The Prelude to Adventure Part 24

Oh! these last two days! what I've suffered!"

Now for the first time in the history of the whole affair Olva Dune may be said to have felt sheer physical terror, not terror of the mist, of the road, of the darkness, of the night, but terror of physical things--of the loss of light and air, of the denial of food, of physical death. . . . For a moment the room swam about him. He heard, in the Court below him, some men laughing--a dog was barking. Then he saw that Bunning was on the edge of hysteria. The bedmaker would come in and find him laughing--as he had laughed once before.

Olva stilled the room with a tremendous effort--the floor sank, the table and chairs tossed no longer.

"Now, Bunning, tell me quickly. They'll be here to lay lunch in a minute. What have you told Craven? And why have you told him anything?"

"I told him--yesterday--that I did it."

"That _you_ did it?"

"Yes, that I murdered Carfax."

"My G.o.d! You fool! . . . You fool!"

A most dangerous thing this devotion of a fool.

But, strangely, Olva's words roused in Bunning a kind of protest, so that he pulled his eyes back into their sockets, steadied his hands, held his boots firmly to the floor, and, quite softly, with a little note of urgency in it as though he were pleading before a great court, said--

"Yes, I know. But he drove me to it; Craven did. I thought it was the only way to save you. He's been at me now for days; ever since that time he stopped me in Outer Court and asked me why I was a friend of yours.

He's been coming to my room--at night--at all sorts of times--and just sitting there and looking at me."

Olva came across and touched Bunning's arm: "Poor Bunning! What a brute I was to tell you!"

"He used to come and say nothing--just look at me. I couldn't stand it, you know. I'm not a clever man--not at all clever--and I used to try and think of things to talk about, but it always seemed to come back to Carfax--every time."

"And then--when you told me the other day about your caring for Miss Craven--I felt that I must do something. I'd always puzzled, you know, why I should be brought into it at all. I didn't seem to be the sort of fellow who'd be likely to be mixed up with a man like you. I felt that it must be with some purpose, you know, and now--now--I thought I suddenly saw--

"I don't know--I thought he'd believe me--I thought he'd tell the police and they'd arrest me--and that'd be the end of it."

Here Bunning took a handkerchief and began miserably to gulp and sniff.

"But, good heavens!" Olva cried, "you didn't suppose that they wouldn't discover it all at the police-station in a minute! Two questions and you'd be done! Why, man----!"

"I didn't know. I thought it would be all right. I was all alone that afternoon, out for a walk by myself--and you'd told me how you did it.

I'd only got to tell the same story. I couldn't see how any one should know---I couldn't really . . . I don't suppose"--many gulps--"that I thought much about that--I only wanted to save you."

How bright and wonderful the day! How full of colour the world! And it was all over, all absolutely, finally done.

"Now--look here, stop that sniffing--it's all right. I'm not angry with you. Just tell me exactly what you said to Craven yesterday when you told him."

Bunning thought. "Well, he came into my room quite early after my breakfast. I was reading my Bible, as I used to, you know, every morning, to see whether I could be interested again, as I used to be. I was finding I couldn't when Craven came in. He looked queer. He's been looking queerer every day, and I don't think he's been sleeping. Then he began to ask me questions, not actually about anything, but odd questions like, Where was I born? and Why did I read the Bible? and things like that--just to make me comfortable--and his eyes were so funny, red and small and never still. Then he got to you."

The misery now in Bunning's eyes was more than Olva could bear. It was dumb, uncomprehending misery, the unhappiness of something caught in a trap--and that trap this glittering dancing world!

"Then he got to you! He always asked me the same questions. How long I'd known you?--Why we got on together when we were so different?--silly meaningless things--and he didn't listen to my answers. He was always thinking of the next things to ask and that frightened me so."

The misery in Bunning's eyes grew deeper.

"Suddenly I thought I saw what was meant--that I was intended to take it on myself. It made me warm all over, the though of it. . . . Now, I was going to do something . . . that's how I saw it!"

"Going to do something . . ." he repeated desperately, with choking sobs between the words. "It's all happened so quickly. He had just said absently, not looking at me, 'You like Dune, don't you?'

"When I came out with it all at once---I said, 'Yes, I know, I know what _you_ want. You think that Dune killed Carfax and that _I_ know he did, but he didn't _I_ killed Carfax. . . .'"

Bunning's voice quite rang out. His eyes now desperately sought Olva's face, as though he would find there something that would make the world less black.

"I wasn't frightened---not then---that was the odd thing. The only thing I thought about was saving you---getting you out of it. I didn't see! I didn't see!"

"And then---what did Craven say?" Olva asked quietly.

"Craven said scarcely anything. He asked me whether I realized what I was saying, whether I saw what I was in for? I said 'Yes'---that it had all been too much for my conscience, that I had to tell some one---all the things that you told me. Then he asked me why I'd done it. I told him because Carfax always bullied me---he did, you know---and that one day I couldn't stand it any longer and I met him in the wood and hit him. He said, 'You must be very strong,' and of course I'm not, you know, and that ought to have made me suspect something. But it didn't.

. . . Then he said he must think over what he ought to do, but all the time he was saying it I knew he was thinking of something else and then he went away."

"That was yesterday morning?"

"Yesterday morning, and all day I was terrified, but happy too. I thought I'd done a big thing and I thought that the police would come and carry me off. . . . Nothing happened all day. I sat there waiting.

And I thought of you---that you'd be able to marry Miss Craven and would be very happy.

"Then, this morning, coming from chapel, Craven stopped me. I thought he was going to tell me that he'd thought it his duty to give me away. He would, you know. But it wasn't that.

"All he said was: 'I wonder how you know so much about it, Bunning.' I couldn't say anything. Then he said, 'I'm going to ask Dune.' That was all . . . all," he wretchedly repeated, and then, with a movement of utter despair, flung his head into his hands, and cried.

Olva, standing straight with his hands at his side, looked through his window at the world---at the white lights on the lower sky, at the pearl grey roofs and the little cutting of dim white street and the high grey college wall. He was to begin again, it seemed, at the state in which he'd been on the day after Carfax's murder. Then he had been sure that arrest would only be a question of hours and he had resolutely faced it with the resolve that he would drain all the life, all the vigour, all the fun from the minutes that remained to him.

Now he had come back to that. Craven would give him away, perhaps . . .

he would, at any rate, drive him away from Margaret. But he would almost certainly feel it his duty to expose him. He would feel that that would end the complication with his sister once and for all---the easiest way.

He would feel it his duty---these people and their duty!

Well, at least he would have his game of football first---no one could take his afternoon away from him. Margaret would be there to watch him and he would play! Oh! he would play as he had never played in his life before!

Bunning's voice came to him from a great distance---

"What are you going to do? What are you going to say to Craven?"

"Say to him? Why, I shall tell him, of course---tell him everything."

Bunning leapt from his chair. In his urgency he put his hands on Olva's arm: "No, no, no. You mustn't do that. Why it will be as though I'd murdered you. Tell him I did it. Make him believe it. You can---you're clever enough. Make him feel that I did it. You mustn't, mustn't---let him know. Oh, please, please. I'll kill myself if you do. I will really."

Olva gravely, quietly, put his hands on Bunning's shoulders.

"It's all right---it had to come out. I've been avoiding it all this time, escaping it, but it had to come. Don't you be afraid of it. I daresay Craven won't do anything. After all he loves his sister and she cares for him. That will influence him. But, anyhow, all that's done with. There are bigger things in question than Craven knowing about Carfax, and you were meant to tell him---you were really. You've just forced me to see what's the right thing to do---that's all."

Bunning was, surely, in the light of it, a romantic figure.

Miss Annett came in with the lunch.

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