The Prelude to Adventure Part 9

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 fl.u.s.tered 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+lling'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 s.h.i.+llings' worth. He presumed on nothing at all, was confidential when he ought to have been silent, and gus.h.i.+ng 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 wors.h.i.+p 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 a.s.s they wouldn't want to come round to your rooms so often."

"I know," said Bunning. "I am an awful a.s.s." 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 a.s.s."

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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionate 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 G.o.d's gone. . . . I think I'll drown myself."

"Nonsense. You mustn't talk like that--G.o.d's never gone."

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

"You think there's a G.o.d?"

"I know there's a G.o.d."

"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 G.o.d 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.