BUNNING
1
He went into Hall. He sat amongst the particular group of his own year
who were considered the _elite_. There was Cardillac there, brilliant,
flashing Cardillac. There was Bobby Galleon, fat, good-natured, sleepy,
intelligent in an odd bovine way. There was Craven, young, ardent,
hail-fellow-well-met. There was Lawrence, burly back for the University
in Rugby, unintelligent, kind and good-tempered unless he were drunk.
There were others. They all sat in their glory, noisily happy. Somewhere
in the distance on a raised dais were the Dons gravely pompous. Every
now and again word was brought that the gentlemen were making too much
noise. The Master might be observed drinking elaborately, ceremoniously
with some guest. Madden, the Service Tutor, flung his shrill treble
voice above the general hubbub--
"But, my dear Ross, if you had only observed---"
"Where is Carfax?" came suddenly from Lawrence. He asked Craven, who
was, of course, the devoted friend of Carfax. Craven had large brown
eyes, a charming smile, a prominent chin, rather fat routed cheeks and
short brown hair that curled a little. He gave the impression of eager
good-temper and friendliness. To-night he looked worried. "I don't
know," he said, "I can't understand it. He said this morning that he'd
be here to-night and make up a four at Bridge. He went off to see an
aunt or some one at Grantchester!"
"Perhaps," said Bobby Galleon gravely, "he had an exeat and has gone up
to town."
"But he'd have said something--sure. And the porter hasn't seen him. He
would have been certain to know."
Olva was never expected to talk much. His reserve was indeed rather
popular. The entirely normal and ordinary men around him appreciated
this mystery. "Rum fellow, Dune . . . nobody knows him." His high dark
colour, his dignity, his courtesy had about it something distinguished
and romantic. "He'll do something wonderful one day, _you_ bet. Why, if
he only chose to play up at footer there's nothing he couldn't do."
Even the brilliant Cardillac, thin, dark, handsome leader of fashion and
society, admitted the charm.
Now, however, Olva, looking up, quietly said--
"I expect his aunt's kept him to dinner. _He'll_ turn up."
But of course he wouldn't turn up. He was lying in the heart of that
crushed, dripping fern with his leg doubled under him. It wasn't often
that one killed a man with one blow; the signet ring that he wore on the
little finger of his right hand--a Dune ring of great antiquity--must
have had something to do with it.
He turned it round thoughtfully on his finger. Robert, an old, old
trembling waiter, said in a shaking voice--
"There's salmi of wild game, sir--roast beef."
"Beef, please," Olva said quietly.
He was considering now that all these men would to-morrow night have
only one thought, one idea. They would remember everything, the very
slightest thing that he had done. They would discuss it all from every
possible point of view.
"I always knew he'd do something. . . ." He suddenly knew quite sharply,
as though a voice had spoken to him, that he could not endure this
any longer. There was gathering upon him the conviction that in a few
minutes, rising from his place, he would cry out to the hall--"I,
Olva Dune, this afternoon, killed Carfax. You will find his body in the
wood." He repeated the words to himself under his breath. "You will find
his body in the wood. . . ." "You will find . . ."
He finished his beef very quietly and then got up.
Craven appealed to him. "I say, Dune, do come and make a four--my rooms,
half-past eight--Lawrence and Galleon are the other two."
Olva looked down at him with his grave, rather melancholy smile.
"Afraid I can't to-night, Craven; must work."
"Don't overdo it," Cardillac said.
The eyes of the two men met. Olva knew that Cardillac--"Cards" as he was
to his friends, liked him; he himself did not hate Cardillac. He was the
only man in the College for whom he had respect. They were both of them
demanding the same thing from the world. They both of them despised
their fellow-creatures.
Olva, climbing the stairs to his room, stood for a moment in the dark,
before he turned on the lights. He spoke aloud in a whisper, as though
some one were with him in the room.
"This won't do," he said. "This simply won't do. Your nerves are going.
You've only got a few hours of it. Hold on--Think of the beast that he
was. Think of the beast that he was."
He walked slowly back to the door and turned on the electric lights. He
did not sport his oak--if people came to see him he would rather like
it: in some odd way it would be more satisfactory than that he should go
to see them--but people did not often come to see him.
He laid out his books on the table and sat down. He had grown fond of
this room. The walls were distempered white. The ceiling was old and
black with age. There was a deep red-tiled fireplace. One wall had low
brown bookshelves. There were two pictures: one an Around reprint of
Matsys' "Portrait of Aegidius"--that wise, kind, tender face; the other
an admirable photogravure of Durer's "Selbstbildnis." The books were
mainly to do with his favourite historical period--the Later Roman
Empire. There was some poetry--an edition of Browning, Swinburne's
_Poems and Ballads_, Ernest Dowson, Rossetti, Francis Thompson. There
was an edition of Hazlitt, a set of the _Spectator_, one or two novels,
_Henry Lessingham_ and _The Roads_ by Galleon, _To Paradise_ by Lester,
Meredith's _One of Our Conquerors_ and _Diana of the Crossways, The
Ambassadors_ and _Awkward Age_ of Henry James.
On the mantelpiece above the fireplace 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 right, it was
not Christian. The world gaped below Bunning's heavy feet.
At last Dune said: "I'm ready, let's go." They went out.
2
Little St. Agnes was apparently so named because it was the largest
church in Cambridge. It was of no ancient date, but it was grim, grey,
dark--admirably suited to an occasion like the present. Under the high
roof, lost in a grey cloud, resolving themselves into rows of white,
intense faces, sat hundreds of undergraduates.
They were seated on uncomfortable, unstable chairs, and the noise of
their uneasy movements sent squeaks up and down the building as though
it had been a barn filled with terrified rats.
Far in the distance, perched on a high pulpit, was a little white
figure--an old gaunt man with a bony hand and a grey beard. Behind him
again there was darkness. Only, in all the vast place, the white body
and rows of white faces raised to it.
Olva and Bunning found seats in a corner. A slight soft voice said, with
the mysterious importance of one about to deliver an immense secret,
"You will look in the Mission Books, Hymn 330. 'Oh! for the arms of
Jesus.' I want you to think for a moment of the meaning of the words
before you sing."
There followed the rustling of many pages and then a heavy, emotional
silence. Olva read the words and found them very sentimental, very bad
verse and rather unpleasantly fall of blood and pain. Every one stood;
the chairs creaked from one end of the building to the other, an immense
volume of sound rose to the roof.
Olva felt that the entire church was seized with emotion. He saw that
Bunning's hand was trembling, he knew that many eyes were filled with
tears. For himself, he understood at once that that distant figure in
white was here to make a dramatic appeal--dramatic as certainly as the
appeal that a famous actor might make in London. That was his job--
he was out for it---and anything in the way of silence or noise, of
darkness or light, that could add to the effect would be utilized. Olva
knew also that nine-tenths of the undergraduates were present there for
the same purpose. They wished to have their emotions played upon; they
wished also to be reassured about life; they wished to confuse this
dramatic emotion with a sincere desire for salvation. They wished, it is
true, to be good, but they wished, a great deal more, to be dramatically
stirred.
Olva was reminded of the tensity of the atmosphere at a bull-fight that
he had once seen in Madrid. Here again was the same intensity. . . .
He saw, therefore, in this first singing of the hymn, that this place,
this appeal, would be of no use in his own particular need. This
deliberate evoking of dramatic effect had nothing to do with that silent
consciousness of God. This place, this appeal, was fantastic, childish,
beside that event that had that afternoon sent Carfax into space. Let
these men hurry to the wood, let them find the sodden body, let them
face then the reality of Life. . . .
Again, as before in Hall, he was tempted to rise and cry out: "I have
killed Carfax. I have killed Carfax. What of all your theories now?"
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. There were those, perhaps, in the
Church tonight who had not even thought about God. There were those
again who, maybe, had some crime on their conscience and did not know
how to get rid of it. Would they not come to Christ and ask His help?
Stories were told. Story of the young man who cursed his mother, broke
his leg, and arrived home just too late to see her alive. Story of the
friend who died to save another friend, and how many souls were saved
by this self-sacrifice. Story of the Undergraduate who gambled and drank
and was converted by a barmaid and eventually became a Bishop.
All these examples of God's guidance. Then, for an instant, there is a
great silence. The emotion is now beating in waves against the wall. The
faces are whiter now, hands are clenched, lips bitten. Suddenly there
leaps upon them all that gentle voice, now a trumpet. "Who is for the
Lord? Who is for the Lord?"
Then gently again,--"Let us pray in silence for a few minutes." . . .
A great creaking of chairs, more intense silence. At last the voice
again--"Will those who are sure that they are saved stand up?" Dead
silence--no one moves. "Will those who wish to be saved stand up?" With
one movement every one--save only Olva, dark in his corner--stands up.
Bunning's eyes are flaming, his body is trembling from head to foot.
"Christ is amongst you! Christ is in the midst of you!"
Suddenly, somewhere amongst the shadows a voice breaks out--"Oh! my God!
Oh! my God!" Some one is crying--some one else is crying. All about the
building men are falling on to their knees. Bunning has crashed on to
his--his face buried in his hands.
The little gentle voice again--"I shall be delighted to speak to any of
those whose consciences are burdened. If any who wish to see me would
wait. . . ."
The souls are caught for God.
Prayers followed, another hymn. Bunning with red eyes has contemplated
his sins and is in a glow of excited repentance. It is over.
As Olva rose to leave the building he knew that this was not the path
for which he was searching. Not here was that terrible Presence. . . .
The men poured in a black crowd out into the night. As Olva stepped into
the darkness he knew that the terror was only now beginning for him.
Standing there now with no sorrow, remorse, repentance, nevertheless
he knew that all night, alone in his room, he would be fighting with
devils. . . .
Bunning, nervously, stammered--"If you don't mind--I think I'm going
round for a minute."
Olva nodded good-night. As he went on his way to Saul's, grimly, it
seemed humorous that "soft-faced" Bunning should be going to confess his
thin, miserable little sins.
For him, Olva Dune, only a dreadful silence. . . .