FIFTH OF NOVEMBER
1
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.
2
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.