gods could
possibly, during your stay at Cambridge, confer upon you. Even the
members of the Christian Union, horrified though they were by the amount
of wine that was drunk on dining occasions and the consequent peril
to their own goods and chattels, bowed to the shining splendour of the
fortunate hero. It had never yet been known that a President of the
Wolves should also be a member of the Christian Union, but one must
never despair, and nets, the most attractive and genial of nets, were
flung to catch the great man.
On the present occasion it had been generally understood that Cardillac
would be elected without any possible opposition. Dune had not for a
moment occurred to any one. He had; during his first term, when his
football prowess had passed, swinging through the University, been
elected to the Wolves, but he had only attended one dinner and had then
remained severely and unpleasantly sober. There was no other possible
rival to Cardillac, to his distinction, his power of witty and malicious
after-dinner speaking, his wonderful clothes, his admirable football,
his haughty indifference. He would of course be elected.
And then, some three weeks ago, this wonderful, unexpected development
of Olva Dune had startled the world. His football, his sudden geniality
(he had been seen, it was asserted, at one of Med-Tetloe's revival
meetings with, of all people in the world, Bunning), his air of being
able to do anything whatever if he wished to exert himself, here was
a character indeed--so wonderful that it was felt, even by the most
patriotic of Saulines, that he ought, in reality, to have belonged to
St. Martin's.
It became at once, of course, a case of rivalry between Dune and
Cardillac, and it was confidently expected that Dune would be victorious
in every part of the field.
Cardillac had reigned for a considerable period and there were many men
to whom he had been exceedingly offensive. Dune, although he admitted no
one to closer intimacy, was offensive never. If, moreover, you had seen
him play the other day against the Harlequins, you could but fall down
on your knees and worship. Here, too, he rivalled Cardillac. Tester,
Buchan, and Whymper were quite certain of their places in the University
side--Whymper because he was the greatest three-quarter that Cambridge
had had for many seasons, and Tester and Buchan because they had been at
Fettes together and Buchan had played inside right to Tester's outside
since the very tenderest age; they therefore understood one another
backward. There remained then only this fourth place, and Cardillac
seemed certain enough . . . until Dune's revival. And now it depended
on Whymper. He would choose, of the two men, the one who suited him the
better. Cardillac had played with him more than had Dune. Cardillac
was safe, steady, reliable. Dune was uncertain, capricious, suddenly
indifferent. On the other hand not Whymper himself could rival the
brilliance of Dune's game against the Harlequins. That was in a place by
itself--let him play like that at Queen's Club in December and no Oxford
defence could stop him.
So it was argued, so discussed. Certain, at any rate, that Dune's
recrudescence threatened the ruin of Cardillac's two dearest ambitions,
and Cardillac did not easily either forget or forgive.
And yet behold them now, gravely, the gaze of the entire company,
entering together, sitting together by the fire, watching with serious
eyes the clumsy efforts of an unhappily ambitious Freshman to make
clear his opinions of the Navy, the Government and the British Islands
generally--only, ultimately, producing a tittering, stammering apology
for having burdened so long with his hapless clamour, the Debate.
2
Olva liked Cardillac--Cardillac liked Olva. They both in their attitude
to College affairs saw beyond the College gates into the wide and bright
world. Cardillac, when it had seemed that no danger could threaten
either his election to the Wolves or the acquisition of his Football
Blue, had regarded both honours quietly and with indifference. It amazed
him now when both these Prizes were seriously threatened that he should
still appreciate and even seek out Dune's company.
Had it been any other man in the College he would have been a very
active enemy, but here was the one man who had that larger air, that
finer style whose gravity was beautiful, whose soul was beyond Wolves
and Rugby football, whose future in the real world promised to be of a
fine and highly ordered kind. Cardillac wished eagerly that these things
might yet be his, but if he were to be beaten, then, of all men in the
world, let it be by Dune. In his own scant, cynical estimate of his
fellow-beings Dune alone demanded a wide and appreciative attention.
To Olva on this evening it mattered but little where he was or what he
did. The snow had ceased to fall, and now, under a starry sky, lay white
and glistening clear; but still with him storm seemed to hover, its snow
beating his body, its fury yieling him no respite.
And now there was no longer any doubt. He faced it with the most
matter-of-fact self-possession of which he was capable. Some-thing was
waiting for his surrender. He figured it, sitting quietly back in the
reading-room, listening to the Debate, watching the faces around him, as
the tracing of some one who was dearly loved. There was nothing stranger
in it all than his own certainty that the Power that pursued him was
tender. And here he crossed the division between the Real and the
Unreal, because his present consciousness of this Power was as actual as
his consciousness of the chairs and tables that filled the reading-room.
That was the essential thing that made the supreme gulf between himself
and his companions. It was not because he had murdered Carfax but
because he was now absolutely conscious of God that he was so alone. He
could not touch his human companions, he could scarcely see them. It was
through this isolation that God was driving him to confession. Now, in
the outer Court, huge against the white dazzling snow, the great shadow
was hovering, its head piercing the stars, its arms outstretched.
Let him surrender and at once there would be infinite peace, but with
surrender must come submission, confession . . . with confession he must
lose the one thing that he desired--Margaret Craven . . . that he might
go and talk to her, watch her, listen to her voice. Meanwhile he must
not think. If he allowed his brain, for an instant, to rest, it was
flooded with the sweeping consciousness of the Presence--always he must
be doing something, his football, his companions, and often at the end
of it all, calmly, quietly, betrayed--hearing above all the clatter that
he might make the gentle accents of that Voice. He remembered that peace
that he had had in St. Martin's Chapel on the day of the discovery of
the body. What he would give to reclaim that now!
Meanwhile he must battle; must quiet Craven's suspicions, must play
football, join company with men who seemed to him now like shadows.
As he glanced round at them--at Lawrence, Bunning, Galleon
Cardillac--they seemed to have far less existence than the grey shadow
in the outer Court. Sounds passed him like smoke--the lights grew faint
in his eyes . . . he was being drawn out into a world that was all of
ice--black ice stretching to every horizon; on the edge of it, vast
against the night sky, was the Grey Figure, waiting.
"Come to Me. Tell Me that you will follow Me. I spoke to you in the
wood. You have broken My law. . . ."
"Lot of piffle," he heard Cardillac's voice from a great distance.
"These freshers are always gassing." The electric light, seen through a
cloud of tobacco smoke, came slowly back to him, dull globes of colour.
"It's so hot--I'm cutting," he whispered to Cardillac, and slipped out
of the room.
He climbed to his room, flung back his door and saw that his light was
turned on.
Facing him, waiting for him, was Bunning.
3
"If you don't want me----" he began with his inane giggle.
"Sit down." Olva pulled out the whisky and two siphons of soda. "If I
didn't want you I'd say so."
He filled himself a strong glass of whisky and soda and began feverishly
to drink.
Bunning sat down.
"Don't be such a blooming fool. Take off your gown if you're going to
stop."
Bunning meekly took off his gown. His spectacles seemed so large that
they swallowed up the rest of his face; the spectacles and the enormous
flat-toed boots were the principal features of Bunning's attire. He sat
down again and gazed at Olva with the eyes of a devoted dog. Olva
looked at him. Over Bunning's red wrists the brown ends of a Jaeger vest
protruded from under the shirt.
"I say, why don't you dress properly?"
"I don't know---" began Bunning.
"Well, the sleeves of your vest needn't come down like that. It looks
horribly dirty. Turn 'em up."
Bunning, blushing almost to tears, turned them back.
"There's no need to make yourself worse than you are, you know," Olva
finished his whisky and poured out some more. "Why do you come
here? . . . I'm always beastly to you."
"As long as you let me come--I don't mind how beastly you are."
"But what do you get from it?"
Bunning looked down at his huge boots.
"Everything. But it isn't that--it is that, without being here, I
haven't got anything else."
"Well, you needn't wear such boots as that--and your shirts and things
aren't clean. . . . You don't mind my telling you, do you?"
"No, I like it, Nobody's ever told me."
Here obviously was a new claim for intimacy and this Olva hurriedly
disavowed.
"Oh! It's only for your own good, you know. Fellows will like you better
if you're decently dressed. Why hasn't any one ever told you?"
"They'd given me up at home." Bunning heaved a great sigh.
"Why? Who are your people?"
"My father's a parson in Yorkshire. They're all clergymen in my
family--uncles, cousins, everybody--my elder brother. I was to have been
a clergyman."
"_Was_ to have been? Aren't you going to be one now?"
"No--not since I met you."
"Oh, but you mustn't take such a step on my account. I don't want to
prevent you. I've nothing to do with it. I should think you'd make a
very good parson."
Olva was brutal. He felt that in Bunning's moist devoted eyes there was
a dim pain. But he was brutal because his whole soul revolted against
sentimentality, not at all because his soul revolted against Bunning.
"No, I shouldn't make a good parson. I never wanted to be one really.
But when your house is full of it, as our house was, you're driven. When
it wasn't relations it was all sorts of people in the parish--helpers
and workers--women mostly. I hated them."
Here was a real note of passion! Bunning seemed, for an instant, to be
quite vigorous.
"That's why I'm so untidy now," Bunning went desperately on; "nobody
cared how I looked. I was stupid at school, my reports were awful, and
I was a day boy. It is very bad for any one to be a day boy--very!" he
added reflectively, as though he were recalling scenes and incidents.
"Yes?" said Olva encouragingly. He was being drawn by Bunning's artless
narration away from the Shadow. It was still there, its arm outstretched
above the snowy court, but Bunning seemed, in some odd way, to
intervene.
"I always wanted to find God in those days. It sounds a stupid thing
to say, but they used to speak about Him--mother and the rest--just as
though He lived down the street. They knew all about Him and I used to
wonder why I didn't know too. But I didn't. It wasn't real to me. I used
to make myself think that it was, but it wasn't."
"Why didn't you talk to your mother about it?--
"I did. But they were always too busy with missions and things. And then
there was my elder brother. _He_ understood about God and went to all
the Bible meetings and things, and he was always so neat-never dirty--I
used to wonder how he did it . . . always so neat."
Bunning took off his great spectacles and wiped them with a very dirty
handkerchief.
"And had you no friends?"
"None--nobody. I didn't want them after a bit. I was afraid of
everybody. I used to go down all the side-streets between school and
home for fear lest I should meet some one. I was always very nervous as
a boy--very. I still am."
"Nervous of people?"
"Yes, of everybody. And of things, too--things. I still am. You'd
be surprised. . . . It's odd because none of the other Bunnings are
nervous. I used to have fancies about God."
"What sort of fancies?"
"I used to see Him when I was in bed like a great big shadow, all up
against the wall. A grey shadow with his head ever so high. That's how I
used to think of Him. I expect that all sounds nonsense to you."
"No, not at all!" said Olva.
"I think they thought me nearly an idiot at home--not sane at all. But
they didn't think of me very often. They used to apologise for me when
people came to tea. I wasn't clever, of course--that's why they thought
I'd make a good parson."
He paused--then very nervously he went on. "But now I've met you I
shan't be. Nothing can make me. I've always watched you. I used to look
at you in chapel. You're just as different from me as any one can be,
and that's why you're like God to me. I don't want you to be decent to
me. I think I'd rather you weren't. But I like to come in sometimes and
hear you say that I'm dirty and untidy. That shows that you've noticed."
"But I'm not at all the sort of person to make a hero of," Olva said
hurriedly. "I don't want you to feel like that about we. That's all
sentimentality. You mustn't feel like that about anybody. You must stand
on your own legs."
"I never have," said Burning, very solemnly, "and I never will. I've
always had somebody to make a hero of. I would love to die for you, I
would really. It's the only sort of thing that I can do, because I'm not
clever. I know you think me very stupid."
"Yes, I do," said Olva, "and you mustn't talk like a schoolgirl. If
we're friends and I let you come in here, you mustn't let your vest come
over your cuffs and you must take those spots off your waistcoat, and
brush your hair and clean your nails, and you must just be sensible and
have a little humour. Why don't you play football?"
"I can't play games, I'm very shortsighted."
"Well, you must take some sort of exercise. Run round Parker's Piece or
something, or go and run at Fenner's. You'll get so fat."
"I _am_ getting fat. I don't think it matters much what I look like."
"It matters what every one looks like. And now you'd better cut. I've
got to go out and see a man."
Burning submissively rose. He said no more but bundled out of the door
in his usual untidy fashion. Olva came after him and banged his "oak"
behind him. In Outer Court, looking now so vast and solemn in the
silence of its snow, Bunning, stopping, pointed to the grey buildings
that towered over them.
"It was against a wall like that that I used to imagine God--on a night
like this--you'll think that very silly." He hurriedly added, "There's
Marshall coming. I know he'll be at me about those Christian Union
Cards. Good-night." He vanished.
But it was not Marshall. It was Rupert Craven. The boy was walking
hurriedly, his eyes on the ground. He was suddenly conscious of some
one and looked up. The change in him was extraordinary. His eyes had
the heavy, dazed look of one who has not slept for weeks. His face was
a yellow white, his hair unbrushed, and his mouth moved restlessly. He
started when he saw Olva.
"Hallo, Craven. You're looking seedy. What's the matter?"
"Nothing, thanks. . . . Good-night."
"No, but wait a minute. Come up to my rooms and have some coffee. I
haven't seen you for days."
A fortnight ago Craven would have accepted with joy. Now he shook his
head.
"No, thanks. I'm tired: I haven't been sleeping very well."
"Why's that? Overwork?"
"No, it's nothing. I don't know why it is."
"You ought to see somebody. I know what not sleeping means."
"Why? . . . Are _you_ sleeping badly?" Craven's eyes met Olva's.
"No, I'm splendid, thanks. But I had a bout of insomnia years ago. I
shan't forget it."
"You _look_ all right." Cravan's eyes were busily searching Olva's face.
Then suddenly they dropped.
"I'm all right," he said hurriedly. "Tired, that's all."
"Why do you never come and see me now?"
"Oh, I will come--sometime. I'm busy."
"What about?"
Olva stood, a stern dark figure, against the snow.
"Oh, just busy." Craven suddenly looked up as though he were going to
ask Olva a question. Then he apparently changed his mind, muttered a
good-night and disappeared round the corner of the building.
Olva was alone in the Court. From some room came the sound of voices and
laughter, from some other room a piano--some one called a name in Little
Court. A sheet of stars drew the white light from the snow to heaven.
Olva turned very slowly and entered his black stairway.
In his heart he was crying, "How long can I stand this? Another day?
Another hour? This loneliness. . . . I must break it. I must tell some
one. I _must_ tell some one."
As he entered his room he thought that he saw against the farther wall
an old gilt mirror and in the light of it a dark figure facing him; a
voice, heavy with some great overburdening sorrow, spoke to him.
"How terrible a thing it is to be alone with God!"
CHAPTER IX
REVELATION OF BUNNING (II)
1
The next day the frost broke, and after a practice game on the Saul's
ground, in preparation for a rugby match at the end of the week, Olva,
bathed and feeling physically a fine, overwhelming fitness, went to see
Margaret Craven.
This sense of his physical well-being was extraordinary. Mentally he
was nearly beaten, almost at the limit of his endurance. Spiritually the
catastrophe hovered more closely above him at every advancing moment,
but, physically, he had never, in all his life before, felt such
magnificent health. He had been sleeping badly now for weeks. He had
been eating very little, but he felt no weariness, no faintness. It
was as though his body were urging upon him the importance of his
resistance, as though he were perceiving, too, with unmistakable
clearness the cleavage that there was between body and soul. And indeed
this vigour _did_ give him an energy to set about the numberless things
that he had arranged to fill every moment of his day--the many little
tinkling bells that he had set going to hide the urgent whisper of that
other voice. He carried his day through with a rush, a whirl, so that
he might be in bed again at night almost before he had finished his
dressing in the morning--no pause, no opportunity for silence. . . .
And now he must see Margaret Craven, see her for herself, but also see
her to talk to her about her brother. How much did Rupert Craven know?
How much--and here was the one tremendous question--had he told his
sister? As Olva waited, once again, in the musty hall, saw once more the
dim red glass of the distant window, smelt again the scent of oranges,
his heart was beating so that he could not hear the old woman's
trembling voice. How would Margaret receive him? Would there be in her
eyes that shadow of distrust that he always saw now in Rupert's? His
knees were trembling and he had to stay for an instant and pull himself
together before he crossed the drawing-room threshold.
And then he was, instantly, reassured. Margaret was alone in the dim
room, and as she came to meet him he saw in her approach to him that
she had been wanting him. In her extended hands he found a welcome that
implied also a need. He felt, as he met her and greeted her and looked
again into the grave, tender eyes that he had been wanting so badly ever
since he had seen them last, that there was nothing more wonderful than
the way that their relationship advanced between every meeting. They
met, exchanged a word or two and parted, but in the days that separated
them their spirits seemed to leap together, to crowd into lonely hours a
communion that bound them more closely than any physical intimacy could
do.
"Oh! I'm so glad you've come. I had hoped it, wanted it."
He sat down close to her, his dark eyes on her face.
"You're in trouble? I can see."
She bent her eyes gravely on the fire, and as slowly she tried to put
together the things that she wished to say he felt, in her earnest
thoughtfulness, a rest, a relief, so wonderful that it was like plunging
his body into cool water after a long and arid journey.
"No, it is nothing. I don't want to make things more overwhelming than
they are. Only, it is, I think, simply that during these last days when
mother and Rupert have both been ill, I have been overwhelmed."
"Rupert?"
"Yes, we'll come to him in a moment. You must remember," she smiled up
at him as she said it, "that I'm not the least the kind of person who
makes the best of things--in fact I'm not a useful person at all. I
suppose being abroad so long with my music spoiled me, but whatever it
is I seem unable to wrestle with things. They frighten me, overwhelm me,
as I say . . . I'm frightened now."
He looked up at her last word and caught a corner reflection in the old
gilt mirror--a reflection of a multitude of little things; silver boxes,
photograph frames, old china pots, little silk squares, lying like
scattered treasures from a wreck on a dark sea.
"What are you frightened about?"
"Well, there it is--nothing I suppose. Only I'm not good at managing
sick people, especially when there's nothing definitely the matter with
them. It's a case with all three of us--a case of nerves."
"Well, that's as serious a thing as any other disease."
"Yes, but I don't know what to do with it. Mother lies there all day.
She seldom speaks, she scarcely eats anything. She entirely refuses to
have a doctor. But worse than that is the extraordinary feeling that
she has had during this last week about Rupert. She refuses to see him,"
Margaret Craven finally brought out.
"Refuses?"
"Yes, she says that he is altered to her. She says that he will not let
her alone, that he is imagining things. Poor Rupert is most terribly
distressed. He is imagining nothing. He would do anything for her, he is
devoted to her."
"Since when has she had this idea?"
"You remember the day that you came last? when Rupert came in and had
found your matchbox. It began about then. . . . Of course Rupert has
not been well--he has never been well since that dreadful death of Mr.
Carfax, and certainly since that day when you were here I think that
he's been worse--strange, utterly unlike himself, sleeping badly, eating
nothing. Poor, poor Rupert, I would do anything for him, for them
both, but I am so utterly, utterly useless, What can I do?" she finally
appealed to him.
"You said once," he answered her slowly, "that I could help you. If you
still feel that, tell me, and I will do anything, anything. You know
that I will do anything."
They came together, in that terrible room, like two children out of the
dark. He suddenly caught her hand and she let him hold it. Then, very
gently, she withdrew it.
"I think that you can make all the difference," she answered slowly.
"Mother often speaks of you. I told you before that she wants so much to
see you, and if you would do that, if you would go up, for just a little
time, and sit with her, I believe you would soothe her as no one else
can. I don't know why I feel that, but I know that she feels it too. You
_are_ restful," she said suddenly, with a smile, flung up at him.
And again, as on the earlier occasion, he shrank from the thing that she
asked him. He had felt, from the very moment this afternoon that he had
entered the house, that that thing would be asked of him. Mrs. Craven
wanted him. He could feel the compulsion of her wish drawing him through
walls and floors and all the obstructions of the world.
"Of course I'll go," he said.
"Ah! that will help. It would be so good of you. Poor mother, it's
lonely for her up there all day, and I know that she thinks about
things, about father, and it's not good for her. You might perhaps say
a word too about Rupert. I cannot imagine what it is that she is feeling
about him." She paused, and then with a sigh, rising from their chair,
longingly brought out, "Oh! but for all of us! to get away--out of this
house, out of this place, that's the thing we want!"
She stood there in her black dress, so simply, so appealingly before
him, that it was all that he could do not to catch her in his arms and
bold her. He did indeed rise and stand beside her, and there in silence,
with the dim room about them, the oppressive silence so ominous
and sinister, they came together with a closeness that no earlier
intercourse had given them.
Olva seemed, for a short space, to be relieved from his burdens. For
them both, so young, so helpless against powers that were ruthless in
the accomplishment of wider destinies, they were allowed to find in
these silent minutes a brief reprieve.
Then, with the sudden whirring and shrill clatter of an ancient clock,
action began again, but before the striking hour had entirely died away,
he said to her, "Whatever happens, we are, at any rate, friends. We can
snatch a moment together even out of the worst catastrophe."
"You're afraid . . . ?" Her breath caught, as she flung a look about the
room.
"One never knows."
"It is all so strange. There in Dresden everything was so happy, so
undisturbed, the music and one's friends; it was all so natural. And
now--here--with Rupert and mother--it's like walking in one's sleep."
"Well, I'll walk with you," he assured her.
But indeed that was exactly what it _was_ like, he thought, as he
climbed the old and creaking stairs. How often had one dreamed of the
old dark house, the dusty latticed windows, the stairs with the gaping
boards, at last that thin dark passage into which doors so dimly opened,
that had black chasms at either end of it, whose very shadows seemed
to demand the dripping of some distant water and the shudder of some
trembling blind. In a dream too there was that sense of inevitability,
of treading unaccustomed ways with an assured, accustomed tread that
was with him now. The old woman who had conducted him stopped at a door,
hidden by the dusk, and knocked. She opened it and wheezed out--
"Mr. Dune, m'am;" and then, standing back for him to pass, left him
inside.
As the door closed he was instantly conscious of an overwhelming desire
for air, a longing to fling open the little diamond-paned window. The
ceiling was very low and a fierce fire burned in the fireplace. There
was little furniture, only a huge white bed hovered in the background.
Olva was conscious of a dark figure lying on a low chair by the fire, a
figure that gave you instantly those long white hands and those burning
eyes and gave you afterwards more slowly the rest of the outline. But
its supreme quality was its immobility. That head, that body, those
hands, never moved, only behind its dark outline the bright fire
crackled and flung its shadows upon the wall.
"I am sorry that you are not so well."
Mrs. Craven's dark eyes searched his face. "You are restful to me. I
like you to come. But I would not intrude upon your time."
Olva said, "I am very glad to come if I can be of any service. If there
is anything that I can do."
The eyes seemed the only part of her body that lived. It was the eyes
that spoke. "No, there is nothing that any one can do. I do not care for
talking. Soon I will be downstairs again, I hope. It is lonely for my
daughter."
"There is Rupert."
At the mention of the name her eyes were suddenly sheathed. It was like
the instant quenching of some light. She did not answer him.
"Tell me about yourself. What you do, what you care about . . . your
life."
He told her a little about his home, his father, but he had a strange,
overwhelming conviction that she already knew. He felt, also, that she
regarded these things that he told her as preliminaries to something
else that he would presently say. He paused.
"Yes?" she said.
"I am tiring you. I have talked enough. It is time for me to be back in
College."
She did not contradict him. She watched him as he said good-bye. For
one moment he touched her chill, unresponsive hand, for an instant their
eyes, dark, sombre, met. The thought flew to his brain, "My God, how
lonely she is . . ." and then, "My God, how lonely I am." Slowly and
quietly he closed the door behind him.
2
That night the Shadow was nearer, more insistent; the closer it came
the more completely was the real world obscured. This obscurity was now
shutting oil from him everything; it was exactly as though his whole
body bad been struck numb so that he might touch, might hold, but
could feel nothing. Again it was as though he were confined in a damp,
underground cell and the world above his head was crying out with life
and joy. In his hand was the key of the door; he had only to use it.
Submission--to be taken into those arms, to be told gently what he
must do, and then--Obedience--perhaps public confession, perhaps death,
struggling, ignominious death . . . at least, never again Margaret
Craven, never again her companionship, her understanding, never again
to help her and to feel that warm sure clasp of her hand. What would she
say, what would she do if she were told? That remained for him now the
one abiding question. But he could not doubt what she would do. He saw
the warmth fading from the eyes, the hard stern lines settling about the
mouth, the cold stiffening of her whole body. No, she must never know,
and if Rupert discovered the truth, he, Olva, must force him, for his
sister's sake, to keep silence. But if Rupert knew he would tell his
sister, and she would believe him. No use denials then.
And on the side of it all was the Shadow, with him now, with him in the
room.
All things betray Thee Who betrayest Me.
The line from some poem came to him. It was true, true. His life that
had been the life of a man was now the life of a Liar--Liar to his
friends, Liar to Margaret, Liar to all the world--so his shuddering
soul cowered there, naked, creeping into the uttermost corner to escape
the Presence.
If only for an hour he might be again himself---might shout aloud the
truth, boast of it, triumph in it, be naked in the glory of it. Day
by day the pressure had been increased, day by day his loneliness had
grown, day by day the pursuit had drawn closer.
And now he hardly recognized the real from the false. He paced his room
frantically. He felt that on the other side of the bedroom door there
was terror. He had turned on all his lights; a furious fire was blazing
in the grate; beyond the windows cold stars and an icy moon, but in here
stifling heat.
When Bunning (the clocks were striking eleven) came blinking in upon him
he was muttering--"Let me go, let me go. I killed him, I tell you. I'm
glad I killed him. . . . Oh! Let me alone! For pity's sake let me alone!
I _can't_ confess! Don't you see that I can't confess? There's Margaret.
I must keep her---afterwards when she knows me better I'll tell her."
As he faced Bunning's staring glasses, the thought came to Him, "Am I
going mad?--Has it been too much for me?---Mad?"
He stopped, wheeled round, caught the table with both hands, and leaned
over to Bunning, who stood, his mouth open, his cap and gown still on.
Olva very gravely said: "Come in, Bunning. Shut the door. 'Sport' it.
That's right. Take off your gown and sit down."
The man, still staring, white and frightened, sat down.
Olva spoke slowly and very distinctly: "I'm glad you've come. I want to
talk to you. I killed Carfax, you know." As he said the words he began
slowly to come back to himself from the Other World to this one. How
often, sleeping, waking, had he said those words! How often, aloud, in
his room, with his door locked, had he almost shouted them!
He was not now altogether sure whether Bunning were really there or no.
His spectacles were there, his boots were there, but was Bunning there?
If he were not there. . . .
But he _was_ there. Olva's brain slowly cleared and, for the first time
for many weeks, he was entirely himself. It was the first moment of
peace that he had known since that hour in St. Martin's Chapel.
He was quiet, collected, perfectly calm. He went over to the window,
opened it, and rejoiced in the breeze. The room seemed suddenly empty.
Five minutes ago it had been crowded, breathless. There was now only
Bunning.
"It was so awfully hot with that enormous fire," he said.
Bunning's condition was peculiar. He sat, his large fat face white and
streaky, beads of perspiration on his forehead, his hands gripping the
sides of the armchair. His boots stuck up in the most absurd manner,
like interrogation marks. He watched Olva's face fearfully. At last he
gasped--
"I say, Dune, you're ill. You are really--you're overdone. You ought to
see some one, you know. You ought really, you ought to go to bed." His
words came in jerks.
Olva crossed the room and stood looking down upon him.
"No, Bunning, I'm perfectly well. . . . There's nothing the matter with
me. My nerves have been a bit tried lately by this business, keeping it
all alone, and it's a great relief to me to have told you."
The fact forced itself upon Bunning's brain. At last in a husky whisper:
"You . . . killed . . . Carfax?" And then the favourite expression of
such weak souls as he: "Oh! my God! Oh! my God!"
"Now look here, don't get hysterical about it. You've got to take it
quietly as I do. You said the other day you'd do anything for me. . . .
Well, now you've got a chance of proving your devotion."
"My God! My God!" The boots feebly tapped the floor.
"I had to tell somebody. It was getting on my nerves. I suppose it gives
you a kind of horror of me. Don't mind saying so if it does."
Bunning, taking out a grimy handkerchief, wiped his forehead. He shook
his head without speaking.
Olva sat down in the chair opposite him and lit his pipe.
"I want to tell somebody all about it. You weren't really, I suppose,
the best person to tell. You're a hysterical sort of fellow and you're
easily frightened, but you happened to come in just when I was rather
worked up about it. At any rate you've got to face it now and you must
pull yourself together as well as you can. . . . Move away from the
fire, if you're hot."
Bunning shook his head.
Olva continued: "I'm going to try to put it quite plainly to you, the
Carfax part of it I mean. There are other things that have happened
since that I needn't bother you with, but I'd like you to understand why
I did it."
"Oh! my God!" said Bunning. He was trembling from head to foot and his
fat hands rattled on the woodwork of the chair and his feet rattled on
the floor.
"I met Carfax first at my private school---a little, fat dirty boy he
was then, and fat and dirty he's been ever since. I hated him, but I was
always pleasant to him. He wasn't worth being angry with. He always did
rotten things. He knew more filthy things than the other boys, and he
was a bully--a beastly bully. I think he knew that I bated him, but we
were on perfectly good terms. I think he was always a little afraid
of me, but it's curious to remember that we never had a quarrel of any
kind, until the day when I killed him."
Olva paused and asked Bunning to have a drink. Bunning, gazing at him
with desperate eyes, shook his head.
"Then we went on to Rugby together. It's odd how Fate has apparently
been determined to hammer out our paths side by side. Carfax grew more
and more beastly. He always did the filthiest things and yet out of
it all seemed to the world at large a perfectly decent fellow. He was
clever in that way. I am not trying to defend myself. I'm making it
perfectly straightforward and just as it really was. He knew that I knew
him better than anybody, and as we went on at Rugby I think that his
fear of me grew. I didn't hate him so much for being Carfax, but rather
as standing for all sorts of rotten things. It didn't matter to me in
the least whether he was a beast or not, I'm a beast myself, but it did
matter that he should smile about it and have damp hands. When I touched
his hand I always wanted to hit him.
"I've got a very sudden temper, all my family are like that--calm
most of the time and then absolutely wild. I hated him more up here
at College than I'd hated him at school. He developed and still his
reputation was just the same, decent fellows like Craven followed him,
excused him; he had that cheery manner. . . . Hating him became a habit
with me. I hated everything that he did--his rolling walk down the
Court, his red colour, his football . . . and then he ruined that fellow
Thompson. That was a poor game, but no one seemed to think anything of
it . . . and indeed he and I seemed to be very good friends. He used to
sneer at me behind my back, I know, but I didn't mind that. Any one's
at liberty to sneer if they like. But he was really afraid of me . . .
always.
"Then at last there was this girl that he set about destroying. He
seduced her, promised her marriage. I knew all about it, because she
used to be rather a friend of mine. I warned her, but she was absolutely
infatuated--wouldn't hear of anything that I had to say, thought it all
jealousy. She wasn't the kind of girl who could stand disgrace. . . .
She came to him one day and told him that she was going to have a baby.
He laughed at her in the regular old conventional way . . . and that
very afternoon, after he had seen her, he met me--there in Sannet Wood.
"He began to boast about it, told me jokingly about the way that he'd
'shut her mouth,' as he called it . . . laughed . . . I hit him. I meant
to hit him hard, I hated him so; I think that I wanted to kill him.
All the accumulated years were in that blow, I suppose; at any rate, I
caught him on the chin and it broke his neck and he dropped . . . that's
all."
Olva paused, finished his drink, and ended with--
"There it is--it's simple enough. I'm not in the least sorry I killed
him. I've no regrets; he was better out of the world than in it, and
I've probably saved a number of people from a great deal of misery. I
thought at first that I should be caught, but they aren't very sharp
round here and there was really nothing to connect me with it. But there
were other things--there's more in killing a man than the mere killing.
I haven't been able to stand the loneliness---so I told you."
The last words brought him back to Bunning, a person whom he had almost
forgotten. A sudden pity for the man's distress made his voice tender.
"I say, Running, I oughtn't to have told you. It's been too much for
you. But if you knew the relief that it is to me. . . . Though, mind
you, if it's on your conscience, if it burdens you, you must 'out' with
it. Don't have any scruples about me. But it needn't burden you. _You_
hadn't any-thing to do with it. You were here and I told you. That's
all. I've shown you that I want you as a friend."
For answer the creature burst suddenly into tears, hiding his face
in his sleeve, as small boys hide their faces, and choking out
desperately--
"Oh! my God! Oh! my God!"
CHAPTER X
CRAVEN
1
That evening Olva was elected President of the Wolves. It was a ceremony
conducted with closed doors and much drinking of wine, by a committee
of four and the last reigning President who had the casting vote. The
College waited in suspense and at eleven o'clock it was understood that
Dune had been elected.
According to custom, on the day following in "Hall" Olva would be
cheered by the assembled undergraduates whilst the gods on the dais
smiled gently and murmured that "boys will be boys."
Meanwhile the question that agitated the Sauline world was the way that
Cardillac would take it. "If it had been any one else but Dune . . ."
but it couldn't have been any one else. There was no other possible
rival, and "Cards," like the rest of the world, bowed to Dune's charm.
The Dublin match, to be played now in a fortnight's time, would settle
the football question. It was generally expected that they would try
Dune in that match and judge him finally then on his play. There was a
good deal of betting on the matter, and those who remembered his earlier
games said that nothing could ever make Dune a reliable player and that
it was a reliable player that was wanted.
When Olva came into "Hall" that evening he was conscious of two pairs
of eyes, Craven's and Bunning's. On either side of the high vaulted hall
the tables were ranged, and men, shouting, waving their glasses, lined
the benches. Olva's place was at the end farthest from the door and
nearest the High Table, and he had therefore the whole room to cross.
He was smiling a little, a faint colour in his cheeks. At his own end of
the table Craven was standing, silent, with his eyes gravely fixed upon
Olva's face. Half-way down the hall there was Bunning, and Olva could
see, as he passed up the room, that the man was trembling and was
pressing his hands down upon the table to hold his body still.
When Olva had sat down and the cheering had passed again into the
cheerful hum that was customary, the first voice that greeted him was
Cardillac's.
"Congratulations, old man. I'm delighted."
There was no question of Cardillac's sincerity. Craven was sitting four
places lower down; he had turned the other way and was talking eagerly
to some man on his farther side--but the eyes that had met Olva's two
minutes before had been hostile.
Cardillac went on: "Come in to coffee afterwards, Dune; several men are
coming in."
Olva thanked him and said that he would. The world was waiting to see
how "Cards" would take it, and, beyond question, "Cards" was taking it
very well. Indeed an observer might have noticed that "Cards" was too
absorbed by the way that Dune was "taking it" to "take it" himself
consciously at all. Olva's aloof surveying of the world about him, as a
man on a hill surveys the town in the valley, made of "Cards'" last year
and a half a gaudy and noisy thing. He had thought that his attitude had
been nicely adjusted, but now he saw that there were still heights to be
reached--perhaps in this welcome that he was giving to Dune's success
he might attain his position. . . . Not, in any way, a bad fellow, this
Cardillac--but obsessed by a self-conscious conviction that the world
was looking at him; the world never looks for more than an instant at
self-consciousness, but it dearly loves self-forgetfulness, for that
implies a compliment to itself.
Afterwards, in Cardillac's handsome and over-careful rooms, there was
an attempt at depth. The set--Lawrence, Galleon, Craven and five or six
more--never thought about Life unless drink drove them to do so, and
drink drove them to-night. A long, thin man, Williamson by name, with a
half-Blue for racquets and a pensive manner, had a favourite formula on
these occasions: "But think of a rabbit now . . ." only conveying by the
remark that here was a proof of God's supreme, astounding carelessness.
"You shoot it, you know, without turning a hair (no joke, you rotter),
and it breeds millions a week . . . and--does it think about it, that's
what I want to know? Where's its soul?
"Hasn't got a soul. . . ."
"Well, what _is_ the soul, anyway?"
There you are-the thing's properly started, and the more the set drinks
the vaguer it gets until finally it goes happily to bed and wakes with a
headache and a healthy opinion that "Religion and that sort of stuff is
rot" in the morning. That is precisely as far as intellect ever ventured
in Saul's. There may have been quaint obscure fellows who sported their
oaks every night and talked cleverly on ginger-beer, but they were
not admitted as part of the scheme of things. . . . Saulines, to quote
Lawrence, "are _not_ clever."
They were not especially clever to-night, thought Olva, as he sat in the
shadow away from the light of the fire and watched them sitting back in
enormous armchairs, with their legs stretched out, blowing wreaths of
smoke into the air, drinking whiskies and sodas . . . no, not clever.
Craven, the shadows blacker than ever under his eyes, was on the
opposite side of the room from Olva. He sat with his head down and was
silent.
"Think of a rabbit now," said Williamson.
"I suppose," said Galleon, who was not gifted, "that they're happy
enough."
"Yes, but what do they _make_ of it all?"
At this moment Craven suddenly burst in with "Where's Carfax?"
This question was felt by every one to be tactless. Elaborately,
with great care and some considerable effort, Carfax had been
forgotten--forgotten, it seemed, by every one save Craven. He had been
forgotten because his death did not belong to the Cambridge order of
things, because it raised unpleasant ideas, and made one morbid and
neurotic. 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.
And now Craven _had_ been unusual--"Where's Carfax?" . . . What a
dreadful thing to say and how tactless! The note, moreover, in Craven's
voice sounded a danger. There was something in the air as though the
fellow might, at any moment, burst into tears, fire a pistol into the
air, or jump out of the window! So unpleasant, and Carfax was much more
real, even now, than an abstract rabbit.
"Dear boy," said Cardillac, easily, "Carfax is dead. We all miss him--it
was a beastly, horrible affair, but there's no point in dwelling on
things; one only gets morbid, and morbidity isn't what we're here for."
"It's all very well," Craven was angrily muttering, "but it's scandalous
the way you forget a man. Here he was, amongst the whole lot of you,
only a month or so ago and he was a friend of every one's. 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. Gone, now, at any rate, any
possibility of a comfortable evening. Craven said no more but still sat
there with his head banging, his only movement the shaking of his hand.
Cardillac tried to bring ease back again, Williamson once more started
his rabbits, but now there was danger in that direction. Conversation
fell, heavily, helplessly, to the ground. Some man got up to go and some
one else followed him. It was the wrong moment for departure for they
had drunk enough to make it desirable to drink more, but to escape from
that white face of Craven's was the thing--out into the air.
At last Craven himself got up. "I must be off," he said heavily.
"So must I," Olva said, coming forward from his corner. Craven flung him
a frightened glance and then passed stumbling out of the door.
Olva caught him up at the bottom of the dark stairs. He put a hand on
Craven's trembling arm and held him there.
"I want to talk to you, Craven. Come up to my room."
Craven tried to wrench his arm away. "No, I'm tired. I want to go to
bed."
"You haven't been near me for weeks. Why?"
"Oh, nothing--let me go. I'll come up another time."
"No, I _must_ talk to you--now. Come." Olva's voice was stern--his face
white and hard.
"No--I won't."
"You must. I won't keep you long. I have something to tell you."
Craven suddenly ceased to struggle. He gazed straight into Olva's eyes,
and the look that he gave him was the strangest thing--something of
terror, something of anger, a great wonder, and even--strangest of
all!--a struggling affection.
"I'll come," he said.
In Olva's room he stood, a disturbed figure facing the imperturbability
of the other man with restless eyes and hands that moved up and down
against his coat. Olva commanded the situation, with stern eyes he
seemed to be the accuser. . . .
"Sit down--fill a pipe."
"No, I won't sit--what do you want?"
"Please sit. It's so much easier for us both to talk. I can't say the
things that I want to when you're standing over me. Please sit down."
Craven sat down.
Olva faced him. "Now look here, Craven, a little time ago you came and
wished that we should see a good deal of one another. You came in here
often and you took me to see your people. You were charming . . . I was
delighted to be with you."
Olva paused--Craven said nothing.
"Then suddenly, for no reason that I can understand, this changed. Do
you remember that afternoon when you had tea with me here and I went to
sleep? It was after that--you were never the same after that. And it has
been growing worse. Now you avoid me altogether--you don't speak to me
if you can help it. I'm not a man of many friends and I don't wish to
lose one without knowing first what it is that I have done. Will you
tell me what it is?"
Craven made no answer. His eyes passed restlessly up and down the room
as though searching for some way of escape. He made little choking
noises in his throat. When Olva had had no answer to his question, he
went gravely on--
"But it isn't only your attitude to me that matters, although I _do_
want you to explain that. But I want you also to tell me what the damage
is. You're most awfully unwell. You're an utterly different man--changed
entirely during the last week or two, and we've all noticed it. But
it doesn't only worry us here; it worries your mother and sister too.
You've no right to keep it to yourself."
"There's nothing the matter."
"Of course there is. A man doesn't alter in a day for nothing, and I
date it all from that evening when you had tea with me, and I can't help
feeling that it's something that I can clear up. If it _is_ anything
that I can do, if I can clear your bother up in any way, you have only
to tell me. And," he added slowly, "I think at least that you owe me an
explanation of your own personal avoidance of me. No man has any right
to drop a friend without giving his reasons. You know that, Craven."
Craven suddenly raised his weary eyes. "I never was a friend of yours.
We were acquaintances--that's all."
"You made me a friend of your mother and sister. I demand an
explanation, Craven."
"There is no explanation. I'm not well--out of condition."
"Why?"
"Why is a fellow ever out of condition? I've been working too hard, I
suppose. . . . But you said you'd got something to tell me. What have
you got to tell me?"
"Tell me first what is troubling you."
"No."
"You refuse?"
"Absolutely."
"Then I have nothing to tell you."
"Then you brought me in here on a lie. I should never have come if---"
"Yes?"
"If I hadn't thought you had something to tell me."
"What should I have to tell you?"
"I don't know . . . nothing."
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?"
He brought it out at last, his hands gripping the sides of his chair,
all the agonized uncertainty of the last few weeks in his voice. Olva
faced him, standing above him, and looking down upon him.
"My dear Craven--what an odd question--why do you want to know?"
"Well, finding your matchbox like that--there in Sannet Wood--and I know
you must have lost it just about then because I remember your looking
for it here. I thought that perhaps you might have seen somebody, had
some kind of suspicion. . . ."
"Well, I _was_, as a matter of fact, there that very afternoon. I walked
through the wood with Bunker--rather late. I met no one during the whole
of the time."
"No one?"
"No one."
"You have no suspicion?"
"No suspicion."
The boy relapsed from his eagerness into his heavy dreary indifference.
His lips were working. Olva seemed to catch the words--"Why should it be
I? Why should it be I?" Olva came over to him and placed his hand on his
shoulder.
"Look here, old man, I don't know what's the matter with you, but it's
plain enough that you've got this Carfax business on your nerves--drop
it. It does no good--it's the worst thing in the world to brood about.
Carfax is dead--if I could help you to find his murderer I would--but I
can't."
Craven's whole body was trembling under Olva's hand. Olva moved back to
his chair.
"Craven, listen to me. You _must_ listen to me." Then, speaking very
slowly he brought out-"I _have_ a right to speak to you--a great right.
I wish to marry your sister."
Craven started up from his chair.
"No, no," he cried. "You! Never, so long as I can prevent it."
"You have no right to say that," Olva answered him sternly, "until you
have given me your reasons. I don't know that she cares a pin about
me--I don't suppose that she does. But she will. I'm going to do my very
best to marry her."
Craven broke away to the middle of the room. His body was shaking with
passion and he flung out his hand as though to ward off Olva from him.
"You to marry my sister! My God, I will prevent it--I will tell her--"
He caught himself up suddenly.
"What will you tell her?"
Then Craven collapsed. He stood there, rocking on his feet, his hands
covering his face.
"It's all too awful," he moaned. "It's all too awful."
For a wonderful moment Olva felt that he was about to tell Craven
everything. A flood of words rose to his lips--he seemed, for an
instant, to be rising with a great joyous freedom, as did Christian when
he had dropped his burden, to a new honesty, a high deliverance.
Then he remembered Margaret Craven.
"You take my advice, Craven, and get your nerves straight. They're in a
shocking condition."
Craven went to the door and turned.
"You can tell nothing?"
"Nothing."
"I will never rest until I know who murdered Carfax."
He closed the door behind him and was gone.
CHAPTER XI
FIFTH OF NOVEMBER
1
That attempt to make Craven speak his mind was Olva's last plunge into
the open. He saw now, with a clarity that was like the sudden lifting of
some blind before a lighted window, that he had been beguiled, betrayed.
He had thought that his confession to Bunning would stay the pursuit. He
saw now that it was the Pursuer Himself who had instigated it. With that
confession the grey shadow had drawn nearer, had made one degree more
certain the ultimate capitulation.
For Bunning was surely the last person to be told--with every hour that
became clearer. There were now about four weeks before the end of term.
The Dublin match was to be on the first Tuesday of December, two days
before every one went down, and between the two dates--this 5th of
November and that 2nd of December--the position must be held. . . .
The terror of the irresistible impulse now never left Olva. He had told
Bunning in a moment of uncontrol--what might he not do now at any time?
At one instant to be absolutely silent seemed the only resource, at the
next to rush out and take part in all the life about him. Were he silent
he was tortured by the silence, if he flung himself amongst his fellow
men every hour threatened self-betrayal.
What, moreover, was happening in the house in Rocket Road? Craven was
only waiting for certainty and at any moment some chance might give him
what he needed. What did Mrs. Craven know?
Margaret . . . Margaret . . . Margaret---Olva took the thought of
her in his hand and held it like a sword, against the forces that were
crowding in upon him.
The afternoon of November 5 was thick with fog so that the shops were
lighted early and every room was dim and unreal, and a sulphurous smell
weighted the air. After "Hall" Olva came back to his room and found
Bunning, his white face peering out of the foggy mist like a dull moon
from clouds, waiting for him. All day there had hung about Olva heavy
depression. It had seemed so ugly and sinister a world--the fog had been
crowded with faces and terror, and the dreadful overpowering impression
of unreality that had been increasing with every day now took from
his companions all life and made of them grinning masks. He remembered
Margaret's cry, "It is like walking in a dream," and echoed it. Surely
it _was_ a dream! He would wake one happy morning and find that he had
invited Craven and Carfax to breakfast, and he would hear them, whilst
he dressed, talking together in the outer room, and, later, he would
pass Bunning in the Court without knowing him. He would be introduced
one day to Margaret Craven and find the house in which she lived a
charming comfortable place, full of light and air, with a croquet lawn
at the back of it, and Mrs. Craven, a nice ordinary middle-aged woman,
stout possibly and fond of gossip. And instead of being President of the
Wolves and a person of importance in the College he would be once again
his old self, knowing nobody, scornful of the whole world and of the
next world as well. And this brought him up with a terrible awakening.
No, that old reality could never be real again, for that old reality
meant a world without God. God had come and had turned the world into
a nightmare . . . or was it only his rebellion against God that had so
made it? But the nightmare was there, the awful uncertainty of every
word, of every step, because with the slightest movement he might
provoke the shadow to new action, if anything so grave, so stern, so
silent as that Pursuit could be termed action, and . . . it was odd how
certainly he knew it . . . so kind. Bunning's face brought him to the
sudden necessity of treating the nightmare as reality, for the moment at
any rate. The staring spectacles piteously appealed to him--
"I can't stand it--I can't stand it."
"Hush!" Olva held his hand, and out of the fog, below in the Court, a
voice was calling--"Craven! Craven! Buck up, you old ass!"
"They're going to light bonfires and things," Bunning quavered, and
then, with a hand that had always before seemed soft and flabby but
that was now hard and burning, he caught Olva's wrist. "I had to see
you--I've been three days now--waiting--all the time for them to come
and arrest you. Oh! I've imagined everything--everything--and the fog
makes it worse. . . . Oh! my God! I can't stand it."
The man was on the edge of hysteria. His senseless giggle threatened
that in another instant it would be beyond all control. There was no
time to be lost. Olva took him by the shoulders, held him firmly and
looked straight into the weak, quivering eyes that were behind the
glasses like fish in a tank.
"Look here, Bunning. Pull yourself together. You _must_--you _must_.
Do you understand? If you've never done it before you must do it now.
Remember that you wanted to help me. Well, now you can do it--but
remember that if you give way so that people notice you, then the show's
up. They'll be asking questions--they'll watch you--and you'll have
done for me. Otherwise there's no risk whatever--no risk whatever. Just
remember that--it's as though I'd never done anything; everything's
going on in its usual way; life will always be just the same . . . if
you'll keep hold of yourself--do you understand? Do you hear me?"
Bunning's quavering voice answered him, "I'll try."
"Well, look here. Think of it quite calmly, naturally. You're taking
it like a story that you'd read in a magazine or a play you'd seen at a
theatre--melodrama with all the lights on and every one screaming. Well,
it can be like that if you want it. Every one thinks of murder that way
and you can go shrieking to the Dean and have the rope round my neck in
a minute. But I want you to think of it as the most ordinary thing
in the world. Remember no one knows but yourself, and they won't know
either if you behave in a natural sort of way." Then suddenly his voice
sank to a growl and he caught the man's hands in his and held the whole
quivering body in his control--"Quiet!" he muttered, "Quiet!"
Bunning had begun to laugh--quite helplessly, almost noiselessly--only
his fat cheeks were quivering and his mouth foolishly, weakly smiling:
his eyes seemed to be disconnected from his body and to be protesting
against it. They looked out like a prisoner from behind barred windows.
The body began to shake from head to foot-ripples of noiseless laughter
shook his fat limbs, then suddenly he began . . . peal upon peal. . .
the tears came rolling down, the mouth was loosely trembling, and still
only the eyes, in a kind of sad, stupid wonder, protested.
Olva seized his throat-"Stop it, you damned fool!" . . . He looked
straight into the eyes--Bunning ceased as suddenly as he had begun. The
horrible, helpless noise fell with a giggle into silence; he collapsed
into a chair and hid his face in his hands.
There was a long pause. Olva gazed at the bending figure, summoning all
his will power to hold the shaking thing in control. He waited. Then,
softly, he began again. "Bunning, I did you a great wrong when I told
you--you're not up to it."
From behind the hands there came a muffled voice--"I _am_ up to it."
"This sort of thing makes it impossible."
"It shall never happen again." Bunning lifted his tear-stained face.
"It's been coming for days. I've been so dreadfully frightened. But
now--that I've been with you--it's better, much better. If only--" and
his voice caught--"if only--no one suspects."
Olva gravely answered, "No one suspects."
"If I thought that any one--that there was any chance--that any one had
an idea. . . ."
Craven's voice was echoing in Olva's ears. He answered again--
"No one has the slightest suspicion."
Bunning got up heavily from the chair--"I shall be better now. It's been
so awful having a secret. I never could keep one. I always used to do
wrong things at home and then tell them and then get punished. But I
will try. But if I thought that they guessed--" There was a rap on the
door and Bunning gasped, stepped back against the wall, his face white,
his knees trembling.
"Don't be such a fool," Olva said fiercely. "If you're like that every
time any one knocks you may as well chuck it at once. Look sensible,
man. Pull yourself together."
Lawrence entered, bringing log with him from the stairs. His big,
thick-set body was so reassuring, so healthy in its sturdiness, so
strange a contrast to the trembling figure against the wall that Olva
felt an immense relief.
"You know Bunning, Lawrence?"
"How do?"
Lawrence gripped Bunning's fingers, nodded to Bunning's stumbling words
and smiled genially.
Bunning got to the door, blinked upon them both from behind his glasses
and was gone--muttering something about "work . . . letters to write."
"Rum feller," said Lawrence, and dismissed him with a chuckle.
"Shouldn't ever have thought him your style, Dune . . . but you're a
clever feller and clever fellers always see more in stupid fellers than
ordinary fellers do . . . come out and see the rag."
"Rag! What rag?"
"It's November 5th."
So it was. In the air already perhaps there were those mysterious
signs and portents that heralded riot--nothing, as yet, for the casual
observer to notice, nothing but a few undergraduates arm-in-arm pacing
the sleepy streets--a policeman here, a policeman there. Every now and
again clocks strike the quarters, and in many common-rooms heads are
nodding over ancient Port and argument of the gentlest kind is being
tossed to and fro. But, nevertheless, we remember other Fifths of
November. There was that occasion in '98, that other more distant time
in '93. . . . There was that furious battle in the Market Place when the
Town Hall was nearly set on fire and a policeman had his arm broken.
These are historic occasions; on the other hand the fateful date has
passed, often enough, without the merest flinging of a squib or friendly
appropriation of the genial policeman's helmet.
No one can say, no one knows, whether there will be riot to-night or no.
Most of the young gentlemen now parading the K.P. and Petty Cury would
undoubtedly prefer that there should be a riot. For one thing there has
been no riot during the last five or six years--no one "up" just now
has had any experience of such a thing, and it would be beyond question
delightful to taste the excitement of it. But, on the other hand, there
is all the difficulty of getting under way. One cannot possibly enjoy
the occasion until one has reached that delightful point when one has
lost all sense of risk, when recklessly we pile the bonfire, snap our
fingers in the nose of poor Mr. Gregg who is terrific enough when he
marches solemnly into Chapel but is nothing at all when he is screaming
with shrill anger amongst the lights and fury of the blazing common.
Will this wonderful moment when discipline, respect for authority,
thoughts of home, terrors of being sent down, all these bogies, are
flung derisively to the winds arrive to-night? It has struck nine, and
to Olva and Lawrence, walking solemnly through the market-place, it all
seems quiet enough.
But behold how the gods work their will! It so happens that Giles of St
Martin's has occasion, on this very day, to celebrate his twenty-first
birthday. It has been done as a twenty-first birthday should be done,
and by nine o'clock the company, twenty in number, have decided that
"it was the ruddiest of ruddy old worlds"--that--"let's have
some moretodrink ol' man--it was Fifth o' November--and that a
ruddyoldbonfire would be--a--ruddyol'-joke---"
Now, at half-past nine, the company of twenty march singing down the
K.P. and gather unto themselves others--a murmur is spreading through
the byways. "Bonfire on the Common." "Bonfire on the Common." The
streets begin to be black with undergraduates.
2
Olva was conscious as he passed with Lawrence through the now crowded
streets that Bunning's hysteria had had an effect upon his nerves. He
could not define it more directly than by saying that the Shadow
that had, during these many weeks, appeared to be pursuing him, at a
distance, now seemed to be actually with him. It was as though three of
them, and not two, were walking there side by side. It was as though he
were himself whispering in his own ear some advice of urgent pleading
that he was himself rejecting . . . he was even weighted with the sense
of some enlarged growth, of having in fact to carry more, physically
as well as spiritually, than he had ever carried before. Now it quite
definitely and audibly pleaded--
"Submit--submit--submit. . . . See the tangle that you are getting
yourself into. See the trouble that you are getting others into. See
the tangle and muddle that you are making of it all. . . . Submit. . . .
Give in. . . . You're beaten."
But he was not beaten. Neither the love of Margaret, nor the suspicions
of Rupert, nor the hysteria of Bunning had as yet defeated him . . . and
even as he resisted it was as though he were fighting himself.
Sidney Street was now quite black with thronging undergraduates moving
towards the Common. There was very little noise in it all; every now
and again some voice would call aloud to some other voice and would be
answered back; a murmur like the swelling of some stream, unlike, in its
uniformity and curious evenness of note, any human conversation, seemed
to cling to the old grey walls. All of it at present orderly enough but
with sinister omen in its very quiet.
Olva felt an increasing excitement as he moved. It was an excitement
that had some basis in the stir that was about him, in the murmur like
bees of the crowd, in the soft stirring of grey branches above the walls
of the street against the night sky, in the golden lights that, set in
dim towers, shone high up above their heads. In all these things there
was a mysterious tremor that beat, with the rhythm of a pulse, from the
town's very heart--but there was more than that in his excitement. There
was working in him a conviction that he was now, even now, reaching the
very climax of his adventure. Very certainly, very surely, the moment
was thawing near, and even in the instant when he had, that very
evening, left his rooms, he had stepped, he instinctively knew, out of
one stage into another.
"Where are we going?" he asked Lawrence.
"Common. There's goin' to be an old fire. Hope there's a row--don't mind
who I hit."
The side streets that led to the Common made progress more difficult,
and, with the increased difficulty, came also a more riotous spirit.
Some one started "The Two Obadiahs," and it was lustily sung with a
good deal of repetition; several people had wooden rattles, intended
to encourage College boats during the races, but very useful just now.
There were, at the point where the street plunges into the Common, some
wooden turnstiles, and these of course were immensely in the way and men
were flung about and there was a good deal of coarse pleasantry, and
one mild freshman, who had been caught into the crowd by accident, was
thrown on to the ground and very nearly trodden to death.
The sight of the vast and mysterious Common put every one into the best
of spirits. There was room here to do anything, and it was also dark
enough and wide enough to escape if escape were advisable. Moreover
the space of it seemed so limitless that it negatived any one's
responsibility. A sudden delightful activity swept over the world, and
it was immediately every one's business to get wood from anywhere at
all and drag it into the middle of the Common. As they moved through the
turnstiles Olva fancied that he caught sight of Craven.
On the Common's edge, with bright little lights in their windows, were
perched a number of tiny houses with strips of garden in front of them.
These little eyes watched, apprehensively no doubt, the shadowy mass
that hovered under the night sky. They did not like this kind of thing,
these little houses--they remembered five or six years ago when
their cabbages had been trampled upon, their palings torn down, even
hand-to-hand contests in the passages and one roof on fire. Where were
the police? The little eyes watched anxiously. There was no sign of the
police. . . .
Olva smiled at himself for the excitement that he was feeling. He was
standing at present with Lawrence on the edge of the Common, watching,
but he was feeling irresistibly drawn towards the dark pile of wood that
was rising slowly towards the sky.
"As though one were ten years old"--and yet there was Lawrence
murmuring, "I'd awfully like to hit somebody." And that, after all,
was what it all came to. Perhaps Olva, if there were really to be some
"scraps," would be able to work off some of his apprehension, of his
breathlessness. Oh! for one wild ten minutes when scruples were flung
to the winds, when there was at last in front of one an enemy whom one
could touch, whom one could fling, physically, brutally, down before
one!
"The worst of it is," Lawrence was saying, "there are these town
cads--they'll be in the back somewhere shoutin' ''It 'im, 'Varsity,'
or somethin' and then runnin' for their lives if they see a Robert
comin' . . . it's rotten bein', mixed up with such muck . . . anyhow I'm
goin' to have a dash at it----" and he had suddenly plunged forward into
space.
Olva was alone. A breeze blew across the Common, the stars twinkled and
jumped as though they were suffering from a nervous attack, and with
every moment restraint was flung a farther distance, more voices called
aloud and shouted, more men poured out of the little side streets. It
had the elements of a great mystery. It was as though Mother Earth had,
with a heave of her breast, tossed these shadowy forms into the air and
was herself stirring with the emotion of their movement.
There was an instant's breathless silence; to the roar of a shouting
multitude a bright hard flame shot like steel into the air--the bonfire
was alight.
Now with every moment it mounted higher. Black pigmy figures were
now dancing round it and across the Common other figures were always
passing, dragging wood with them. The row of palings towards the river
had gone and soon those little cottages that lined the grass must
suffer. Surely now the whole of the University was gathered there!
The crowd was close now, dense--men shoved past one another crying out
excited cries, waving their arms with strange meaningless gestures. They
were arriving rapidly at that condition when they had neither names nor
addresses but merely impulses.
Most dangerous element of all threatened that ring of loafers on the
outskirts--loafers from the town. Here in this "mob of excited boys" was
opportunity for them of getting something back on that authority that
had so often treated them with ignominy. . . . Their duty to shout
approval, to insult at a distance, to run for their lives were their
dirty bodies in any danger . . . but always to fan the flame---"Good
old--Varsity--Let them have it, the dirty--" "Pull their shirts off--"
Screams, laughter, shouting, wild dancing--let the Dons come now and see
what they can make of it!
"Bulldogs!" sounded a voice in Olva's ear, and turning round he beheld
a breathless, dishevelled Bunning. "I've been pulling wood off the
palings. Ha! hoch! he! (such noises to recover his breath). _Such_ a
rag!"--and then more apprehensively, "Bulldogs! There they are, with
Metcher!" They stood, two big men in top-hats, plainly to be seen behind
a Don in cap and gown, upon a little hill to the right of the bonfire.
The flames lit their figures. Metcher, the Don, was reading something
from a paper, and, round the hill, derisively dancing, were many
undergraduates. Apparently the Proctor found the situation too difficult
for him and presently he disappeared. Bunning watched him, apprehension
and a sense of order struggling' with a desire for adventure. "They've
gone to fetch the police. There'll be an awful row."
There probably would be because that moment had at last been reached
when authority was flung absolutely to the winds of heaven. The world
seemed, in a moment, to have gone mad. Take Bunning, his cheeks
flushed, his body shaking, his eyes flaming, for an example. Olva, dark,
motionless in his shadow, watched it all and waited for his moment. He
knew that it was coming. Grimly he addressed the Shadow, now close to
his very heart. "I know you. You are urging me on. This night is your
business. . . . But I am fighting you still! I am fighting you still!"
The moment came. Bunning, clutching on to Olva's sleeve, whispered, "The
police! Even at that crisis of intensest excitement he could be seen,
nervously, pushing his spectacles up his nose. A surging crowd of men,
and Olva again fancied that he caught sight of Craven, swept towards
the row of timid twinkling lights with their neat little gardens like
trembling protests laid out before them. More wood! more wood! to
appease that great flaming monster that shot tongues of fire now to the
very heavens. More wood! more wood!"
"Look out, the police!"
They came, with their truncheons, in a line down the Common. Olva was
flung into the heart of a heaving mass of legs and arms. He caught a
glimpse of Bunning behind and he thought that he saw Craven a little to
his right. He did not know--he did not care. His blood was up at last.
He was shouting he knew not what, he was hitting out with his fists.
Men's voices about him--"Let go, you beast." "My God, I'll finish you."
"There goes a bobby." "Stamp on him!"
A disgraceful scene. The policemen were hopelessly outnumbered. The
crowd broke on to the line of orderly little gardens, water was
poured from windows, the palings were flung to the ground--glass
broken--screams of women somewhere in the distance.
But even now Olva knew that his moment had not come. Then some one
shouted in his ear--"Town cads! They're murdering a bobby!" He was
caught with several other men (of their number was Bunning) off the
Common up a side street.
A blazing lamp showed him an angry, shouting, jeering crowd; figures
closed round something on the ground. Four men had joined arms with him,
and now the five of them, shouting "'Varsity!" hitting right and left,
rushed into the circle. The circle broke and Olva saw lying his length
on the ground, half-stunned, clothed only in a torn shirt of bright
blue, a stout heavy figure--once obviously, from the clothes flung to
one side, a policeman, now with his large red face in a muddy puddle,
his fat naked legs bent beneath him, his fingers clutching dirt, nothing
very human at all. Town cads of the worst! Some brute now was raising
his foot and kicking the bare flesh!
Instantly the world was on flame for Olva. Now again, as once in Sannet
Wood, he must hit and hit with all his soul. He broke, like a madman,
into the heart of the crowd, sending it flying. There were cries and
screams.
He was conscious of three faces. There was Bunning there, white,
staring. There was Craven, with his back to a house-door, staring
also--and directly before him was a purple face with muddy hair fringing
it and little beady eyes. The face of the brute who had been kicking! He
must hit. He struck and his fist broke the flesh! He was exultant . . .
at last he had, after these weeks of intangibility, found something
solid. The face broke away from him. The circle scattered back and the
fat, naked body was lying in the mud alone. There was a sudden silence.
Olva, conscious of a great power surging through his body, raised his
hand again.
A voice, shrill, terror in it, screamed, "Look out, man, he'll kill
you!"
He turned and saw under the lamplight Craven, his eyes blazing, his
finger pointed. He was suddenly cold from head to foot. The voice came,
it had seemed, from heaven. Craven's eyes were alive now with certainty.
Then there was another cry from somewhere of "The police!" and the crowd
had melted. In the little street now there were only the body of the
policeman and a handful of undergraduates.
They raised the man, poured water over him, found some of his clothes,
and two men led him, his head lolling, down the street.
There was a noisy world somewhere in the distance, but here there was
silence. Olva crept slowly out of his exultation and found himself in
the cold windy street with Bunning for his only companion.
Bunning--now a torn, dirty, bleeding Bunning--gripped his arm.
"Did you hear?"
"Hear what?"
"Craven--when you were fighting there--Craven was watching . . . I saw
it all . . . Craven suspects."
Olva met the frightened eyes--"He does not suspect."
"Didn't you hear? He called out to the cad you were going for. . . ."
Then, in a kind of whimper, dismal enough in the dreary little
street--"He'll find out--Craven--I know he will. . . . Oh! my God! what
_shall_ I do!"
Some one had broken the glass of the street lamp and the gas flared
above them, noisily.
CHAPTER XII
LOVE TO THE "VALSE TRISTE"
1
It was all, when one looked back upon it, the rankest melodrama. The
darkness, the flaming lamp, Craven's voice and eyes, Bunning . . .
it had all arranged itself as though it bad been worked by a master
dramatist. At any rate there they now were, the three of them--Olva,
Bunning, Craven--placed in a situation that could not possibly stay
as it was. In which direction was it going to develop? Bunning had no
control at all, it would be he who would supply the next move . . .
meanwhile in the back of Olva's mind there was that banging sense of
urgency, no time to be lost. He must see Margaret and speak before
Rupert spoke to her. Perhaps, even now, Craven was not certain. If he
only knew of how much Craven was sure! Did he feel sure enough to speak
to Margaret?
Meanwhile the first and most obvious thing was that Bunning was in a
state of terror that threatened instant exposure. The man was evidently
realizing that now, for the first time, he had a big thing with which he
must grapple. He must grapple with his devotion to Olva, with his terror
of Craven, but, most of all, with his terror of himself. That last was
obviously the thing that tortured him, for, having now been given by the
High Gods an opportunity of great service, so miserable a creature did
he consider himself that he would not for an instant trust his control.
He was trying, Olva saw, with an effort that in its intensity was
pathetic to prove himself worthy of the chance that had been offered
him, as though it were the one sole opportunity that he would ever be
given, but to appear to the world something that he was not was an art
that Bunning and his kind could never acquire--that is their tragedy.
It was the fate of Bunning that his boots and spectacles should always
negative any attempt that he might make at a striking personality.
On the night after the "Rag" he sat in Olva's room and made a supreme
effort at control.
"If you can only hold on," Olva told him, "to the end of term. It's only
a week or two now. Just stick it until then; you won't be bothered with
me after that."
"You're going away?"
"I don't know--it depends."
"I don't know what I should do if you went. To have to stand that awful
secret all alone . . . only me knowing. Oh! I couldn't! I couldn't! and
now that Craven--"
"Craven knows nothing. He doesn't even suspect anything. See here,
Bunning"--Olva crossed over to him and put his hand on his shoulder.
"Can't you understand that your behaviour makes me wish that I hadn't
told you, whereas if you care as you say you do you ought to want to
show me how you can carry it, to prove to me that I was right to tell
you---"
"Yes, I know. But Craven---"
"Craven knows nothing."
"But he does." Bunning's voice became shrill and his fat hand shook on
Olva's arm. "There's something I haven't told you. This morning in Outer
Court he stopped me."
"Craven stopped you?"
"Yes. There was no one about. I was going along to my rooms and he met
me and he said: 'Hullo, Bunning.'"
"Well?"
"I'd been thinking of it--of his knowing, I mean--all night, so I was
dreadfully startled, dreadfully startled. I'm afraid I showed it."
"Get on. What did he say?"
"He said: 'Hullo, Bunning!'"
"Yes, you've told me that. What else?"
"I said 'Hullo!' I was dreadfully startled. I don't think he'd ever
spoken to me before. And then he looked so strange--wild, as though he
hadn't slept, and white, and his eyes moved all the time. I'm afraid he
saw that I was startled."
"Do get on. What else did he ask you?"
"He asked me whether I'd enjoyed last night. He said: 'You were with
Dune, weren't you?' He cried, as though he wasn't speaking to me at all:
'That's an odd sort of friend for you to have.' I ought to have been
angry I suppose, but I was shaking all over . . . yes . . . well . . .
then he said: 'I thought you were in with all those pi men,' and I just
couldn't say anything at all--I was shaking so. He must have thought I
looked very odd."
"I'm sure he did," said Olva drily. "Well it won't be many days before
_you_ give the show away--_that's_ certain."
What could have made him tell the fellow? What madness? What---?
But Bunning caught on to his sleeve.
"No, no, you mustn't say that, Dune, please, you mustn't. I'm going to
do my best, I am really. But his coming suddenly like that, just when
I'd been thinking. . . . But it's awful. I told you if any one suspected
it would make it so hard---"
"Look here, Bunning, perhaps it will help you if you know the way that
I'm feeling about it. I'll try and explain. All these days there's
something in me that's urging me to go out and confess."
"Conscience," said Bunning solemnly.
"No, it isn't conscience at all. It's something quite different, because
the thing that's urging me isn't urging me because I've done something
I'm ashamed of, it's urging me because I'm in a false position. There's
that on the one side, and, on the other, I'm in love with Rupert
Craven's sister."
Bunning gave a little cry.
"Yes. That complicates things, doesn't it? Now you see why Rupert Craven
is the last person who must know anything about it; it's because he
loves his sister so much and suspects, I think, that I care for her,
that he's going to find out the truth."
"Does she care for you?" Bunning brought out huskily.
"I don't know. That's what I've got to find out."
"Because it all depends on that. If she cares enough it won't matter
what you've done, and if she doesn't care enough it won't matter her
knowing because you oughtn't to marry her. Oh," and Bunning's eyes
as they gazed at Olva were those, once more, of a devoted dog: "she's
lucky." Then he repeated, as though to himself, in his odd husky
whisper: "Anything that I can do . . . anything that I can do . . ."
2
On the next evening, about five o'clock, Olva went to the house in
Rocket Road. He went through a world that, in its frosty stillness,
held beauty in its hands like a china cup, so fragile in its colours, so
gentle in its outline, with a moon, round and of a creamy white, with a
sky faintly red, and stiff trees, black and sharp.
Cambridge came to Olva then as a very lovely thing. The Cambridge life
was a lovely thing with its kindness, its simplicity, its optimism. He
was penetrated too with a great sadness because he knew that life of
that kind was gone, once and for ever, from him; whatever came to him
now it could never again be that peace; the long houses flung black
shadows across the white road and God kept him company. . . .
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.
She had beside her to-day a little plate of dry biscuits, and, now and
again, her hand would move across her black dress and break one of these
with a sharp sound, and then her hand would fall back again.
"I am very glad to see you. Draw your chair to the fire. It is a chill
day, but fine, I believe."
She regarded him gravely.
"It is not much of life that I can watch from this room, Mr. Dune. It is
good of you to come and see me . . . there must be many other things for
you to do."
He came at once to the point.
"I want your permission to ask your daughter to marry me, Mrs. Craven."
There was a long silence between them. He seemed, in his inner
consciousness, to be carrying on a dialogue.
"You see," he said to the Shadow, "I have forestalled you. I shall ask
Margaret Craven this evening to marry me. You cannot prevent that . . .
you _cannot_."
And a voice answered: "All things betray Thee Who betrayest Me."
"You have known us a very short time, Mr. Dune." Mrs. Craven's voice
came to him from a great distance.
He felt as though he were speaking to two persons. "Time has nothing to
do with falling in love, Mrs. Craven."
He saw to his intense amazement that she was greatly moved. She, who
had always seemed to him a mask, now was suddenly revealed as suffering,
tortured, intensely human. Her thin white hands were pressed together.
"I am a lonely, unhappy woman, Mr. Dune. Margaret is now all that is
left to me. Everything has been taken from me. Rupert--" Her voice
was lost; very slowly tears rolled down her cheeks. She began again
desperately. "Margaret is all that I have got. If I were left alone it
would be too much for me. I could not endure the silence."
It was the more moving in that it followed such stern reserve. His own
isolation, the curious sense that he had that they were, both of them,
needing protection against the same power (it seemed to him that if he
raised his eyes he would see, on the opposite wall, the shadow of
that third Presence); this filled him with the tenderest pity, so that
suddenly he bent down and kissed her hand.
She caught his with a fierce convulsive movement, and so they sat in
silence whilst he felt the pulse of her hand beat through his body, and
once a tear rolled from her cheek on to his wrist.
"You understand . . ." she said at last. "You understand. I have always
seen that you know. . ." Then she whispered, "How did you know?"
"Know?" He was bewildered, but before she could speak again the door
opened and Margaret Craven came in.
She moved with that restrained emotion that he had seen in her when he
had first met her. She was some great force held in check, some fire
that blazed but must be hidden from the world, and as she bent over
her mother and kissed her the embrace had in it something of passionate
protest; both women seemed to assert in it their right to quite another
sort of life.
He saw that his moment with Mrs. Craven had passed. That fire, that
humanity had gone from her and she lay back now on her sofa with the
faint waxen lids closed upon her eyes, her hands thinly folded, almost a
dead woman.
Margaret kissed her again--now softly and gently, and Olva went with her
from the room.
3
He was prepared to find that Rupert had told her everything. He thought
that he saw in the gravity and sadness of her manner, and also in the
silence that she seemed deliberately at first to place between them,
that she was waiting for the right moment to break it to him. He felt
that she would ask him gravely and with great kindness, but that, in the
answer that he would give her, it must be all over . . . the end. The
pursuit would be concluded.
Then suddenly in the way that she looked at him he knew that she had
been told nothing.
"I'm afraid that mother is very unwell. I'm afraid that you must have
found her so."
"If she could get away---" he began.
"Ah! if we could all get away! If only we could! But we have talked of
that before. It is quite impossible. And, even if we could (and how glad
I should be!), I do not know that it would help mother. It is Rupert
that is breaking her heart!"
"Rupert!"
For answer to his exclamation she cried to him with all the pent-up
suffering and loneliness of the last weeks in her voice--
"Ah, Mr. Dune, help me! I shall go mad if something doesn't happen;
every day it is worse and I can't grapple with it. I'm not up to it.
If only they'd speak out! but it's this silence!" She seemed to pull
herself together and went on more quietly: "You know that Rupert and I
have been everything to one another all our lives. We have never had
a secret of any kind. Until this last month Rupert was the most open,
dearest boy in the world. His tenderness with my mother was a most
wonderful thing, and to me!--I cannot tell you what he was to me. I
suppose, for the very reason that we were so much to one another, we
did not make any other very close friends. I had girls in Dresden, of
course, and there were men at school and college for whom he cared,
but I think there can have been few brothers and sisters who were so
entirely together in every way. A month ago that all ceased."
She flung her head back with a sharp defiant movement as though the
memory of it hurt her.
"I've told you this before. I talked to you about it when you were
here last. But since then he has become much worse and I am afraid that
anything may happen. I have no one to go to. It is killing my mother,
and then--you were a friend of his."
"I hope that I am now."
"That is the horrible part of it. But it seems now that all this
agitation, this trouble, is directed against you."
"Against me"
"Yes, the other evening he spoke about you--here--furiously. He said
you must never come here again, that I must never speak to you again.
He said that you had done dreadful things. And then when I asked him he
could not tell me anything. He seemed--and you must look on it in that
light, Mr. Dune--as though he were not in the least responsible for what
he said. I'm afraid he is very, very ill. He is dreadfully unhappy, and
yet he can explain nothing. I too have been very unhappy, and mother,
because we love him."
"If he wishes that I should not come here again---" Olva began.
"But he is not responsible. He really does not know what he is doing.
He never had the smallest trouble that he did not confide it to me, and
now---"
"I have noticed, of course," Olva said "that lately his manner to me has
been strange. I would have helped him if he would let me, but he will
not. He will have nothing to say to me . . . I too have been very sorry
about it. I have been sorry because I am fond of Rupert, but also--there
is another, stronger reason--because I love you, Margaret."
As he spoke he got up and stood by her chair. He saw her take in his
last words, at first with a wondering gravity, then with a sudden
splendour so that light flooded her face; her arms made a little
helpless gesture, and she caught his hand.
He drew her up to him out of her chair; then, with a fierce passionate
movement, they held one another and clung together as though in a
desperate wild protest against the world.
"You can't touch me now--I've got her," he seemed to fling at the blank
face of the old mirror.
It was his act of defiance, but through his exultation he caught the
whisper--it might again have been conveyed to him through the shrill
shivering notes of the "Valse Triste"--"Tell her--tell her--now. Trust
her. Dear son, trust Me . . . it must be so in the end."
"Now," he heard her say, "I can stand it all."
"When you came into this room weeks ago," she went on, "I loved you;
from the very first instant. Now I do not mind what any one can do."
"I too loved you from the first instant."
"You were so grave. I tried at first not to think of you as a person at
all because I thought that it was safer, and then gradually, although I
fought against you, I could not keep you out. You drove your way in. You
understood so wonderfully the things that I wanted you to understand.
Then Rupert and mother drove me to want you more and more. I thought
that you liked me, but I didn't know. . . ." Then with a little shiver
she clung to him, pressing close to him. "Oh! hold me, hold me safe."
The room was now gathering to itself that dusk that gave it its
strangest air. The fire had fallen low and only shone now in the
recesses of the high fireplace with a dull glimmer. Amongst the shadows
it seemed that the Presence was gravely waiting. As Olva held Margaret
in his arms he felt that he was fighting to keep her.
In the dark hollow of the mirror he thought that he saw the long white
road, the mists, the little wood and some one running. . . .
It seemed to him that Margaret was not there, that the room was dark and
very heavy, that some bell was ringing in his ear. . . . Then about
him a thousand voices were murmuring: "Tell her--tell her--tell her the
truth."
With a last effort he tried to cry "I will not tell her."
His lips broke on her name "Margaret." Then, with a little sigh,
tumbling forward, he fainted.
CHAPTER XIII
MRS. CRAVEN
1
Afterwards, lying in his easy chair before his fire, he was allowed a
brief and beautiful respite. It was almost as though he were already
dead--as though, consciously, he might lie there, apart from the world,
freed from the eternal pursuit, at last unharassed, and hold, with both
hands, that glorious certainty--Margaret.
He had a picture of her now. He was lying where he had tumbled, there on
the floor with the silver trays and boxes, the odd tables, the gimcrack
chairs all about him. Slowly he had opened his eyes and had gazed,
instantly, as though the gates of heaven had rolled back for him, into
her face. She was kneeling on the floor, one hand was behind his head,
the other bathed his forehead. He could see her breasts (so little, so
gentle) rise and fall beneath her thin dress, and her great dark eyes
caught his soul and held it.
In that one great moment God withdrew. For the first time in his
knowledge of her they were alone, and in the kiss that he gave to her
when he drew her down to him they met for the first time. Death and the
anger of God might come to him--that great moment could never be taken
from him. It was his. . . .
He had seen that she was gravely distressed with his fainting, and he
had been able to give her no reason beyond the heat of the room. He
could see that she was puzzled and felt that there was some mystery
there that she was not to know, but she too had found in that last kiss
a glorious certainty that no other hazard could possibly destroy.
He loved her--she loved him. Let the Gods thunder!
But he knew, nevertheless, as he lay back there in the chair, that he
had received a sign. That primrose path with Margaret was not to be
allowed him, and so sure was he that now he could lie back and look at
it all as though he were a spectator and wonder in what way God
intended to work it out. The other side of him--the fighting, battling
creature--was, for the moment, dormant. Soon Bunning would come in
and then the fight would begin again, but for the instant there was
peace--the first peace that he had known since that far-away evening in
St. Martin's Chapel.
As with a drowning man (it is said) so now with Olva his past life
stretched, in panorama, before him. He saw the high rocky grey building
with its rough shape and shaggy lichen, its neglected courtyard, its
iron-barred windows, the gaunt trees, like witches, that hemmed it, the
white ribbon of road, far, far below it, the shining gleam of the river
hidden by purple hills. He saw his father--huge, flowing grey beard,
eyebrows stuck, like leeches, on to his weather-beaten face, his gnarled
and knotted hands. He saw himself a tiny boy with thin black hair and
grave eyes watching his father as he bathed in the mill-pool below the
house--his father rising naked from the stream, hung with the mists of
early morning, naked with enormous chest, huge flanks, his beard black
then and sweeping across his breast, his great thighs shining with the
dripping water--primitive, primeval, in the heart of the early morning
silence.
Many, many other pictures of those first days, but always Olva and his
father, moving together, speaking but seldom, sitting before the fire in
the evenings, watching the blaze, despising the world. The contempt that
his father had for his fellow-beings! Had a man ever been so alone? Olva
himself had drunk of that same contempt and welcomed his solitude at
Harrow. The world had been with him a place of war, of hostility, until
he had struck that blow in Sannet Wood. He remembered the eagerness with
which, at the end of term, he had hastened back to his father. After the
noise and clatter of school life how wonderful to go back to the still
sound of dripping water, to the crackle of dry leaves under foot, to
the heavy solemn tread of cattle, to those evenings when at his father's
side he heard the coals click in the fire and the old clock on the
stairs wheeze out the passing minutes. That relationship with his father
bad been, until this term, the only emotion in his life--and now? And
now!
It was incredible this change that had come to him. First there was
Margaret and then, after her, Mrs. Craven, Rupert, Lawrence, Cardillac,
Bunning. All these persons, in varying degree, bad become of concern to
him. The world that had always been a place of smoke, of wind, of sky,
was now, of a sudden, crowded with figures. He bad been swept from the
hill-top down into the market-place. He had been given perhaps one keen
glance of a moving world before he was drawn from it altogether. . . .
Now, just as he had tasted human companionship and loved it, must he
die?
He knew, too, that his recent popularity in the College had pleased him.
He wanted them to like him . . . he was proud to feel that because he
was he therefore Cardillac resigned, willingly, his place to him. But if
Cardillac knew him for a felon, knew that he might be hanged in the
dark and flung into a nameless grave, what then? If Cardillac knew what
Rupert Craven almost knew, would not his horror be the same? The world,
did it only know. . . .
To-morrow was the day of the Dublin match. Olva and Cardillac were both
playing, and at the end of the game choice might be made between them.
Did Olva care? He did not know . . . but Margaret was coming, and, in
the back of his mind, he wanted to show her what he could do.
And yet, whilst that Shadow hovered in the Outer Court, how little a
thing this stir and movement was! No tumult that the material world
could ever make could sound like that whisper that was with him now
again in the room--with him at his very heart--"All things betray Thee.
. . ."
The respite was over. Bunning came in.
Change had seized Bunning. Here now was the result of his having pulled
himself together. Olva could see that the man bad made up his mind
to something, and that, further, he was resolved to keep his purpose
secret. It was probably the first occasion in Bunning's life of such
resolution. There was a faint colour in the fat cheeks, the eyes bad a
little light and the man scarcely spoke at all lest this purpose should
trickle from his careless lips. Also as he looked at Olva his customary
devotion was heightened by an air of frightened pride.
Olva, watching him, was apprehensive--the devotion of a fool is the
most dangerous thing in creation.
"Well, have you seen Craven again?"
"Yes. We had a talk."
"What did he say?"
"Oh, nothing."
"Rot. He didn't stop and talk to you about the weather. Come on,
Bunning, what have you been up to?"
"I haven't been up to anything."
The man's lips were closed. For another half an hour Bunning sat in a
chair before the fire--silent. Every now and again he flung a glance at
Olva. Sometimes he jerked his head towards the window as though he heard
a step.
He had the look of a Christian going into the amphitheatre to face the
Beasts.
2
About eleven o'clock of the next morning Olva went to see Margaret. He
had written to her the night before and asked her not to tell Rupert
the news of their engagement immediately, but, when the morning came, he
could not rest with that. He must know more.
It was a damp, misty morning, the fine frost had gone. He was going to
Margaret to try and recover some reality out of the state that he was
in. The recent incidents--Craven's suspicions, the 5th of November
evening, Bunning's alarm, the scene with Margaret--bad dragged him for
a time from that conviction that he was living in an unreal world. That
day when he had run in the snowstorm from Sannet Wood had seemed to him,
during these last weeks, absurd and an effect, obviously, of excited
nerves. Now, on this morning of the Dublin match, he awoke again to
that unreal condition. The bedmaker, the men passing through the Court
beneath his windows, the porter at the gate--these people were unreal,
and above him, around him, the mist seemed ever about to break into new
terrible presences.
"This thing is wearing me down. I shall go off my head if something
definite doesn't happen"--and then, there in his room with the stupid
breakfast things still on the table, the consciousness of the presence
of God seized him so that he felt as though the pursuit were suddenly at
an end and there was nothing left now but complete submission.
In this world of wraiths, God was the most certain Presence. . . .
There remained only Margaret. Perhaps she could recover reality for him.
He went to her.
He found her waiting for him in the little drawing-room and he could not
see her. He knew then that the Pursuing Shadow had taken a new step. It
was literally physically true. The room was there, the shining things,
the knick-knacks, the mirror, the scent of oranges. He could see her
body, her black dress, her eyes, her white neck, the movement towards
him that she made when she saw him coming, but there was nothing there.
It was as though he had been asked to love a picture.
He could not think of her at all as Margaret Craven or of himself
as Olva Dune. Only in the glass's reflection he saw the white road
stretching to the wood.
"I really am going off my head. She'll see that something's up"--and
then from the bottom of his heart, far away as though it had been the
cry of another person, "Oh! how I want her How I want her!"
He took her in his arms and kissed her and felt as though he were dead
and she were dead and that they were both, being so young am eager for
life, struggling to get back existence again.
Her voice came to him from a long distance "Olva, how ill you look! What
is it? What won't you tell me? There's something the matter with you all
and you all keep me in the dark."
He said nothing and she went on very gently, "It would be so much
better, dear, if you were to tell me. After all, I'm part of you now,
aren't I? Perhaps I can help you."
His own voice, from a long distance, said: "I don't think that you can
help me, Margaret."
She put her hand on his arm and looked up into his face. "I am trying to
help you all, but it is so difficult if you will tell me nothing. And,
Olva dear, if it is something that you have done--something that you are
afraid to tell me--believe me, dear, that there's nothing--nothing in
the world--that you could have done that would matter to me now. I love
you--nothing can alter that."
He tried to feel that the hand on his arm was real. With a great effort
he spoke: "Have you told Rupert?"
"Mother told him last night."
"What did he say?"
"I don't know--but they had a terrible scene. Rupert," her lip quivered,
"went away without a word last night. Only he told mother that if I
would not give you up he would never come into the house again. But he
loves me more than any one in the world, and he can't do without me. I
know that he can't, and I know that he will come back. Mother wants to
see you; perhaps you will go up to her."
She had moved back from him and was looking at him with sad perplexity.
He knew that he must seem strange and cold standing there, in the middle
of the room, without making any movement towards her, but he could not
help himself, he seemed to have no power over his own actions.
Coming up to him she flung her arms round his neck. "Olva, Olva, tell
me, I can't endure it"--but slowly he detached himself from her and
left her.
As he went through the dark close passage he wondered how God could be
so cruel.
When he came into Mrs. Craven's room he knew that her presence comforted
him. The dark figure on the faded sofa by the fire seemed to him now
more real than anything else in the world. Although Mrs. Craven made
no movement yet he felt that she encouraged him come to her, that she
wanted him. The room was very dark and bare, and although a large fire
blazed in the hearth, it was cold. Beyond the window a misty world,
dank, with dripping trees, stretched to a dim horizon. Mrs. Craven did
not turn her eyes from the fire when she heard him enter. He felt as
though she were watching him and knew that he had drawn a chair beside
the sofa. Suddenly she moved her hand towards him and he took it and
held it for a moment.
She turned and he saw that she had been crying.
"I had a talk with my son last night," she said at last, and her voice
seemed to him the saddest thing that he had ever heard. "We had always
loved one another until lately. Last night he spoke to me as he has
never spoken before. He was very angry and I know that he did not mean
all that he said to me--but it hurt me."
"I'm afraid, Mrs. Craven, that it was because of me. Rupert is very
angry with me and he refuses to consent to Margaret's marriage with me.
Is not that so?"
"Yes, but it is not only that. For many weeks now he has not been
himself with me. I am not a happy woman. I have had much to make me
unhappy. My children are a very great deal to me. I think that this has
broken my heart."
"Mrs. Craven, if there is anything that I can do that will put things
right, if I can say anything to Rupert, if I can tell him anything,
explain anything, I will. I think I can tell you, Mrs. Craven, why it
is that Rupert does not wish me to marry Margaret. I have something to
confess--to you."
Then he was defeated at last? He had surrendered? In another moment the
words "I killed Carfax and Rupert knows that I killed him" would have
left his lips--but Mrs. Craven had not heard his words. Her face was
turned away from him again and she spoke in a strange, monotonous voice
as one speaks in a dream.
The words seemed to be created out of the faded sofa, the misty window,
the dim shadowy bed. She was crying--her hands were pressed to her
face--the words came between her sobs.
"It is too much for me. All these years I have kept silence. Now I can
bear it no longer. If Rupert leaves me, it will kill me, but unless I
speak to some one I shall die of all this silence, . . . I cannot bear
any longer to be alone with God."
Was it his own voice? Were these his own words? Had things gone so far
with him that he did not know--"I cannot bear any longer to be alone
with God. . . ." Was not that his own perpetual cry?
"Mr. Dune, I killed my husband."
In the silence that followed the only sound was her stifled crying and
the crackling fire.
"You knew from the beginning."
"No, I did not know."
"But you were different from all the others. I felt it at once when I
saw you. You knew, you understood, you were sorry for me."
"I am sorry. I understand. But I did not know."
"Let me tell you." She turned her face towards him and began to speak
eagerly.
He took her hand between his.
"Oh! the relief--now at once--after all these years of silence. Fifteen
years. . . . It happened when Rupert was a tiny boy. You see he was
a bad man. I found it out almost at once--after a month or two. But I
loved him madly--utterly. I did not care about his being bad--that does
not matter to a woman--but he set about breaking my heart. It amused
him. Margaret was born. He used to terrify me with the things that he
would teach her. He said that he would make her as big a devil as he
was himself. I prayed God that I might never have another child and
then Rupert was born. From that moment my one prayer was that my husband
might die.
"At last my opportunity came. He fell ill--dreadful attacks of
heart--and one night he had a terrible attack and I held back the
medicine that would have saved him. I saw his eyes watching me, pleading
for it. I stood and waited . . . he died."
She stopped for a moment--then her words came more slowly: "It was a
very little thing--it was not a very bad thing--he was a wicked
man . . . but God has punished me and He will punish me until I die. All
these years He has pursued me, urging me to confess--I have fought and
struggled against it, but at last He has beaten me--He has driven me.
. . . Oh! the relief! the relief!"
She looked at him curiously.
"If you did not know, why did I feel that you understood and
sympathized? Have you no horror of me now?"
For answer, he bent and kissed her cheek.
"I too am very lonely. I too know what God can do."
Then she clung to him as though she would never let him leave her.
CHAPTER XIV
GOD
1
Half an hour later he was in his room again, and the real world had come
back to him. It had come back with the surprise of some supernatural
mechanism; it was as though the sofa, chairs, pictures had five minutes
before been grass and toadstools in a world of mist and now were sofa,
chairs and pictures again.
He was absolutely sane, whereas half an hour ago he had been held almost
by an enchantment. If Margaret were here with him now, here in his
room--not in that dim, horrible Rocket Road house, raised it might
almost seem by the superstitions and mists of his own conscience--ah!
how he would love her!
He was filled with a sense of energy and enterprise. He would have it
out with Rupert, laugh away his suspicions, reconcile him to the idea of
the marriage, finally drag Margaret from that horrible house. As with a
man who has furious attacks of neuralgia, and between the agony of them
feels, so great is the relief, that no pain will ever come to him again,
so Olva was now, for an instant, the Olva of a month ago.
Four times had the Pursuer thus given him respite--on the morning after
the murder, in St. Martin's Chapel on that same evening, after his
confession to Bunning, and now. But Aegidius, looking down from his
wall, saw the strong, stern face of his young friend and loved him and
knew that, at last, the pursuit was at an end. . . .
Bunning came in.
2
Bunning came in. The little silver clock had just struck a quarter to
one. The match was at half-past two.
Olva knew at his first sight of Bunning that something had happened. The
man seemed dazed, he dragged his great legs slowly after him and planted
them on the floor as though he wanted something that was secure, like
a man who had begun desperately to slip down a crevasse. His back was
bowed and his cheeks were flushed as though some one had been striking
him, but his eyes told Olva everything. They were the eyes of a child
who has been wakened out of sleep and sees Terror.
"What is it? Sit down. Pull yourself together."
"Oh! Dune! . . . My God, Dune!" The man's voice had the unreality of men
walking in a cinematograph. "Craven's coming."
"Coming! Where?"
"Here!"
"Now?"
"I don't know--when. He knows."
"You told him?"
"I thought it best. I thought I was doing right. It's all gone wrong.
Oh! these last two days! what I've suffered!"
Now for the first time in the history of the whole affair Olva Dune may
be said to have felt sheer physical terror, not terror of the mist,
of the road, of the darkness, of the night, but terror of physical
things--of the loss of light and air, of the denial of food, of physical
death. . . . For a moment the room swam about him. He heard, in the
Court below him, some men laughing--a dog was barking. Then he saw that
Bunning was on the edge of hysteria. The bedmaker would come in and find
him laughing--as he had laughed once before.
Olva stilled the room with a tremendous effort--the floor sank, the
table and chairs tossed no longer.
"Now, Bunning, tell me quickly. They'll be here to lay lunch in a
minute. What have you told Craven? And why have you told him anything?"
"I told him--yesterday--that I did it."
"That _you_ did it?"
"Yes, that I murdered Carfax."
"My God! You fool! . . . You fool!"
A most dangerous thing this devotion of a fool.
But, strangely, Olva's words roused in Bunning a kind of protest, so
that he pulled his eyes back into their sockets, steadied his hands,
held his boots firmly to the floor, and, quite softly, with a little
note of urgency in it as though he were pleading before a great court,
said--
"Yes, I know. But he drove me to it; Craven did. I thought it was the
only way to save you. He's been at me now for days; ever since that time
he stopped me in Outer Court and asked me why I was a friend of yours.
He's been coming to my room--at night--at all sorts of times--and just
sitting there and looking at me."
Olva came across and touched Bunning's arm: "Poor Bunning! What a brute
I was to tell you!"
"He used to come and say nothing--just look at me. I couldn't stand it,
you know. I'm not a clever man--not at all clever--and I used to try
and think of things to talk about, but it always seemed to come back to
Carfax--every time."
"And then--when you told me the other day about your caring for Miss
Craven--I felt that I must do something. I'd always puzzled, you know,
why I should be brought into it at all. I didn't seem to be the sort of
fellow who'd be likely to be mixed up with a man like you. I felt that
it must be with some purpose, you know, and now--now--I thought I
suddenly saw--
"I don't know--I thought he'd believe me--I thought he'd tell the police
and they'd arrest me--and that'd be the end of it."
Here Bunning took a handkerchief and began miserably to gulp and sniff.
"But, good heavens!" Olva cried, "you didn't suppose that they wouldn't
discover it all at the police-station in a minute! Two questions and
you'd be done! Why, man----!"
"I didn't know. I thought it would be all right. I was all alone that
afternoon, out for a walk by myself--and you'd told me how you did it.
I'd only got to tell the same story. I couldn't see how any one should
know---I couldn't really . . . I don't suppose"--many gulps--"that I
thought much about that--I only wanted to save you."
How bright and wonderful the day! How full of colour the world! And it
was all over, all absolutely, finally done.
"Now--look here, stop that sniffing--it's all right. I'm not angry with
you. Just tell me exactly what you said to Craven yesterday when you
told him."
Bunning thought. "Well, he came into my room quite early after my
breakfast. I was reading my Bible, as I used to, you know, every
morning, to see whether I could be interested again, as I used to be. I
was finding I couldn't when Craven came in. He looked queer. He's been
looking queerer every day, and I don't think he's been sleeping. Then
he began to ask me questions, not actually about anything, but odd
questions like, Where was I born? and Why did I read the Bible? and
things like that--just to make me comfortable--and his eyes were so
funny, red and small and never still. Then he got to you."
The misery now in Bunning's eyes was more than Olva could bear. It was
dumb, uncomprehending misery, the unhappiness of something caught in a
trap--and that trap this glittering dancing world!
"Then he got to you! He always asked me the same questions. How long
I'd known you?--Why we got on together when we were so different?--silly
meaningless things--and he didn't listen to my answers. He was always
thinking of the next things to ask and that frightened me so."
The misery in Bunning's eyes grew deeper.
"Suddenly I thought I saw what was meant--that I was intended to take it
on myself. It made me warm all over, the though of it. . . . Now, I was
going to do something . . . that's how I saw it!"
"Going to do something . . ." he repeated desperately, with choking
sobs between the words. "It's all happened so quickly. He had just said
absently, not looking at me, 'You like Dune, don't you?'
"When I came out with it all at once---I said, 'Yes, I know, I know what
_you_ want. You think that Dune killed Carfax and that _I_ know he did,
but he didn't _I_ killed Carfax. . . .'"
Bunning's voice quite rang out. His eyes now desperately sought Olva's
face, as though he would find there something that would make the world
less black.
"I wasn't frightened---not then---that was the odd thing. The only thing
I thought about was saving you---getting you out of it. I didn't see! I
didn't see!"
"And then---what did Craven say?" Olva asked quietly.
"Craven said scarcely anything. He asked me whether I realized what I
was saying, whether I saw what I was in for? I said 'Yes'---that it had
all been too much for my conscience, that I had to tell some one---all
the things that you told me. Then he asked me why I'd done it. I told
him because Carfax always bullied me---he did, you know---and that one
day I couldn't stand it any longer and I met him in the wood and hit
him. He said, 'You must be very strong,' and of course I'm not, you
know, and that ought to have made me suspect something. But it didn't.
. . . Then he said he must think over what he ought to do, but all the
time he was saying it I knew he was thinking of something else and then
he went away."
"That was yesterday morning?"
"Yesterday morning, and all day I was terrified, but happy too. I
thought I'd done a big thing and I thought that the police would come
and carry me off. . . . Nothing happened all day. I sat there waiting.
And I thought of you---that you'd be able to marry Miss Craven and
would be very happy.
"Then, this morning, coming from chapel, Craven stopped me. I thought he
was going to tell me that he'd thought it his duty to give me away. He
would, you know. But it wasn't that.
"All he said was: 'I wonder how you know so much about it, Bunning.' I
couldn't say anything. Then he said, 'I'm going to ask Dune.' That was
all . . . all," he wretchedly repeated, and then, with a movement of
utter despair, flung his head into his hands, and cried.
Olva, standing straight with his hands at his side, looked through his
window at the world---at the white lights on the lower sky, at the pearl
grey roofs and the little cutting of dim white street and the high grey
college wall. He was to begin again, it seemed, at the state in which
he'd been on the day after Carfax's murder. Then he had been sure that
arrest would only be a question of hours and he had resolutely faced it
with the resolve that he would drain all the life, all the vigour, all
the fun from the minutes that remained to him.
Now he had come back to that. Craven would give him away, perhaps . . .
he would, at any rate, drive him away from Margaret. But he would almost
certainly feel it his duty to expose him. He would feel that that would
end the complication with his sister once and for all---the easiest way.
He would feel it his duty---these people and their duty!
Well, at least he would have his game of football first---no one could
take his afternoon away from him. Margaret would be there to watch him
and he would play! Oh! he would play as he had never played in his life
before!
Bunning's voice came to him from a great distance---
"What are you going to do? What are you going to say to Craven?"
"Say to him? Why, I shall tell him, of course---tell him everything."
Bunning leapt from his chair. In his urgency he put his hands on Olva's
arm: "No, no, no. You mustn't do that. Why it will be as though I'd
murdered you. Tell him I did it. Make him believe it. You can---you're
clever enough. Make him feel that I did it. You mustn't, mustn't---let
him know. Oh, please, please. I'll kill myself if you do. I will
really."
Olva gravely, quietly, put his hands on Bunning's shoulders.
"It's all right---it had to come out. I've been avoiding it all this
time, escaping it, but it had to come. Don't you be afraid of it. I
daresay Craven won't do anything. After all he loves his sister and she
cares for him. That will influence him. But, anyhow, all that's done
with. There are bigger things in question than Craven knowing about
Carfax, and you were meant to tell him---you were really. You've just
forced me to see what's the right thing to do---that's all."
Bunning was, surely, in the light of it, a romantic figure.
Miss Annett came in with the lunch.
3
As Olva was changing into his football things, Cardillac appeared.
"Come up to the field with me, will you? I've got a hansom."
Olva finished tying his boots and stood up. Cardillac looked at him.
"My word, you seem fit."
"Yes, I'm splendid, thanks."
He felt splendid. Never before had he been so conscious of the right to
be alive. His football clothes smelt of the earth and the air. He moved
his arms and legs with wonderful freedom. His blood was pumping through
his body as though death, disease, infirmity such things---were of
another planet.
For such a man as he there should only be air, love, motion, the
begetting of children, the surprising splendour of a sudden death. Now
already Craven was waiting for him.
He had sent a note round to Craven's rooms; he had said, "Come in to see
me after the match---five o'clock. I have something to tell you."
At five o'clock then. . . .
Meanwhile it was nice of Cardillac to come. They exchanged no words
about it, but they understood one another entirely. It was as though
Cardillac had said---"I expect that you're going to knock me out of this
Rugger Blue as you knocked me out of the Wolves, and I want to show you
that we're pals all the way through."
What Cardillac really said was---"Have a cigarette? These are Turkish.
Feel like playing a game to-day?"
"Never felt better in my life."
"Well, these Dublin fellows haven't had their line crossed yet this
season. May one of us have the luck to do it."
"Pretty hefty lot of forwards."
"Yes, O'Brien's their spot Three I believe."
Olva and Cardillac attracted much attention as they walked through
the College. Miss Annett, watching them from a little window where she
washed plates, gulped in her thin throat with pride for "that Mr. Dune.
There's a gentleman!" The sun above the high grey buildings broke slowly
through yellow clouds. The roads were covered with a thin fine mud and,
from the earth, faint clouds of mist rose and vanished into a sky that
was slowly crumbling from thick grey into light watery blue.
The cold air beat upon their faces as the hansom rattled past Dunstan's,
over the bridge, and up the hill towards the field.
Cardillac talked. "There goes Braff. He doesn't often come up to a
game nowadays--must be getting on for seventy--the greatest half the
'Varsity's ever had, I suppose."
"It's a good thing this mud isn't thicker. It won't make the ball bad.
That game against Monkstown the other day! My word. . . ."
But Olva was not listening. It seemed to him now that two separate
personalities were divided in him so sharply that it was impossible to
reconcile them.
There was Olva Dune concentrating all his will, his mentality, upon the
game that he was about to play. This was his afternoon. After it there
would be darkness, death, what you will--parting from Margaret--all
purely physical emotions.
The other Olva felt nothing physical. The game, confession to Rupert,
trial, imprisonment, even separation from Margaret, all these things
were nothing in comparison with some great business that was in progress
behind it all, as real life may go on behind the painted back cloth of a
stage. Here were amazing happenings, although at present he was confused
and bewildered by them. It was not that Olva was, actually, at the
instant conscious of actual impressions, but rather that great emotions,
great surprising happiness, seemed to shine on some horizon. It was as
though something had said to his soul, "Presently you will feel a joy, a
splendour, that you had never in your wildest thoughts imagined."
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. . . .
4
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.
But it all seemed of supreme unimportance. To-night he was to face
Rupert, to state, once and for all, that he had killed Carfax, to submit
Margaret to a terrible test . . . even that of no importance. All life
was insignificant beside something that was about to happen; before the
gaze of that white dazzling cloud be felt that he stood, a little pigmy,
alone on a brown spreading field.
The game was up at the University end. The Dublin men were pressing and
the Cambridge forwards seemed to have lost their heads. It was a case
now of "scrum," lining out, and "scrum" again. The Cambridge men got the
ball, kept it between their heels and tried, desperately to wheel with
it and carry it along with them. It escaped them, dribbled out of the
scrimmage, the Cambridge half leapt upon it, but the Dublin man was upon
him before he could get it away. It was on the ground again, the Dublin
forwards dribbled it a little and then some one, sweeping it into his
arms, fell forward with it, over the line, the Cambridge men on top of
him.
Dublin had scored a try, and a goal from an easy angle followed--Dublin
five points.
They all moved back to the centre of the field and now the Cambridge
men, rushing the ball from a line-out in their favour, pressed hard. At
last the ball came to the three-quarters. Tester caught it, it passed to
Buchan, who as he fell flung it right out to Cardillac; Cardillac draw
his man, swerved, and sent it back to Olva. As Olva felt the neat hard
surface of it, as he knew that the way was almost clear before him, his
feet seemed clogged with heavy weights. Something was about to happen to
him--something, but not this. The crowd behind the ropes were shouting,
he knew that he was himself running, but it seemed that only his body
was moving, his real self was standing back, gazing at those white
clouds--waiting.
He knew that he made no attempt to escape the man in front of him; he
seemed to run straight into his arms; he heard a little sigh go up from
behind the ropes, as he tumbled to the ground, letting the ball trickle
feebly from his fingers. A try missed if ever one was!
No one said anything, but he felt the disappointment in the air. He
knew what they were saying--"One of Dune's off days! I always said you
couldn't depend upon the man. He's just too sidey to care what happens.
. . ."
Well they might say it if they would; his eyes were on the horizon.
But his failure had had its effect. Let there be an individualist in
the line and Tester and Buchan would play their well-ordered game to
perfection. They relied as a rule upon Whymper--to-day they had depended
upon Dune. Well Dune had failed them, the forwards were heeling so
slowly, the scrum-half was never getting the ball away--it was a
miserable affair.
The Dublin forwards pressed again. For a long time the two bodies of men
swayed backwards and forwards; in the University twenty-five Lawrence
was performing wonders. He seemed to be everywhere at once, bringing
men down, seizing, in a lightning flash of time, his opportunity for
relieving by kicking into touch.
Twice the ball went to the Dublin three-quarters and they seemed
certainly in, but on the first occasion a man slipped and on the second
Olva caught his three-quarter and brought him sharply to the ground. It
was the only piece of work that he had done.
More struggling--then away on the right some Dublin man had caught it
and was running. Some one dashed at him to hurl him into touch, but he
slipped past and was in.
Another try--the kick was again successful--Dublin ten points.
The half-time whistle blew. As the met gathered into groups in the
middle of the field, sucking lemons and gathering additional melancholy
there from, Olva stood a little away from them. Whymper came out into
the field to exhort and advise. As he passed Olva he said--
"Rather missed that try of yours. Ought to have gone a bit faster."
He did not answer, it seemed to be no concern of his at all. He was now
trembling it every limb, but his excitement had nothing to do with
the game. It seemed to him that the earth and the sky were sharing his
emotion am he could feel in the air a great exaltation. I was becoming
literally true for him that earth air, sky were praising at this moment,
in wonderful unison, some great presence.
"All things betray Thee who betrayest Me. . . ." Now he understood what
that line had intended him to feel--the very sods crushed by his boots
were leading him to submission.
The whistle sounded. His back now was turned to the white clouds; he was
facing the high stone wall and the tops of the hansom cabs.
The game began again. The Dublin men were determined to drive their
advantage to victory. Another goal and their lead might settle, once and
for all, the issue.
Olva was standing back, listening. The earth was humming like a top. A
voice seemed to be borne on the wind--"Coming, Coming, Coming."
He felt that the clouds were spreading behind him and a little wind
seemed to be whispering in the grass--"Coming, Coming, Coming." His very
existence now was strung to a pitch of expectation.
As in a dream he saw that a Dublin man with the ball had got clear away
from the clump of Cambridge forwards, and was coming towards him. Behind
him only was Lawrence. He flung himself at the man's knees, caught them,
falling himself desperately forward. They both came crashing to the
ground. It was a magnificent collar, and Olva, as he fell, heard, as
though it were miles away, a rising shout, saw the sky bend down to him,
saw the ball as it was jerked up rise for a moment into the air--was
conscious that some one was running.
5
He was on his knees, alone, on the vast field that sloped a little
towards the horizon.
Before him the mountain clouds were now lit with a clear silver light so
dazzling that his eyes were lowered.
About him was a great silence. He was himself minute in size, a tiny,
tiny bending figure.
Many years passed.
A great glory caught the colour from the sky and earth and held it like
a veil before the cloud.
In a voice of the most radiant happiness Olva cried--
"I have fled--I am caught--I am held . . . Lord, I submit."
And for the second time he heard God's voice--
"My Son . . . My Son."
He felt a touch--very gentle and tender--on his shoulder.
6
Many years had passed. He opened his eyes and saw the ball that had been
rising, many years ago, now falling.
The man whom he had collared was climbing to his feet; behind them men
were bending down for a "scrum." The shout that he had heard when he had
fallen was still lingering in the air.
And yet many years had passed.
"Hope you're not hurt," the Dublin man said. "Came down hard."
"No, thanks, it's all right."
Olva got on to his feet. Some one cried, "Well collared, Dune."
He ran back to his place. Now there was no hesitation or confusion. A
vigour like wine filled his body. The Cambridge men now were pressing;
the ball was flung back to Cardillac, who threw to Olva. The Dublin line
was only a few yards away and Olva was over. Lawrence kicked a goal and
Cambridge had now five points to the Dublin ten.
Cambridge now awoke to its responsibilities. The Dublin men seemed to be
flagging a little, and Tester and Buchan, having apparently decided that
Olva was himself again, played their accustomed game.
But what had happened to Dune? There he had been his old casual superior
self during the first half of the game. Now he was that inspired player
that the Harlequin match had once revealed him. Whymper had spoken to
him at half-time. That was what it was--Whymper had roused him.
For he was amazing. He was everywhere. Even when he had been collared,
he was suddenly up, had raced after the three-quarter line, caught them
up and was in the movement again. Five times the Cambridge Threes were
going, were half-way down the field, and were checked by the wonderful
Dublin defence. Again and again Cambridge pressed. There were only ten
minutes left for play and Cambridge were still five points behind.
Somebody standing in the crowd said, "By Jove, Dune seems to be enjoying
it. I never saw any one look as happy."
Some one else said, "Dune's possessed by a devil or something. I never
saw anything like that pace. He doesn't seem to be watching the game at
all, though."
Some one said, "There's going to be a tremendous snowstorm in a minute.
Look at those white clouds."
Then, when there were five minutes more to play, there was a forward
rush over the Dublin line--a Cambridge man, struggling at the bottom
of a heap of legs and arms, touched down. A Dublin appeal was made for
"Carried over," but--no--"Try for Cambridge."
A deafening shout from behind the ropes, then a breathless pause whilst
Lawrence stepped back to take the kick, then a shattering roar as the
ball sailed between the posts.
Ten points all and three minutes left to play.
They were back to the centre, the Dublin men had kicked, Tester had
gathered and returned to touch. There was a line-out, a Cambridge man
had the ball and fell, Cambridge dribbled past the ball to the half, the
ball was in Cardillac's hands.
Let this be ever to Cardillac's honour! Fame of a lifetime might have
been his, the way was almost clear before him--he passed back to Olva.
The moment had come. The crowd fell first into a breathless silence,
then screamed with excitement--
"Dune's got it. He's off!"
He had a crowd of men upon him. Handing off, bending, doubling, almost
down, slipping and then up again--he was through them.
The great clouds were gathering the grey sky into their white arms. Mr.
Gregg, at the back of the stand, forgetting for once decorum, white and
trembling, was hoarse with shouting.
Olva's body seemed so tiny on that vast field--two Dublin three-quarters
came for him. He appeared to run straight into the arms of both of them
and then was through them. They started after him--one man was running
across field to catch him. It was a race. Now there fell silence as the
three men tore after the flying figure. Surely never, in the annals of
Rugby football, had any one run as Olva ran then. Only now the Dublin
back, and he, missing the apparent swerve to the right, clutched
desperately at Olva's back, caught the buckle of his "shorts" and stood
with the thing torn off in his hand.
He turned to pursue, but it was too late. Olva had touched down behind
the posts.
As he started back with the ball the wide world seemed to be crying and
shouting, waving and screaming.
Against the dull grey sky far away an ancient cabman, standing on the
top of his hansom, flourished his whip.
But as he stood there the shouting died--the crowds faded--alone there
on the brown field with the white high clouds above him, Olva was
conscious, only, of the gentle touch of a hand on his shoulder.
CHAPTER XV
PRELUDE TO A JOURNEY
1
He had a bath, changed his clothes, and sitting before his fire waited.
As he looked around his room he knew that he was leaving it for ever.
What ever might be the issue of his conversation with Rupert, he knew
that that at any rate was true; he would never return here again--or he
would not return until he had worked out his duty. He looked about
him regretfully; he had grown very fond of that room and the things
in it--the shape of it, the books, the blue bowls, the bright fire,
"Aegidius" (but he would take "Aegidius" with him). He looked last at
the photograph of his father, the rocky eyes, the flowing beard, the
massive shoulders.
It was back to him that he was going, and he would walk all the way.
Walking alone he would listen, he would watch, he would wait, and then,
in that great silence, he would be told what he must do.
In the pleasant crackle of the fire, in the shaded light of the lamp, in
the starlit silence of the College Courts, there seemed such safety; in
his heart there was such happiness; in that moment of waiting for Rupert
Craven to come he learnt once and for all that, in very _truth_, there
is no gift, no reward, no joy that can equal "the Peace of God," nor is
there any temporal danger, disease or agony that can threaten its power.
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;
he was young enough to be amazed at finding the world a place of
Life and Death; he was young enough finally to be staggered that he
personally should be drawn into the struggle.
But now, just now, as he stood in the doorway, he was simply tired,
tired out. He pulled himself together with the obvious intention of
being cold and fierce and judicial. He had cornered Dune at last, he
had driven him to confession, he was a fine fellow, a kind of Fate, the
Supreme Judge . . . this is what he doubtless desired to feel; but he
wished that Dune had not played so wonderful a game that afternoon, that
Dune did not now--at this moment of complete disaster and ruin--look
so strangely happy, that he were himself not so utterly wretched and
conscious of his own failure to do anything as it ought to be done. He
did his best; he refused to sit down, he remained as still as possible,
he looked over Dune's head in order to avoid those shining eyes.
The eyes caught him.
"Craven, why have you been badgering the wretched Bunning?"
"I thought you asked me to come here to tell me something--I didn't
come to answer questions."
"We'll come to my part of it in a moment. But I think it's only fair to
answer me first."
"What have you got to do with Bunning?"
"That's not, immediately, the point. The thing I want to know is, why
you should have chosen, during the last week, to go and torment the
hapless Bunning until you've all but driven him out of his wits."
"I don't see what it's got to do with you."
"It's got this much to do with me--that he came to me this morning with
a story so absurd that it proves that he can't be altogether right in
his head. He told me that he had confided this absurd story to you."
There was no answer.
"I don't suppose," Olva went on at last gently, "that we've either of
us got very much time, and there's a great deal to be done, so let's
go straight to it. Bunning told me this morning that he declared to you
yesterday that he--of all people in the world--had murdered Carfax."
"Yes," at last Craven sullenly muttered, "he told me that."
"And of course you didn't believe it?"
"I didn't believe that _he'd_ done it--no. But he knows who _did_ do it.
He's got all the details. Some one has told him."
Craven was trembling. Olva pushed a chair towards him.
"Look here, you'd better sit down."
Craven sat down.
"I know that some one told him," Olva said quietly, "because I told
him."
"Then you know who----" Craven's voice was a whisper.
"I know," said Olva, "because it was I who killed Carfax."
Craven took it---the moment for which he'd been waiting so long--in the
most amazing way.
"Oh!" he cried, like a child who has cut its finger. "Oh! I wish
you hadn't!" There was the whole of Craven's young struggle with an
astounding world in that cry.
Then, after that, there was a long silence, and had some one come into
the room he would have looked at the two men before the fire and have
supposed that they were gently and comfortably falling off to sleep.
Olva at last said; "Of course I know that you have suspected me for a
long time. Everything played into your hands. I have done my very utmost
to prevent your having positive proof of the thing, but that part of the
business is now done with. You know, and you can do what you please with
the knowledge."
But, now that the moment had come, Rupert Craven could do nothing with
it.
"I don't want to do anything," he muttered at last. "I'm not up to doing
anything. I don't understand it. I'm not the sort of fellow who ought to
be in this kind of thing at all."
That was how he now saw it, as an unfair advantage that had been taken
of him. This point of view changed his position to the extent of his now
almost appealing to Olva to help him out of it.
"Your telling me like that has made it all so difficult. I feel now
suddenly as though I hated Carfax and hadn't the least objection to
somebody doing for him. And _that's_ all wrong--murder's an awful
thing--one ought to feel bad about it." Then finally, with the cry of
a child in the dark, "But this _isn't_ life, it never _has_ been
life since that day I heard of Carfax being killed. It's the sort of
thing--it's been for weeks the sort of thing--that you read of in books
or see at the Adelphi; and I'm not that kind of fellow. I tell you I've
been mad all this last month, getting it on the brain, seeing things
night and day. My one idea was to make you own up to it, but I never
thought of what was going to happen when you did."
Olva let him work it out.
"Of course I never thought of you for an instant as the man until that
afternoon when you talked in your sleep. Then I began to think and I
remembered what Carfax had said about your hating him. Then I went with
your dog for a walk and we found your matchbox. After that I noticed all
sorts of things and, at the same time, I saw that you were in love with
Margaret. That made me mad. My sister is everything in the world to me,
and it seemed to me that--she should marry a fellow who . . . without
knowing! I began to be ill with it and yet I hadn't any real reasons to
bring forward. You wanted me to show my cards, but I wouldn't. Sometimes
I thought I really _was_ going mad. Then two things made me desperate.
I saw that you had some secret understanding with my mother and I
saw--that my sister loved you. We'd always been tremendous pals--we
three, and it seemed as though every one were siding against me. I saw
Margaret marrying you and mother letting her--although she knew . . .
it was awful--Hell!"
He pressed his hands together, his voice shook: "I'd never been in
anything before--no kind of trouble--and now it seemed to put me right
on one side. I couldn't see straight. One moment I hated you, then I
admired you, and the oddest thing of all was that I didn't think about
the actual thing--your having killed Carfax--at all; everything else was
so much more important. I just wanted to be sure that you'd done it and
then--for you to go away and never see any of us again."
Olva smiled.
"Yes," he said.
"But it wasn't until the 5th of November--the 'rag' night--that I was
quite sure. I knew then, when I saw you hitting that fellow, that
you'd killed Carfax. But, of course, that wasn't proof. Then I noticed
Bunning. I saw that he was always with you, and of course it was an
odd sort of friendship for you to have; I could see, too, that he'd got
something on his mind. I went for him--it was all easy enough--and at
last he broke down. Then I'd got you----"
"You've got me," said Olva.
Rupert looked him, slowly, in the face. "You're wonderful!" Then he
added, almost wistfully, "If Margaret hadn't loved you it wouldn't
really any of it have mattered. I suppose that's very immoral, but
that's what it comes to. Margaret's everything in the world to me and
you must tell her."
"Of course I will tell her," Olva said. "That's what I ought to have
done from the beginning. That's what I was _meant_ to do. But I had
to be driven to it. What will you do, Craven, if it doesn't matter to
her--if she doesn't care whether I killed Carfax or no?"
"At least you'll have told her," the boy replied firmly. "At least
she'll know. Then it's for her to decide. She'll do the right thing," he
ended proudly.
"And what do you think that is?" Olva asked him.
"I don't know," he answered. "This seems to have altered everything. I
ought now to be hating you--I don't. I ought to shudder at the sight of
you--I don't. The Carfax business seems to have slipped right back, to
be ages ago, not to matter. All I suppose I wanted was to be reassured
about you--if Margaret loved you. And now I _am_ reassured. I believe
you know what to do."
"Yes, I know what to do," said Olva. "I'm going away to-morrow for a
long time. I shall always love Margaret--there can never be any one
else--but I shall not marry her unless I can come back cleared."
"And who--what--can clear you?"
"Ah! who knows! There'll be something for me to do, I expect. . . . I
will see Margaret to-morrow--and say good-bye."
Craven's face was white, the eyelids had almost closed, his head hung
forward as though it were too heavy to support.
"I'm just about done," he murmured, "just about done. It's been all
a beastly dream . . . and now you're all right--you and Margaret--I
haven't got to bother about her any more."
2
After hall Olva went to Cardillac's room for the last time. No one there
knew that it was for the last time. It seemed to them all that he was
just beginning to come out, to be one of them. The football match
of that afternoon had been wonderful enough for anything, and the
excitement of it lingered still about Cardillac's rooms, thick now with
tobacco-smoke, crowded with men, noisy with laughter. The air was so
strong with smoke, the lights so dim, the voices so many, that Olva
finding a corner near an open window slipped, it might almost seem, from
the world. Outside the snow, threatening all day, now fell heavily; the
old Court took it with a gentleness that showed that the snow was meant
for it, and the snow covered the grey roofs and the smooth grass with
a satisfaction that could almost be heard, so deep was it. Just this
little window-pane between the world that Olva was leaving and the world
to which he was going!
He caught fragments: "Just that last run--gorgeous--but old Snodky says
that that horse of his---"
"My dear fellow, you take it from me--they can't get on without
it. . . . Now a girl I know----"
"They fairly fell upon one another's necks and hugged. Talk of the
fatted calf! Now if I'd asked the governor----"
Around him there came, with a poignancy, a beauty, that, now that he was
to lose it all, was like a wound, the wonder of this Cambridge. Then he
had it, the marvellous moment! On the other side of the window the
still court, a few twinkling lights, the powdering snow--and here the
vitality, the energy, the glowing sense of two thousand souls marching
together upon Life and seizing it, with a shout, lifting it, stepping
out with it as though it were one long glory! Afterwards what matter?
There had been the moment, never to be forgotten! Cambridge, the
beautiful threshold!
For an instant the sense of his own forthcoming journey--away from life,
as it seemed to him--caught him as he sat there. "What will God do with
me?"
From the outer world through the whispering snow, he caught the echo of
the Voice--"My Son . . . My Son."
Soon he heard Lawrence's tremendous laugh--"Where's Dune? Is he here?"
Lawrence found him and sat down beside him.
"By Jupiter, old man, I was frightened for you this afternoon. Until
half-time you were drugged or somethin', and there was I prayin' to my
Druids all I was worth to put back into you. And, my word, they did it
I Talk about that second half--never saw anythin' like it! Have a drink,
old man!"
"No, thanks. Yes, I didn't seem to get on to it at all at first."
"Well, you're fixed for Queen's Club--just heard--got your Blue all
right. You and Whymper ought to do fine things between you, although
stickin' two individualists together on the same wing like that ain't
exactly my idea, and they don't as a rule settle the team as early
as this"--Lawrence put a large hand on Olva's knee. "Goin' home for
Christmas?" he said.
"I expect so."
"Well, yer see--I've got a sort of idea. I wish this vac, you'd come
an' stay with us for a bit. Good old sorts, my people. Governor quite
a brainy man--and you could talk, you two. There'll be lots of people
tumblin' about the place--lots goin' on, and the governor'll like to
have a sensible feller once in a way . . . and I'd like it too," he
ended at the bottom of his gruff voice.
"Well, you see;" Olva explained, "it depends a bit on my own father.
He's all alone up there at our place, and I like to be with him as much
as possible." Olva looked through the window at the snow, grey against
the sky, white against the college walls. "I don't quite know where I
shall be--I think you must let me write to you."
"Oh! _that's_ all right," said Lawrence. "I want you to come along some
time. You'd like the governor--and if you don't mind listening to an ass
like me--well, I'd take it as an honour if you'd talk to me a bit."
As Olva looked Lawrence in the eyes he knew that it would be well with
him if, in his journey through the world, he met again so good a soul.
Cardillac joined them and they all talked for a little. Then Olva said
good-night.
He turned for a moment at the door and looked back. Some one at the
other end of the room was singing "Egypt" to a cracked piano. A babel
of laughter, of chatter, every now and again men tumbled against one
another, like cubs in a cave, and rolled upon the floor. Lawrence,
his feet planted wide apart, was standing in the middle of an admiring
circle, explaining something very slowly.
"If the old scrum-half," he was saying, "only stood back enough---"
What a splendid lot they were! What a life it was! So much joy in the
heart of so much beauty! . . . Cambridge!
As he crossed the white court the strains of "Egypt" came, like a
farewell, through the tumbling snow.
There was still a thing that he must do. He went to say good-bye to
Bunning. He thought with surprise as he climbed the stairs that this was
the first time that he'd ever been to Bunning's room. It had always been
Bunning who had come to him. He would always see that picture---Bunning
standing, clumsily, awkwardly in the doorway. Poor Bunning!
When Olva came in he was sitting in a very old armchair, staring into
the fire, his hair on end and his tie above his collar. Olva watched him
for a moment, the face, the body, everything about him utterly dejected;
the sound of Olva's entrance did not at once rouse him. When at last he
saw who it was he started up, his face flushing crimson.
"You!" he cried.
"Yes," said Olva, "I've come to tell you that everything's all right."
For a moment light touched Bunning's eyes, then slowly he shook his
head.
"Things can't be all right. It's gone much too far."
"My dear Bunning, I've seen Craven. I've told him. I assure you that all
is well."
"You told him?"
"Everything. That I killed Carfax--he knew it, of course, long ago. He
went fast asleep at the end of it."
Bunning shook his head again, wearily. "It's all no good. You're
saying these things to comfort me. Even if Craven didn't do anything he
wouldn't let you marry his sister now. That's more important than being
hung."
"If it hadn't been for you," Olva said slowly, "I should have gone on
wriggling. You've made me come out into the open. 'I'm going to tell
Miss Craven everything to-morrow."
"What will she do?"
"I don't know. She'll do the right thing. After that I'm going away."
"Going away?"
"Yes. I want to think about things. I've never thought about anything
except myself. I'm going to tramp it home, and after that I shall find
out what I'm going to do."
"And Miss Craven?"
"I shall come back to her one day--when I'm fit for it--or rather, _if_
I'm fit for it. But that's enough about myself. I only wanted to tell
you, Bunning, before I go that I shall never forget your telling Craven.
You're lucky to have been able to do so fine a thing. We shall meet
again later on--I'll see to that."
Bunning, his whole body strung to a desperate appeal, caught Olva's
hand. "Take me with you, Dune. Take me with you. I'll be your
servant--anything you like. I'll do anything if you'll let me come. I
won't be a nuisance--I'll never talk if you don't want me to--I'll do
everything you tell me--only let me come. You're the only person
who's ever shown me what I might do. I might be of use if I were with
you--otherwise----"
"Rot, Bunning. You've got plenty to do here. I'm no good yet for
anybody. One day perhaps we'll meet again. I'll write to you. I promise
not to forget you. How could I? and one day I'll come back---"
Bunning moved away, his head banging. "You must think me an awful
fool--of course you do. I am, I suppose. I'd be awful to be with for
long at a time--of course I see that. But I don't know what to do. If
I go home and tell them I'm not going to be a parson it'll be terrible.
They'll all be at me. Not directly. They won't say anything, but they'll
have people to talk to me. They'll fill the house--they won't spare any
pains. And then, at last, being all alone, I shall give in. I know I
shall, I'm not clever or strong. And I shall be ordained--and then
it'll be hell. I can see it all. You came into my life and made it all
different, and now you're going out of it again and it will be worse
than ever---"
"I won't go out of it," said Olva. "I'll write if you'd like--and
perhaps we'll meet. I'll be always your friend. And--look here--I'll
tell Margaret--Miss Craven--about you, and she'll ask you to go and see
her, and if you two are friends it'll be a kind of alliance between all
of us, won't it?"
Bunning was happier--"Oh, but she'll think me such an ass!"
"Oh no, she won't, she's much too clever, And, Bunning, don't let
yourself be driven by people. Stick to the thing you want to do--you'll
find something all right. Just go on here and wait until you're shown.
Sit with your ears open----"
Bunning filled his mouth with toast. "If you'll write to me and keep up
with me I'll do anything."
"And one thing--Don't tell any one I'm going. I shall just slip out of
college early the day after to-morrow. I don't want any one to know.
It's nobody's affair but mine."
Then he held out his hand--"Good-bye, Bunning, old man."
"Good-bye," said Bunning.
When Olva had gone he sat down by the fire again, staring.
Some hours afterwards he spoke, suddenly, aloud: "I can stand the lot of
them now."
Then he went to bed.
CHAPTER XVI
OLVA AND MARGARET
1
On the next evening the sun set with great splendour. The frost had come
and hardened the snow and all day the sky bad been a pale frozen blue,
only on the horizon fading into crocus yellow.
The sun was just vanishing behind the grey roofs when Olva went to
Rocket Road. All day he had been very busy destroying old letters and
papers and seeing to everything so that he should leave no untidiness
nor carelessness behind him. Now it was all over. To-morrow morning,
with enough money but not very much, and with an old rucksack that he
had once had on a walking tour, he would set out. He did not question
this decision--he knew that it was what he was intended to do--but it
was the way that Margaret would take his confession that would make that
journey hard or easy.
He did not know--that was the surprising thing--how she would take it.
He knew her so little. He only knew that he loved her and that she would
do, without flinching, the thing that she felt was right. Oh! but it
would be difficult!
The house, the laurelled drive, the little road, the distant moor and
wood--these things had to-night a gentle air. Over the moor the setting
sun flung a red flame; the woods burned black; the laurels were heavy
with snow and a robin hopped down the drive as Olva passed.
He found Margaret in the drawing-room, and here, too, he fancied that
there was more light and air than on other days.
When the old woman had left the room he suddenly caught Margaret to him
and kissed her as though he would never let her go. She clung to him
with her hands. Then he stood gravely away from her.
"There," he said, "that is the last time that I may kiss you before I
have told you what it is that I have come here to say. But first may I
go up to your mother for a moment?"
"Yes," Margaret said, "if you will not be very long. I do not think that
I can have much more patience." Then she added more slowly, gazing into
his face, "Rupert said last night that you would have something to tell
me to-day. I have been waiting all day for you to come. But Rupert was
his old self last night, and he talked to mother and has made her happy
again. Oh! I think that everything is going to be right!"
"I will soon come down to you," he said.
Mrs. Craven's long dark room was lit by the setting sun; beyond her
windows the straight white fields lifted shining splendour to the stars
already twinkling in the pale sky. Candles were lit on a little black
table by her sofa and the fire was red deep in its cavernous setting.
He stood for a moment in the dim room facing the setting sun, and the
light of the fire played about his feet and the pale glow that stole up
into the evening from the snowy fields touched his face.
She knew as she looked at him that something bad given him great peace.
"I've come to say good-bye," he said. Then he sat down by her side.
"No," she said, smiling, "you mustn't go. We want you--Rupert and
Margaret and I. . . ." Then softly, as though to herself, she repeated
the words, "Rupert and Margaret and I."
"Dear Mrs. Craven, one day I will come back. But tell me, Rupert spoke
to you last night?"
"Yes, he has made me so very happy. Last night we were the same again as
we used to be, and even, I think, more than we have ever been. Rupert is
growing up."
"Yes--Rupert is growing up. Did he tell you why he had, during these
weeks, been so strange and unhappy?"
"No, he gave me no real explanation. But I think that it was the
terrible death of his friend Mr. Carfax--I think that that had preyed
upon his mind."
"No, Mrs. Craven, it was more than that. He was unhappy because he knew
that it was I that had killed Carfax."
He saw a little movement pass over her--her hand trembled against her
dress. For some time they sat together there in silence, and the red sun
slipped down behind the fields; the room was suddenly dark except for
the yellow pool of light that the candles made and for the strange gleam
by the window that came from the snow.
At last she said, "Now I understand--now I understand."
"I killed him in anger--it was quite fair. No one had any idea except
Rupert, but everything helped to show him that it was I. When he saw
that I loved Margaret he was very unhappy. He saw that we had some kind
of understanding together and he thought that I had told you and that
you sympathize with me. I am going down now to tell Margaret."
"Poor, poor Olva." It was the first time that she had called him by his
Christian name. She took his hand. "Both of us together--the same thing.
I have paid, God knows I have paid, and soon, I hope, it will be over.
But your life is before you."
He looked out at the evening fields. "I'm going down now to tell
Margaret. And tomorrow I shall set out. I will not come back to Margaret
until I know that I am cleared--but I want you, while I am away, to
think of me sometimes and to talk of me sometimes to Margaret. And one
day, perhaps, I shall know that I may come back."
She put her thin hands about his head and drew it down to her and kissed
him.
"There will never be a time when you are not in my mind," she said. "I
love you as though you were my own son. I had hoped that you would be
here often, but now I see that it is right for you to go. I know that
Margaret will wait for you. Meanwhile an old woman loves you."
He kissed her and left her.
At the door through the dark room he heard her thin voice: "May God
bless you and keep you."
He went to perform his hardest task.
2
It was the harder in that for a little while he seemed to be left
absolutely alone. The room was dark save for the leaping light of the
fire in the deep stone fireplace, and as he saw Margaret standing there
waiting for him, desperately courageous, he only knew that he loved her
so badly that, for a little while, he could only stand there staring at
her, twisting his hands together, speechless.
"Well," at last she said. "Come and sit down and tell me all about it."
But her voice trembled a little and her eyes were wide, frightened,
begging him not to hurt her.
He sat down near her, before the fire, and she instinctively, as though
she knew that this was a very tremendous matter, stood away from him,
her hands clasped together against her black dress.
Suddenly now, before he spoke, he realized what it would mean to him
if she could not forgive what he had done. He had imagined it once
before--the slow withdrawal of her eyes, the gradual tightening of the
lips, the little instinctive movement away from him.
If he must go out into the world, having lost her, he thought that he
could never endure, God or no God, the long dreary years in front of
him.
At last he was brave: "Margaret--at first I want you to know that I
love you with all my heart and soul and body; that nothing that can
ever happen to me can ever alter that love--that I am yours, entirely,
always. And then I want you to know that I am not worthy to love you,
that I ought never to have asked you to love me, that I ought to have
gone away the first time that I saw you."
She made a little loving, protecting movement towards him with her hands
and then let them drop against her dress again.
"I ought never to have loved you--because--only a day or two before I
met you--I had killed Carfax, Rupert's friend."
The words as they fell seemed to him like the screams that iron bolts
give as a gate is barred.
He whispered slowly the words again: "I killed Carfax"--and then he
covered his eyes with his hands so that he might not see her face.
The silence seemed eternal--and she had made no movement. To fill that
silence he went on desperately--
"I had always hated him--there were many reasons--and one day we met
in Sannet Wood, quarrelled, and I hit him. The blow killed him. I don't
think I meant to kill him, but I wasn't sorry afterwards--I have never
felt remorse for _that_. There have been other things. . . .
"Soon afterwards I met you--I loved you at once--you know that I
did--and I could not tell you. Oh! I tried--I struggled, pretty poor
struggling--but I could not. I thought that it was all over, that he
was dead and nobody knew. But God was wiser than that--Rupert knew. He
suspected and then he grew more sure, and at last he was quite certain.
Yesterday, after the football match, I told him and I promised him that
I would tell you . . . and I have told you."
Silence again--and then suddenly there was movement, and there were arms
about him and a voice in his ear--"Poor, poor Olva . . . dear Olva . . .
how terrible it must have been!"
He could only then catch her and hold her, and furiously press her
against him. "Oh, my dear, my dear--you don't mind!"
They stayed together, like that, for a long time.
He could not think clearly, but in the dim recesses of his mind he saw
that they had all--Mrs. Craven, Margaret, Rupert--taken it in the same
kind of way. Could it be that Margaret and Rupert living, although
unconsciously, in the shadow all their lives of just this crime,
breathing the air of it, and breathing it too with the other air of love
and affection--that they had thus, all unknowing, been quietly prepared?
Or had they, each of them, their especial reason for excusing it?
Mrs. Craven from her great knowledge, Rupert from his great weariness,
Margaret from her great love?
At last Margaret got up and sat down in a chair away from him.
"Olva dear, you ought to have told me. If we had married and you had not
told me---"
"I was so terribly afraid of losing you."
"But it gives me now," her voice was almost triumphant, "something to
share with you, something to help you in, something to fight with you.
Now I can show you how much I love you.
"How could you have supposed that I would mind? Do you think that a
woman, if she loves a man, cares for anything that he may do? If you
had killed a hundred men in Sannet Wood I would have helped you to bury
them. The thing that a woman demands most of love is that she may prove
it. I know that murder has a dreadful sound--but to meet your enemy face
to face, to strike him down because you hated him--" Her voice rose, her
eyes flashed--she raised her arms--"You must pay for it, Olva--but we
shall pay together."
He knew now, as he watched her, that he had a harder thing to do than he
had believed possible.
"No," he said, and his eyes could not face hers, "we can't pay
together--I must go alone."
She laughed a little. "How can you go alone if we are together?"
"We shall not be together. I go away, alone, to-morrow."
He knew that her eyes were then, very slowly, searching his face. She
said, gently, after a moment's pause, "Tell me, Olva, what you mean. Of
course we are going together."
"Oh, it is so hard for me!" He was fighting now as he had never fought.
Why not, even at this last moment, in spite of yesterday, defy God and
stay with her and keep her? In that moment of hesitation he suffered so
that the sweat came to his forehead and his eyes were filled with pain
and then were suddenly tired and dull.
But he came out, and seemed now to stand above the room and look down on
his body and her body and to be filled with a great pity for them both.
"Margaret dear, it's very hard for me to tell you. Will you be patient
with me and let me put things as clearly as I can--as _I_ see them?"
She burst out, "Olva, you mustn't leave me, I---" Then she used all her
strength to bring control. Very quietly she ended--"Yes, Olva, tell me
everything."
"It is so difficult because it is about God, and we all of us feel, and
rightly I expect, that it is priggish to talk about God at all. And then
I don't know whether I can give you everything as it happened because
it was all so unsubstantial and at the end of it any one might say 'But
this is nothing--nothing at all. You've been hysterical, nervous--that's
the meaning of it. You've nothing to show.' And yet if all the world
were to say that to me I should still have no doubt. I know, as I know
that we are sitting here, as I know that I love you, that what I say is
true."
She brought her chair close to him and then put her band in his and
waited.
"After I had killed Carfax--after his body had fallen and the wood
was very silent, I was suddenly conscious of God. I can't explain that
better. I can only say that I knew that some one had watched me, I knew
that the world would never be the same place again because some one had
watched me, and I knew that it was not because I had done wrong, but
because I had put myself into a new set of conditions that life would be
different now. I knew these things, and I went back to College.
"I had never thought about God before, never at all. I had been entirely
heathen. Now I was sure of His existence in the way that one is sure of
wood when one touches it or water when one drinks it.
"But I did not know at all what kind of God He was. I went to a Revival
meeting, but He was not there. He was not in the College Chapel. He was
not in any forms or ceremonies that I could discover. He might choose
to appear to other men in those different ways but not to me. Then a
fellow, Lawrence, told me about some old worship---Druids and their
altars--but He was not there. And all those days I was increasingly
conscious that there was some one who would not let me alone. It
fastened itself in my mind gradually as a Pursuit, and it seemed to me
too that, as the days passed, I began slowly to understand the nature
of the Pursuer--that He was kind and tender but also relentless,
remorseless. I was frightened. I flung myself into College things--games
and every kind of noise because I was so afraid of silence. And all the
time some one urged me to obedience. That was all that He demanded, that
I should be passive and obey His orders. I would have given in, I think,
very soon, but I met you."
Her hand tightened in his and then, because he felt that her body was
trembling, he put his arm round her and held her.
"I knew then when I loved you that I was being urged, by this God, to
confess everything to you. I became frightened; I should have trusted
you, but it was so great a risk. You were all that I had and if I
lost you life would have gone too. Those aren't mere words. . . . I
struggled, I tried every way of escape. And then everything betrayed me.
Rupert began to suspect, then to be sure. Whether I flung myself into
everything or hid in my room it was the same--God came closer and
closer. It was a perfectly real experience and I could see Him as a
great Shadow--not unkind, loving me, but relentless. Then the day came
that I proposed to you and I fainted. I knew then that I was not to be
allowed so easy a happiness. Still I struggled, but now God seemed to
have shut off all the real world and only left me the unreal one--and I
began to be afraid that I was going mad."
She suddenly bent down and kissed him; she stayed then, until he had
finished, with her head buried in his coat.
"It wasn't any good--I knew all the time that it could only end one
way.
"Everything betrayed me, every one left me. I thought every moment that
Rupert would tell me. Then, one night when I was hardly sane, I told a
man, Bunning--a queer odd creature who was the last kind of person to be
told. He, in a fit of mad self-sacrifice, told Rupert that _he'd_ killed
Carfax, and then of course it was all over.
"I suddenly yielded. It was as though God caught me and held me. I saw
Him, I heard Rim--yesterday--in the middle of the football. I know that
it was so. After that there could be only one thing--Obedience. I knew
that I must tell you. I have told you. I know, too, that I must go out
into the world, alone, and work out my duty . . . and then, oh! then, I
will come back."
When he had finished, on his shoulder he seemed to feel once more a hand
gently resting.
At last she raised her head, and clutching his hand as though she would
never let it go, spoke:--
"Olva, Olva, I don't understand. I don't think I believe in any God.
And, dear, see--it is all so natural. Thinking about what you had
done, thinking of it all alone, preyed on your nerves. Because Rupert
suspected you made it worse. You imagined things--everything. That is
all--Olva, really that is all."
"Margaret, don't make it harder for both of us. I must go. There is no
question. I don't suppose that any one can see any one else's spiritual
experiences--one must be alone in that. Margaret dear, if I stayed with
you now--if we married--the Pursuit would begin again. God would hold me
at last--and then one day you would find that I had gone away--I would
have been driven--there would be terror for both of us then."
She slipped on to her knees and caught his hands.
"This is all unreal--utterly unreal. But our love for each other, that
is the only thing that can matter for either of us. You have lived in
your thoughts these weeks, imagined things, but think of what you do
if you leave me. You are all I have--you have become my world--I can't
live, I can't live, Olva, without you."
"I must go. I must find what God is."
"But listen, dear. You come to me to confess something. You find that
what you have done matters nothing to me. You say that you love me more
than ever, and, in the same moment, that you are going to leave me. Is
it fair to me? You give no reason. You do not know where you are going
or what you intend to do. You can give no definite explanation."
"There is no explanation except that by what I did in Sannet Wood that
afternoon I put myself out of touch with human society until I had done
something _for_ human society. God has been telling me for many days
that I owe a debt. I have tried to avoid paying that debt. I tried
to escape Him because I knew that he demanded that I must pay my debt
before I could come to you. I see this as clearly as I saw yesterday the
high white clouds above the football field. God now is as real to me as
you are. It is as though for the rest of my life I must live in a house
with two persons. We cannot all live together until certain conditions
are granted. I go to make those conditions possible. Because I have
broken the law I am an outlaw. I am impelled to win my way back to
citizenship again. God will show me."
"But this is air--all nerves. God is nothing. God does not exist."
"God _does_ exist. I must work out His order and then I will come back
to you."
She began to be frightened. She caught his coat in her hands, and
desperately pleaded. Then she saw his white set face, and the way that
his hands gripped the chair, and it was as though she had suddenly found
herself alone in the room.
"Olva, don't leave me, don't leave me, Olva. I can't live without you.
I don't care what you've done. I'll bear everything with you. I'll come
away with you. I'll do anything if only you will let me be with you."
"No, I must go alone."
"But it can't matter--it can't matter. I'm so unimportant. You shall do
what you feel is your duty--only let me be there."
"No, I must go alone."
She began to cry, bitter, miserable, sobbing, sitting on the floor, away
from him. Her crying was the only sound in the room.
He bent and touched her--"Margaret dear--you make it so hard."
At last, in that strange beautiful way that she had, control seemed
suddenly to come to her; she stood up and looked as though she had, in
that brief moment, lived a thousand years of sorrow.
"You will come back?"
"I swear that I will come back to you."
"I--I--will--wait for you."
There, in the dim, unreal room, as they had stood once before, now,
standing, they were wrapt together. They were very young to feel such
depths of tragedy, to touch such heights of beauty. They were a long
time there together.
"Margaret darling, you know that I will come back."
"I know that you will come back."
"Olva!"
"Margaret!"
He left her.
Then, standing with outstretched arms, alone there, she who had but now
denied the Pursuer, cried to the dark room--
"God, God--send him back to me!"
Some one promised her.
CHAPTER XVII
FIRST CHAPTER
The sun was rising, hard and red, over Sannet Wood and the white frozen
flats, when Olva Dune set out. . . .
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