College students -- Fiction; Murder -- Fiction; Murderers -- Fiction
Bunning leapt from his chair. In his urgency he put his hands on Olva's
arm: "No, no, no. You mustn't do that. Why it will be as though I'd
murdered you. Tell him I did it. Make him believe it. You can---you're
clever enough. Make him feel that I did it. You mustn't, mustn't---let
him know. Oh, please, please. I'll kill myself if you do. I will
really."
Olva gravely, quietly, put his hands on Bunning's shoulders.
"It's all right---it had to come out. I've been avoiding it all this
time, escaping it, but it had to come. Don't you be afraid of it. I
daresay Craven won't do anything. After all he loves his sister and she
cares for him. That will influence him. But, anyhow, all that's done
with. There are bigger things in question than Craven knowing about
Carfax, and you were meant to tell him---you were really. You've just
forced me to see what's the right thing to do---that's all."
Bunning was, surely, in the light of it, a romantic figure.
Miss Annett came in with the lunch.
3
As Olva was changing into his football things, Cardillac appeared.
"Come up to the field with me, will you? I've got a hansom."
Olva finished tying his boots and stood up. Cardillac looked at him.
"My word, you seem fit."
"Yes, I'm splendid, thanks."
He felt splendid. Never before had he been so conscious of the right to
be alive. His football clothes smelt of the earth and the air. He moved
his arms and legs with wonderful freedom. His blood was pumping through
his body as though death, disease, infirmity such things---were of
another planet.
For such a man as he there should only be air, love, motion, the
begetting of children, the surprising splendour of a sudden death. Now
already Craven was waiting for him.
He had sent a note round to Craven's rooms; he had said, "Come in to see
me after the match---five o'clock. I have something to tell you."
At five o'clock then. . . .
Meanwhile it was nice of Cardillac to come. They exchanged no words
about it, but they understood one another entirely. It was as though
Cardillac had said---"I expect that you're going to knock me out of this
Rugger Blue as you knocked me out of the Wolves, and I want to show you
that we're pals all the way through."
What Cardillac really said was---"Have a cigarette? These are Turkish.
Feel like playing a game to-day?"
"Never felt better in my life."
"Well, these Dublin fellows haven't had their line crossed yet this
season. May one of us have the luck to do it."
"Pretty hefty lot of forwards."
"Yes, O'Brien's their spot Three I believe."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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