Back Aa

Prelude To Adventure

<h2> CHAPTER XI — FIFTH OF NOVEMBER </h2> <h3> 1 </h3> That attempt to make Craven speak his mind was Olva's last plunge into the open. He saw now, with a clarity that was like the sudden lifting of some blind before a lighted window, that he had been beguiled, betrayed. He had thought that his confession to Bunning would stay the pursuit. He saw now that it was the Pursuer Himself who had instigated it. With that confession the grey shadow had drawn nearer, had made one degree more certain the ultimate capitulation. For Bunning was surely the last person to be told—with every hour that became clearer. There were now about four weeks before the end of term. The Dublin match was to be on the first Tuesday of December, two days before every one went down, and between the two dates—this 5th of November and that 2nd of December—the position must be held. . . . The terror of the irresistible impulse now never left Olva. He had told Bunning in a moment of uncontrol—what might he not do now at any time? At one instant to be absolutely silent seemed the only resource, at the next to rush out and take part in all the life about him. Were he silent he was tortured by the silence, if he flung himself amongst his fellow men every hour threatened self-betrayal. What, moreover, was happening in the house in Rocket Road? Craven was only waiting for certainty and at any moment some chance might give him what he needed. What did Mrs. Craven know? Margaret . . . Margaret . . . Margaret—-Olva took the thought of her in his hand and held it like a sword, against the forces that were crowding in upon him. The afternoon of November 5 was thick with fog so that the shops were lighted early and every room was dim and unreal, and a sulphurous smell weighted the air. After "Hall" Olva came back to his room and found Bunning, his white face peering out of the foggy mist like a dull moon from clouds, waiting for him. All day there had hung about Olva heavy depression. It had seemed so ugly and sinister a world—the fog had been crowded with faces and terror, and the dreadful overpowering impression of unreality that had been increasing with every day now took from his companions all life and made of them grinning masks. He remembered Margaret's cry, "It is like walking in a dream," and echoed it. Surely it was a dream! He would wake one happy morning and find that he had invited Craven and Carfax to breakfast, and he would hear them, whilst he dressed, talking together in the outer room, and, later, he would pass Bunning in the Court without knowing him. He would be introduced one day to Margaret Craven and find the house in which she lived a charming comfortable place, full of light and air, with a croquet lawn at the back of it, and Mrs. Craven, a nice ordinary middle-aged woman, stout possibly and fond of gossip. And instead of being President of the Wolves and a person of importance in the College he would be once again his old self, knowing nobody, scornful of the whole world and of the next world as well. And this brought him up with a terrible awakening. No, that old reality could never be real again, for that old reality meant a world without God. God had come and had turned the world into a nightmare . . . or was it only his rebellion against God that had so made it? But the nightmare was there, the awful uncertainty of every word, of every step, because with the slightest movement he might provoke the shadow to new action, if anything so grave, so stern, so silent as that Pursuit could be termed action, and . . . it was odd how certainly he knew it . . . so kind. Bunning's face brought him to the sudden necessity of treating the nightmare as reality, for the moment at any rate. The staring spectacles piteously appealed to him— "I can't stand it—I can't stand it." "Hush!" Olva held his hand, and out of the fog, below in the Court, a voice was calling—"Craven! 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. There was no time to be lost. Olva took him by the shoulders, held him firmly and looked straight into the weak, quivering eyes that were behind the glasses like fish in a tank. "Look here, Bunning. Pull yourself together. You must—you must. Do you understand? If you've never done it before you must do it now. Remember that you wanted to help me. Well, now you can do it—but remember that if you give way so that people notice you, then the show's up. They'll be asking questions—they'll watch you—and you'll have done for me. Otherwise there's no risk whatever—no risk whatever. Just remember that—it's as though I'd never done anything; everything's going on in its usual way; life will always be just the same . . . if you'll keep hold of yourself—do you understand? Do you hear me?" 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." Then suddenly his voice sank to a growl and he caught the man's hands in his and held the whole quivering body in his control—"Quiet!" he muttered, "Quiet!" Bunning had begun to laugh—quite helplessly, almost noiselessly—only his fat cheeks were quivering and his mouth foolishly, weakly smiling: his eyes seemed to be disconnected from his body and to be protesting against it. They looked out like a prisoner from behind barred windows. The body began to shake from head to foot-ripples of noiseless laughter shook his fat limbs, then suddenly he began . . . peal upon peal. . . the tears came rolling down, the mouth was loosely trembling, and still only the eyes, in a kind of sad, stupid wonder, protested. Olva seized his throat-"Stop it, you damned fool!" . . . He looked straight into the eyes—Bunning ceased as suddenly as he had begun. The horrible, helpless noise fell with a giggle into silence; he collapsed into a chair and hid his face in his hands. There was a long pause. Olva gazed at the bending figure, summoning all his will power to hold the shaking thing in control. He waited. Then, softly, he began again. "Bunning, I did you a great wrong when I told you—you're not up to it." From behind the hands there came a muffled voice—"I am up to it." "This sort of thing makes it impossible." "It shall never happen again." Bunning lifted his tear-stained face. "It's been coming for days. I've been so dreadfully frightened. But now—that I've been with you—it's better, much better. If only—" and his voice caught—"if only—no one suspects." Olva gravely answered, "No one suspects." "If I thought that any one—that there was any chance—that any one had an idea. . . ." Craven's voice was echoing in Olva's ears. He answered again— "No one has the slightest suspicion." Bunning got up heavily from the chair—"I shall be better now. It's been so awful having a secret. I never could keep one. I always used to do wrong things at home and then tell them and then get punished. But I will try. But if I thought that they guessed—" There was a rap on the door and Bunning gasped, stepped back against the wall, his face white, his knees trembling. "Don't be such a fool," Olva said fiercely. "If you're like that every time any one knocks you may as well chuck it at once. Look sensible, man. Pull yourself together." Lawrence entered, bringing log with him from the stairs. His big, thick-set body was so reassuring, so healthy in its sturdiness, so strange a contrast to the trembling figure against the wall that Olva felt an immense relief. "You know Bunning, Lawrence?" "How do?" Lawrence gripped Bunning's fingers, nodded to Bunning's stumbling words and smiled genially. Bunning got to the door, blinked upon them both from behind his glasses and was gone—muttering something about "work . . . letters to write." "Rum feller," said Lawrence, and dismissed him with a chuckle. "Shouldn't ever have thought him your style, Dune . . . but you're a clever feller and clever fellers always see more in stupid fellers than ordinary fellers do . . . come out and see the rag." "Rag! What rag?" "It's November 5th." So it was. In the air already perhaps there were those mysterious signs and portents that heralded riot—nothing, as yet, for the casual observer to notice, nothing but a few undergraduates arm-in-arm pacing the sleepy streets—a policeman here, a policeman there. Every now and again clocks strike the quarters, and in many common-rooms heads are nodding over ancient Port and argument of the gentlest kind is being tossed to and fro. But, nevertheless, we remember other Fifths of November. There was that occasion in '98, that other more distant time in '93. . . . There was that furious battle in the Market Place when the Town Hall was nearly set on fire and a policeman had his arm broken. These are historic occasions; on the other hand the fateful date has passed, often enough, without the merest flinging of a squib or friendly appropriation of the genial policeman's helmet. No one can say, no one knows, whether there will be riot to-night or no. Most of the young gentlemen now parading the K.P. and Petty Cury would undoubtedly prefer that there should be a riot. For one thing there has been no riot during the last five or six years—no one "up" just now has had any experience of such a thing, and it would be beyond question delightful to taste the excitement of it. But, on the other hand, there is all the difficulty of getting under way. One cannot possibly enjoy the occasion until one has reached that delightful point when one has lost all sense of risk, when recklessly we pile the bonfire, snap our fingers in the nose of poor Mr. Gregg who is terrific enough when he marches solemnly into Chapel but is nothing at all when he is screaming with shrill anger amongst the lights and fury of the blazing common. Will this wonderful moment when discipline, respect for authority, thoughts of home, terrors of being sent down, all these bogies, are flung derisively to the winds arrive to-night? It has struck nine, and to Olva and Lawrence, walking solemnly through the market-place, it all seems quiet enough. But behold how the gods work their will! It so happens that Giles of St Martin's has occasion, on this very day, to celebrate his twenty-first birthday. It has been done as a twenty-first birthday should be done, and by nine o'clock the company, twenty in number, have decided that "it was the ruddiest of ruddy old worlds"—that—"let's have some moretodrink ol' man—it was Fifth o' November—and that a ruddyoldbonfire would be—a—ruddyol'-joke—-" Now, at half-past nine, the company of twenty march singing down the K.P. and gather unto themselves others—a murmur is spreading through the byways. "Bonfire on the Common." "Bonfire on the Common." The streets begin to be black with undergraduates. <h3> 2 </h3> Olva was conscious as he passed with Lawrence through the now crowded streets that Bunning's hysteria had had an effect upon his nerves. He could not define it more directly than by saying that the Shadow that had, during these many weeks, appeared to be pursuing him, at a distance, now seemed to be actually with him. It was as though three of them, and not two, were walking there side by side. It was as though he were himself whispering in his own ear some advice of urgent pleading that he was himself rejecting . . . he was even weighted with the sense of some enlarged growth, of having in fact to carry more, physically as well as spiritually, than he had ever carried before. Now it quite definitely and audibly pleaded— "Submit—submit—submit. . . . See the tangle that you are getting yourself into. See the trouble that you are getting others into. See the tangle and muddle that you are making of it all. . . . Submit. . . . Give in. . . . You're beaten." But he was not beaten. 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. All of it at present orderly enough but with sinister omen in its very quiet. Olva felt an increasing excitement as he moved. It was an excitement that had some basis in the stir that was about him, in the murmur like bees of the crowd, in the soft stirring of grey branches above the walls of the street against the night sky, in the golden lights that, set in dim towers, shone high up above their heads. In all these things there was a mysterious tremor that beat, with the rhythm of a pulse, from the town's very heart—but there was more than that in his excitement. There was working in him a conviction that he was now, even now, reaching the very climax of his adventure. Very certainly, very surely, the moment was thawing near, and even in the instant when he had, that very evening, left his rooms, he had stepped, he instinctively knew, out of one stage into another. "Where are we going?" he asked Lawrence. "Common. There's goin' to be an old fire. Hope there's a row—don't mind who I hit." The side streets that led to the Common made progress more difficult, and, with the increased difficulty, came also a more riotous spirit. Some one started "The Two Obadiahs," and it was lustily sung with a good deal of repetition; several people had wooden rattles, intended to encourage College boats during the races, but very useful just now. There were, at the point where the street plunges into the Common, some wooden turnstiles, and these of course were immensely in the way and men were flung about and there was a good deal of coarse pleasantry, and one mild freshman, who had been caught into the crowd by accident, was thrown on to the ground and very nearly trodden to death. The sight of the vast and mysterious Common put every one into the best of spirits. There was room here to do anything, and it was also dark enough and wide enough to escape if escape were advisable. Moreover the space of it seemed so limitless that it negatived any one's responsibility. A sudden delightful activity swept over the world, and it was immediately every one's business to get wood from anywhere at all and drag it into the middle of the Common. As they moved through the turnstiles Olva fancied that he caught sight of Craven. On the Common's edge, with bright little lights in their windows, were perched a number of tiny houses with strips of garden in front of them. These little eyes watched, apprehensively no doubt, the shadowy mass that hovered under the night sky. They did not like this kind of thing, these little houses—they remembered five or six years ago when their cabbages had been trampled upon, their palings torn down, even hand-to-hand contests in the passages and one roof on fire. Where were the police? The little eyes watched anxiously. There was no sign of the police. . . . Olva smiled at himself for the excitement that he was feeling. He was standing at present with Lawrence on the edge of the Common, watching, but he was feeling irresistibly drawn towards the dark pile of wood that was rising slowly towards the sky. "As though one were ten years old"—and yet there was Lawrence murmuring, "I'd awfully like to hit somebody." And that, after all, was what it all came to. Perhaps Olva, if there were really to be some "scraps," would be able to work off some of his apprehension, of his breathlessness. Oh! for one wild ten minutes when scruples were flung to the winds, when there was at last in front of one an enemy whom one could touch, whom one could fling, physically, brutally, down before one! "The worst of it is," Lawrence was saying, "there are these town cads—they'll be in the back somewhere shoutin' ''It 'im, 'Varsity,' or somethin' and then runnin' for their lives if they see a Robert comin' . . . it's rotten bein', mixed up with such muck . . . anyhow I'm goin' to have a dash at it——" and he had suddenly plunged forward into space. Olva was alone. A breeze blew across the Common, the stars twinkled and jumped as though they were suffering from a nervous attack, and with every moment restraint was flung a farther distance, more voices called aloud and shouted, more men poured out of the little side streets. It had the elements of a great mystery. It was as though Mother Earth had, with a heave of her breast, tossed these shadowy forms into the air and was herself stirring with the emotion of their movement. There was an instant's breathless silence; to the roar of a shouting multitude a bright hard flame shot like steel into the air—the bonfire was alight. Now with every moment it mounted higher. Black pigmy figures were now dancing round it and across the Common other figures were always passing, dragging wood with them. The row of palings towards the river had gone and soon those little cottages that lined the grass must suffer. Surely now the whole of the University was gathered there! The crowd was close now, dense—men shoved past one another crying out excited cries, waving their arms with strange meaningless gestures. They were arriving rapidly at that condition when they had neither names nor addresses but merely impulses. Most dangerous element of all threatened that ring of loafers on the outskirts—loafers from the town. Here in this "mob of excited boys" was opportunity for them of getting something back on that authority that had so often treated them with ignominy. . . . Their duty to shout approval, to insult at a distance, to run for their lives were their dirty bodies in any danger . . . but always to fan the flame—-"Good old—Varsity—Let them have it, the dirty—" "Pull their shirts off—" Screams, laughter, shouting, wild dancing—let the Dons come now and see what they can make of it! "Bulldogs!" sounded a voice in Olva's ear, and turning round he beheld a breathless, dishevelled Bunning. "I've been pulling wood off the palings. Ha! hoch! he! (such noises to recover his breath). Such a rag!"—and then more apprehensively, "Bulldogs! There they are, with Metcher!" They stood, two big men in top-hats, plainly to be seen behind a Don in cap and gown, upon a little hill to the right of the bonfire. The flames lit their figures. Metcher, the Don, was reading something from a paper, and, round the hill, derisively dancing, were many undergraduates. Apparently the Proctor found the situation too difficult for him and presently he disappeared. Bunning watched him, apprehension and a sense of order struggling' with a desire for adventure. "They've gone to fetch the police. There'll be an awful row." There probably would be because that moment had at last been reached when authority was flung absolutely to the winds of heaven. The world seemed, in a moment, to have gone mad. Take Bunning, his cheeks flushed, his body shaking, his eyes flaming, for an example. Olva, dark, motionless in his shadow, watched it all and waited for his moment. He knew that it was coming. Grimly he addressed the Shadow, now close to his very heart. "I know you. You are urging me on. This night is your business. . . . But I am fighting you still! I am fighting you still!" The moment came. Bunning, clutching on to Olva's sleeve, whispered, "The police! Even at that crisis of intensest excitement he could be seen, nervously, pushing his spectacles up his nose. A surging crowd of men, and Olva again fancied that he caught sight of Craven, swept towards the row of timid twinkling lights with their neat little gardens like trembling protests laid out before them. More wood! more wood! to appease that great flaming monster that shot tongues of fire now to the very heavens. More wood! more wood!" "Look out, the police!" They came, with their truncheons, in a line down the Common. Olva was flung into the heart of a heaving mass of legs and arms. He caught a glimpse of Bunning behind and he thought that he saw Craven a little to his right. He did not know—he did not care. His blood was up at last. He was shouting he knew not what, he was hitting out with his fists. Men's voices about him—"Let go, you beast." "My God, I'll finish you." "There goes a bobby." "Stamp on him!" A disgraceful scene. The policemen were hopelessly outnumbered. The crowd broke on to the line of orderly little gardens, water was poured from windows, the palings were flung to the ground—glass broken—screams of women somewhere in the distance. But even now Olva knew that his moment had not come. Then some one shouted in his ear—"Town cads! They're murdering a bobby!" He was caught with several other men (of their number was Bunning) off the Common up a side street. A blazing lamp showed him an angry, shouting, jeering crowd; figures closed round something on the ground. Four men had joined arms with him, and now the five of them, shouting "'Varsity!" hitting right and left, rushed into the circle. The circle broke and Olva saw lying his length on the ground, half-stunned, clothed only in a torn shirt of bright blue, a stout heavy figure—once obviously, from the clothes flung to one side, a policeman, now with his large red face in a muddy puddle, his fat naked legs bent beneath him, his fingers clutching dirt, nothing very human at all. Town cads of the worst! Some brute now was raising his foot and kicking the bare flesh! Instantly the world was on flame for Olva. Now again, as once in Sannet Wood, he must hit and hit with all his soul. He broke, like a madman, into the heart of the crowd, sending it flying. There were cries and screams. He was conscious of three faces. There was Bunning there, white, staring. There was Craven, with his back to a house-door, staring also—and directly before him was a purple face with muddy hair fringing it and little beady eyes. The face of the brute who had been kicking! He must hit. He struck and his fist broke the flesh! He was exultant . . . at last he had, after these weeks of intangibility, found something solid. The face broke away from him. The circle scattered back and the fat, naked body was lying in the mud alone. There was a sudden silence. Olva, conscious of a great power surging through his body, raised his hand again. A voice, shrill, terror in it, screamed, "Look out, man, he'll kill you!" He turned and saw under the lamplight Craven, his eyes blazing, his finger pointed. He was suddenly cold from head to foot. The voice came, it had seemed, from heaven. Craven's eyes were alive now with certainty. Then there was another cry from somewhere of "The police!" and the crowd had melted. In the little street now there were only the body of the policeman and a handful of undergraduates. They raised the man, poured water over him, found some of his clothes, and two men led him, his head lolling, down the street. There was a noisy world somewhere in the distance, but here there was silence. Olva crept slowly out of his exultation and found himself in the cold windy street with Bunning for his only companion. Bunning—now a torn, dirty, bleeding Bunning—gripped his arm. "Did you hear?" "Hear what?" "Craven—when you were fighting there—Craven was watching . . . I saw it all . . . Craven suspects." Olva met the frightened eyes—"He does not suspect." "Didn't you hear? He called out to the cad you were going for. . . ." Then, in a kind of whimper, dismal enough in the dreary little street—"He'll find out—Craven—I know he will. . . . Oh! my God! what shall I do!" Some one had broken the glass of the street lamp and the gas flared above them, noisily. <hr /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.