Part 16 (1/2)

CHAPTER X

CRAVEN

1

That evening Olva was elected President of the Wolves. It was a ceremony conducted with closed doors and much drinking of wine, by a committee of four and the last reigning President who had the casting vote. The College waited in suspense and at eleven o'clock it was understood that Dune had been elected.

According to custom, on the day following in ”Hall” Olva would be cheered by the a.s.sembled undergraduates whilst the G.o.ds on the dais smiled gently and murmured that ”boys will be boys.”

Meanwhile the question that agitated the Sauline world was the way that Cardillac would take it. ”If it had been any one else but Dune . . .”

but it couldn't have been any one else. There was no other possible rival, and ”Cards,” like the rest of the world, bowed to Dune's charm.

The Dublin match, to be played now in a fortnight's time, would settle the football question. It was generally expected that they would try Dune in that match and judge him finally then on his play. There was a good deal of betting on the matter, and those who remembered his earlier games said that nothing could ever make Dune a reliable player and that it was a reliable player that was wanted.

When Olva came into ”Hall” that evening he was conscious of two pairs of eyes, Craven's and Bunning's. On either side of the high vaulted hall the tables were ranged, and men, shouting, waving their gla.s.ses, lined the benches. Olva's place was at the end farthest from the door and nearest the High Table, and he had therefore the whole room to cross.

He was smiling a little, a faint colour in his cheeks. At his own end of the table Craven was standing, silent, with his eyes gravely fixed upon Olva's face. Half-way down the hall there was Bunning, and Olva could see, as he pa.s.sed up the room, that the man was trembling and was pressing his hands down upon the table to hold his body still.

When Olva had sat down and the cheering had pa.s.sed again into the cheerful hum that was customary, the first voice that greeted him was Cardillac's.

”Congratulations, old man. I'm delighted.”

There was no question of Cardillac's sincerity. Craven was sitting four places lower down; he had turned the other way and was talking eagerly to some man on his farther side--but the eyes that had met Olva's two minutes before had been hostile.

Cardillac went on: ”Come in to coffee afterwards, Dune; several men are coming in.”

Olva thanked him and said that he would. The world was waiting to see how ”Cards” would take it, and, beyond question, ”Cards” was taking it very well. Indeed an observer might have noticed that ”Cards” was too absorbed by the way that Dune was ”taking it” to ”take it” himself consciously at all. Olva's aloof surveying of the world about him, as a man on a hill surveys the town in the valley, made of ”Cards'” last year and a half a gaudy and noisy thing. He had thought that his att.i.tude had been nicely adjusted, but now he saw that there were still heights to be reached--perhaps in this welcome that he was giving to Dune's success he might attain his position. . . . Not, in any way, a bad fellow, this Cardillac--but obsessed by a self-conscious conviction that the world was looking at him; the world never looks for more than an instant at self-consciousness, but it dearly loves self-forgetfulness, for that implies a compliment to itself.

Afterwards, in Cardillac's handsome and over-careful rooms, there was an attempt at depth. The set--Lawrence, Galleon, Craven and five or six more--never thought about Life unless drink drove them to do so, and drink drove them to-night. A long, thin man, Williamson by name, with a half-Blue for racquets and a pensive manner, had a favourite formula on these occasions: ”But think of a rabbit now . . .” only conveying by the remark that here was a proof of G.o.d's supreme, astounding carelessness.

”You shoot it, you know, without turning a hair (no joke, you rotter), and it breeds millions a week . . . and--does it think about it, that's what I want to know? Where's its soul?

”Hasn't got a soul. . . .”

”Well, what _is_ the soul, anyway?”

There you are-the thing's properly started, and the more the set drinks the vaguer it gets until finally it goes happily to bed and wakes with a headache and a healthy opinion that ”Religion and that sort of stuff is rot” in the morning. That is precisely as far as intellect ever ventured in Saul's. There may have been quaint obscure fellows who sported their oaks every night and talked cleverly on ginger-beer, but they were not admitted as part of the scheme of things. . . . Saulines, to quote Lawrence, ”are _not_ clever.”

They were not especially clever to-night, thought Olva, as he sat in the shadow away from the light of the fire and watched them sitting back in enormous armchairs, with their legs stretched out, blowing wreaths of smoke into the air, drinking whiskies and sodas . . . no, not clever.

Craven, the shadows blacker than ever under his eyes, was on the opposite side of the room from Olva. He sat with his head down and was silent.

”Think of a rabbit now,” said Williamson.

”I suppose,” said Galleon, who was not gifted, ”that they're happy enough.”

”Yes, but what do they _make_ of it all?”

At this moment Craven suddenly burst in with ”Where's Carfax?”