The Prelude to Adventure Part 19

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 G.o.ds 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 pa.s.sed 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 l.u.s.tily sung with a good deal of repet.i.tion; 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 coa.r.s.e 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ma.s.s 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 pa.s.sages 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 "sc.r.a.ps," 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 s.p.a.ce.

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 mult.i.tude 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 pa.s.sing, dragging wood with them. The row of palings towards the river had gone and soon those little cottages that lined the gra.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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. .h.i.tting out with his fists.

Men's voices about him--"Let go, you beast." "My G.o.d, 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--gla.s.s 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 G.o.d! what _shall_ I do!"