As the words came from him Lawrence stopped.
"Druids?" said Olva.
"Why, yes. I wish I were a clever feller an' I could say what I mean, but if I'd been a man with a bit of grey matter that's what I'd have gone in for—those old stones, those old fellers who used to slash your throat to please their God. My soul, there's stuff there. They knew what fighting was—they'd have played footer with you. Ever since I was a tiny kid they've excited me, and if I'd been a brainy feller I'd have known a lot more, but the minute I start reactin' about them I get heavy, can't keep my eyes to it. But I've walked miles—often and often—to see a stone or a hill, don't yer know, and Sannet Wood's one o' the best. So, says I, when I hear about young Carfax bein' done for right there at the very place, I says to myself, 'You may look and look—hold your old inquests—collar your likely feller—but it wasn't a man that did it, and you'll have to go further than human beings if you fix on the culprit.'"
This was, in all probability, the longest speech that Lawrence had ever made in his life. He himself seemed to think so, for he added in short jerks: "It was those old Druids—got sick—o' the sight—o' Carfax's dirty body—bangin' about in their preserves—an' they gave him a chuck under the chin," and after that there was silence.
To Olva the effect of this was uncanny. He played, it seemed, a spiritual Blind Man's Buff. On every side of him things filled the air; once and again he would touch them, sometimes he would fancy that he was alone, clear, isolated, when suddenly something again would blunder up against him. And always with him, driving him into the bustle of his fellow men, flinging him, hurling him from one noise to another noise, was the terror of silence. Let him once be alone, once waiting in suspense, and he would hear. . . . What would he hear?
He felt a sudden impulse to speak.
"Do you know, Lawrence, in a kind of way I feel with you. I mean this—that if—I had, at any time, committed a murder or were indeed burdened by any tremendous breaking of a law, I believe it would be the consciousness of the Maker of the law that would pursue me. It sounds priggish, but I don't mean man. The laws that man has made nothing—subject to any temporary civilization, mere fences put up for a moment to keep the cattle in their proper fields. But the laws that God made—if you break one . . ."
Lawrence tuned heavily in his chair.
"Then you believe in God?"
"Yes, I believe in God."