June 9, 2025 • 15 mins
Step into the thrilling narrative of Hugh Walpoles Prelude to Adventure. The story unfolds around Olva Dune, a Cambridge undergraduate who commits a murder and in that moment, senses the divine presence. The novel masterfully encapsulates the essence of Francis Thompsons poem, The Hound of Heaven - a tale of a soul in dread, relentlessly pursued by Gods love. Its highly recommended to enrich your experience by familiarizing yourself with the poem prior to diving into the novel. The story intrigued Carl Jung so much that he praised it as a psychological masterpiece in a letter to Walpole. Hergesheimer likened the suspense and plot to that of a Poe masterpiece, yet grounded in the relatable human experience. The narrative is a riveting blend of suspense, love, fear, triumph, all set against the backdrop of the captivating Cornish sea.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter seven of the Prelude to Adventure by Hugh Walpole.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter seven
Terror one. That night the cold fell like a plague
upon the town. It came sweeping across the long low flats,
crisping the dark canals with white frosted ice, stiffening the
(00:24):
thin reeds at the river's edge, taking each blade of
grass and holding it in its iron hand, and then
leaving it an independent thing of cold and shining beauty.
At last it blue and wild gales down the narrow streets,
throwing the color of those gray walls against a sky
of the sharpest blue, making of each glittering star a
(00:48):
frozen eye, carrying in its arms a round red sun,
that it might fasten it like a frosted orange, against
its hard blue canopy. Already now at half past two
of the afternoon, there were signs of the early dusk.
The blue was already being drained from the sky, and
(01:09):
against the low horizon, a faint golden shadow, soon to
burn into the heart of the cold blue, was hovering
over a doon, turning into the King's parade. Was conscious
of crowds of people, of a gaiety in life that
filled the air with sound. He checked sternly, with a
furious exercise of self control, his impulse to creep back
(01:32):
into the narrow streets that he had just left. It's
an idea, he repeated over and over as he stood there.
It's an idea. You are like anyone else, You are
as you were before everything. There is no mark, no
one knows. For it seemed to him that above him,
around him, always before him, and behind him, there was
(01:55):
a gray shadow, and that as men approached him, this
shadow bending whispered, and as they came to him, they
flung at him a frightened glance and passed. If only
he might take the arm of any one of those
bright and careless young men and say to him I
killed Carfax. Thus and thus it was, oh the relief,
(02:17):
the lifting of the weight. For then and only then,
this pursuing shadow, so strangely, grave, not cruel, but only relentless,
would step back because that confession, how clearly he knew
it was the thing that God demanded. So long as
he kept silence, he resisted the pursuer. So long as
(02:39):
he resisted the pursuer, he must fly. He must escape first,
into silence, then into sound, then back again to silence.
Somewhere behind his actual consciousness there was the knowledge that
did he once yield himself, life would be well. But
that yielding meant confession, nunciation, devotion. It was not because
(03:03):
it was Carfax that he had killed, but it was
because it was God that had spoken to him that
he fled. A fortnight ago, he would have been already defeated.
The pursuer should have caught him, bound him, done with
him as he would. But now, in that same instant,
that young Craven had looked at him with challenge in
(03:24):
his eyes. In that instant, also he Olva had looked
at Margaret in that silence yesterday evening in the dark
drawing room. The two facts had together leapt at him.
He loved Margaret Craven. He was suspected by Rupert Craven.
Love had thus terribly grimly, and yet so wonderfully sprung
(03:48):
into his heart that had never until now known its
lightest touch. Because of it, because Margaret Graven must never
know what he had done, He must fight, crave, must
lie and twist and turn. His soul must belong to
Margaret Craven, not to this terrible unperturbed pursuing God all night,
(04:11):
he had fought for control a very little more, and
he would rush, crying his secret to the whole world.
Slowly he had summoned calm back to him. Rupert Craven
should be defeated, he would quietly visit sannat Wood, face
it in its naked fact, stand before it, and examine it,
(04:31):
and fight down once and for all, this imagination of God,
those strange glances that men flung upon him, that sudden
raising of the eyes to his face. A man greeted him,
another man waved his hand, always this same suspicion, the
great gray shadow that bent and whispered in their ears.
(04:54):
He saw too another picture igh above him, Some great
power was seated, and down to earth. There bent a
mighty hand into this hand, very gently, very tenderly. Certain
figures were drawn Missus Craven, Margaret Rupert Bunning, even Lawrence
(05:14):
Ulva was dragging with him into the heart of some
terrible climax. These so diverse persons he could not escape.
Now other lies were twisted into the fabric of his own.
And yet this certainty of the futility of it, he
must still struggle to the very end. On that cold day,
(05:36):
the world seemed to stand as men gather about a
coursing match with hard eyes and jeering faces to watch
the hopeless flight. Two. He fetched Bunker from the stable
where he was captain, set off along the hard white road.
He had behaved very badly to Bunker, but the dog
(05:56):
showed no sign of delight at his release. On other days,
when he had been kept in a 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 Alva spoke to him, he wagged his tail,
(06:18):
but as though it were duty that impelled it. The
air grew colder and 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
(06:39):
clouds were charged with snow as they hung there. They
seemed to radiate from their depths and even more piercing coldness.
They hung above Ova 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 law low shivering flats. There was
(07:03):
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
(07:25):
suddenly a bird rose from the canal 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. Spaces between the trees were eyes, and it
(07:48):
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.
Uva turned on to him sharply. The dog looked at him, pleading.
Then in OVA's dark, stern face, he seemed to see
that there was no relenting, That wood must be faced.
(08:12):
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
(08:36):
white clouds there had risen in Ova 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 this slaying of him
should be so unforgettable a sin? Moreover, had it been
(08:57):
the mere vulgar hauntings of remorse, terrors of a frightened conscience,
he could have turned upon himself the contempt that any
doon must deserve for so ignoble a submission. But here
there were other things, something that no human resolution could combat.
He seized then, eagerly on the things that he could conquer.
(09:19):
The suspicions of Rupert Craven, the rivalry of Cardiac, 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
(09:40):
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,
(10:00):
twisted branches of the trees shone with frost. The earth
crackled beneath his foot, and in the woods 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
(10:21):
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 match box? He stood silently, looking
(10:42):
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
(11:03):
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 thankfulness, he turned back to the
druid stones. There they were, two of them, standing upright,
(11:23):
stained with lichen gray and weather beaten, one lying flat,
hollowed a little in the center. 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 God in these quiet stones
(11:44):
than he had been in that noisy, theatrical revival meeting.
Lawrence was wrong. Those old religions were dead. No more
could the Greek gods pass smiling into the temples of
their worshippers. No more Woden Thor and the rest demand
their bloody sacrifice. These old stones are dead. The gods
(12:05):
are dead. But God. 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,
(12:27):
and was conscious as the wood slipped back into the
distance of some vague alarm. Three. The world was now
rapidly transformed. There had been promised a blaze of glory,
but the sun, red and angry, had been drowned by
the thick gray clouds that now flooded the air, dimly
(12:47):
seen for an instant, outlined against the gray, then suddenly nonexistent,
leaving a world like a piece of crumpled paper, white
and dark to all its boundaries. The snow fell well,
now more swiftly, but always gently, imperturbably, almost, it might seem,
with a whispering intention of some important message. Olva was
(13:10):
intensely cold. He buttoned his coat tightly up to his ears,
but nevertheless the air was so biting that it hurt
Bunker with his head down drove against the snow that
was coming, now ever more thickly. The piece that there
had been in the little wood was now utterly gone.
The air seemed full of voices. They came with the snow,
(13:32):
and as the flakes blew more closely against his face
and coat, there seemed to press about him a multitude
of persons. He drove forward, but this sense of oppression
increased with every step. The wood had been swallowed by
the storm. Ova felt like a man who has long
been struggling with some vice. Insidiously, the temptation had grown
(13:54):
in force and power. His brain, once so active in
the struggle, is now dimmed and dulled. His power of resistance,
once so vigorous, is now confused. Confusion grows to paralysis.
He can only now stare distressed at the dark temptation,
their having swept over him such strong waters, that struggle
(14:17):
is no longer of a veil. One last clutch at
the vice, one last desperate and hateful pleasure, and he
is gone. Olva knew that behind him in the storm,
the pursuit was again upon him. That brief respite in
the wood had not been long granted him. The snow
(14:38):
choked him, blinded him. His body was desperately cold, his
soul trembled with fear. On every side he was surrounded.
The world had vanished. Only the thin gray body of
his dog, panting at his side, could be dimly seen.
God had not been in the wood, but God was
in the storm. Last desperate resistance held him. He stayed
(15:03):
where he was and shouted against the blindings. No, there
is no God. There is no God. Suddenly his voice
sank to a whisper. There is no God, he muttered.
The dog was standing, his eyes wide with terror, his
feet apart, his body quivering. Ova gazed into the storm.
(15:28):
Then desperately he started to run. End of chapter seven.
Chapter seven of the Prelude to Adventure by Hugh Walpole.
This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter seven
Terror one. That night the cold fell like a plague
upon the town. It came sweeping across the long low flats,
crisping the dark canals with white frosted ice, stiffening the
(00:24):
thin reeds at the river's edge, taking each blade of
grass and holding it in its iron hand, and then
leaving it an independent thing of cold and shining beauty.
At last it blue and wild gales down the narrow streets,
throwing the color of those gray walls against a sky
of the sharpest blue, making of each glittering star a
(00:48):
frozen eye, carrying in its arms a round red sun,
that it might fasten it like a frosted orange, against
its hard blue canopy. Already now at half past two
of the afternoon, there were signs of the early dusk.
The blue was already being drained from the sky, and
(01:09):
against the low horizon, a faint golden shadow, soon to
burn into the heart of the cold blue, was hovering
over a doon, turning into the King's parade. Was conscious
of crowds of people, of a gaiety in life that
filled the air with sound. He checked sternly, with a
furious exercise of self control, his impulse to creep back
(01:32):
into the narrow streets that he had just left. It's
an idea, he repeated over and over as he stood there.
It's an idea. You are like anyone else, You are
as you were before everything. There is no mark, no
one knows. For it seemed to him that above him,
around him, always before him, and behind him, there was
(01:55):
a gray shadow, and that as men approached him, this
shadow bending whispered, and as they came to him, they
flung at him a frightened glance and passed. If only
he might take the arm of any one of those
bright and careless young men and say to him I
killed Carfax. Thus and thus it was, oh the relief,
(02:17):
the lifting of the weight. For then and only then,
this pursuing shadow, so strangely, grave, not cruel, but only relentless,
would step back because that confession, how clearly he knew
it was the thing that God demanded. So long as
he kept silence, he resisted the pursuer. So long as
(02:39):
he resisted the pursuer, he must fly. He must escape first,
into silence, then into sound, then back again to silence.
Somewhere behind his actual consciousness there was the knowledge that
did he once yield himself, life would be well. But
that yielding meant confession, nunciation, devotion. It was not because
(03:03):
it was Carfax that he had killed, but it was
because it was God that had spoken to him that
he fled. A fortnight ago, he would have been already defeated.
The pursuer should have caught him, bound him, done with
him as he would. But now, in that same instant,
that young Craven had looked at him with challenge in
(03:24):
his eyes. In that instant, also he Olva had looked
at Margaret in that silence yesterday evening in the dark
drawing room. The two facts had together leapt at him.
He loved Margaret Craven. He was suspected by Rupert Craven.
Love had thus terribly grimly, and yet so wonderfully sprung
(03:48):
into his heart that had never until now known its
lightest touch. Because of it, because Margaret Graven must never
know what he had done, He must fight, crave, must
lie and twist and turn. His soul must belong to
Margaret Craven, not to this terrible unperturbed pursuing God all night,
(04:11):
he had fought for control a very little more, and
he would rush, crying his secret to the whole world.
Slowly he had summoned calm back to him. Rupert Craven
should be defeated, he would quietly visit sannat Wood, face
it in its naked fact, stand before it, and examine it,
(04:31):
and fight down once and for all, this imagination of God,
those strange glances that men flung upon him, that sudden
raising of the eyes to his face. A man greeted him,
another man waved his hand, always this same suspicion, the
great gray shadow that bent and whispered in their ears.
(04:54):
He saw too another picture igh above him, Some great
power was seated, and down to earth. There bent a
mighty hand into this hand, very gently, very tenderly. Certain
figures were drawn Missus Craven, Margaret Rupert Bunning, even Lawrence
(05:14):
Ulva was dragging with him into the heart of some
terrible climax. These so diverse persons he could not escape.
Now other lies were twisted into the fabric of his own.
And yet this certainty of the futility of it, he
must still struggle to the very end. On that cold day,
(05:36):
the world seemed to stand as men gather about a
coursing match with hard eyes and jeering faces to watch
the hopeless flight. Two. He fetched Bunker from the stable
where he was captain, set off along the hard white road.
He had behaved very badly to Bunker, but the dog
(05:56):
showed no sign of delight at his release. On other days,
when he had been kept in a 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 Alva spoke to him, he wagged his tail,
(06:18):
but as though it were duty that impelled it. The
air grew colder and 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
(06:39):
clouds were charged with snow as they hung there. They
seemed to radiate from their depths and even more piercing coldness.
They hung above Ova 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 law low shivering flats. There was
(07:03):
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
(07:25):
suddenly a bird rose from the canal 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. Spaces between the trees were eyes, and it
(07:48):
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.
Uva turned on to him sharply. The dog looked at him, pleading.
Then in OVA's dark, stern face, he seemed to see
that there was no relenting, That wood must be faced.
(08:12):
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
(08:36):
white clouds there had risen in Ova 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 this slaying of him
should be so unforgettable a sin? Moreover, had it been
(08:57):
the mere vulgar hauntings of remorse, terrors of a frightened conscience,
he could have turned upon himself the contempt that any
doon must deserve for so ignoble a submission. But here
there were other things, something that no human resolution could combat.
He seized then, eagerly on the things that he could conquer.
(09:19):
The suspicions of Rupert Craven, the rivalry of Cardiac, 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
(09:40):
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,
(10:00):
twisted branches of the trees shone with frost. The earth
crackled beneath his foot, and in the woods 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
(10:21):
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 match box? He stood silently, looking
(10:42):
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
(11:03):
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 thankfulness, he turned back to the
druid stones. There they were, two of them, standing upright,
(11:23):
stained with lichen gray and weather beaten, one lying flat,
hollowed a little in the center. 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 God in these quiet stones
(11:44):
than he had been in that noisy, theatrical revival meeting.
Lawrence was wrong. Those old religions were dead. No more
could the Greek gods pass smiling into the temples of
their worshippers. No more Woden Thor and the rest demand
their bloody sacrifice. These old stones are dead. The gods
(12:05):
are dead. But God. 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,
(12:27):
and was conscious as the wood slipped back into the
distance of some vague alarm. Three. The world was now
rapidly transformed. There had been promised a blaze of glory,
but the sun, red and angry, had been drowned by
the thick gray clouds that now flooded the air, dimly
(12:47):
seen for an instant, outlined against the gray, then suddenly nonexistent,
leaving a world like a piece of crumpled paper, white
and dark to all its boundaries. The snow fell well,
now more swiftly, but always gently, imperturbably, almost, it might seem,
with a whispering intention of some important message. Olva was
(13:10):
intensely cold. He buttoned his coat tightly up to his ears,
but nevertheless the air was so biting that it hurt
Bunker with his head down drove against the snow that
was coming, now ever more thickly. The piece that there
had been in the little wood was now utterly gone.
The air seemed full of voices. They came with the snow,
(13:32):
and as the flakes blew more closely against his face
and coat, there seemed to press about him a multitude
of persons. He drove forward, but this sense of oppression
increased with every step. The wood had been swallowed by
the storm. Ova felt like a man who has long
been struggling with some vice. Insidiously, the temptation had grown
(13:54):
in force and power. His brain, once so active in
the struggle, is now dimmed and dulled. His power of resistance,
once so vigorous, is now confused. Confusion grows to paralysis.
He can only now stare distressed at the dark temptation,
their having swept over him such strong waters, that struggle
(14:17):
is no longer of a veil. One last clutch at
the vice, one last desperate and hateful pleasure, and he
is gone. Olva knew that behind him in the storm,
the pursuit was again upon him. That brief respite in
the wood had not been long granted him. The snow
(14:38):
choked him, blinded him. His body was desperately cold, his
soul trembled with fear. On every side he was surrounded.
The world had vanished. Only the thin gray body of
his dog, panting at his side, could be dimly seen.
God had not been in the wood, but God was
in the storm. Last desperate resistance held him. He stayed
(15:03):
where he was and shouted against the blindings. No, there
is no God. There is no God. Suddenly his voice
sank to a whisper. There is no God, he muttered.
The dog was standing, his eyes wide with terror, his
feet apart, his body quivering. Ova gazed into the storm.
(15:28):
Then desperately he started to run. End of chapter seven.
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