DESTROY....” I.
DURING the month that followed, the battle raged furiously, and within a
week of that original incident there was no one in the establishment
who had not his or her especial grievance against someone else. In the
Senior common room, at the middle morning hour, the whole staff might
be seen, silent, grave, bending with sheer resolution over the daily
papers, eloquent backs turned to their enemies, every now and again
abstract sarcasm designed for some very concrete resting-place.
That original umbrella had, long ago, been forgotten, or, rather the
original borrowing of it. It had now become a flag, a banner—something
that stood for any kind of principle that it might serve one's purpose
to support. One hated one's neighbor—well, let any small detail be the
provocation, the battle was the thing.
Imagine, moreover, the effect on the young generation, assembled to
watch and imitate the thoughts and actions of their elders and betters;
what a delightful and admirable system!—with their Greek accents
and verbs in with their principal parts of savior and dire and their
conclusive decisions concerning vulgar fractions and the imports and
exports of Sardinia, they should learn the delicate art of cutting
your neighbor, of hating your fellow-creatures, of malicious
misconception—all this within so small an area of ground, so slight a
period of time, at so wonderfully inconsiderable an expense.
The question at issue passed of course speedily to the very smallest boy
in the school, but here there was not so intense a division—there was
indeed scarcely a division at all, because there could not, on the
whole, be two opinions about it. When it came to choosing between Old
Pompous with his stupid manners and his uncertain temper, with all the
custom of his twenty years' stay at the school so that he was simply
a tiresome tradition that present fathers of grown families had once
accepted as a fearful authority—between this and the novel and athletic
Traill, with his splendid football and his easy fellowship... why?
There was nothing more to be said. Why should n't one take Old Pompous's
umbrella? Who was he to be so particular about his property? He would
n't hesitate to take someone else's things if he wanted them....
Meanwhile there was an encouragement to rebellion amongst all those who
came beneath his discipline—as to the way that he took this, there is
more to be said later.
But the point about this month is not the question of individual quarrel
and disturbance. Of that there was enough and to spare, but there was
nothing extraordinary about its progress, and every successive term saw
something of the kind: the two questions as to whether Traill should
have taken Perrin's umbrella and whether Isabel Desart should, under the
circumstances, have allowed herself to be engaged to Traill, simply took
the place of other questions that had, in their time, served to rouse
combat. No—the peculiar fact about this month was that at the end of it,
when their quarrels and hatreds should have reached their climax, they
were sunk suddenly almost to the point of disappearance—they were almost
lost and forgotten—and the reason of this was that everyone in the
place, in some cases unconsciously and in nearly every instance
silently, was watching Perrin.... It had become during that time an
issue between two men, and one of those men was passive. It was being
worked out in silence—even the spectators themselves made no comment,
but Mrs. Comber afterwards put it into words when she said that
“Everyone was so afraid that talking about it might make it happen that
no one said anything at all”—and that indeed was the remarkable fact.
Amongst all the eyes that were turned on the developing incident those
most fitted for our purpose of elucidation belonged to Isabel Desart,
and her experience of it all will do very well for everyone else's
experience of it, because the only difference between herself and
the rest was that she was more acute in her judgment and had a more
discerning intuition.
In the first place she had very crucially indeed to fight her own
battles. It did not take her a day to discover that every lady in the
place, with the single exception of Mrs. Comber, was, for the time
being at any rate, up in arms against her. She ought not to have allowed
herself to be engaged to Mr. Traill—there were no two opinions about it.
It was not ladylike—she was allying herself, to disorder and tumult, she
was encouraging the stealing of things, and the knocking down of persons
in authority—above all, she was setting herself up, whatever that might
mean: all this was foreshadowed on the very first day in Mrs. Comber's
drawing-room.
These things did not, in the very least, surprise or dismay Isabel. She
loved a battle—she had never realized before how dearly she loved it,
she gave no quarter and she asked none. She went about with her head up
and her eyes flashing fire—she was quiet unless she was attacked; but so
soon as there were signs of the enemy, the armor would be buckled on
and the trumpet sounded. In a way—and it seemed to her curious when
she looked back upon it—this month of hers was stirring and even rather
delightful.
But there were other and more serious sides to it. She saw at once that
something had happened in the Comber family, and with all the tenderness
and gentleness that was so wonderfully hers she sought to put it right.
But she soon realized that it had all gone far too deep for any outside
help. She did not know what had occurred on that evening when she had
dined at the Squire's. Mrs. Comber told her nothing—she only begged her
not to speak to Freddie about the umbrella quarrel and not to attempt to
bring Archie to the house, at present at any rate.
But Mrs. Comber was now a different person—her animated volubility had
disappeared altogether, she went about her house very quietly with a
pale face and tired eyes, and she did not speak unless she was spoken
to. But the change in Freddie Comber was still more marked. Isabel
had never liked him so much before. His harsh dogmatism seemed to have
disappeared. He said very little to anybody, but in his own house at any
rate he was quiet, reserved, and even submissive. Isabel noticed that he
was on the watch to do things for his wife, and sometimes she saw that
his eyes would leave his work and stray about the room as though he were
searching for something. He scarcely seemed to notice her at all,
and sometimes when she spoke to him he would start and look at her
curiously, almost suspiciously, as though he were wondering how much she
knew. He was not kind and attentive to her, as he had been before—she
felt sure that he had now a great dislike for her. All this made her
miserable, and she loved to wonder sometimes what it was that held her
back from speaking to Mrs. Comber about it all—but something prevented
her.
The masters, she knew, were divided about her. They were, she thought,
more occupied with their own quarrels and disputes than with any
attitude towards herself. At first she was amused by their divided
camps—it all seemed so childish and absurd, and for its very
childishness it could not have a serious conclusion; but as the days
went on and she saw into it all more deeply, the pathos of it caught
her heart and she could have cried to think of what men they might have
been, of the things that they might have done. Some of them seemed to
seek her out now with a courtliness and deference that they had
never shown her before. Birkland, of whom she had always been rather
frightened, spoke to her now whenever there was an opportunity, and his
sharp, sarcastic eyes softened, and she saw the sadness in their gray
depths, and she felt in the pressure of his hands that he wanted now to
be friends with her. White, too, was different now. He said very little
to her, and he was so quiet that for him to speak at all was a wonderful
thing, but there were a few words about his affection for Archie.
With all of this Isabel got a profound sense of its being her duty to
do something; as far as her own affairs were concerned she was perfectly
able to manage them, and if the matter in dispute had been simply her
engagement to Archie, there would be no difficulty—it was a case
of waiting, and then escaping; but things were more serious than
that—something was in the air, and she knew enough of that life and that
atmosphere to be afraid. But it was not until later than this that she
began to be afraid definitely of Mr. Perrin.
But this feeling that she had of the necessity of doing something
grew when she perceived the inertia of the others—inertia was perhaps
scarcely the word: it was rather, as the matter advanced, an increasing
impulse to sink their own quarrels and sit back in the chairs and wait
for the result.
And, with this before her, Isabel set out on a determined campaign,
having for its ultimate issue the hope of possible reconciliation—she
could not put it more optimistically than that—before the end of the
term came.
It was not at all a desire to do good that drove her—indeed, her
flashing disputes with Mrs. Dormer, her skirmishes with the younger Miss
Madder, were very far away from any evangelistic principles whatever—but
rather some hint of future trouble that was hard to explain. She wished
to prevent things happening, was the way that she herself would have put
it; but that did not hinder her from feeling a natural anxiety that Miss
Madder, Mrs. Dormer, and the rest should have some of their own shots
back before the end of the term was reached. II.
But she began her campaign with her own Archie, and found him difficult.
Going down the hill by the village on one of those sharp, tightly
drawn days with the horizon set like marble and nothing moving save the
brittle leaves blowing like brown ghosts up and down, she tried to get
him to see the difficulties as she saw them, She attacked him at first
on the question of making peace with Mr. Perrin, and came up at
once against a bristling host of obstinacies and traditions that her
ignorance of public school and university laws had formerly hidden from
her.
Perrin was a bounder, and young Traill's eyes were cold and hard as he
summed it all up in this sentence. He would do anything in the world
for Isabel, but she did n't probably altogether understand what a fellow
felt—there were things a man couldn't do. She found that the laws of
the Medes and Persians were nothing at all in comparison with the stone
tables of public school custom: “The man was a bounder”—“There were
things a fellow couldn't do.”
She had not expected him to go and beg for peace—she had not probably
altogether wished him to; but the way that he looked at it all left her
with a curious mixture of feelings: she felt that he was so immensely
young, and therefore to be—most delightful of duties—looked after.
Also she felt, for the first time, all the purpose and obstinacy of his
nature, so that she foresaw that there would in the future between them
be a great many tussles and battles.
But she was very much cleverer than he was, and dealt with him very
gently, and then suddenly gave him a sharp, little moral rap, and then
kissed him afterwards. She found, in fact, that this trouble with Mr.
Perrin was worrying him dreadfully. He hid it as well as he could, and
hid it on the whole very successfully; but Isabel dragged it all out
and saw that he hated quarreling with anybody, and that he now dimly
discovered that he was the center of a vulgar dispute and that people
were taking sides about him—all this was horrible.
He also felt very strongly the injustice of it. “I never meant to knock
the fellow down. I never knew I'd taken his beastly umbrella—all this
fuss!”—which was, Isabel thought, so very like a man, because the thing
was done and there was no more to be said about it. He thought a great
deal about her in the matter and was very anxious to stand up for
her; indeed, that was the only aspect of the affair that gave him any
satisfaction—that they should be fighting shoulder to shoulder against
the “low, bounding” world, and he declared, as he looked at her, that he
loved her more and more every day.
But all of this did not touch on his relations with Perrin, and his eyes
with regard to that gentleman could only look one way—he would not make
advances.
The more Isabel felt his determination, the more, curiously enough,
she felt Mr. Perrin's pathos. She had not yet arrived at the definite
watching of him that was to come upon them all soon so curiously; but
when she thought of him she thought of Archie's definition of him, and
she realized, as she had not realized before, that that would be a
great many other persons' definition of him also. Whatever he was—cross,
irritable, violent, even wicked—he was, at any rate, lonely, and that
was enough to make Isabel sorry, and more than sorry.
She could not, of course, make Archie see that. “The fellow's always
wanted to be lonely—thinks himself much too good for other people's
society, that's the fact, and if a man behaves like a beast, he must
expect to be left alone.”
That did not worry Archie. The whole of his annoyance arose from the
fact that there should be such a fuss. He had never really quarreled
with anyone before—people never did quarrel with him; and now suddenly
here were Comber and West and the little French worm Pons, stiff and
sulky whenever they met him, and Moy-Thompson bullying him whenever he
got the opportunity.
Of course he wasn't going to stay! he couldn't stay under these
circumstances—but it was all unpleasant and disagreeable. Isabel herself
was only too anxious to take him out of it all as soon as possible. He
wasn't wearing well under it. He had been full of light and sunshine at
the beginning of the term, pleasant to everyone, equable, comfortable,
a splendid creature to be with. Now the boys of his class found that
nothing pleased him, little things roused him to a fury, and he snapped
at people when they spoke to him. With Isabel he was always gentle, but
his eager eyes were tired, and once he wasn't very far away from tears.
But she did not allow any of these things to worry her. She was proud
with Miss Madder, haughty with Moy-Thompson, gentle with Mrs. Comber,
always amusing and cheerful with Archie. But when she had gone to bed
and was at last alone, she would lie there, trying to puzzle it all out,
afraid of what the future might bring, and praying that she might drag
Archie out of it all before they had damaged him. He was such a boy, and
all this discussion was so new to him; but she felt that she herself was
ninety at least, and she would wonder sometimes that all men's difficult
education seemed to leave them just where they began, which was several
stages earlier than the place where women commenced. Love and death were
very simple things, it seemed to her, beside the tangled daily worries
of people getting along together. Her present feeling was something
akin to Alice's sensation at the Croquet party when the hoops (being
flamingoes) would walk away and climb up trees, and the balls (being
hedge-hogs) would wander off the ground. They were all flamingoes and
hedge-hogs at Moffatt's. III.
But towards the end of this month, Isabel became suddenly conscious of
Mr. Perrin in a very different way. It was now only three weeks before
the end of term, and in another week examinations would begin. That
something in the atmosphere that signified the coming of examinations
was busy about the place. People were very quiet, and then suddenly in
the most singular way would break out; there was continual quarreling in
the common room, strange rumors were carried of things that people had
said—it was all a question of strain.
There came, it now being the first week in December, the first day of
snow, and the light, feathery flakes fell throughout the afternoon, and
when the sun set there was a soft, white world with the buildings black
and grim and a sky of hurrying gray cloud. Isabel and Mrs. Comber sat in
Mrs. Comber's little drawing-room over a roaring fire, and there was no
other light in the room.
Mrs. Comber sat, as she so often sat now, with her chin resting in her
hand, silently staring at the fire.
Isabel was unhappy; the silent whiteness of the world outside, the
consciousness of Miss Madder's rudeness to her that afternoon, the
trouble that she had seen in Archie's eyes when she had said good night
to him after Chapel, above all, a general sense of strain and nerves
stretched to breaking-point—all this overwhelmed her. She had never felt
so strongly before that she and Archie, if they were to keep anything at
all of their vitality, must escape at once... to-night... to-morrow; it
might be too late.
She knew that Archie had lost his temper with West that afternoon, that
he had called him a “rotten little counter-jumper,” and that West had
made an allusion to “stealing things.” Where were they all? What were
they all doing to be fighting like this?
They sat in silence opposite to one another, one on each side of the
fire, and the ticking of the clock, and every now and again a tumbling
coal, were the only sounds. Then suddenly Isabel broke out.
“Oh! I can't stand it any longer; I feel as though I should go mad. What
is the matter with everybody? Why are we all fighting like this? Oh!
I do want to be pleasant to somebody again, just for a change. For the
last three weeks, ever since that wretched quarrel, there has been no
peace at all.”
“I know,” Mrs. Comber answered without raising her eyes from the fire;
“I am very tired, too, and it's a good thing there are only three weeks
more of the term, because I 'm sure that somebody would be cutting
somebody's throat if it lasted any longer, and I wouldn't mind very much
if somebody would cut mine.” She gave a little choke in her throat, and
then suddenly her head fell forward into her hands, and she burst into
passionate sobbing.
Isabel said nothing, but came over to her and knelt down by her chair
and took her other hand. They stayed together in silence for a long
time, and the burning fire flung great shadows on the walls, and the
snow had begun to fall again and rustled very softly and gently against
the window.
At last Mrs. Comber looked up and wiped her eyes, and tried to smile.
“Ah! my dear! you are so good to me. I don't know what I should have
done this terrible term if you hadn't been, and now my eyes are a
perfect sight, and Freddie will be coming in; but I could n't help it.
Things only seem to get worse and worse and worse, and I've stood it as
long as I can, and I can't stand it any longer. I think I shall go away
and be a nun or a hospital nurse or something where you 're let alone.”
“Dear Mrs. Comber;” said Isabel, still holding her hand, “do tell me
about these last few weeks, if it would help you. Of course, I 've seen
that something 's happened between you and Mr. Comber. I can see that
he is most dreadfully sorry about something, and I know that he wants to
make it up. But this silence is worse than anything, and if you 'd only
have it out, both of you, I'm sure it would get all right.”
“No, dear.” Mrs. Comber shook her head and wiped her eyes. “It's not
that so much. Freddie and I will get all right again, I expect, and even
be better together than we were be-for; but all this business has shown
me, my dear, that I'm a failure. I 've known it really all the time, and
I used to pretend that if one was nice enough to people one could n't
be altogether a failure, because they wanted one to like them—and that's
the truth. Nobody wants me to like them, and I'm the loneliest woman in
the world. I'm not grumbling about it, because I suppose I'm careless
and silly and untidy, but I don't think anyone's wanted friends quite so
badly as I have, and some people have such a lot. I used to think it was
all just accidents, but now I know it's really me; and now you 're going
to be married there's an end of you, the only person I had.”
“Archie and I,” said Isabel softly, “will care for you to the end of
your days, and you will come and stay with us, won't you? And you know
that Freddie loves you. Why, I 've seen him looking at you during these
last weeks as though he could die for you, and then he's been afraid
to say anything. It's only this horrid place that has got in the way so
dreadfully.”
Mrs. Comber caught her hand eagerly. “Do you really think so, my
dear? Oh! if I could only think that, because I have fancied he's been
different lately, and he's such a dear when he likes to be and is n't
worried about his form; but things are always worse at examination time,
and I always pray that the two weeks may be got through as quickly as
possible; and something dreadful did happen the other day, and I know
he was ashamed of himself, the poor dear.... Perhaps things will be all
right.”
Mrs. Comber gave a great sigh and looked a little more cheerful. Then,
after a pause, she began again, but a little doubtfully: “You know,
Isabel dear, there's something else. I don't want to frighten you, but
Mrs. Dormer noticed it as well, and I know it's silly of me, but I don't
quite like it—”
“Like what?” said Isabel. “Well, Mr. Perrin; he's been looking so queer
ever since that quarrel with your Archie. I daresay you haven't noticed
anything, and I daresay it may be all my own imaginations, and I'm sure
in a place like this one might imagine anything—”
“How does he look queer,” said Isabel quietly.
“Well, it's his eyes, I suppose, and the things the boys say about him.
You know, my dear, I've wondered since whether perhaps he didn't care
about you rather a great deal, and whether that isn't another reason for
his disliking Archie—”
“Care about me?” said Isabel laughing; “why, no, of course not. He's
only spoken to me once or twice.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Comber, “I've seen him looking at you in the strangest
way in chapel. And his face has got so white and thin and drawn, I'm
really quite sorry for the poor man. And his eyes are so odd, as though
he was trying to see something that wasn't there. And the boys say that
he's so strange in class sometimes and stops suddenly in the middle of
a lesson and forgets where he is; and Mr. Clinton was telling me that he
never speaks to Archie, but sometimes when Archie's there he gets very
white and shakes all over and leaves the room. I only want you to warn
Archie to be careful, because when a man's lonely like that and begins
to think about things, he might do anything.”
“Why, what could he do?” Isabel said, with a little catch in her breath.
“Well, I don't know, dear,” Mrs. Comber said rather uncertainly. “Only
when examinations come on they do seem to get into the men's heads so,
and it's only that I thought that Archie might be careful and ready if
Mr. Perrin seemed odd at all...”
Mrs. Comber left it all very uncertain, and as they sat silently in the
room with the fire turning from a roaring blaze into a golden cavern and
the shadows on the wall growing smaller and smaller as the fire fell,
Isabel seemed to feel the cold black and white of the world outside
gather ominously about her.
She said good night very quietly, and the two women clung to each other
a moment longer than usual, as though they did not wish to leave each
other.
“At any rate,” said Isabel, “whatever else this place may do, it can't
alter our being together. You 've always got me, you know.”
But from this moment Isabel was afraid. Perhaps her nerves were
strained, perhaps she saw a great deal more than there was to be seen;
but she longed for the end of the term with a passionate eagerness, and
she could not sleep at nights.
And then, curiously, on the very next morning Mr. Perrin came and spoke
to her.
She always afterwards remembered him as she saw him that day. She was
just turning out of the black gate to go down the hill to the village;
there was a very pale blue sky; the ground was white with gray and
purple shadows, and the houses were brown and sharply edged, as though
cut out of paper, in the distance; the hills were a gray-white against
the sky. He came towards her very slowly, and she saw that he wanted
to speak to her, so she stopped and waited for him. When he came up
to her—with his gown hanging loosely about him and his heavy, black
mortar-board, with his thin, haggard cheeks, and staring eyes, with his
straggly, unkept mustache—she had a moment of ungovernable fear. She
could give no reason for it, but she knew that her impulse was to turn
and run away, anywhere so that she might escape from him.
Then she controlled herself and turned and faced him, and smiled and
held out her hand.
She could see him staring beyond her, over her shoulder, with eyes that
didn't see her at all. She saw that his hand was shaking.
“How do you do, Mr. Perrin? I haven't seen you for quite a long time.
Isn't this snow delightful? If it will only stay like this.”
Suddenly he came quite close to her, looking into her eyes; he grasped
her hand and held it.
“I 've been wanting to say...” he said in an odd voice, and there he
stopped and stood staring at her.
“Yes,” she said gently.
His throat was moving convulsively, and he put his hand up to his face
with a helpless gesture and pulled his mustache.
“I've wanted to say—um, ah—to congratulate you...”
He cleared his throat, and suddenly she saw tears in his eyes.
“Oh! thank you!” she said impulsively, coming up to him and putting her
hand on his arm. “Thank you so very much!” and then she could say no
more.
He moved his arm away, and his eyes passed her again, out of the distant
horizon. Then he said very rapidly, as though he were reciting a speech
that he had learnt, “I wanted to congratulate you on your engagement. I
hope you 'll be very happy. I'm sure you will. I'm afraid I 'm a
little late in my good wishes. I'm afraid I'm a little late. Yes. Good
morning!”
Then, before she could say any more, he had moved away and gone down the
path.
As she watched his black gown waving a little behind him she knew that
her vague fears of the night before had taken definite form.