Hugh Walpole

“ Bunning's quavering voice answered him, "I'll try."
"Well, look here. Think of it quite calmly, naturally. You're taking it like a story that you'd read in a magazine or a play you'd seen at a theatre—melodrama with all the lights on and every one screaming. Well, it can be like that if you want it. Every one thinks of murder that way and you can go shrieking to the Dean and have the rope round my neck in a minute. But I want you to think of it as the most ordinary thing in the world. Remember no one knows but yourself, and they won't know either if you behave in a natural sort of way." ”

“ Olva finished tying his boots and stood up. Cardillac looked at him.
"My word, you seem fit."
"Yes, I'm splendid, thanks."
He felt splendid. Never before had he been so conscious of the right to be alive. His football clothes smelt of the earth and the air. He moved his arms and legs with wonderful freedom. His blood was pumping through his body as though death, disease, infirmity such things—-were of another planet.
For such a man as he there should only be air, love, motion, the begetting of children, the surprising splendour of a sudden death. Now already Craven was waiting for him. ”

“ How much had Bunker seen? How much had he understood? Was it fancy, or did the dog crouch, the tiniest impulse, away from him as he bent to pat him? Bunker was tired; he relapsed on to his haunches, wagged his tail, grinned, but in his eyes there seemed, although the lamplight was deceptive, to be the faintest shadow of an apprehension.
"Good old dog, good old Bunker." Bunker wagged his tail, but the tiniest shiver passed, like a thought, through his body.
Olva left him.
As he passed through the streets he met men whom he knew. They nodded or flung a greeting. ”

“ God would hold me at last—and then one day you would find that I had gone away—I would have been driven—there would be terror for both of us then."
She slipped on to her knees and caught his hands.
"This is all unreal—utterly unreal. But our love for each other, that is the only thing that can matter for either of us. You have lived in your thoughts these weeks, imagined things, but think of what you do if you leave me. You are all I have—you have become my world—I can't live, I can't live, Olva, without you." ”

“ As Olva looked Lawrence in the eyes he knew that it would be well with him if, in his journey through the world, he met again so good a soul. Cardillac joined them and they all talked for a little. Then Olva said good-night.
He turned for a moment at the door and looked back. Some one at the other end of the room was singing "Egypt" to a cracked piano. A babel of laughter, of chatter, every now and again men tumbled against one another, like cubs in a cave, and rolled upon the floor. ”

“ Do you think that a woman, if she loves a man, cares for anything that he may do? If you had killed a hundred men in Sannet Wood I would have helped you to bury them. The thing that a woman demands most of love is that she may prove it. I know that murder has a dreadful sound—but to meet your enemy face to face, to strike him down because you hated him—" Her voice rose, her eyes flashed—she raised her arms—"You must pay for it, Olva—but we shall pay together." ”

“ Olva kept an amazed silence. Life! What an amusing thing!—that he, with his foot on the edge of disaster, death, should be invited by Bunning to a revival meeting. He understood it, of course. Bunning had been sent, as an ardent missionary is sent into the heart of West Africa, to invite Olva to consider his soul. He was expecting, poor creature, to be kicked violently down the twisting wooden stairs. On another occasion he would be sent to Lawrence or Cardillac, and then his expectations would be most certainly fulfilled. ”

“ Miss Margaret Craven had not yet come in, but would Mr. Dune, perhaps, go up and see Mrs. Craven? The old woman's teeth chattered in the cold little hall. "We are dead, all of us dead here," the skins on the walls seemed to say; "and you'll be dead soon . . . oh! yes, you will."
Olva went up to Mrs. Craven. The windows of her room were tightly closed and a great fire was blazing; before this she lay stretched out on a sofa of faded green—her black dress, her motionless white hands, her pale face, her moving eyes. ”

“ Neither the love of Margaret, nor the suspicions of Rupert, nor the hysteria of Bunning had as yet defeated him . . . and even as he resisted it was as though he were fighting himself.
Sidney Street was now quite black with thronging undergraduates moving towards the Common. There was very little noise in it all; every now and again some voice would call aloud to some other voice and would be answered back; a murmur like the swelling of some stream, unlike, in its uniformity and curious evenness of note, any human conversation, seemed to cling to the old grey walls. ”

“ For answer to his exclamation she cried to him with all the pent-up suffering and loneliness of the last weeks in her voice—
"Ah, Mr. Dune, help me! I shall go mad if something doesn't happen; every day it is worse and I can't grapple with it. I'm not up to it. If only they'd speak out! but it's this silence!" She seemed to pull herself together and went on more quietly: "You know that Rupert and I have been everything to one another all our lives. We have never had a secret of any kind. Until this last month Rupert was the most open, dearest boy in the world. ”

“ The long road rang under Olva's step—it would be a frosty night.
When the little wood was now a black ball in the mist Olva was suddenly sick. He leant against one of the dark mysterious trees and was wretchedly, horribly ill. Slowly, then, the colour came back to his cheeks, his hands were once more steady, he could see again clearly. He addressed the strange world about him, the long flat fields, the hard white road, the orange sun. "That is the last time," he said aloud, "the last weakness."
He definitely braced himself to face life. ”

“ Craven! Buck up, you old ass!"
"They're going to light bonfires and things," Bunning quavered, and then, with a hand that had always before seemed soft and flabby but that was now hard and burning, he caught Olva's wrist. "I had to see you—I've been three days now—waiting—all the time for them to come and arrest you. Oh! I've imagined everything—everything—and the fog makes it worse. . . . Oh! my God! I can't stand it."
The man was on the edge of hysteria. His senseless giggle threatened that in another instant it would be beyond all control. ”

“ It had come back with the surprise of some supernatural mechanism; it was as though the sofa, chairs, pictures had five minutes before been grass and toadstools in a world of mist and now were sofa, chairs and pictures again.
He was absolutely sane, whereas half an hour ago he had been held almost by an enchantment. If Margaret were here with him now, here in his room—not in that dim, horrible Rocket Road house, raised it might almost seem by the superstitions and mists of his own conscience—ah! how he would love her! ”

“ It had always been supposed that he was good friends with Carfax, as good friends as he allowed himself to be with any one. No one had known in which direction he would take his walk; he had come upon Carfax entirely by chance. It might quite naturally be supposed that some tramp had attempted robbery. To the world at large Olva could have had no possible motive. But, for the moment, these thoughts were dismissed. It seemed to him just now immaterial whether he lived or died. Life had not hitherto been so wonderful a discovery that the making of it had been entirely worth while. ”

“ Olva and Cardillac attracted much attention as they walked through the College. Miss Annett, watching them from a little window where she washed plates, gulped in her thin throat with pride for "that Mr. Dune. There's a gentleman!" The sun above the high grey buildings broke slowly through yellow clouds. The roads were covered with a thin fine mud and, from the earth, faint clouds of mist rose and vanished into a sky that was slowly crumbling from thick grey into light watery blue. ”

“ As the last notes of the clock in Outer Court striking five died away Rupert Craven came in. If he had seemed tired and worn-out before, now the overwhelming impression that he gave was of an unhappiness from which he seemed to have no outlet. He was young enough to be tormented by the determination to do the right thing; he was young enough to give his whole devotion to his sister; he was young enough to admire, against all determination, Olva's presence and prowess and silence; he was young enough to be haunted, night and day, by the terrors of his imagination ”

“ To be in possession of that tremendous secret, to be at war, as it were, with the world, and yet to lead, in all probability, an ordinary life—that demands courage."
"One may accustom oneself to anything," Mrs. Craven said. Her voice was deep and musical, and her words seemed to linger almost like an echo in the air.
Olva thought as he looked at Margaret Craven that there was a strength there that could face anything; it was more than courage; it might, under certain circumstances, become fanaticism. ”

“ That trembling ass, Bunning, singing now at the top of his voice, shaking with the fervour of it, let him know that he had brought a murderer to the sacred gathering—again Olva had to concentrate all his mind, his force, his power upon the conquest of his nerves. For a moment it seemed as though he would lose all control; he stood, his knees quivering beneath him—then strength came back to him.
After the hymn the address. There was tense, rapt silence. The little voice went on, soft, low, sweet, pleading, very clear. There must be many men who had not yet found God. ”

“ 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." ”

“ He was not in the College Chapel. He was not in any forms or ceremonies that I could discover. He might choose to appear to other men in those different ways but not to me. Then a fellow, Lawrence, told me about some old worship—-Druids and their altars—but He was not there. And all those days I was increasingly conscious that there was some one who would not let me alone. It fastened itself in my mind gradually as a Pursuit, and it seemed to me too that, as the days passed, I began slowly to understand the nature of the Pursuer—that He was kind and tender but also relentless, remorseless. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I don't think I believe in any God. And, dear, see—it is all so natural. Thinking about what you had done, thinking of it all alone, preyed on your nerves. Because Rupert suspected you made it worse. You imagined things—everything. That is all—Olva, really that is all."
"Margaret, don't make it harder for both of us. I must go. There is no question. I don't suppose that any one can see any one else's spiritual experiences—one must be alone in that. Margaret dear, if I stayed with you now—if we married—the Pursuit would begin again. ”

“ To-night he was to face Rupert, to state, once and for all, that he had killed Carfax, to submit Margaret to a terrible test . . . even that of no importance. All life was insignificant beside something that was about to happen; before the gaze of that white dazzling cloud be felt that he stood, a little pigmy, alone on a brown spreading field.
The game was up at the University end. The Dublin men were pressing and the Cambridge forwards seemed to have lost their heads. ”

“ The world had been with him a place of war, of hostility, until he had struck that blow in Sannet Wood. He remembered the eagerness with which, at the end of term, he had hastened back to his father. After the noise and clatter of school life how wonderful to go back to the still sound of dripping water, to the crackle of dry leaves under foot, to the heavy solemn tread of cattle, to those evenings when at his father's side he heard the coals click in the fire and the old clock on the stairs wheeze out the passing minutes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ridge cleared away the lunch with much shaking of the head. Olva lay in his chair watching, with eyes that never closed nor stirred, the crackling golden fire. Beyond the window the world was of blue steel. He could fancy the still gleaming waters of the lake that stretched beyond the grass lawns; he could fancy the red brick of the buildings that clung like some frieze to the horizon. Along the stone courtyard rang the heavy football boots of men going to the Upper Fields. ”

“ Olva seemed to catch the words—"Why should it be I? Why should it be I?" Olva came over to him and placed his hand on his shoulder.
"Look here, old man, I don't know what's the matter with you, but it's plain enough that you've got this Carfax business on your nerves—drop it. It does no good—it's the worst thing in the world to brood about. Carfax is dead—if I could help you to find his murderer I would—but I can't."
Craven's whole body was trembling under Olva's hand. Olva moved back to his chair. ”