2
Olva liked Cardillac—Cardillac liked Olva. They both in their attitude to College affairs saw beyond the College gates into the wide and bright world. Cardillac, when it had seemed that no danger could threaten either his election to the Wolves or the acquisition of his Football Blue, had regarded both honours quietly and with indifference. It amazed him now when both these Prizes were seriously threatened that he should still appreciate and even seek out Dune's company.
Had it been any other man in the College he would have been a very active enemy, but here was the one man who had that larger air, that finer style whose gravity was beautiful, whose soul was beyond Wolves and Rugby football, whose future in the real world promised to be of a fine and highly ordered kind. Cardillac wished eagerly that these things might yet be his, but if he were to be beaten, then, of all men in the world, let it be by Dune. In his own scant, cynical estimate of his fellow-beings Dune alone demanded a wide and appreciative attention.
To Olva on this evening it mattered but little where he was or what he did. The snow had ceased to fall, and now, under a starry sky, lay white and glistening clear; but still with him storm seemed to hover, its snow beating his body, its fury yieling him no respite.
And now there was no longer any doubt. He faced it with the most matter-of-fact self-possession of which he was capable. Some-thing was waiting for his surrender. He figured it, sitting quietly back in the reading-room, listening to the Debate, watching the faces around him, as the tracing of some one who was dearly loved. There was nothing stranger in it all than his own certainty that the Power that pursued him was tender. And here he crossed the division between the Real and the Unreal, because his present consciousness of this Power was as actual as his consciousness of the chairs and tables that filled the reading-room. That was the essential thing that made the supreme gulf between himself and his companions. It was not because he had murdered Carfax but because he was now absolutely conscious of God that he was so alone. He could not touch his human companions, he could scarcely see them. It was through this isolation that God was driving him to confession. Now, in the outer Court, huge against the white dazzling snow, the great shadow was hovering, its head piercing the stars, its arms outstretched. Let him surrender and at once there would be infinite peace, but with surrender must come submission, confession . . . with confession he must lose the one thing that he desired—Margaret Craven . . . that he might go and talk to her, watch her, listen to her voice. Meanwhile he must not think. If he allowed his brain, for an instant, to rest, it was flooded with the sweeping consciousness of the Presence—always he must be doing something, his football, his companions, and often at the end of it all, calmly, quietly, betrayed—hearing above all the clatter that he might make the gentle accents of that Voice. He remembered that peace that he had had in St. Martin's Chapel on the day of the discovery of the body. What he would give to reclaim that now!
Meanwhile he must battle; must quiet Craven's suspicions, must play football, join company with men who seemed to him now like shadows. As he glanced round at them—at Lawrence, Bunning, Galleon Cardillac—they seemed to have far less existence than the grey shadow in the outer Court. Sounds passed him like smoke—the lights grew faint in his eyes . . . he was being drawn out into a world that was all of ice—black ice stretching to every horizon; on the edge of it, vast against the night sky, was the Grey Figure, waiting.
"Come to Me. Tell Me that you will follow Me. I spoke to you in the wood. You have broken My law. . . ."
"Lot of piffle," he heard Cardillac's voice from a great distance. "These freshers are always gassing." The electric light, seen through a cloud of tobacco smoke, came slowly back to him, dull globes of colour.
"It's so hot—I'm cutting," he whispered to Cardillac, and slipped out of the room.
He climbed to his room, flung back his door and saw that his light was turned on.
Facing him, waiting for him, was Bunning.