The Prelude to Adventure. Hugh Walpole
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there were three deep blue bowls, the only ornaments in the room. Beyond the little diamond-paned windows, beyond the dark mysteries of the Fellows' garden, a golden mist rose from the lamps of the street, there were stars in the sky.
He faced his books. For a quarter of an hour he saw before him the hanging, baggy cheeks, the white, staring eyes, the glittering ring on the weak finger. His hands began to tremble. …
There was a timid knock on the door, and he was instantly sure that the body had been found, and that they had come to arrest him. He stood back from the door with his hand pressing on the table. It was almost a relief to him that the summons had come so soon—it would presently all be over.
"Come in," he said, and gave one look at the golden mist, at the stars, at the tender face of Aegidius.
The door was opened slowly with fumbling hands, and there stood there a large, fat, clumsy, shapeless creature, with a white face, a hooked nose, an open, foolish mouth.
The reaction was hysterical. To expect a summons to death and public shame, to find—Bunning. Bunning—that soft, blithering, emotional, religious, middle-class maniac—Bunning! "Soft-faced" Bunning, as he was called, was the man of Olva's year in whom the world at large found most entertainment. The son of some country clergyman, kicked and battered through the slow, dreary years at some small Public School, he had come up to Saul's with an intense, burning desire to make a mark. He was stupid, useless at games, having only somewhere behind his fat ugly body a longing to be connected with some cause, some movement, some person of whom he might make a hero.
He had, of course, within the first fortnight of his arrival, plunged himself into dire disgrace. He had asked Lawrence, coming like a young god from Marlborough, in to coffee; they had made him drunk and laughed at his hysterical tears: in his desire for popularity he had held a gathering in his room, with the original intention of coffee, cakes and gentle conversation; the evening had ended with the arrival of all his furniture and personal effects upon the grass of the court below his windows.
He had been despised by the Dons, buffeted and derided by his fellow undergraduates. Especially had Carfax and Cardillac made his life a burden to him, and whenever it seemed that there was nothing especial to do, the cry arose, "Let's go and rag Bunning," and five minutes later that fat body would tremble at the sound of many men climbing the wooden stairs, at the loud banging on his wooden door, at the cry, "Hullo, Bunning—we've come for some coffee."
Then, towards the end of the first year, the Cambridge Christian Union flung out its net and caught him. His attempt at personal popularity had failed here as thoroughly as it had failed at school—now for his soul. He found that the gentlemen of his college who were members of the Christian Union were eager for his company. They did not laugh at his conversation nor mock his proffered hospitalities. They talked to him, persuaded him that his soul was in jeopardy, and carried him off during part of the Long Vacation to the Norfolk Broads, where prayer-meetings, collisions with other sea-faring craft, and tinned meats were the order of the day.
Olva had watched him with that amused incredulity that he so frequently bestowed upon his fellow-creatures. How was this kind of animal, with its cowardice, its stupidity, its ugliness, its uselessness, possible? He had never spoken to Bunning, although he had once received a note from him asking him to coffee—a piece of very considerable impertinence. He had never assisted Carfax and Cards in their raiding expeditions, but that was only because he considered such things tiresome and childish.
And now, behold, there in his doorway—incredible vision!—was the creature—at this moment of—all others!
"Come in," said Olva again.
Bunning brought his large quivering body into the room and stood there, turning his cap round and round in his hands.
"Oh, I say—" and there he stopped.
"Won't you sit down?"
"No—thanks—I——"
"In what way can I be of use to you?"
"Oh! I say—"
Senseless giggles, and then Bunning's mouth opened and remained open. His eyes stared at Dune.
"Well, what is it?"
"Oh—my word—you know—"
"Look here," said Olva quietly, "if you don't get on and tell me what you want I shall do you some bodily damage. I've got work to do. Another time, perhaps, when I am less busy——"
Bunning was nearly in tears. "Oh, yes, I know—it's most awful cheek—I——"
There was a desperate silence and then he plunged out with—"Well, you know, I—that is—we-I—sort of wondered whether, you know, you'd care—not if you're awfully busy of course—but whether you'd care to come and hear Med. Tetloe preach to-night. I know it's most awful cheek——" He was nearly in tears.
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. But it was for the cause—at least these sinners should be given the opportunity of considering their souls. If they refused to consider them, they must not complain if they find the next world but little to their fancy.
No one had ever attacked Olva before on this subject. His reserve had been more alarming to the Soul Hunters than the coarse violence of a Cardillac or a Carfax. And now Bunning—Bunning of all people in this ridiculous world—had ventured. Well, there was pluck necessary for that. Bunning, the coward, had done a braver thing than many more stalwart men would have cared to do. There was bravery there!
Moreover, why should not Olva go? He could not sit alone in his room, his nerves would soon be too many for him. What did it matter? His last evening of freedom should be spent as no other evening of his life had been spent. … Moreover, might there not be something behind this business? Might he not, perhaps, be shown to-night some clue to the presence of that Power that had spoken to him in the wood? Through all the tangled confusion of his thoughts, through the fear and courage there ran this note-where was God? … God the only person to Whom he now could speak, because God knew.
Might not this idiot of a Bunning have been shown the way to the mystery?
"Yes," said Olva, smiling. "I'll come, if you won't mind sitting down and smoking for a quarter of an hour, while I finish this—have a drink, will you?"
Bunning's consternation at Olva's acceptance was amusing. He dropped his cap, stopped to pick it up, gasped. That Dune should really come!
"You'll come?" he spluttered out. Never in his wildest imaginings had he fancied such a thing. Dune, the most secret, reserved, mysterious man in the college—Dune, whose sarcastic smile was considered more terrifying than Lawrence's mailed fist—Dune, towards whom in the back of his mind there had been paid that reverence that belongs only to those who are of another world.
Never, in anything that had happened to him, had Bunning been so terrified as he had been by this visit to Dune. Watson Morley, the Christian Union man, had insisted that it was his duty and therefore he had come, but it had taken him ten minutes of agony to climb those stairs. And now Dune had accepted. …
The colour flooded his cheeks and faded again. He sat down clumsily in a chair, felt for a pipe that he smoked unwillingly because it was the manly thing to do, spurted some Apollinaris into a glass and over the tablecloth, struck many matches vainly, dropped tobacco on to the carpet. His heart was beating like a hammer!
How men would stare when they saw him with Dune. In his heart was the uneasy knowledge that had Dune proposed staying there in his rooms and talking instead of going to Little St. Agnes and listening to the Reverend Med. Tetloe, he would have stayed. This was not