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June 9, 2025 • 24 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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Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapters sixteen and seventeen of the Prelude to Adventure by
Hugh Walpole. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain.
Chapter sixteen, Ova and Margaret one. On the next evening,
the sun set with great splendor. The frost had come
and hardened the snow, and all day the sky had

(00:21):
been a pale, frozen blue, only on the horizon fading
into croakush yellow. The sun was just vanishing behind the
gray roofs when Ova went to Rocket Road. All day
he had been very busy, destroying old letters and papers,
and seeing to everything so that he should leave no
untidiness nor carelessness behind him. Now it was all over

(00:44):
tomorrow morning. With enough money but not very much, and
with an old rucksack that he had once had on
a walking tour, he would set out. He did not
question this decision. He knew that it was what he
was intended to do. But it was the way that
Margaret would take his confession that would make that journey

(01:05):
hard or easy. He did not know. That was the
surprising thing, how she would take it. He knew her
so little. He only knew that he loved her, and
that she would do without flinching the thing that she
felt was right. Oh, but it would be difficult. The house,
the laureled drive, the little road, the distant moor, and

(01:27):
would these things had to night a gentle air over
the more the setting sun flung a red flame, the
woods burned black, the laurels were heavy with snow, and
a robin hopped down the drive. As Olva passed, he
found Margaret in the drawing room, and here too he
fancied that there was more light and air than on

(01:48):
other days. When the old woman had left the room,
he suddenly caught Margaret to him and kissed her as
though he would never let her go. She clung to
him with her hands. Then he stood gravely away from her.
There he said, that is the last time that I
may kiss you before I have told you what it
is that I have come here to say. But first,

(02:11):
may I go up to your mother for a moment? Yes,
said Margaret, if you will not be very long, I
do not think that I can have much more patience.
Then she added more slowly, gazing into his face, Rupert
said last night that you would have something to tell
me to day. I have been waiting all day for
you to come. But Rupert was his old self last night,

(02:34):
and he talked to mother and has made her happy again. Oh,
I think that everything is going to be all right.
I will soon come down to you, he said. Missus
Craven's long dark room was lit by the setting sun.
Beyond her windows, the straight white fields lifted shiny splendor
to the stars already twinkling in the pale sky. Candles

(02:56):
were lit on a little black table by her sofa,
and the fire was red deep in its cavernous setting.
He stood for a moment in the dim room, facing
the setting sun, and the light of the fire played
about his feet, and the pale glow that stole up
into the evening from the snowy fields touched his face.
She knew, as she looked at him that something had

(03:18):
given him great peace. I've come to say good bye,
he said, and then he sat down by her side. No,
she said, smiling, you mustn't go. We want you Rupert
and Margaret and I. Then, softly, as though to herself,
she repeated the words Rupert and Margaret and I. Dear

(03:38):
missus Craven, One day I will come back. But tell
me Rupert spoke to you last night. Yes, he has
made me so very happy. Last night we were the
same again as we used to be, and even I
think more than we have ever been. Rupert is growing up. Yes,
Rupert is growing up. Did he tell you why he

(04:00):
had during these weeks been so strange and unhappy? No,
he gave me no real explanation. But I think that
it was the terrible death of his friend, mister Carfax.
I think that that had preyed upon his mind. No,
Missus Craven, it was more than that. He was unhappy
because he knew that it was I that had killed Carfax.

(04:23):
He saw a little movement pass over her, her hand
trembled against her dress. For some time they sat together
there in silence, and the red sun slipped down behind
the fields. The room was suddenly dark, except for the
yellow pool of light that the candles made, and for
the strange gleam by the window that came from the snow.

(04:44):
At last, she said, now I understand. Now, I understand
I killed him in anger. It was quite fair. No
one had any idea except Rupert. But everything helped to
show him that it was I. When he saw that
I loved Margaret, he was very unhappy. He saw that

(05:04):
we had some kind of understanding together, and he thought
that I had told you and that you sympathize with me.
I am going now to tell Margaret, poor, Poorovah. It
was the first time that she had called him by
his Christian name. She took his hand, both of us
together the same thing. I have paid. God knows I

(05:26):
have paid, and soon I hope it will be over.
But your life is before you. He looked out at
the evening fields. I am going down now to tell Margaret,
and tomorrow I shall set out. I will not come
back to Margaret until I know that I am cleared.
But I want you while I am away, to think
of me sometimes, and to talk of me sometimes to Margaret,

(05:49):
and one day perhaps I shall know that I may
come back. She put her thin hands about his head
and drew it down to her and kissed him. There
will never be a time when you are not in
my mind, she said, I love you as though you
were my own son. I had hoped that you would
be here often, but now I see that it is

(06:10):
right for you to go. I know that Margaret will
wait for you. Meanwhile, an old woman loves you. He
kissed her and left her at the door. Through the
dark room, he heard her thin voice. May God bless
you and keep you. He went to perform his hardest task. Two,

(06:30):
It was the harder in that, for a little while
he seemed to be left absolutely alone. The room was
dark save for the leaping light of the fire in
the deep stone fireplace, And as he saw Margaret standing
there waiting for him, desperately courageous, he only knew that
he loved her so badly that for a little while

(06:51):
he could only stand there staring at her, twisting his
hands together, speechless. Well at last she said, come and
sit down and tell me all about it. But her
voice trembled a little, and her eyes were wide frightened,
begging him not to hurt her. He sat down near
her before the fire, and she, instinctively, as though she

(07:14):
knew that this was a very tremendous matter, stood away
from him, her hands clasped together against her black dress. Suddenly,
now before he spoke, he realized what it would mean
to him if she could not forgive what he had done.
He had imagined it once before, the slow withdrawal of
her eyes, the gradual tightening of the lips, the little

(07:38):
instinctive movement away from him. If he must go out
into the world having lost her, he thought that he
could never endure God or no God, the long dreary
years in front of him. At last, he was brave Margaret.
At first, I want you to know that I love
you with all my heart and soul and body, that

(08:00):
nothing that can ever happen to me can ever alter
that love, that I am yours entirely always. And then
I want you to know that I am not worthy
to love you, that I ought never to have asked
you to love me, that I ought to have gone
away the first time that I saw you. She made
a little, loving, protecting movement towards him with her hands,

(08:21):
and then let them drop against her dress. Again. I
ought never to have loved you, because only a day
or two before I met you, I had killed Carfax,
Rupert's friend. The words as they fell seemed to him
like the screams that iron bolts give as a gait
is barred. He whispered slowly the words again, I killed Carfax.

(08:46):
And then he covered his eyes with his hands so
that he might not see her face. The silence seemed eternal,
and she had made no movement to fill that silence.
He went on desperately. I had always hated him, There
were many reasons. And one day we met in Sanna Wood,
quarreled and I hit him. The blow killed him. I

(09:10):
don't think I meant to kill him, but I wasn't
sorry afterwards. I have never felt remorse for that. There
have been other things. Soon afterwards I met you. I
loved you at once, You know that I did. And
I could not tell you. Oh I tried. I struggled,
pretty poor struggling, but I could not. I thought that

(09:30):
it was all over, that he was dead, and nobody knew.
But God was wiser than that. Rupert knew. He suspected,
and then he grew more sure, and at last he
was quite certain. Yesterday, after the football match, I told him,
and I promised him that I would tell you, and
I have told you. Silence again, And then suddenly there

(09:53):
was movement, and there were arms about him, and a
voice in his ear. Poor, poor Ova, dear Ovha, How
terrible it must have been. He could only then catch
her and hold her and furiously press her against him.
Oh my, dear, my dear, you don't mind. They stayed

(10:14):
together like that for a long time he could not
think clearly, but in the dim recesses of his mind
he saw that they had all Missus Craven, Margaret Rupert
taken it in the same kind of way. Could it
be that Margaret and Rupert, living, although unconsciously in the
shadow all their lives, of just this crime, breathing the

(10:37):
air of it, and breathing it too with the other
air of love and affection, that they had thus all unknowing,
been quietly prepared, Or had they, each of them their
especial reasons for excusing it, Missus Craven from her great knowledge,
Rupert from his great weariness, Margaret from her great love.

(10:59):
At last, Margaret got up and sat down in a
chair away from him. Ovah, dear, you ought to have
told me if we had married and you had not
told me. I was so terribly afraid of losing you.
But it gives me now. Her voice was almost triumphant.
Something to share with you, something to help you in,

(11:22):
something to fight with you. Now I can show you
how much I love you. How could you have supposed
that I would mind? Do you think that a woman,
if she loves a man, cares for anything that he
may do. If you had killed a hundred men in
Sanna wood, I would have helped you to bury them.
The thing that a woman demands most of love is

(11:43):
that she may prove it. I know that murder has
a dreadful sound. But to meet your enemy face to face,
to strike him down because you hated him. Her voice rose,
her eyes flashed, She raised her arms. You must pay
for it, Ovah, But we shall. I'll pay together. He
knew now, as he watched her, that he had a

(12:05):
harder thing to do than he had believed possible. No,
he said, and his eyes could not face hers. We
can't pay together. I must go alone. She laughed a little.
How can you go alone? If we are together, we
shall not be together. I go away alone tomorrow. He

(12:25):
knew that her eyes were then very slowly searching his face.
She said, gently, after a moment's pause, tell me, Ovah,
what you mean. Of course, we are going together. Oh,
it is so hard for me. He was fighting now
as he had never fought. Why not, even at this
last moment, in spite of yesterday, defy God and stay

(12:48):
with her and keep her In that moment of hesitation,
He suffered so that the sweat came to his forehead,
and his eyes were filled with pain, and then were
suddenly tired and dull. But he came out and seemed
now to stand above the room and look down on
his body and her body, and to be filled with

(13:09):
a great pity for them both. Margaret, dear, it's very
hard for me to tell you. Will you be patient
with me and let me put things as clearly as
I can as I see them. She burst out, Olvah,
you mustn't leave me. I. Then she used all her
strength to bring control. Very quietly, she ended, Yes, Ova,

(13:30):
tell me everything. It is so difficult because it is
about God, and we all of us feel and rightly
I expect that it is priggish to talk about God
at all. And then I don't know whether I can
give you everything as it happened, because it was also unsubstantial.
And at the end of it, anyone might say, but

(13:52):
this is nothing, nothing at all. You've been hysterical, nervous,
that's the meaning of it. You've nothing to show. And
yet if all the world were to say that to me,
I would still have no doubt. I know, as I
know that we are sitting here, as I know that
I love you, that what I say is true. She

(14:12):
brought her chair close to him, and then put her
hand in his and waited. After I had killed Carfax,
after his body had fallen, and the wood was very silent,
I was suddenly conscious of God. I can't explain that better.
I can only say that I knew that someone had
watched me. I knew that the world would never be

(14:33):
the same place again because someone had watched me. And
I knew that it was not because I had done wrong,
but because I had put myself into a new set
of conditions. That life would be different. Now I knew
these things, and I went back to college. I had
never thought about God before, never at all. I had

(14:54):
been entirely heathen. Now I was sure of his existence,
in the way that one is sure of of wood
when one touches it, or water when one drinks it.
But I did not know at all what kind of
God he was. I went to a revival meeting, but
he was not there. He was not in the college chapel.
He was not in any forms or ceremonies that I

(15:16):
could discover. He might choose to appear to other men
in those different ways, but not to me. Then a fellow, Lawrence,
told me about some old worship druids and their altars.
But he was not there. And all those days I
was increasingly conscious that there was someone who would not

(15:36):
let me alone. It fastened itself in my mind gradually
as a pursuit. And it seemed to me too, that
as the days passed, I began slowly to understand the
nature of the pursuer. That he was kind and tender,
but also relentless, remorseless. I was frightened. I flung myself

(15:57):
into college things, games and every kind of noise because
I was so afraid of silence. And all the time
some one urged me to obedience. That was all that
he demanded, that I should be passive and obey his orders.
I would have given in, I think, very soon. But
I met you. Her hand tightened in his, and then

(16:19):
because he felt that her body was trembling, he put
his arm round her and held her. I knew then,
when I loved you, that I was being urged by
this god to confess everything to you. I became frightened.
I should have trusted you, but it was so great
a risk. You were all that I had, and if
I lost you, life would have gone too. Those weren't

(16:43):
mere words. I struggled. I tried every way of escape,
and then everything betrayed me. Rupert began to suspect, then,
to be sure, whether I flung myself into everything or
hid in my room. It was the same. God came
closer and closer. It was a perfectly real experience, and
I could see him as a great shadow, not unkind,

(17:06):
loving me, but relentless. Then the day came that I
proposed to you, and I fainted. I knew then that
I was not to be allowed so easy a happiness.
Still I struggled, But now God seemed to have shut
off all the real world and only left me the
unreal one, and I began to be afraid that I

(17:27):
was going mad. She suddenly bent down and kissed him.
She stayed then until he had finished, with her head
buried in his goat. It wasn't any good. I knew
all the time that it could only end one way.
Everything betrayed me, every one left me. I thought every
moment that Rupert would tell me. Then one night, when

(17:50):
I was hardly saying, I told a man Bunning, a queer,
odd creature who was the last kind of person to
be told. He, in a fit of man self sacrifice,
told Rupert that he'd killed Carfrax, and then of course
it was all over. I suddenly yielded. It was as
though God caught me and held me. I saw him,

(18:12):
I heard him yesterday in the middle of the football
I know that it was so after that there could
be only one thing obedience. I knew that I must
tell you. I have told you. I know too that
I must go out into the world alone and work
out my duty, and then, oh, then I will come back.

(18:36):
When he had finished on his shoulder, he seemed to
feel once more a hand gently resting. At last, she
raised her head and clutching his hand as though she
would never let go, spoke Ova, Ovah, I don't understand.
I don't think I believe in any god. And dear see,

(18:56):
it's all so natural. Thinking about what you had done
and thinking of it all alone, prayed on your nerves
because Rupert suspected you made it worse. You imagine things.
Everything that is all, Ova, really, that is all, Margaret.
Don't make it harder for both of us. I must go.
There is no question. I don't suppose that anyone can

(19:18):
see anyone else's spiritual experiences, one must be alone in that. Margaret, Dear,
if I stayed with you, now, if we married, the
pursuit would begin again. God would hold me at last,
And then one day you would find that I had
gone away. I would have been driven. There would be
terror for both of us. Then she slipped on her

(19:41):
knees and caught his hands. This is all unreal, utterly unreal.
But our love for each other that is the only
thing that can matter for either of us. You have
lived in your thoughts these weeks, imagined things. But think
of what you do if you leave me. You are
all I have. You have become my world. I can't live,

(20:03):
I can't live Olvo without you. I must go, I
must find what God is. But listen, dear, you come
to me to confess something. You find that what you
have done matters nothing to me. You say that you
love me more than ever, and in the same moment
that you are going to leave me, is it fair

(20:24):
to me? You give no reason. You do not know
where you are going or what you intend to do.
You can give no definite explanation. There is no explanation
except that by what I did in sennat Wood that afternoon.
I put myself out of touch with human society until
I had done something for human society. God has been

(20:47):
telling me for many days that I owe a debt.
I have tried to avoid paying that debt. I tried
to escape him because I knew that he demanded that
I must pay my debt before I could come to you.
I see this as clearly as I saw yesterday the
high white clouds above the football field. God now is

(21:07):
as real to me as you are. It is as
though for the rest of my life I must live
in a house with two persons. We cannot all live
together until certain conditions are granted. I go to make
those conditions possible. Because I have broken the law. I
am an outlaw. I am impelled to win my way

(21:27):
back to citizenship again. God will show me. But this
is air all nerves. God is nothing. God does not exist.
God does exist. I must work out his order, and
then I will come back to you. She began to
be frightened. She caught his coat in her hands and
desperately pleaded. Then she saw his white set face and

(21:51):
the way that his hands gripped the chair and It
was as though she had suddenly found herself alone in
the room. Ova, don't leave me, don't leave tmolva. I
can't live without you. I don't care what you've done.
I'll bear everything with you. I'll come away with you.
I'll do anything if only you will let me be
with you. No, I must go alone. But it can't matter,

(22:15):
it can't matter. I'm so unimportant. You shall do what
you feel is your duty. Only let me be there. No,
I must go alone. She began to cry, bitter, miserable, sobbing,
sitting on the floor away from him, her crying was
the only sound in the room. He bent and touched her. Margaret, dear,

(22:36):
you make it so hard. At last, in that strange,
beautiful way that she had, control seemed suddenly to come
to her. She stood up and looked as though she had,
in that brief moment, lived a thousand years of sorrow.
You will come back. I swear that I will come
back to you. I I will wait for you there

(23:02):
in the dim, unreal room, as they had stood once before,
Now standing they were wrapped together. They were very young
to feel such depth of tragedy, to touch such heights
of beauty, they were a long time there together. Margaret, Darling,
you know that I will come back. I know that

(23:23):
you will come back. Olva Margaret. He left her, then,
standing with outstretched arms alone. There She, who had but
now denied the pursuer, cried to the dark room, God, God,
send him back to me, someone promised her. End of

(23:46):
Chapter sixteen, Chapter seventeen, first chapter. The sun was rising
hard and red over Sannet Wood and the white frozen
flats when Ova Doones set out. End of chapter sixteen
and seventeen. End of the Prelude to Adventure by Hugh

(24:07):
Walpole
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