by Hugh Walpole
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 oth
er 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.”