The Prelude to Adventure Part 18

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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.body, 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 G.o.d. G.o.d had come and had turned the world into a nightmare . . . or was it only his rebellion against G.o.d 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 a.s.s!"

"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 G.o.d! 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 gla.s.ses 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 d.a.m.ned 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 m.u.f.fled 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 rea.s.suring, so healthy in its st.u.r.diness, 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 gla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed, 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.