The Prelude to Adventure Part 8

"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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d made--if you break one . . ."

Lawrence tuned heavily in his chair.

"Then you believe in G.o.d?"

"Yes, I believe in G.o.d."

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."