The only man who could ever have claimed any possible rivalry was Dune, and Dune had seemed determined, until now, to avoid any-thing of the kind. Suddenly the situation leapt upon the startled eyes of the attentive world. Possibility of excitement. . . .

2

Olva, himself, was entirely unconcerned by this threatened rivalry. He was being driven, by impulses that he understood only too well, into the noisiest life that he could manage to find about him. The more noise the better; he had only a cold fear at his heart that, after all, it would penetrate his dreaded loneliness too little, let it be as loud a noise as he could possibly summon.

He had not now—and this was the more terrible—any consciousness of Carfax at all; there was waiting for him, lurking, beast-like, until its inevitable moment, something far more terrible.

Meanwhile he made encounters. . . . There was Bunning. The Historical Society in Saul's was held together by the Senior Tutor. This gentleman, a Mr. Gregg, was thin, cadaverous, blue-chinned, mildly insincere. It was his view of University life that undergraduates were born yesterday and would believe anything that you told them. In spite, however, of their tender years there was a lurking ferocity that must be checked by an indulgent heartiness of manner, as one might offer a nut to a monkey. His invariable manner of salutation—"Come along, Simter—the very man I wanted to see"—lost its attraction through much repetition, and the hearty assumption on the amiable gentleman's part that "we are all boys together" froze many undergraduates into a chill and indifferent silence. He had not taken Holy Orders, but he gave, nevertheless, the effect of adopting the language of the World, the Flesh and the Devil in order that he might the better spy out the land. He attracted, finally, to himself certain timid souls who preferred insincere comfort to none at all, but he was hotly rejected by more able-bodied persons.

Nevertheless the Historical Society prospered, and Olva one evening, driven he knew not by what impulse, attended its meeting. When he entered Mr. Gregg's room some dozen men were already seated there. The walls were hung with groups in which a younger and even thinner Mr. Gregg was displayed, a curious figure in "shorts." On one side of the room two oars were hung and over the mantelpiece (littered with pipes) there were photographs of the "Mona Lisa" and Da Vinci's "Last Supper." The men in the room were embarrassed and silent. Under a strong light a minute undergraduate with enormous spectacles sat, white and trembling; it was obviously he who was to read the paper.

Mr. Gregg came forward heartily. "Why, Dune, this is quite splendid! The very man! Why, it is long since you've honoured our humble gathering. Baccy? That's right. Help yourself. Erdington's going to read to us about the Huns and stand a fire of questions afterwards, aren't you, Erdington?"

The youth in spectacles gulped.

"That's right. That's right. Comfortable now, Dune? Got all you want? That's right. Now we can begin, I think. Minutes of the last meeting, Stevens."

Olva placed himself in a corner and looked round the room. He found that most of the men were freshmen whose faces he did not know, but there, moving his fat body uneasily on a chair, was Bunning, and there, to his intense surprise, was Lawrence. That football hero was lounging with half-closed eyes in a large armchair. His broad back looked as though it would burst the wooden arms, and his plain, good-natured face beamed, through a cloud of smoke, upon the company. Below his short, light grey flannel trousers were bright purple socks. He had the body of a bullock—short, thick, broad, strong, thoroughly well calculated to withstand the rushes of oncoming three-quarters. Various freshmen flung timid glances at the hero every now and again; it was to them an event that they might have, for a whole hour, closely under their observation, this king among men.

Olva wondered at his presence. He remembered that Lawrence was taking a "pass" degree in History. He knew also that Lawrence somewhere in the depths of his slow brain had a thirst for knowledge and at the same time a certain assurance that he would never acquire any. His slow voice, his slow smile, the great, heavy back, the short thick legs attracted Olva; there was something simple and primeval here that appealed to the Dune blood. Moreover, since the afternoon when Olva had played against the Harlequins and covered himself with glory, Lawrence had shown a disposition to make friends. Old Lawrence might be stupid, but, as a background, he was the most important man in the College. His slow, lumbering body as it rolled along the Court was followed by the eyes of countless freshmen. His appearance on the occasion of a College concert was the signal for an orgy of applause. Cardillac might lead the College, but he was, nevertheless, of common clay. Lawrence was of the gods!

Swift contrast the fat and shapeless Bunning! As the tremulous and almost tearful voice of little Erdington continued the solemn and dreary exposition of the Huns, Olva felt increasingly that Bunning's eye was upon him. Olva had not seen the creature since the night of the revival, and he was irritated with himself for the persistence of his interest. The man's pluck had, in the first place, struck him, but now it seemed to him that they were, in some undefinable measure, linked together. As Olva watched him, half contemptuously, half sarcastically, he tried to pin his brain down to the actual, definite connection. It seemed ultimately to hang round that dreadful evening when they had been together; it was almost—-although this was absurd—as though Bunning knew; but, in spite of the certain assurance of his ignorance Olva felt as he moved uneasily under Bunning's gaze that the man himself was making some claim upon him. It was evident that Bunning was unhappy; he looked as though he had not slept; his face was white and puffy, his eyes dark and heavy. He was paying no attention to the "Huns," but was trying, obviously, to catch Olva's eye. As the reading progressed Olva became more and more uneasy. It showed the things that must be happening to his nerves. He had now that sensation that had often come to him lately that some one was waiting for him outside the door. He imagined that the man next to him, a spotty, thin and restless freshman, would suddenly turn to him and say quite casually—"By the way, you killed Carfax, didn't you?" Above all he imagined himself suddenly rising in his place and saying—-"Yes, gentlemen, this is all very well, very interesting I'm sure, but I killed Carfax."

His tortured brain was being driven, compelled to these utterances. Behind him still he felt that pursuing cloud; one day it would catch him and, out of the heart of it, there would leap . . .

And all this because Bunning looked at him. It was becoming now a habit—so general that it was instinctive—that, almost unconsciously, he should, at a point like this, pull at his nerves. "They are watching you; they are watching you. Don't let them see you like this; pull yourself together. . . ."

He did. Little Erdington's voice ceased. Mr. Gregg was heard saying: "It has always occurred to me that the Huns . . . " and then, after many speeches: "How does this point of view strike you, Erdington?"

It didn't strike Erdington very strongly, and there was no other person present who seemed to be struck in any very especial direction. The discussion, therefore, quickly flagged. Olva escaped Bunning's pleading eyes, found his gown amongst a heap in the corner, and avoiding Mr. Gregg's pressing invitation to stay, plunged down the stairs. Behind him, then, making his heart leap into his mouth, was a slow, thick voice.

"I say, Dune, what do you say to a little drink in my room after all that muck?" Above him, in the dark shadow of the stair, loomed Lawrence's thick body.

"I shall be delighted," Olva said.

Lawrence came lumbering down. He always spoke as though words were a difficulty to him. He left out any word that was not of vital necessity.

"Muck that-awful muck. What do they want gettin' a piffler like that kid in the glasses to read his ideas? Ain't got any—not one—no more 'an I have."

They reached the Court—it swam softly in the moonlight—stars burnt, here and there, in a trembling sky.

Lawrence put his great arm through Olva's. "Rippin' game that o' yours yesterday. Rippin'." He seemed to lick his lips over it as a gourmet over a delicate dish.

Lawrence pursued his slow thoughts.

"I say, you know, you—re one of these clever ones—thinkin' an' writin' an' all that—an' yet you play footer like an archangel—a blarsted archangel. Lucky devil!" He sighed heavily. "Every time I put on my footer boots," he pursued, "I say to myself, 'What you'd be givin', Jerry Lawrence, if you could just go and write a book! What you'd give! But it ain't likely—my spellin's somethin' shockin'."

Here there was interruption. Several men came rattling; laughing and shouting, down the staircase behind Lawrence and Olva.

"Oh, damn!" said Lawrence, slowly turning round upon them. Cardillac was there, also Bobby Galleon, Rupert Craven, and one or two more.

Cardillac shouted. "Hullo, Lawrence, old man. Is it true, as they say, that you've been sitting at the feet of our dearly beloved Gregg? How splendid for you!"

"I've been at our Historical Society hearin' about the Huns, and therefore there's compellin' necessity for a drink," Lawrence said, moving in the direction of his room.

"Oh! rot, don't go in yet. We're thinking of going round and paying Bunning a visit in another ten minutes. He's going to have a whole lot of men in for a prayer-meeting. Thompson's just brought word."

Thompson, a wretched creature in the Second Year, who had, during his first term, been of the pious persuasion and had since turned traitor, offered an eager assurance.

The news obviously tempted Lawrence. He moved his body slowly round.

"Well," he said slowly, then he turned to Olva. "You'll come?" he said.

"No, thanks," said Olva shortly. "Bunning's been ragged about enough. There's nothing the matter with the man."

Cardillac's voice was amused. "Well, Dune, I daresay we can get on without you," he said.

Lawrence said slowly, "Well, I don't know. P'raps it's mean on the man. I want a drink. I don't think I'm havin' any to-night, Cards."

Cardillac was sharper. "Oh, nonsense, Lawrence, come along. It doesn't do the man any harm."

"It frightens the fellow out of his wits," said Dune sharply. "You wouldn't like it yourself if you had a dozen fellows tumbling down upon your rooms and chucking your things out of the window."

Rupert Craven said: "Well, I'm off anyhow. Work for me." He vanished into the shadow.

Lawrence nodded. "Good-bye, Cards, old man. Go and play your old bridge or something—leave the wretched Bunnin' to his prayers."

Lawrence and Olva moved away.

3

The first thing that Lawrence said when they were lounging comfortably in his worn but friendly chairs hit Olva, expecting peace here at any rate, like a blow.

"Fellers have forgotten Carfax damn quick."

In that good-natured face there was no suspicion, but Olva seemed to see there a curiosity, even an excitement.

"Yes," he said, "they have."

"Fellers," said Lawrence again, "aren't clever in this College. They get their firsts in Science—little measly pups from Board Schools who don't clean their teeth—and there are one or two men who can row a bit and play footer a bit and play cricket a bit—I grant you all that—but they aren't clever—not what I call clever."

Olva waited for the development of Lawrence's brain.

"Now at St. Martin's they'll talk. They'll sit round a fire the whole blessed evenin' talkin'—about whether there's a God or isn't a God, about whether they're there or aren't there, about whether women are rotten or not, about jolly old Greece and jolly old Rome—I know. That's the sort o' stuff you could go in for—damn interestin'. I'd like to listen to a bit of it, although they'd laugh if they heard me say so, but what I'm gettin' at is that there ain't any clever fellers in this old bundle o' bricks, and Carfax's death proves it."

"How does it prove it?" asked Dune.

"Why, don't you see, they'd have made more of Carfax. Nobody said a blessed thing that any one mightn't have said."

Lawrence thought heavily for a moment or two, and then he brought out—

"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 God. 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 God made—if you break one . . ."

Lawrence tuned heavily in his chair.

"Then you believe in God?"

"Yes, I believe in God."

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."

Olva turned on the electric light. At the same moment there was a loud knock on the door.

Craven opened it, showing in the doorway a pale and flustered Bunning. Craven looked at him with a surprised stare, and then, calling out good-bye to Olva, walked off.

Bunning stood hesitating, his great spectacles shining owl-like in the light.

Dune didn't want him. He was, he reflected as he looked at him, the very last person whom he did want. And then Bunning had most irritating habits. There was that trick of his of pushing up his spectacles nervously higher on to his nose. He bad a silly shrill laugh, and he had that lack of tact that made him, when you had given him a shilling's worth of conversation and confidence, suppose that you had given him half-a-crown's worth and expect that you would very shortly give him five shillings' worth. He presumed on nothing at all, was confidential when he ought to have been silent, and gushing when he should simply have thanked you with a smile. Nothing, moreover, to look at. He had the kind of complexion that looks as though it would break into spots at the earliest opportunity. His clothes fitted him badly and were dusty at the knees; his hair was of no colour nor strength whatever, and he bit his nails. His eyes behind his spectacles were watery and restless, and his linen always looked as though it had been quite clean yesterday and would be quite filthy to-morrow.

And yet Olva, as he looked at him seated awkwardly in a chair, was surprisingly, unexpectedly touched. The creature was so obviously sincere. It was indeed poor Bunning's only possible "leg," his ardour. He would willingly go to the stake for anything. It was the actual death and sacrifice that mattered—-and Bunning's life was spent in marching, magnificently and wholeheartedly, to the sacrificial altars and then discovering that he had simply been asked to tea.

Now it was evident that he wanted something from Olva. His tremulous eyes bad, as they gazed at Dune across the room, the dumb worship of a dog adoring its master.

"I hear," he said in that husky voice that always sounded as though he were just swallowing the last crumbs of a piece of toast, "that you stopped Cardillac and the others coming round to my rooms the other night. I can't tell you how I feel about it."

"Rot," said Olva brusquely. "If you were less of an ass they wouldn't want to come round to your rooms so often."

"I know," said Bunning. "I am an awful ass." He pushed his spectacles up his nose. "Why did you stop them coming?" he asked.

"Simply," said Olva, "because it seems to me that ten men on to one is a rotten poor game."

"I don't know," said Bunning, still very husky, "If a man's a fool he gets rotted. That's natural enough. I've always been rotted all my life. I used to think it was because people didn't understand me—now I know that it really is because I am an ass."

Strangely, suddenly, some of the burden that bad been upon Olva now for so long was lifted. The atmosphere of the room that had lain upon him so heavily was lighter—and he seemed to feel the gentle withdrawing of that pursuit that now, ever, night and day, sounded in his ears.

And what, above all, had happened to him? He flung his mind back to a month ago. With what scorn then would he have glanced at Bunning's ugly body—with what impatience have listened to his pitiful confessions. Now he said gently—

"Tell me about yourself."

Bunning gulped and gripped the baggy knees of his trousers.

"I'm very unhappy," he said at last desperately—"very. And if you hadn't come with me the other night to hear Med-Tetloe—I'm sure I don't know why you did—I shouldn't have come now—-"

"Well, what's the matter?"

Bunning's mouth was full of toast. "It was that night—that service. I was very worked up and I went round afterwards to speak to him. I could see, you know, that it hadn't touched you at all. I could see that, and then when I went round to see him he hadn't got anything to say—nothing that I wanted—and—suddenly—then—at that moment—I felt it was all no good. It was you, you made me feel like that—-"

"I?"

"Yes. If you hadn't gone—like that—it would have been different. But when you—the last man in College to care about it-went and gave it its chance I thought that would prove it. And then when I went to him he was so silly, Med-Tetloe I mean. Oh! I can't describe it but it was just no use and I began to feel that it was all no good. I don't believe there is a God at all—it's all been wrong—I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go. I've been wretched for days, not sleeping or anything. And then they come and rag me—and—and—the Union men want me to take Cards round for a Prayer Meeting—and—and—I wouldn't, and they said. . . . Oh! I don't know, I don't know what to do—I haven't got any-thing left!"

And here, to Olva's intense dismay, the wretched creature burst into the most passionate and desperate tears, putting his great hands over his face, his whole body sobbing. It was desolation—the desolation of a human being who had clutched desperately at hope after hope, who had demanded urgently that he should be given something to live for and had had all things snatched from his hands.

Olva, knowing what his own loneliness was, and the terror of it, understood. A fortnight ago he would have hated the scene, have sent Bunning, with a cutting word, flying from the room, never to return.

"I say, Bunning, you mustn't carry on like this—you're overdone or something. Besides, I don't understand. What does it matter if you have grown to distrust Med-Tetloe and all that crowd. They aren't the only people in the world—that isn't the only sort of religion."

"It's all I had. I haven't got anything now. They don't want me at home. They don't want me here. I'm not clever. I can't do anything. . . . And now God's gone. . . . I think I'll drown myself."

"Nonsense. You mustn't talk like that—God's never gone."

Bunning dropped his hands, looked up, his face ridiculous with its tear-stains.

"You think there's a God?"

"I know there's a God."

"Oh!" Bunning sighed.

"But you mustn't take it from me, you know. You must think it out for yourself. Everybody has to."

"Yes—but you matter—more to me than—any one."

"I?"

"Yes." Bunning looked at the floor and began to speak very fast. "You've always seemed to me wonderful—so different from every one else. You always looked—so wonderful. I've always been like that, wanted my hero, and I haven't generally been able to speak to them—my heroes I mean. I never thought, of course, that I should speak to you. And then they sent me that day to you, and you came with me—it was so wonderful—I've thought of nothing else since. I don't think God would matter if you'd only let me come to see you sometimes and talk to you—like this."

"Don't talk that sort of rot. Always glad to see you. Of course you may come in and talk if you wish."

"Oh! you're so different—from what I thought. You always looked as though you despised everybody—and now you look—Oh! I don't know—but I'm afraid of you—-"

The wretched Bunning was swiftly regaining confidence. He was now, of course, about to plunge a great deal farther than was necessary and to burden Olva with sell-revelations and the rest.

Olva hurriedly broke in—

"Well, come and see me when you want to. I've got a lot of work to do before Hall. But we'll go for a walk one day. . . ."

Bunning was at once flung back on to his timid self. He pushed his spectacles back, blushed, nearly tumbled over his chair as he got up, and backed confusedly out of the room.

He tried to say something at the door—"I can't thank you enough. . ." he stuttered and was gone.

As the door closed behind him, swiftly Olva was conscious again of the Pursuit. . . .

He turned to the empty room—"Leave me alone," he whispered. "For pity's sake leave me alone."

The silence that followed was filled with insistent, mysterious urgency.

2

Craven did not come that night to Hall. Galleon had asked him and Olva to breakfast-the next morning. He did not appear.

About two o'clock in the afternoon a note was sent round to Olva's rooms. "I've been rather seedy. Just out for a long walk—do you mind my taking Bunker? Send word round to my rooms if you mind.—R. C." Craven had taken Bunker out for walks before and had grown fond of the dog. There was nothing in that. But Olva, as he stood in the middle of his room with the note in his hand, was frightened.

The result of it was that about five o'clock on that afternoon Olva paid his second visit to the dark house in Rocket Road. His motives for going were confused, but he knew that at the back of them was a desire that he should find Margaret Craven, with her grave eyes, waiting for him in the musty little drawing-room, and that Mrs. Craven, that mysterious woman, should not be there. The hall, when the old servant had admitted him, once again seemed to enfold him in its darkness and heavy air with an almost active purpose. It breathed with an actual sound, almost with a melody . . . the "Valse Triste" of Sibelius, a favourite with Olva, seemed to him now to be humming its thin spiral note amongst the skins and Chinese weapons that covered the walls. The House seemed to come forward, on this second occasion, actively, personally. . . . His wish was gratified. Margaret Craven was alone in the dark, low-ceilinged drawing-room, standing, in her black dress, before the great deep fireplace, as though she had known that he would come and had been awaiting his arrival.

"I know that you will excuse my mother," she said in her grave, quiet voice. "She is not very well. She will be sorry not to have seen you." Her hand was cool and strong, and, as he held it for an instant, he was strangely conscious that she, as well as the House, had moved into more intimate relation with him since their last meeting.

They sat down and talked quietly, their voices sounding like low notes of music in the heavy room. He was conscious of rest in the repose of her figure, the pale outline of her face, the even voice, and above all the grave tenderness of her eyes. He was aware, too, that she was demanding from him something of the same kind; he divined that for her, too, life had been no easy thing since they last met and that she wanted now a little relief before she must return. He tried to give it her.

All through their conversation he was still conscious in the dim rustle that any breeze made in the room of that thin melody that Sibelius once heard. . . .

"I hope that Mrs. Craven is not seriously ill?

"No. It is one of her headaches. Her nerves are very easily upset. There was a thunder-storm last night. . . . She has never been strong since father died."

"You will tell her how sorry I am."

"Thank you. She is wonderfully brave about it. She never complains—she suffers more than we know, I think. I don't think this house is good for her. Father died here and her bedroom now is the room where he died. That is not good for her, I'm sure. Rupert and I both are agreed about it, but we cannot get her to change her mind. She can be very determined."

Yes—Olva, remembering her as she sat so sternly before the fire, knew that she could be determined.

"And I am afraid that your brother isn't very well either."

She looked at him with troubled eyes. "I am distressed about Rupert. He has taken this death of his friend so terribly to heart. I have never known him morbid about anything before. It is really strange because I don't think he was greatly attached to Mr. Carfax. There were things I know that he didn't like."

"Yes. He doesn't look the kind of fellow who would let his mind dwell on things. He looks too healthy."

"No. He came in to see us for an hour last night and sat there without a word. I played to him—he seemed not to hear it. And generally he cares for music."

"I'm afraid"—their eyes met and Olva held hers until he had finished his sentence—"I'm afraid that it must seem a little lonely and gloomy for you here—in this house—after your years abroad."

She looked away from him into the fire.

"Yes," she said, speaking with sudden intensity. "I hate it. I have hated it always—this house, Cambridge, the life we lead here. I love my mother, but since I have been abroad something has happened to change her. There is no confidence between us now. And it is lonely because she speaks so little—I am afraid she is really very ill, but she refuses to see a doctor. . . ."

Then her voice was softer again, and she leant forward a little towards him. "And I have told you this, Mr. Dune, because if you will you can help me—all of us. Do you know that she liked you immensely the other even big? I have never known her take to any one at once, so strongly. She told me afterwards that you had done her more good than fifty doctors—just your being there—so that if, sometimes, you could come and see her——"

He did not know what it was that suddenly, at her words, brought the terror back to him. He saw Mrs. Craven so upright, so motionless, looking at him across the room—with recognition, with some implied claim. Why, he had spoken scarcely ten words to her. How could he possibly have been of any use to her? And then, afraid lest his momentary pause had been noticeable, he said eagerly—-

"It is very kind of Mrs. Craven to say that. Of course I will come if she really cares about it. I am not a man of many friends or many occupations. . . ."

She broke in upon him—

"You could be if you cared. I know, because Rupert has told me. They all think you wonderful, but you don't care. Don't throw away friends, Mr. Dune—one can be so lonely without them."

Her voice shook a little and he was suddenly afraid that she was going to cry. He bent towards her.

"I think, perhaps, we are alike in that, Miss Craven. We do not make our friends easily, but they mean a great deal to us when they come. Yes, I am lonely and I am a little tired of bearing my worries alone, in silence. Perhaps I can help you to stand this life a little better if I tell you that—mine is every bit as hard."

She turned to him eyes that were filled with gratitude. Her whole body seemed to be touched with some new glow. Into the heart of their consciousness of the situation that had arisen between them there came, sharply, the sound of a shutting door. Then steps in the hall.

"That's Rupert," she said.

They both rose as he came into the room. He stood back in the shadow for a moment as though surprised at Olva's presence. Then he came forward very gravely.

"I've found something of yours, Dune," he said. It lay, gleaming, in his hand. "Your matchbox."

Dune drew a sharp breath. Then he took it and looked at it.

"Where did you find it?"

"In Saunet Wood. Bunker and I have been for a walk there. Bunker found it."

As the three of them stood there, motionless, in the middle of the dark room, Olva caught, through the open door, the last sad fading breath of the "Valse Triste."



CHAPTER VII

TERROR

1

That night the cold fell, like a plague, upon the town. It came, sweeping across the long low flats, crisping the dark canals with white frosted ice, stiffening the thin reeds at the river's edge, taking each blade of grass and holding it in its iron hand and then leaving it an independent thing of cold and shining beauty. At last it blew in wild gales down the narrow streets, throwing the colour of those grey walls against a sky of the sharpest blue, making of each glittering star a frozen eye, carrying in its arms a round red sun that it might fasten it, like a frosted orange, against its hard blue canopy.

Already now, at half-past two of the afternoon, there were signs of the early dusk. The blue was slowly being drained from the sky, and against the low horizon a faint golden shadow soon to burn into the heart of the cold blue, was hovering.

Olva Dune, turning into the King's Parade, was conscious of crowds of people, of a gaiety and life that filled the air with sound. He checked sternly with a furious exercise of self-control his impulse to creep back into the narrow streets that he had just left.

"It's an Idea," he repeated over and over, as he stood there. "It's an Idea. . . . You are like any one else—you are as you were . . . before . . . everything. There is no mark—no one knows."

For it seemed to him that above him, around him, always before him and behind him there was a grey shadow, and that as men approached him this shadow, bending, whispered, and, as they came to him, they flung at him a frightened glance . . . and passed.

If only he might take the arm of any one of those bright and careless young men and say to him, "I killed Carfax—thus and thus it was." Oh! the relief! the lifting of the weight! For then—and only then—this pursuing Shadow, so strangely grave, not cruel, but only relentless, would step back. Because that confession—how clearly he knew it!—was the thing that God demanded. So long as he kept silence he resisted the Pursuer—so long as he resisted the Pursuer he must fly, he must escape—first into Silence, then into Sound, then back again to Silence. Somewhere, behind his actual consciousness: there was the knowledge that, did he once yield himself, life would be well, but that yielding meant Confession, Renunciation, Devotion. It was not because it was Carfax that he had killed, but it was because it was God that had spoken to him, that he fled.

A fortnight ago he would have been already defeated—the Pursuer should have caught him, bound him, done with him as he would. But now—in that same instant that young Craven had looked at him with challenge in his eyes, in that instant also he, Olva, had looked at Margaret.

In that silence, yesterday evening, in the dark drawing-room the two facts had together leapt at him—he loved Margaret Craven, he was suspected by Rupert Craven. Love had thus, terribly, grimly, and yet so wonderfully, sprung into his heart that had never, until now, known its lightest touch. Because of it—because Margaret Craven must never know what he had done—he must fight Craven, must lie and twist and turn. . . . His soul must belong to Margaret Craven, not to this terrible, unperturbed, pursuing God.

All night he had fought for control. A very little more and he would rush crying his secret to the whole world; slowly he had summoned calm back to him. Rupert Craven should be defeated; he would, quietly, visit Sannet Wood, face it in its naked fact, stand before it and examine it—and fight down once and for all this imagination of God.

Those glances that men flung upon him, that sudden raising of the eyes to his face . . . a man greeted him, another man waved his hand always this same suspicion . . . the great grey shadow that bent and whispered in their ears.

He saw, too, another picture. High above him some great power was seated, and down to earth there bent a mighty Hand. Into this Hand very gently, very tenderly, certain figures were drawn—Mrs. Craven, Margaret, Rupert, Bunning, even Lawrence. Olva was dragging with him, into the heart of some terrible climax, these so diverse persons; he could not escape now—other lives were twisted into the fabric of his own.

And yet with this certainty of the futility of it, he must still struggle . . . to the very end.

On that cold day the world seemed to stand, as men gather about a coursing match, with hard eyes and jeering faces to watch the hopeless flight. . . .

2

He fetched Banker from the stable where he was kept and set off along the hard white road. He had behaved very badly to Bunker, a but the dog showed no signs of delight at his release. On other days when he had been kept in his stable for a considerable time he had gone mad with joy and jumped at his master, wagging his whole body in excitement. Now he walked very slowly by Olva's side, a little way behind him; when Olva spoke to him he wagged his tail, but as though it were duty that impelled it.

The air grew colder aid colder—slowly now there had stolen on to the heart of the blue sky white pinnacles of cloud—a dazzling whiteness, but catching, mysteriously, the shadow of the gold light that heralded the setting sun. These clouds were charged with snow; as they hung there they seemed to radiate from their depths an even more piercing coldness. They hung above Olva like a vast mountain range and had in their outline so sharp and real an existence that they were part of the hard black horizon, rising, immediately, out of the long, low, shivering flats.

There was no sound in all the world; behind him, sharply, the Cambridge towers bit the sky—before him like a clenched hand was the little wood.

The silence seemed to have a rhythm and voice of its own so that if one listened, quite clearly the tramp of a marching army came over the level ground. Always an army marching—and when suddenly a bird rose from the canal with a sharp cry the tramping was caught, with the bird, for an instant, into the air, and then when the cry was ended sank down again. The wood enlarged; it lay upon the cold land now like a man's head; a man with a cap. Spaces between the trees were eyes and it seemed that he was lying behind the rim of the world and leaning his head upon the edge of it and gazing. . . .

Bunker suddenly stopped and looked up at his master.

"Come on," Olva turned on to him sharply.

The dog looked at him, pleading. Then in Olva's dark stern face he seemed to see that there was no relenting—that wood must be faced. He moved forward again, but slowly, reluctantly. All this nonsense that Lawrence had talked about Druids. We will soon see what to make of that. And yet, in the wood, it did seem as though there were something waiting. It was now no longer a man's head—only a dark, melancholy band of trees, dead black now against the high white clouds.

There had risen in Olva the fighting spirit. Fear was still there, ghastly fear, but also an anger, a rage. Why should he be thus tormented? What had he done? Who was Carfax that the slaying of him should be so unforgettable a sin? Moreover, had it been the mere vulgar hauntings of remorse, terrors of a frightened conscience, he could have turned upon himself the contempt that any Dune must deserve for so ignoble a submission.

But here there were other things—some-thing that no human resolution could combat. He seized then eagerly on the things that he could conquer—the suspicions of Rupert Craven, the rivalry of Cardillac, the confidences of Bunning, . . . the grave tenderness of Margaret Craven . . . these things he would clutch and hold, let the Pursuing Spirits do what they would.

As he entered the dark wood a few flakes of snow were falling. He knew where the Druid Stones lay. He had once been shown them by some undergraduate interested in such things. They lay a little to the right, below the little crooked path and above the Hollow.

The wood was not dripping now—held in the iron hand of the frost the very leaves on the ground seemed to be made of metal; the bare twisted branches of the trees shone with frosty—the earth crackled beneath his foot and in the wood's silence, when he broke a twig with his boot the sound shot into the air and rang against the listening stillness.

He looked at the Hollow, Bunker close at his heels. He could see the spot where he had first stood, talking to Carfax—there where the ferns now glistened with silver. There was the place where Carfax had fallen. Bunker was smelling with his head down at the ground. What did the dog remember? What had Craven meant when he said that Bunker had found the matchbox?

He stood silently looking down at the Hollow. In his heart now there was no terror. When, during these last days, he had been fighting his fear it had always seemed to him that the heart of it lay in this Hollow. He had always seen the dripping fern, smelt the wet earth, heard the sound of the mist falling from the trees. Now the earth was clear and hard and cold. The great white mountains drove higher into the sky, very softly and gently a few white flakes were falling.

With a great relief, almost a sigh of thank-fulness, he turned back to the Druids' Stones. There they were—two of them standing upright, stained with lichen, grey and weather-beaten, one lying flat, hollowed a little in the centre. The ferns stood above them and the bare branches of the trees crossed in strange shapes against the sky.

Here, too, there was a peaceful, restful silence. No more was God in these quiet stones than He had been in that noisy theatrical Revival Meeting—Lawrence was wrong. Those old religions were dead. No more could the Greek Gods pass smiling into the temples of their worshippers, no more Wodin, Thor and the rest may demand their bloody sacrifice.

These old stones are dead. The Gods are dead—but God? . . .

He stayed there for a while and the snow fell more heavily. The golden light had faded, the high white clouds had swallowed the blue. There would soon be storm.

In the wood—strangest of ironies—there had been peace.

Now he started down the road again and was conscious, as the wood slipped back into distance, of some vague alarm.

3

The world was now rapidly transformed. There had been promised a blaze of glory, but the sun, red and angry, had been drowned by the thick grey clouds that now flooded the air—dimly seen for an instant outlined against the grey—then suddenly non-existent, leaving a world like a piece of crumpled paper white and dark to all its boundaries.

The snow fell now more swiftly but always gently, imperturbably—almost it might seem with the whispering intention of some important message.

Olva was intensely cold. He buttoned his coat tightly up to his ears, but nevertheless the air was so biting that it hurt. Bunker, with his head down, drove against the snow that was coming now ever more thickly.

The peace that there had been in the little wood was now utterly gone. The air seemed full of voices. They came with the snow, and as the flakes blew more closely against his face and coat there seemed to press about him a multitude of persons.

He drove forward, but this sense of oppression increased with every step. The wood had been swallowed by the storm. Olva felt like a man who has long been struggling with some vice; insidiously the temptation has grown in force and power—his brain, once so active in the struggle, is now dimmed and dulled. His power of resistance, once so vigorous, is now confused—confusion grows to paralysis—he can only now stare, distressed, at the dark temptation, there have swept over him such strong waters that struggle is no longer of avail—one last clutch at the vice, one last desperate and hateful pleasure, and he is gone. . . .

Olva knew that behind him in the storm the Pursuit was again upon him. That brief respite in the wood had not been long granted him. The snow choked him, blinded him, his body was desperately cold, his soul trembling with fear. On every side he was surrounded—the world had vanished, only the thin grey body of his dog, panting at his side, could be dimly seen.

God had not been in the wood, but God was in the storm. . . .

A last desperate resistance held him. He stayed where he was and shouted against the blinding snow.

"There is no God. . . . There is no God."

Suddenly his voice sank to a whisper. "There is no God," he muttered.

The dog was standing, his eyes wide with terror, his feet apart, his body quivering.

Olva gazed into the storm. Then, desperately, he started to run. . . .



CHAPTER VIII

REVELATION OF BUNNING (I)

1

On that evening the College Debating Society exercised its mind over the question of Naval Defence.

One gentleman, timid of voice, uncertain in wit, easily dismayed by the derisive laughter of the opposite party, asserted that "This House considers the Naval policy of the present Government fatal to the country's best interests." An eager politician, with a shrill voice and a torrent of words, denied this statement. The College, with the exception of certain gentlemen destined for the Church (they had been told by their parents to speak on every possible public occasion in order to be ready for a prospective pulpit), displayed a sublime and somnolent indifference. The four gentlemen on the paper had prepared their speeches beforehand and were armed with notes and a certain nervous fluency. For the rest, the question was but slightly assisted. The prospective members of the Church thought of many things to say until they rose to their feet when they could only remember "that the last gentleman's speech bad been the most preposterous thing they had ever had the pleasure of listening to—and that, er—er—the Navy was all right, and, er—if the gentleman who had spoken last but two thought it wasn't, well, all they—er—could say was that it reminded them—er—of a story they had once heard (here follows story without point, conclusion or brevity)—and—er—in fact the Navy was all right. . . ."

The Debate, in short, was languishing when Dune and Cardillac entered the room together. Here was an amazing thing.

It was well known that only last night Cardillac and Dune had both been proposed for the office of President of the Wolves. The Wolves, a society of twelve founded for the purpose of dining well and dressing beautifully, was by far the smartest thing that Saul's possessed. It was famous throughout the University for the noise and extravagance of its dinners, and you might not belong to it unless you had played for the University on at least one occasion in some game or another and unless, be it understood, you were, in yourself, quite immensely desirable. Towards the end of every Christmas term a President for the ensuing year was elected; he must be a second year man, and it was considered by the whole college that this was the highest honour that the gods could possibly, during your stay at Cambridge, confer upon you. Even the members of the Christian Union, horrified though they were by the amount of wine that was drunk on dining occasions and the consequent peril to their own goods and chattels, bowed to the shining splendour of the fortunate hero. It had never yet been known that a President of the Wolves should also be a member of the Christian Union, but one must never despair, and nets, the most attractive and genial of nets, were flung to catch the great man.

On the present occasion it had been generally understood that Cardillac would be elected without any possible opposition. Dune had not for a moment occurred to any one. He had; during his first term, when his football prowess had passed, swinging through the University, been elected to the Wolves, but he had only attended one dinner and had then remained severely and unpleasantly sober. There was no other possible rival to Cardillac, to his distinction, his power of witty and malicious after-dinner speaking, his wonderful clothes, his admirable football, his haughty indifference. He would of course be elected.

And then, some three weeks ago, this wonderful, unexpected development of Olva Dune had startled the world. His football, his sudden geniality (he had been seen, it was asserted, at one of Med-Tetloe's revival meetings with, of all people in the world, Bunning), his air of being able to do anything whatever if he wished to exert himself, here was a character indeed—so wonderful that it was felt, even by the most patriotic of Saulines, that he ought, in reality, to have belonged to St. Martin's.

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 worship. 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 tittering, stammering apology for having burdened so long with his hapless clamour, the Debate.

2

Olva liked Cardillac—Cardillac liked Olva. They both in their attitude 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 God that he was so alone. He could not touch his human companions, he could scarcely see them. It was through this isolation that God 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 passed 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 gassing." 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 glass 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 principal 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 shirt.

"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, blushing 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 shirts and things aren't clean. . . . You don't mind my telling you, do you?"

"No, I like it, Nobody'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 Yorkshire. 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 passion! Bunning seemed, for an instant, to be quite vigorous.

"That's why I'm so untidy now," Bunning went desperately on; "nobody 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 God 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."

"Why didn't you talk to your mother about it?—

"I did. But they were always too busy with missions and things. And then there was my elder brother. He understood about God and went to all the Bible meetings and things, and he was always so neat-never dirty—I used to wonder how he did it . . . always so neat."

Bunning took off his great spectacles and wiped them with a very dirty handkerchief.

"And had you no friends?"

"None—nobody. I didn't want them after a bit. I was afraid of everybody. I used to go down all the side-streets between school and home for fear lest I should meet some one. I was always very nervous as a boy—very. I still am."

"Nervous of people?"

"Yes, of everybody. And of things, too—things. I still am. You'd be surprised. . . . It's odd because none of the other Bunnings are nervous. I used to have fancies about God."

"What sort of fancies?"

"I used to see Him when I was in bed like a great big shadow, all up against the wall. A grey shadow with his head ever so high. That's how I used to think of Him. I expect that all sounds nonsense to you."

"No, not at all!" said Olva.

"I think they thought me nearly an idiot at home—not sane at all. But they didn't think of me very often. They used to apologise for me when people came to tea. I wasn't clever, of course—that's why they thought I'd make a good parson."

He paused—then very nervously he went on. "But now I've met you I shan't be. Nothing can make me. I've always watched you. I used to look at you in chapel. You're just as different from me as any one can be, and that's why you're like God to me. I don't want you to be decent to me. I think I'd rather you weren't. But I like to come in sometimes and hear you say that I'm dirty and untidy. That shows that you've noticed."

"But I'm not at all the sort of person to make a hero of," Olva said hurriedly. "I don't want you to feel like that about we. That's all sentimentality. You mustn't feel like that about anybody. You must stand on your own legs."

"I never have," said Burning, very solemnly, "and I never will. I've always had somebody to make a hero of. I would love to die for you, I would really. It's the only sort of thing that I can do, because I'm not clever. I know you think me very stupid."

"Yes, I do," said Olva, "and you mustn't talk like a schoolgirl. If we're friends and I let you come in here, you mustn't let your vest come over your cuffs and you must take those spots off your waistcoat, and brush your hair and clean your nails, and you must just be sensible and have a little humour. Why don't you play football?"

"I can't play games, I'm very shortsighted."

"Well, you must take some sort of exercise. Run round Parker's Piece or something, or go and run at Fenner's. You'll get so fat."

"I am getting fat. I don't think it matters much what I look like."

"It matters what every one looks like. And now you'd better cut. I've got to go out and see a man."

Burning submissively rose. He said no more but bundled out of the door in his usual untidy fashion. Olva came after him and banged his "oak" behind him. In Outer Court, looking now so vast and solemn in the silence of its snow, Bunning, stopping, pointed to the grey buildings that towered over them.

"It was against a wall like that that I used to imagine God—on a night like this—you'll think that very silly." He hurriedly added, "There's Marshall coming. I know he'll be at me about those Christian Union Cards. Good-night." He vanished.

But it was not Marshall. It was Rupert Craven. The boy was walking hurriedly, his eyes on the ground. He was suddenly conscious of some one and looked up. The change in him was extraordinary. His eyes had the heavy, dazed look of one who has not slept for weeks. His face was a yellow white, his hair unbrushed, and his mouth moved restlessly. He started when he saw Olva.

"Hallo, Craven. You're looking seedy. What's the matter?"

"Nothing, thanks. . . . Good-night."

"No, but wait a minute. Come up to my rooms and have some coffee. I haven't seen you for days."

A fortnight ago Craven would have accepted with joy. Now he shook his head.

"No, thanks. I'm tired: I haven't been sleeping very well."

"Why's that? Overwork?"

"No, it's nothing. I don't know why it is."

"You ought to see somebody. I know what not sleeping means."

"Why? . . . Are you sleeping badly?" Craven's eyes met Olva's.

"No, I'm splendid, thanks. But I had a bout of insomnia years ago. I shan't forget it."

"You look all right." Cravan's eyes were busily searching Olva's face. Then suddenly they dropped.

"I'm all right," he said hurriedly. "Tired, that's all."

"Why do you never come and see me now?"

"Oh, I will come—sometime. I'm busy."

"What about?"

Olva stood, a stern dark figure, against the snow.

"Oh, just busy." Craven suddenly looked up as though he were going to ask Olva a question. Then he apparently changed his mind, muttered a good-night and disappeared round the corner of the building.

Olva was alone in the Court. From some room came the sound of voices and laughter, from some other room a piano—some one called a name in Little Court. A sheet of stars drew the white light from the snow to heaven.

Olva turned very slowly and entered his black stairway.

In his heart he was crying, "How long can I stand this? Another day? Another hour? This loneliness. . . . I must break it. I must tell some one. I must tell some one."

As he entered his room he thought that he saw against the farther wall an old gilt mirror and in the light of it a dark figure facing him; a voice, heavy with some great overburdening sorrow, spoke to him.

"How terrible a thing it is to be alone with God!"



CHAPTER IX

REVELATION OF BUNNING (II)

1

The next day the frost broke, and after a practice game on the Saul's ground, in preparation for a rugby match at the end of the week, Olva, bathed and feeling physically a fine, overwhelming fitness, went to see Margaret Craven.

This sense of his physical well-being was extraordinary. Mentally he was nearly beaten, almost at the limit of his endurance. Spiritually the catastrophe hovered more closely above him at every advancing moment, but, physically, he had never, in all his life before, felt such magnificent health. He had been sleeping badly now for weeks. He had been eating very little, but he felt no weariness, no faintness. It was as though his body were urging upon him the importance of his resistance, as though he were perceiving, too, with unmistakable clearness the cleavage that there was between body and soul. And indeed this vigour did give him an energy to set about the numberless things that he had arranged to fill every moment of his day—the many little tinkling bells that he had set going to hide the urgent whisper of that other voice. He carried his day through with a rush, a whirl, so that he might be in bed again at night almost before he had finished his dressing in the morning—no pause, no opportunity for silence. . . .

And now he must see Margaret Craven, see her for herself, but also see her to talk to her about her brother. How much did Rupert Craven know? How much—and here was the one tremendous question—had he told his sister? As Olva waited, once again, in the musty hall, saw once more the dim red glass of the distant window, smelt again the scent of oranges, his heart was beating so that he could not hear the old woman's trembling voice. How would Margaret receive him? Would there be in her eyes that shadow of distrust that he always saw now in Rupert's? His knees were trembling and he had to stay for an instant and pull himself together before he crossed the drawing-room threshold.

And then he was, instantly, reassured. Margaret was alone in the dim room, and as she came to meet him he saw in her approach to him that she had been wanting him. In her extended hands he found a welcome that implied also a need. He felt, as he met her and greeted her and looked again into the grave, tender eyes that he had been wanting so badly ever since he had seen them last, that there was nothing more wonderful than the way that their relationship advanced between every meeting. They met, exchanged a word or two and parted, but in the days that separated them their spirits seemed to leap together, to crowd into lonely hours a communion that bound them more closely than any physical intimacy could do.

"Oh! I'm so glad you've come. I had hoped it, wanted it."

He sat down close to her, his dark eyes on her face.

"You're in trouble? I can see."

She bent her eyes gravely on the fire, and as slowly she tried to put together the things that she wished to say he felt, in her earnest thoughtfulness, a rest, a relief, so wonderful that it was like plunging his body into cool water after a long and arid journey.

"No, it is nothing. I don't want to make things more overwhelming than they are. Only, it is, I think, simply that during these last days when mother and Rupert have both been ill, I have been overwhelmed."

"Rupert?"

"Yes, we'll come to him in a moment. You must remember," she smiled up at him as she said it, "that I'm not the least the kind of person who makes the best of things—in fact I'm not a useful person at all. I suppose being abroad so long with my music spoiled me, but whatever it is I seem unable to wrestle with things. They frighten me, overwhelm me, as I say . . . I'm frightened now."

He looked up at her last word and caught a corner reflection in the old gilt mirror—a reflection of a multitude of little things; silver boxes, photograph frames, old china pots, little silk squares, lying like scattered treasures from a wreck on a dark sea.

"What are you frightened about?"

"Well, there it is—nothing I suppose. Only I'm not good at managing sick people, especially when there's nothing definitely the matter with them. It's a case with all three of us—a case of nerves."

"Well, that's as serious a thing as any other disease."

"Yes, but I don't know what to do with it. Mother lies there all day. She seldom speaks, she scarcely eats anything. She entirely refuses to have a doctor. But worse than that is the extraordinary feeling that she has had during this last week about Rupert. She refuses to see him," Margaret Craven finally brought out.

"Refuses?"

"Yes, she says that he is altered to her. She says that he will not let her alone, that he is imagining things. Poor Rupert is most terribly distressed. He is imagining nothing. He would do anything for her, he is devoted to her."

"Since when has she had this idea?"

"You remember the day that you came last? when Rupert came in and had found your matchbox. It began about then. . . . Of course Rupert has not been well—he has never been well since that dreadful death of Mr. Carfax, and certainly since that day when you were here I think that he's been worse—strange, utterly unlike himself, sleeping badly, eating nothing. Poor, poor Rupert, I would do anything for him, for them both, but I am so utterly, utterly useless, What can I do?" she finally appealed to him.

"You said once," he answered her slowly, "that I could help you. If you still feel that, tell me, and I will do anything, anything. You know that I will do anything."

They came together, in that terrible room, like two children out of the dark. He suddenly caught her hand and she let him hold it. Then, very gently, she withdrew it.

"I think that you can make all the difference," she answered slowly. "Mother often speaks of you. I told you before that she wants so much to see you, and if you would do that, if you would go up, for just a little time, and sit with her, I believe you would soothe her as no one else can. I don't know why I feel that, but I know that she feels it too. You are restful," she said suddenly, with a smile, flung up at him.

And again, as on the earlier occasion, he shrank from the thing that she asked him. He had felt, from the very moment this afternoon that he had entered the house, that that thing would be asked of him. Mrs. Craven wanted him. He could feel the compulsion of her wish drawing him through walls and floors and all the obstructions of the world.

"Of course I'll go," he said.

"Ah! that will help. It would be so good of you. Poor mother, it's lonely for her up there all day, and I know that she thinks about things, about father, and it's not good for her. You might perhaps say a word too about Rupert. I cannot imagine what it is that she is feeling about him." She paused, and then with a sigh, rising from their chair, longingly brought out, "Oh! but for all of us! to get away—out of this house, out of this place, that's the thing we want!"

She stood there in her black dress, so simply, so appealingly before him, that it was all that he could do not to catch her in his arms and bold her. He did indeed rise and stand beside her, and there in silence, with the dim room about them, the oppressive silence so ominous and sinister, they came together with a closeness that no earlier intercourse had given them.

Olva seemed, for a short space, to be relieved from his burdens. For them both, so young, so helpless against powers that were ruthless in the accomplishment of wider destinies, they were allowed to find in these silent minutes a brief reprieve.

Then, with the sudden whirring and shrill clatter of an ancient clock, action began again, but before the striking hour had entirely died away, he said to her, "Whatever happens, we are, at any rate, friends. We can snatch a moment together even out of the worst catastrophe."

"You're afraid . . . ?" Her breath caught, as she flung a look about the room.

"One never knows."

"It is all so strange. There in Dresden everything was so happy, so undisturbed, the music and one's friends; it was all so natural. And now—here—with Rupert and mother—it's like walking in one's sleep."

"Well, I'll walk with you," he assured her.

But indeed that was exactly what it was like, he thought, as he climbed the old and creaking stairs. How often had one dreamed of the old dark house, the dusty latticed windows, the stairs with the gaping boards, at last that thin dark passage into which doors so dimly opened, that had black chasms at either end of it, whose very shadows seemed to demand the dripping of some distant water and the shudder of some trembling blind. In a dream too there was that sense of inevitability, of treading unaccustomed ways with an assured, accustomed tread that was with him now. The old woman who had conducted him stopped at a door, hidden by the dusk, and knocked. She opened it and wheezed out—

"Mr. Dune, m'am;" and then, standing back for him to pass, left him inside.

As the door closed he was instantly conscious of an overwhelming desire for air, a longing to fling open the little diamond-paned window. The ceiling was very low and a fierce fire burned in the fireplace. There was little furniture, only a huge white bed hovered in the background. Olva was conscious of a dark figure lying on a low chair by the fire, a figure that gave you instantly those long white hands and those burning eyes and gave you afterwards more slowly the rest of the outline. But its supreme quality was its immobility. That head, that body, those hands, never moved, only behind its dark outline the bright fire crackled and flung its shadows upon the wall.

"I am sorry that you are not so well."

Mrs. Craven's dark eyes searched his face. "You are restful to me. I like you to come. But I would not intrude upon your time."

Olva said, "I am very glad to come if I can be of any service. If there is anything that I can do."

The eyes seemed the only part of her body that lived. It was the eyes that spoke. "No, there is nothing that any one can do. I do not care for talking. Soon I will be downstairs again, I hope. It is lonely for my daughter."

"There is Rupert."

At the mention of the name her eyes were suddenly sheathed. It was like the instant quenching of some light. She did not answer him.

"Tell me about yourself. What you do, what you care about . . . your life."

He told her a little about his home, his father, but he had a strange, overwhelming conviction that she already knew. He felt, also, that she regarded these things that he told her as preliminaries to something else that he would presently say. He paused.

"Yes?" she said.

"I am tiring you. I have talked enough. It is time for me to be back in College."

She did not contradict him. She watched him as he said good-bye. For one moment he touched her chill, unresponsive hand, for an instant their eyes, dark, sombre, met. The thought flew to his brain, "My God, how lonely she is . . ." and then, "My God, how lonely I am." Slowly and quietly he closed the door behind him.

2

That night the Shadow was nearer, more insistent; the closer it came the more completely was the real world obscured. This obscurity was now shutting oil from him everything; it was exactly as though his whole body bad been struck numb so that he might touch, might hold, but could feel nothing. Again it was as though he were confined in a damp, underground cell and the world above his head was crying out with life and joy. In his hand was the key of the door; he had only to use it.

Submission—to be taken into those arms, to be told gently what he must do, and then—Obedience—perhaps public confession, perhaps death, struggling, ignominious death . . . at least, never again Margaret Craven, never again her companionship, her understanding, never again to help her and to feel that warm sure clasp of her hand. What would she say, what would she do if she were told? That remained for him now the one abiding question. But he could not doubt what she would do. He saw the warmth fading from the eyes, the hard stern lines settling about the mouth, the cold stiffening of her whole body. No, she must never know, and if Rupert discovered the truth, he, Olva, must force him, for his sister's sake, to keep silence. But if Rupert knew he would tell his sister, and she would believe him. No use denials then.

And on the side of it all was the Shadow, with him now, with him in the room.

All things betray Thee Who betrayest Me.

The line from some poem came to him. It was true, true. His life that had been the life of a man was now the life of a Liar—Liar to his friends, Liar to Margaret, Liar to all the world—so his shuddering soul cowered there, naked, creeping into the uttermost corner to escape the Presence.

If only for an hour he might be again himself—-might shout aloud the truth, boast of it, triumph in it, be naked in the glory of it. Day by day the pressure had been increased, day by day his loneliness had grown, day by day the pursuit had drawn closer.

And now he hardly recognized the real from the false. He paced his room frantically. He felt that on the other side of the bedroom door there was terror. He had turned on all his lights; a furious fire was blazing in the grate; beyond the windows cold stars and an icy moon, but in here stifling heat.

When Bunning (the clocks were striking eleven) came blinking in upon him he was muttering—"Let me go, let me go. I killed him, I tell you. I'm glad I killed him. . . . Oh! Let me alone! For pity's sake let me alone! I can't confess! Don't you see that I can't confess? There's Margaret. I must keep her—-afterwards when she knows me better I'll tell her."

As he faced Bunning's staring glasses, the thought came to Him, "Am I going mad?—Has it been too much for me?—-Mad?"

He stopped, wheeled round, caught the table with both hands, and leaned over to Bunning, who stood, his mouth open, his cap and gown still on.

Olva very gravely said: "Come in, Bunning. Shut the door. 'Sport' it. That's right. Take off your gown and sit down."

The man, still staring, white and frightened, sat down.

Olva spoke slowly and very distinctly: "I'm glad you've come. I want to talk to you. I killed Carfax, you know." As he said the words he began slowly to come back to himself from the Other World to this one. How often, sleeping, waking, had he said those words! How often, aloud, in his room, with his door locked, had he almost shouted them!

He was not now altogether sure whether Bunning were really there or no. His spectacles were there, his boots were there, but was Bunning there? If he were not there. . . .

But he was there. Olva's brain slowly cleared and, for the first time for many weeks, he was entirely himself. It was the first moment of peace that he had known since that hour in St. Martin's Chapel.

He was quiet, collected, perfectly calm. He went over to the window, opened it, and rejoiced in the breeze. The room seemed suddenly empty. Five minutes ago it had been crowded, breathless. There was now only Bunning.

"It was so awfully hot with that enormous fire," he said.

Bunning's condition was peculiar. He sat, his large fat face white and streaky, beads of perspiration on his forehead, his hands gripping the sides of the armchair. His boots stuck up in the most absurd manner, like interrogation marks. He watched Olva's face fearfully. At last he gasped—

"I say, Dune, you're ill. You are really—you're overdone. You ought to see some one, you know. You ought really, you ought to go to bed." His words came in jerks.

Olva crossed the room and stood looking down upon him.

"No, Bunning, I'm perfectly well. . . . There's nothing the matter with me. My nerves have been a bit tried lately by this business, keeping it all alone, and it's a great relief to me to have told you."

The fact forced itself upon Bunning's brain. At last in a husky whisper: "You . . . killed . . . Carfax?" And then the favourite expression of such weak souls as he: "Oh! my God! Oh! my God!"

"Now look here, don't get hysterical about it. You've got to take it quietly as I do. You said the other day you'd do anything for me. . . . Well, now you've got a chance of proving your devotion."

"My God! My God!" The boots feebly tapped the floor.

"I had to tell somebody. It was getting on my nerves. I suppose it gives you a kind of horror of me. Don't mind saying so if it does."

Bunning, taking out a grimy handkerchief, wiped his forehead. He shook his head without speaking.

Olva sat down in the chair opposite him and lit his pipe.

"I want to tell somebody all about it. You weren't really, I suppose, the best person to tell. You're a hysterical sort of fellow and you're easily frightened, but you happened to come in just when I was rather worked up about it. At any rate you've got to face it now and you must pull yourself together as well as you can. . . . Move away from the fire, if you're hot."

Bunning shook his head.

Olva continued: "I'm going to try to put it quite plainly to you, the Carfax part of it I mean. There are other things that have happened since that I needn't bother you with, but I'd like you to understand why I did it."

"Oh! my God!" said Bunning. He was trembling from head to foot and his fat hands rattled on the woodwork of the chair and his feet rattled on the floor.

"I met Carfax first at my private school—-a little, fat dirty boy he was then, and fat and dirty he's been ever since. I hated him, but I was always pleasant to him. He wasn't worth being angry with. He always did rotten things. He knew more filthy things than the other boys, and he was a bully—a beastly bully. I think he knew that I bated him, but we were on perfectly good terms. I think he was always a little afraid of me, but it's curious to remember that we never had a quarrel of any kind, until the day when I killed him."

Olva paused and asked Bunning to have a drink. Bunning, gazing at him with desperate eyes, shook his head.

"Then we went on to Rugby together. It's odd how Fate has apparently been determined to hammer out our paths side by side. Carfax grew more and more beastly. He always did the filthiest things and yet out of it all seemed to the world at large a perfectly decent fellow. He was clever in that way. I am not trying to defend myself. I'm making it perfectly straightforward and just as it really was. He knew that I knew him better than anybody, and as we went on at Rugby I think that his fear of me grew. I didn't hate him so much for being Carfax, but rather as standing for all sorts of rotten things. It didn't matter to me in the least whether he was a beast or not, I'm a beast myself, but it did matter that he should smile about it and have damp hands. When I touched his hand I always wanted to hit him.

"I've got a very sudden temper, all my family are like that—calm most of the time and then absolutely wild. I hated him more up here at College than I'd hated him at school. He developed and still his reputation was just the same, decent fellows like Craven followed him, excused him; he had that cheery manner. . . . Hating him became a habit with me. I hated everything that he did—his rolling walk down the Court, his red colour, his football . . . and then he ruined that fellow Thompson. That was a poor game, but no one seemed to think anything of it . . . and indeed he and I seemed to be very good friends. He used to sneer at me behind my back, I know, but I didn't mind that. Any one's at liberty to sneer if they like. But he was really afraid of me . . . always.

"Then at last there was this girl that he set about destroying. He seduced her, promised her marriage. I knew all about it, because she used to be rather a friend of mine. I warned her, but she was absolutely infatuated—wouldn't hear of anything that I had to say, thought it all jealousy. She wasn't the kind of girl who could stand disgrace. . . . She came to him one day and told him that she was going to have a baby. He laughed at her in the regular old conventional way . . . and that very afternoon, after he had seen her, he met me—there in Sannet Wood.

"He began to boast about it, told me jokingly about the way that he'd 'shut her mouth,' as he called it . . . laughed . . . I hit him. I meant to hit him hard, I hated him so; I think that I wanted to kill him. All the accumulated years were in that blow, I suppose; at any rate, I caught him on the chin and it broke his neck and he dropped . . . that's all."

Olva paused, finished his drink, and ended with—

"There it is—it's simple enough. I'm not in the least sorry I killed him. I've no regrets; he was better out of the world than in it, and I've probably saved a number of people from a great deal of misery. I thought at first that I should be caught, but they aren't very sharp round here and there was really nothing to connect me with it. But there were other things—there's more in killing a man than the mere killing. I haven't been able to stand the loneliness—-so I told you."

The last words brought him back to Bunning, a person whom he had almost forgotten. A sudden pity for the man's distress made his voice tender. "I say, Running, I oughtn't to have told you. It's been too much for you. But if you knew the relief that it is to me. . . . Though, mind you, if it's on your conscience, if it burdens you, you must 'out' with it. Don't have any scruples about me. But it needn't burden you. You hadn't any-thing to do with it. You were here and I told you. That's all. I've shown you that I want you as a friend."

For answer the creature burst suddenly into tears, hiding his face in his sleeve, as small boys hide their faces, and choking out desperately—

"Oh! my God! Oh! my God!"



CHAPTER X

CRAVEN

1

That evening Olva was elected President of the Wolves. It was a ceremony conducted with closed doors and much drinking of wine, by a committee of four and the last reigning President who had the casting vote. The College waited in suspense and at eleven o'clock it was understood that Dune had been elected.

According to custom, on the day following in "Hall" Olva would be cheered by the assembled undergraduates whilst the gods on the dais smiled gently and murmured that "boys will be boys."

Meanwhile the question that agitated the Sauline world was the way that Cardillac would take it. "If it had been any one else but Dune . . ." but it couldn't have been any one else. There was no other possible rival, and "Cards," like the rest of the world, bowed to Dune's charm. The Dublin match, to be played now in a fortnight's time, would settle the football question. It was generally expected that they would try Dune in that match and judge him finally then on his play. There was a good deal of betting on the matter, and those who remembered his earlier games said that nothing could ever make Dune a reliable player and that it was a reliable player that was wanted.

When Olva came into "Hall" that evening he was conscious of two pairs of eyes, Craven's and Bunning's. On either side of the high vaulted hall the tables were ranged, and men, shouting, waving their glasses, lined the benches. Olva's place was at the end farthest from the door and nearest the High Table, and he had therefore the whole room to cross. He was smiling a little, a faint colour in his cheeks. At his own end of the table Craven was standing, silent, with his eyes gravely fixed upon Olva's face. Half-way down the hall there was Bunning, and Olva could see, as he passed up the room, that the man was trembling and was pressing his hands down upon the table to hold his body still.

When Olva had sat down and the cheering had passed again into the cheerful hum that was customary, the first voice that greeted him was Cardillac's.

"Congratulations, old man. I'm delighted."

There was no question of Cardillac's sincerity. Craven was sitting four places lower down; he had turned the other way and was talking eagerly to some man on his farther side—but the eyes that had met Olva's two minutes before had been hostile.

Cardillac went on: "Come in to coffee afterwards, Dune; several men are coming in."

Olva thanked him and said that he would. The world was waiting to see how "Cards" would take it, and, beyond question, "Cards" was taking it very well. Indeed an observer might have noticed that "Cards" was too absorbed by the way that Dune was "taking it" to "take it" himself consciously at all. Olva's aloof surveying of the world about him, as a man on a hill surveys the town in the valley, made of "Cards'" last year and a half a gaudy and noisy thing. He had thought that his attitude had been nicely adjusted, but now he saw that there were still heights to be reached—perhaps in this welcome that he was giving to Dune's success he might attain his position. . . . Not, in any way, a bad fellow, this Cardillac—but obsessed by a self-conscious conviction that the world was looking at him; the world never looks for more than an instant at self-consciousness, but it dearly loves self-forgetfulness, for that implies a compliment to itself.

Afterwards, in Cardillac's handsome and over-careful rooms, there was an attempt at depth. The set—Lawrence, Galleon, Craven and five or six more—never thought about Life unless drink drove them to do so, and drink drove them to-night. A long, thin man, Williamson by name, with a half-Blue for racquets and a pensive manner, had a favourite formula on these occasions: "But think of a rabbit now . . ." only conveying by the remark that here was a proof of God's supreme, astounding carelessness. "You shoot it, you know, without turning a hair (no joke, you rotter), and it breeds millions a week . . . and—does it think about it, that's what I want to know? Where's its soul?