3
"If you don't want me——" he began with his inane giggle.
"Sit down." Olva pulled out the whisky and two siphons of soda. "If I didn't want you I'd say so."
He filled himself a strong glass of whisky and soda and began feverishly to drink.
Bunning sat down.
"Don't be such a blooming fool. Take off your gown if you're going to stop."
Bunning meekly took off his gown. His spectacles seemed so large that they swallowed up the rest of his face; the spectacles and the enormous flat-toed boots were the principal features of Bunning's attire. He sat down again and gazed at Olva with the eyes of a devoted dog. Olva looked at him. Over Bunning's red wrists the brown ends of a Jaeger vest protruded from under the shirt.
"I say, why don't you dress properly?"
"I don't know—-" began Bunning.
"Well, the sleeves of your vest needn't come down like that. It looks horribly dirty. Turn 'em up."
Bunning, blushing almost to tears, turned them back.
"There's no need to make yourself worse than you are, you know," Olva finished his whisky and poured out some more. "Why do you come here? . . . I'm always beastly to you."
"As long as you let me come—I don't mind how beastly you are."
"But what do you get from it?"
Bunning looked down at his huge boots.
"Everything. But it isn't that—it is that, without being here, I haven't got anything else."
"Well, you needn't wear such boots as that—and your shirts and things aren't clean. . . . You don't mind my telling you, do you?"
"No, I like it, Nobody's ever told me."
Here obviously was a new claim for intimacy and this Olva hurriedly disavowed.
"Oh! It's only for your own good, you know. Fellows will like you better if you're decently dressed. Why hasn't any one ever told you?"
"They'd given me up at home." Bunning heaved a great sigh.
"Why? Who are your people?"
"My father's a parson in Yorkshire. They're all clergymen in my family—uncles, cousins, everybody—my elder brother. I was to have been a clergyman."
"Was to have been? Aren't you going to be one now?"
"No—not since I met you."
"Oh, but you mustn't take such a step on my account. I don't want to prevent you. I've nothing to do with it. I should think you'd make a very good parson."
Olva was brutal. He felt that in Bunning's moist devoted eyes there was a dim pain. But he was brutal because his whole soul revolted against sentimentality, not at all because his soul revolted against Bunning.
"No, I shouldn't make a good parson. I never wanted to be one really. But when your house is full of it, as our house was, you're driven. When it wasn't relations it was all sorts of people in the parish—helpers and workers—women mostly. I hated them."
Here was a real note of passion! Bunning seemed, for an instant, to be quite vigorous.
"That's why I'm so untidy now," Bunning went desperately on; "nobody cared how I looked. I was stupid at school, my reports were awful, and I was a day boy. It is very bad for any one to be a day boy—very!" he added reflectively, as though he were recalling scenes and incidents.
"Yes?" said Olva encouragingly. He was being drawn by Bunning's artless narration away from the Shadow. It was still there, its arm outstretched above the snowy court, but Bunning seemed, in some odd way, to intervene.
"I always wanted to find God in those days. It sounds a stupid thing to say, but they used to speak about Him—mother and the rest—just as though He lived down the street. They knew all about Him and I used to wonder why I didn't know too. But I didn't. It wasn't real to me. I used to make myself think that it was, but it wasn't."
"Why didn't you talk to your mother about it?—
"I did. But they were always too busy with missions and things. And then there was my elder brother. He understood about God and went to all the Bible meetings and things, and he was always so neat-never dirty—I used to wonder how he did it . . . always so neat."
Bunning took off his great spectacles and wiped them with a very dirty handkerchief.
"And had you no friends?"
"None—nobody. I didn't want them after a bit. I was afraid of everybody. I used to go down all the side-streets between school and home for fear lest I should meet some one. I was always very nervous as a boy—very. I still am."
"Nervous of people?"
"Yes, of everybody. And of things, too—things. I still am. You'd be surprised. . . . It's odd because none of the other Bunnings are nervous. I used to have fancies about God."
"What sort of fancies?"
"I used to see Him when I was in bed like a great big shadow, all up against the wall. A grey shadow with his head ever so high. That's how I used to think of Him. I expect that all sounds nonsense to you."
"No, not at all!" said Olva.
"I think they thought me nearly an idiot at home—not sane at all. But they didn't think of me very often. They used to apologise for me when people came to tea. I wasn't clever, of course—that's why they thought I'd make a good parson."
He paused—then very nervously he went on. "But now I've met you I shan't be. Nothing can make me. I've always watched you. I used to look at you in chapel. You're just as different from me as any one can be, and that's why you're like God to me. I don't want you to be decent to me. I think I'd rather you weren't. But I like to come in sometimes and hear you say that I'm dirty and untidy. That shows that you've noticed."
"But I'm not at all the sort of person to make a hero of," Olva said hurriedly. "I don't want you to feel like that about we. That's all sentimentality. You mustn't feel like that about anybody. You must stand on your own legs."
"I never have," said Burning, very solemnly, "and I never will. I've always had somebody to make a hero of. I would love to die for you, I would really. It's the only sort of thing that I can do, because I'm not clever. I know you think me very stupid."
"Yes, I do," said Olva, "and you mustn't talk like a schoolgirl. If we're friends and I let you come in here, you mustn't let your vest come over your cuffs and you must take those spots off your waistcoat, and brush your hair and clean your nails, and you must just be sensible and have a little humour. Why don't you play football?"
"I can't play games, I'm very shortsighted."
"Well, you must take some sort of exercise. Run round Parker's Piece or something, or go and run at Fenner's. You'll get so fat."
"I am getting fat. I don't think it matters much what I look like."
"It matters what every one looks like. And now you'd better cut. I've got to go out and see a man."
Burning submissively rose. He said no more but bundled out of the door in his usual untidy fashion. Olva came after him and banged his "oak" behind him. In Outer Court, looking now so vast and solemn in the silence of its snow, Bunning, stopping, pointed to the grey buildings that towered over them.
"It was against a wall like that that I used to imagine God—on a night like this—you'll think that very silly." He hurriedly added, "There's Marshall coming. I know he'll be at me about those Christian Union Cards. Good-night." He vanished.
But it was not Marshall. It was Rupert Craven. The boy was walking hurriedly, his eyes on the ground. He was suddenly conscious of some one and looked up. The change in him was extraordinary. His eyes had the heavy, dazed look of one who has not slept for weeks. His face was a yellow white, his hair unbrushed, and his mouth moved restlessly. He started when he saw Olva.
"Hallo, Craven. You're looking seedy. What's the matter?"
"Nothing, thanks. . . . Good-night."
"No, but wait a minute. Come up to my rooms and have some coffee. I haven't seen you for days."
A fortnight ago Craven would have accepted with joy. Now he shook his head.
"No, thanks. I'm tired: I haven't been sleeping very well."
"Why's that? Overwork?"
"No, it's nothing. I don't know why it is."
"You ought to see somebody. I know what not sleeping means."
"Why? . . . Are you sleeping badly?" Craven's eyes met Olva's.
"No, I'm splendid, thanks. But I had a bout of insomnia years ago. I shan't forget it."
"You look all right." Cravan's eyes were busily searching Olva's face. Then suddenly they dropped.
"I'm all right," he said hurriedly. "Tired, that's all."
"Why do you never come and see me now?"
"Oh, I will come—sometime. I'm busy."
"What about?"
Olva stood, a stern dark figure, against the snow.
"Oh, just busy." Craven suddenly looked up as though he were going to ask Olva a question. Then he apparently changed his mind, muttered a good-night and disappeared round the corner of the building.
Olva was alone in the Court. From some room came the sound of voices and laughter, from some other room a piano—some one called a name in Little Court. A sheet of stars drew the white light from the snow to heaven.
Olva turned very slowly and entered his black stairway.
In his heart he was crying, "How long can I stand this? Another day? Another hour? This loneliness. . . . I must break it. I must tell some one. I must tell some one."
As he entered his room he thought that he saw against the farther wall an old gilt mirror and in the light of it a dark figure facing him; a voice, heavy with some great overburdening sorrow, spoke to him.
"How terrible a thing it is to be alone with God!"