The Prelude to Adventure Part 3

The little gentle voice again--"I shall be delighted to speak to any of those whose consciences are burdened. If any who wish to see me would wait. . . ."

The souls are caught for G.o.d.

Prayers followed, another hymn. Bunning with red eyes has contemplated his sins and is in a glow of excited repentance. It is over.

As Olva rose to leave the building he knew that this was not the path for which he was searching. Not here was that terrible Presence. . . .

The men poured in a black crowd out into the night. As Olva stepped into the darkness he knew that the terror was only now beginning for him.

Standing there now with no sorrow, remorse, repentance, nevertheless he knew that all night, alone in his room, he would be fighting with devils. . . .

Bunning, nervously, stammered--"If you don't mind--I think I'm going round for a minute."

Olva nodded good-night. As he went on his way to Saul's, grimly, it seemed humorous that "soft-faced" Bunning should be going to confess his thin, miserable little sins.

For him, Olva Dune, only a dreadful silence. . . .

CHAPTER III

THE BODY COMES TO TOWN

1

And after all he slept, slept dreamlessly. He woke to the comfortable accustomed voices of Mrs. Ridge, his bedmaker, and Miss Annett, her a.s.sistant. It was a cold frosty morning; the sky showed through the window a cloudless blue.

He could hear the deep base voice of Mrs. Ridge in her favourite phrase: "Well, I _don't_ think, Miss Annett. You won't get over me," and Miss Annett's mildly submissive, "I should think _not_ indeed, Mrs. Ridge."

Lying back in bed he surveyed with a mild wonder the fact that he had thus, easily, slept. He felt, moreover, that that body had already, in the division of to-day from yesterday, lost much of its haunting power.

In the clean freshness of the day, in the comfort of the casual voices of the two women in the other room, in the smell of the coffee, yesterday's melodrama seemed incredible. It had never happened; soon he would see from his window Carfax's hulking body cross the court. No, it was real enough, only it did not concern him. He watched it, as a spectator, indifferent, callous. There _was_ a change in his life, but it was a change of another kind. In the strange consciousness that he now had of some vast and vital Presence, the temporal fact of the thing that he had done lost all importance. There was something that he had got to find, to discover. If--and the possibility seemed large now in the air of this brilliant morning--he were, after all, to escape, he would not rest until he had made his discovery. Some new life was stirring within him. He wanted now to fling himself amongst men; he would play football, he would take his place in the college, he would test everything--leave no stone unturned. No longer a cynical observer, he would be an adventurer . . . if they would let him alone.

He got out of bed, stripped, and stood over his bath. The cold air beat upon his skin; he rejoiced in the sense of his fitness, in the movement of his muscles, in the splendid condition of his body. If this were to be the last day of his freedom, it should at any rate be a splendid day.

He had his bath, flung on a s.h.i.+rt and trousers and went into his sitting-room, bright now with the morning sun, so that the blue bowls and the red tiles shone, and even the dark face of Aegidius was lighted with the gleam.

Mrs. Ridge was short and stout, with white hair, a black bonnet, and the deepest of voices. Her eagerness to deliver herself of all the things that she wanted to say prevented full-stops and commas from being of any use to her. Miss Annett was admirably suited as a companion, being long, thin and silent, and intended by nature to be subservient to the more masterful of her s.e.x. With any man she was able easily to hold her own; with Mrs. Ridge she was bending, bowed, humility.

Mrs. Ridge grinned like a dog at the appearance of Olva. "Good mornin', sir, and a nice frosty cold sort o' day it is with Miss Annett just breakin' one of your cups, sir, 'er 'ands bein' that cold and a cup bein' an easy thing to slip out of the 'and as you must admit yourself, sir. Pore Miss Annett is _that_ distressed."

Miss Annett did indeed look downcast. "I can't think---" she began.

"It's quite all right, Miss Annett," said Olva. "I think it's wonderful that you break the things as seldom as you do. The china was of no kind of value."

It was known in the college that Mr. Dune was the only gentleman of whom Mrs. Ridge could be said to be afraid; she was proud of him and frightened of him. She said to Miss Annett, when that lady made her first appearance--

"And I can tell _you_, Miss Annett, that you need never 'ave no fear of bein' introjuced to Royalty one of these days after bein' with that Mr.

Dune, because it puts you in practice, I can tell you, and a nice spoken gentleman 'e is and _quiet_--never does a thing 'e shouldn't, but wicked under it all I'll be bound. 'E's no chicken, you take it from me. Born yesterday? I _don't_ think. . . ."

The women faded away, and he was left to himself. After breakfast he thought that he would write to his father and give him an account of the thing that he had done; if he escaped suspicion he would tear it up.

Also he was determined on two things: one was that if he were accused of the crime, he would at once admit everything; the other was that he would do his utmost, until he was accused, to lead his life exactly as though he were in no way concerned. He had now an odd a.s.surance that it was not by his public condemnation that he was intended to work out the results of his act. Why was he so a.s.sured of that? What was it that was now so strangely moving him? He faced the world, armed, resolved. It seemed to him that it was important for him, now, to live. This was the first moment of his life that existence had appeared to be of any moment. He wanted time to continue his search.

He wrote to his father---

MY DEAR FATHER,---

I have just been arrested on the charge of murdering an undergraduate here called Carfax. It is quite true that I killed him. We met yesterday, in the country, quarrelled, and I struck him, hitting him on the chin. He fell instantly, breaking his neck. He was muck of the worst kind. I had known him at Rugby; he was always a beast of the lowest order. He was ruining a fellow here, taking his money, making him drink, doing for him; also ruining a girl in a tobacconist's shop. All this was no business of mine, but we had always loathed one another. I think when I hit him I wanted to kill him. I am not, in any way, sorry, except that suddenly I do not want to die. You are the only person in the world for whom I care; you will understand. I have not disgraced the name; it was killing a rat. I think that you had better not come to see me. I face it better alone. We have gone along well together, you and I. I send you my love. Good-bye, OLVA.

As he finished it, he wondered, Would this be sent? Would they come for him? Perhaps, at this moment, they had found the body. He put the letter carefully in the pocket of his s.h.i.+rt. Then, suddenly, he was confronted with the risk. Suppose that he were to be taken ill, to faint, to forget the thing. . . . No, the letter must wait. They would allow him to write, if the time came.

He took the letter, flung it into the fire, watched it burn. He felt as though, in the writing of it, he had communicated with his father. The old man would understand.

2

About eleven o'clock Craven came to see him. Craven's father had been a Fellow of Trinity and Professor of Chinese to the University. He had died some five years ago and now the widow and young Craven's sister lived in Cambridge. Craven had tried, during his first term, to make a friend of Olva, but his happy, eager att.i.tude to the whole world had seemed crude and even priggish to Olva's reserve, and all Craven's overtures had been refused, quietly, kindly, but firmly. Craven had not resented the repulse; it was not his habit to resent anything, and as the year had pa.s.sed, Olva had realized that Craven's impetuous desire for the friends.h.i.+p of the world was something in him perfectly natural and unforced. Olva had discovered also that Craven's devotion to his mother and sister was the boy's leading motive in life. Olva had only seen the girl, Margaret, once; she had been finis.h.i.+ng her education in Dresden, and he remembered her as dark, reserved, aloof--opposite indeed from her brother's cheerful good-fellows.h.i.+p. But for Rupert Craven this girl was his world; she was obviously cleverer, more temperamental than he, and he felt this and bowed to it.

These things Olva liked in him, and had the boy not been so intimate with Cardillac and Carfax, Olva might have made advances, Craven took a man of the Carfax type with extreme simplicity; he thought his geniality and physical strength excused much coa.r.s.eness and vulgarity. He was still young enough to have the Public School code--the most amazing thing in the history of the British nation--and because Carfax bruised his way as a forward through many football matches, and fought a policeman on Parker's Piece one summer evening, Rupert Craven thought him a jolly good fellow. Carfax also had had probably, at the bottom of his dirty, ign.o.ble soul, more honest affection for Craven than for any one in the world. He had tried to behave himself in that ingenuous youth's company.

Now young Craven, disturbed, unhappy, anxious, stood in Olva's door.

"I say, Dune, I hope I'm not disturbing you?"

"Not a bit."

"It's a rotten time to come." Craven came in and sat down. "I'm awfully worried."

"Worried?"

"Yes, about Carfax. No one knows what's happened to him. He may have gone up to town, of course, but if he did he went without an exeat.

Thompson saw him go out about two-thirty yesterday afternoon---was going to Grantchester, because he yelled it back to Cards, who asked him where he was off to--not been heard or seen since."

"Oh, he's sure to be all right," Olva said easily.

"He's up in town!"

"Yes, I expect he is, but I don't know that that makes it any better.

There's some woman he's been getting in a mess with I know--didn't say anything to me about it, but I heard of it from Cards."

"Well--" Olva slowly lit his pipe--"there's something else too. He was always in with a lot of these roughs in the town--stable men and the rest. He used to get tips from them, he always said, and he's had awful rows with some of them before now. You know what a temper he's got, especially when he's been drinking at all. I shouldn't wonder if he hadn't a fight one fine day and got landed on the chin, or something, and left."

"Oh! Carfax can look after himself all right. He's used to that kind of company."

Olva gazed, through the smoke of his pipe, dreamily into the fire.

"You don't like him," Craven said suddenly.

Olva turned slowly in his chair and looked at him. "Why! What makes you say that?"

"Something Carfax told me the other day. We were sitting one evening in his room and he suddenly said to me, 'You know there _is_ one fellow in this place who hates me like poison--always has hated me.' I asked him who it was. He said it was you. I was immensely surprised, because I'd always thought you very good friends--as good friends as you ever are with any one, Dune. You don't exactly take any of us to your breast, you know!"