by Hugh Walpole
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 la
st 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.”