Part 11 (1/2)

And yet with this certainty of the futility of it, he must still struggle . . . to the very end.

On that cold day the world seemed to stand, as men gather about a coursing match, with hard eyes and jeering faces to watch the hopeless flight. . . .

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He fetched Banker from the stable where he was kept and set off along the hard white road. He had behaved very badly to Bunker, a but the dog showed no signs of delight at his release. On other days when he had been kept in his stable for a considerable time he had gone mad with joy and jumped at his master, wagging his whole body in excitement. Now he walked very slowly by Olva's side, a little way behind him; when Olva spoke to him he wagged his tail, but as though it were duty that impelled it.

The air grew colder aid colder--slowly now there had stolen on to the heart of the blue sky white pinnacles of cloud--a dazzling whiteness, but catching, mysteriously, the shadow of the gold light that heralded the setting sun. These clouds were charged with snow; as they hung there they seemed to radiate from their depths an even more piercing coldness.

They hung above Olva like a vast mountain range and had in their outline so sharp and real an existence that they were part of the hard black horizon, rising, immediately, out of the long, low, s.h.i.+vering flats.

There was no sound in all the world; behind him, sharply, the Cambridge towers bit the sky--before him like a clenched hand was the little wood.

The silence seemed to have a rhythm and voice of its own so that if one listened, quite clearly the tramp of a marching army came over the level ground. Always an army marching--and when suddenly a bird rose from the ca.n.a.l with a sharp cry the tramping was caught, with the bird, for an instant, into the air, and then when the cry was ended sank down again.

The wood enlarged; it lay upon the cold land now like a man's head; a man with a cap. s.p.a.ces between the trees were eyes and it seemed that he was lying behind the rim of the world and leaning his head upon the edge of it and gazing. . . .

Bunker suddenly stopped and looked up at his master.

”Come on,” Olva turned on to him sharply.

The dog looked at him, pleading. Then in Olva's dark stern face he seemed to see that there was no relenting--that wood must be faced. He moved forward again, but slowly, reluctantly. All this nonsense that Lawrence had talked about Druids. We will soon see what to make of that. And yet, in the wood, it did seem as though there were something waiting. It was now no longer a man's head--only a dark, melancholy band of trees, dead black now against the high white clouds.

There had risen in Olva the fighting spirit. Fear was still there, ghastly fear, but also an anger, a rage. Why should he be thus tormented? What had he done? Who was Carfax that the slaying of him should be so unforgettable a sin? Moreover, had it been the mere vulgar hauntings of remorse, terrors of a frightened conscience, he could have turned upon himself the contempt that any Dune must deserve for so ign.o.ble a submission.

But here there were other things--some-thing that no human resolution could combat. He seized then eagerly on the things that he could conquer--the suspicions of Rupert Craven, the rivalry of Cardillac, the confidences of Bunning, . . . the grave tenderness of Margaret Craven . . . these things he would clutch and hold, let the Pursuing Spirits do what they would.

As he entered the dark wood a few flakes of snow were falling. He knew where the Druid Stones lay. He had once been shown them by some undergraduate interested in such things. They lay a little to the right, below the little crooked path and above the Hollow.

The wood was not dripping now--held in the iron hand of the frost the very leaves on the ground seemed to be made of metal; the bare twisted branches of the trees shone with frosty--the earth crackled beneath his foot and in the wood's silence, when he broke a twig with his boot the sound shot into the air and rang against the listening stillness.

He looked at the Hollow, Bunker close at his heels. He could see the spot where he had first stood, talking to Carfax--there where the ferns now glistened with silver. There was the place where Carfax had fallen.

Bunker was smelling with his head down at the ground. What did the dog remember? What had Craven meant when he said that Bunker had found the matchbox?

He stood silently looking down at the Hollow. In his heart now there was no terror. When, during these last days, he had been fighting his fear it had always seemed to him that the heart of it lay in this Hollow. He had always seen the dripping fern, smelt the wet earth, heard the sound of the mist falling from the trees. Now the earth was clear and hard and cold. The great white mountains drove higher into the sky, very softly and gently a few white flakes were falling.

With a great relief, almost a sigh of thank-fulness, he turned back to the Druids' Stones. There they were--two of them standing upright, stained with lichen, grey and weather-beaten, one lying flat, hollowed a little in the centre. The ferns stood above them and the bare branches of the trees crossed in strange shapes against the sky.

Here, too, there was a peaceful, restful silence. No more was G.o.d in these quiet stones than He had been in that noisy theatrical Revival Meeting--Lawrence was wrong. Those old religions were dead. No more could the Greek G.o.ds pa.s.s smiling into the temples of their wors.h.i.+ppers, no more Wodin, Thor and the rest may demand their b.l.o.o.d.y sacrifice.

These old stones are dead. The G.o.ds are dead--but G.o.d? . . .

He stayed there for a while and the snow fell more heavily. The golden light had faded, the high white clouds had swallowed the blue. There would soon be storm.

In the wood--strangest of ironies--there had been peace.

Now he started down the road again and was conscious, as the wood slipped back into distance, of some vague alarm.

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