The Prelude to Adventure Part 12

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 wors.h.i.+p. 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 other 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 t.i.ttering, stammering apology for having burdened so long with his hapless clamour, the Debate.

2

Olva liked Cardillac--Cardillac liked Olva. They both in their att.i.tude 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 G.o.d that he was so alone. He could not touch his human companions, he could scarcely see them. It was through this isolation that G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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 ga.s.sing." 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 gla.s.s 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 princ.i.p.al 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 s.h.i.+rt.

"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, blus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+rts and things aren't clean. . . . You don't mind my telling you, do you?"

"No, I like it, n.o.body'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 Yorks.h.i.+re. 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 pa.s.sion! Bunning seemed, for an instant, to be quite vigorous.

"That's why I'm so untidy now," Bunning went desperately on; "n.o.body 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 G.o.d 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."