MEANWHILE, many things had happened to Mr. Perrin during this month. On
that night after Clinton had told him about Miss Desart's engagement
to Traill, he did not go to bed for many hours, but sat over his black
grate without moving until the morning. He did not know until this had
happened to him how greatly he had valued his dreams. To every man in
middle life there comes a day when he sees clearly and pitilessly that
he has missed ambitions, or, if he has gained them, that there were
other ambitions that would have been more profitable of pursuit; and
then, if the rest of his days are to be worthily and honorably spent, he
must make reckoning with other things that have perhaps no glitter nor
promise, but will give him enough—life has no compensation for cynics.
In that black night, the darkest night of his life, Perrin saw that
his last claim to that chance to which he had clung from his earliest
boyhood, was gone. At first, in the blind pathos of his disappointment,
it seemed to him that she had promised to marry him and had left him at
the altar. A great wave of self-pity swept over him, and he sat with his
head in his hands, and the tears trickled through his thin fingers. The
things that he could have done had she been faithful to him!—that was
the way he put it. He saw now scenes that had occurred between them. He
had pleaded his love, and she had accepted him; her head had rested on
his breast, and, in that very room, he had held her and kissed her and
stroked her hair.
And then, slowly, as the room grew colder and the faint gray dawn came
in at the window, he knew that that was not true; she had never cared
about him, she had scarcely spoken to him; how could she care for a man
like him—that sort of creature?
What had God meant by making a man like that? It was His game, perhaps;
it pleased Him perhaps to have some ridiculous animal there that other
men might sport with it—other beardless boys like Traill....
He felt that he would like to take his revenge on God. He would show
God that he was not the kind of man to be played with like that—he would
mock at Him and show that he didn't care, that he was not afraid—ah! but
he was afraid, terribly afraid. He had always been afraid since those
days when, a very small boy in short trousers, he had sat listening
to the clergyman who had painted pictures of hell with such lurid and
wonderful accuracy.
God was like that—He took away from you all the things that made life
worth living, and then punished you with eternal fire afterwards because
you resented His behavior.
Mr. Perrin was not crying now, because his head was aching so badly that
the pain of it prevented any tears. He was sitting with his eyes very
large and bright and his cheeks very white and drawn. When his head
ached, it always meant that that other Mr. Perrin whose appearances he
had now so long attempted to control came creeping out—that other Mr.
Perrin who did not want him to have his chance, that other Mr. Perrin
whom he did not want his friends to see.
On this night for the first time in his life that other Mr. Perrin
seemed to have a concrete appearance and form. He was standing,
Mr. Perrin fancied, somewhere in the corner of the room, and he was
watching. He was wearing the same clothes, and he had the same features,
but it was an evil face—all the eyes and nose and mouth and ears had
gone wrong. Mr. Perrin had kept him in control so long; but now at last
he had broken out, and perhaps he would never go away again.
Mr. Perrin was dreadfully afraid that he had come to stay.
Then, as the minutes passed, Mr. Perrin was conscious that there was
something that this other Mr. Perrin wanted him to do. It had some
connection with that young Traill. Mr. Perrin was conscious that now, as
he thought of him, he had no anger in his brain about young Traill. No,
there was nothing to be angry about—of course not—no; but he knew that
there was something that the other Mr. Perrin thought that he ought to
do to young Traill. What was it?
Then, very slowly, as though he were awaking out of a bad dream, Mr.
Perrin pulled himself together. That other Mr. Perrin passed from
the room, and the cold gray dawn crept across the floor. He was very
desolate and very unhappy. He thought perhaps he would kill himself, and
so end it all. What did people do? They hung themselves, or they shot
themselves, or they poisoned themselves. No, he knew that he would be
afraid to do any of those things. He was afraid of the pain and also, in
an inconsequent way, of the sight that he would look afterwards.
There came to him the curious, strange idea that perhaps this was his
great chance—the chance that he had been waiting for all his life.
Perhaps God intended to knock him down as far as He could, so as to
give him the opportunity of rising. Supposing he rose now, supposing
he showed them that he did not care about Miss Desart or young Traill,
supposing he won a fine position and did magnificently... but then, of
course, it was absurd; after twenty years in Moffatt's one did not “do”
magnificently anywhere.
No, he was no good—he was done for. He thought, as he heard the clock
strike five, he would go to bed. And then he lay there, staring at the
yellow flowers on the wall-paper. There were five in a row, and then
four, and then three, and then two, and then five again.... They were
ugly flowers. He wanted Miss Desart! he wanted Miss Desart! he wanted
Miss Desart! He bit the pillow and lay with his face buried in it, his
thin, sharp shoulders heaving.... He wanted Miss Desart!...
His misery came upon him now in great clouds, and it buffeted him and
enveloped him, and left him at last weak and shaking.
Young Traill had done this—young Traill was his enemy... young Traill!
He hated him, and would do him harm if he could.
And then, across the gray floor, outlined against the yellow paper
flowers, he saw once more the gray figure of the other Mr. Perrin. II.
But when the morning came, and as the days passed, he found that it all
resolved itself into an effort to keep control. This was very hard. When
he had been a small boy there had been a picture that used to hang in
his mother's dining-room. It was a gray picture of a skeleton that sat
with a grin on its ghastly face on a huge iron chest studded with great
black nails. The lid was raised a little, and from under it peeped the
eyes of some wretched man, and over the edge there hung a grasping,
wrenching hand. Someone was in there, someone was trying to get out, and
the skeleton was sitting on the box....
It was like that now with Mr. Perrin; there was something in him that
was trying to get out, and he was determined that it should not. He
found at once that he could not bear to be in the same room with Traill,
and as the days advanced this feeling did not decrease. The feeling
inside him that he must not let out was always stronger and more violent
when Traill was there. Of course they did not speak to one another,
but it was something more active than mere silent avoidance. They
had struggled on the floor together, struggled before Comber and
Birkland—Perrin would not forget that. He remembered it as an act of
faith and said to himself a great many times. He always found that when
he was in the room with Traill something seemed to drag him across the
floor towards him, and he had to hold himself back.
This was all very difficult, and he found it very hard to keep his mind
on his form. It was more necessary than ever to keep his mind on his
form, because he fancied that there was a new spirit abroad amongst
them. They must, of course, have heard all about the quarrel, and
he thought that when he was with them they laughed at him and mocked
amongst themselves. They had always done that of course, but now there
was an added reason.
There was one thing that they did at the Lower School that he always
hated. When the bell rang at five minutes to one for luncheon, the
master who was on duty was supposed to station himself at the door
of the hall and look at the boys' hands, as the boys filed in, to see
whether they were clean. Perrin had always hated doing this; it had
seemed to him most undignified, and the sight of fifty pairs of hands
raised to his eyes, one after the other—hands that were ill-kept,
bitten, and ragged, and torn—this had been, in some bidden way,
irritating. Now it was much more irritating, so that when it was his
week on duty and this horde of boys passed him, raising their hands,
as it seemed to him, with insolence and levity, he wanted to scream, to
beat them all down, to run amok amongst them, to trample until all the
hands were broken and bleeding.
Garden Minimus had often been turned back for having dirty hands. He
used to try to slip through with the crowd, and Perrin had called him
up, and he had come with a twinkling smile, and his hands had been very
inky. Then Perrin, with apparent austerity, but in reality with a kindly
eye, had sent him back to wash. But now the boy made no attempt to
escape, but with a grave, serious face passed slowly along; his hands
were always beautifully clean—he did not look at Perrin. This was, of
course, a very small affair.
But afterwards, when they had all passed in, when they stood silently
behind their forms and he began the Latin grace and at the end “per
Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum” and a great clatter of forms being
dragged out and people sitting down and the hum of voices—then he wanted
to run amongst them and strike their stupid faces, but he knew that he
must not.
One day at the very beginning he had suddenly found that he was alone
in the Junior-Common room with Traill, and Traill had begun to speak to
him.
Traill was standing away from him at the window, and he scarcely turned
his head, but over his shoulder in a gruff voice: “I say, Perrin, isn't
this rather rot, our quarreling like this? I hate not to be speaking to
a fellow—I'm sorry if I did things, but you know—”
And Perrin, with his head a little lowered and his hands swinging, had
moved towards him, making a curious little noise in his throat, and
Traill had seen his face and stepped back against the window.
But Perrin had remembered that picture in his mother's dining-room. No!
that man must not get out—he must at all costs be kept in his box. And
so he had turned and left the room without saying anything.
Traill did not try to speak to him again.
With his form during these days Perrin was very quiet. It was remarked
afterwards how quiet he had been. He was never angry. Boys did bad work,
and he did not seem to mind, but he looked at them in a strange way
and said, “Go back, and do it again—do it again,” as though he were not
thinking of what he said.
Perhaps he did not altogether realize them during those days, but rather
thought of them as faces and boots. There were faces in a row, white
faces, and then there was a long strip of wooden desk, scarred with
ink, and then there were boots, broad-toed boots, sometimes with laces
hanging down, stupid things like toads.
He had taught the things that he taught so often that it needed no
effort now to think of them. When you began with numbers on the board,
other numbers followed, and then an answer, and a face got five marks if
it was right—that was all. He never spoke to Garden Minimus if he could
help it. He did not analyze his silence—it was merely a fact that he did
not wish to have Garden Minimus's face brought too close to his own...
it reminded him of things that hurt.
But, on the whole, his form did not notice any delightful difference
except that there was a visible slackening of authority. One could do
things with pens and ink and other people's books more often than had
hitherto been the case, and Somerset-Walpole perhaps felt the difference
more severely than anyone else.... That was really all that there was to
say about his form.
It was perhaps about a week after the Battle of the Umbrella broke out
that Perrin noticed two things. The first thing that he noticed was
that he saw Traill when Traill wasn't there. This was very odd and very
provoking. It could not be said with real accuracy that he saw him,
because he was always just round the corner and out of his eye. One
morning during an Algebra hour, sitting at his desk, he suddenly felt
that Traill was standing just inside the door. It was very odd of Traill
to do this, because he ought, by rights, to have been teaching at the
Upper School—moreover, the door had apparently made no sound when it
opened and none of the boys seemed to notice his entrance; also Mr.
Perrin could not be quite sure, because he was not looking at the door
at all but at the board in front of him. He knew exactly how Traill was
standing, and at last, his motionless silence was so irritating that he
turned round sharply and looked at the door, but Traill was not there.
The silence that was between them, the elaborate prevention of
conversation when they were together at meals or in a room, came slowly
to Perrin as an added impertinence. He knew now that he hated Traill
with all his heart and soul, but that was a very mild way of putting it.
It was not hatred that he felt when he found Traill's face opposite
him at dinner: it was something more active than that. It was as though
someone at his elbow was urging him to leap across the table, dragging
the cloth with him as he went, and to catch Traill's throat... and to do
things; but he knew that he must not, because something must be kept
in a box. And the other thing that he noticed about this time was
that people were talking about him. This might almost be called the
Irritation of the Closed Door, because on every occasion that he saw
a closed door—and they were very many—he knew that there were people
behind it who were talking about him. Sometimes he suddenly opened, very
softly, a door and looked, and although there was, as a rule, no one
in the room, he was sure that they were hiding in cupboards and behind
chairs. Once when he opened a door suddenly like that, the stout Miss
Madden was alone in the room, sewing, and when she saw him she dropped
her work and screamed, which was foolish of her.
But they were all of them always talking about him, and he would like to
have heard what they said. He wondered what Miss Desart said—he was sure
that she would be kind—and he stared at her very hard in chapel, because
he saw her so very little at other times, and because he would like to
know what she was thinking about. He would like to know whether it was
about the same things as his things—and so he stared at her in a curious
way.
And then one evening he suddenly discovered that it was the day on which
he wrote to his mother. He had omitted to write to her last week for the
first time for very many years, because he had forgotten, and she had
written saying how much she had missed it—so he must not forget it
again.
He had had a very trying day, and the man in the box had more nearly
broken out than ever before, so that at first it was very hard to think
of his mother at all. But he stood in the middle of the room with his
hands to his throbbing head, and he made in his mind a little picture
of her sitting in her lace cap and black gown, waiting for a letter from
him. He sat down in his chair and lit his lamp and took out his pen and
paper and began, as he had begun for a great many years:
“Dear old lady...
Then suddenly he thought that Traill was in the room, standing, as he
did now, just inside the door. He turned sharply in his chair and held
the lamp up towards the door, but there was no one there. He sat with
his head between his hands and cleared his mind of everything except his
mother; and gradually, as he sat there, all that strange state that
had been about him during these days fell from him, and he regained his
clear vision—he began to write as he always did:—
“...I didn't write last week, because I had so much to do. I really
didn't have time, and you know how busy we get during these days with
the examinations coming on and everything.
“I'm very well, except that I have these headaches—nothing at all, and
I'm taking these liver pills that you told me of. I hope you 're all
right, and that Dr. Sanders comes to see you every week. Keeping warm's
the thing, old lady, with this weather, and that shawl that Miss Bennett
gave you is the very thing—mind you wear it, and don't sit in draughts.
I'm all right...”
And then the pen dropped from his fingers, and his head fell between
his hands. He wanted to tell her about Miss Desart, that she needn't be
afraid now of his marrying anyone, that he was never going to marry....
His mind was very clear now. It was like a moor when the mists have
lifted away from it.... His unhappiness came all about him and held him
to the ground. He did not hate Traill—Traill could not help it; but he
wanted her—oh! he wanted her so dreadfully.
He slipped on to his knees on the ground, and he was terribly troubled
so that his back shook. He began with desperation, as though it were his
last hold on life, to pray.
“Oh! God, God, God!... Help me!... Do not let me go back again to that
state that I have just been in. I cannot hold myself when I am like
that. I do not know what I am doing or thinking. But it is all so
hard—there are so many little things—there is no time!... They will not
let me alone. Oh, God! give me my chance, give me my chance! Give me
someone to love; I am so terribly alone... nobody wants me. Oh, God! do
not let me go back to that darkness again.... I am so afraid of what I
may do...”
But at last exhaustion took him, there on the floor, and he slept with
his head on his arm.
And suddenly he awoke in the middle of the night and found himself
there—and it was all very dark. He rose to his feet and was terribly
frightened, because there, a gray figure against the fireplace, was the
other Mr. Perrin—and he knew that God had not answered his prayer, and
he cursed God and stumbled to his bed. III.
And after that, things, for him, developed in an amazing way. He was
quite sure now that God hated him.
Now that he was sure of that, he need not care so much about keeping
that box closed—he was damned anyhow.
Traill now took complete possession of his mind. He never thought of
anyone else, and it was exactly as though an iron weight was pressing
on his head, shutting him down. He must get rid of that iron weight,
because it was so disagreeable and prevented him thinking; but he was
sure that it would not go until he had got rid of Traill: therefore
Traill must go.
He did not know how Traill would be likely to go, but he began to
consider it....
These days before the examinations began were very difficult for
everybody, and Perrin began that hideous “getting behind-hand” that made
things accumulate so that there seemed no chance of ever catching up.
There were all the term's marks to be added up before the examinations
began, there were trial papers and test questions to be set, and
therefore a great many papers to be corrected. He found that he was not
able to keep at it for very long at a time, but would sit in his chair
with his hands folded in front of him and think of—Traill—and then he
would find that the papers were not corrected and that there were others
to be done, and they would be in dingy piles about his room—sometimes
a pile would slip from the table on to the floor and would lie there
scattered, and he would feel his rage rising so that if he had not, with
all his force, kept it down he would have rushed screaming about his
room.
But with the whole staff this irritation was at work, and Perrin
welcomed it because it amused him, and because it seemed to him in tune
with his own moods. Always this week before the examinations was a very
difficult one, but now, this term, it was worse than it had ever been
before.
The place was badly understaffed, and always at this time the work was
multiplied so that any spare hours that there had been before were now
filled to overflowing. Also the examination scheme had now appeared and,
whether by design or not, Moy-Thompson always arranged it so that one
or two men seemed to have scarcely any work at all, and the others
naturally had a great deal more than they could do. The quarrels that
had broken out over the umbrella incident had developed until there
was very little to prevent physical struggle. It happened that on this
occasion, West was the person who was let off easily by the examination
list, and he was not the kind of man to allow his advantage to pass
without comment.
Perrin passed a considerable amount of time now in the Senior common
room. He never talked to anyone, but would sit in a dark corner by the
window and watch them all. The funniest thoughts came to him as he sat
there: for instance, he fancied that it would be pleasant, when they
were not watching, to crawl under the table and bite White's legs—it
would be amusing to spring suddenly from behind on to Comber's back,
and to strip all the clothes from him until he was stark naked, and must
run, screaming, from the room—or to twist Birk-land's ears round
and round until they were tom and hung.... All these things would be
pleasant to do, but he sat in his corner and said nothing.
At last the day before the examinations arrived, and they were nearly
all gathered in the Senior common room in the half-hour before Chapel.
Perrin, with his white face and untidy hair, watched them from his
corner.
“It will be very pleasant,” West said, smiling a little, “to have
that third hour off all through this week. I can't think, Comber, why
Moy-Thompson's given you all that extra Latin to do—I—”
“For God's sake,” Comber broke out furiously, “stop it! Aren't we all
sick to death with hearing of your beastly good luck? Don't we all know
that the whole thing's about as unfair as it is possible for anything to
be? Just keep quiet about it if you can.”
“Oh, of course, Comber,” said West. “You grudge a man any bit of
luck that he may have. It's just like you. I never knew anything more
selfish. If you'd had an hour off yourself, you 'd have let us know
about it all right.”
“Well, stop talking about it anyhow, West,” said Dormer. “Leave it
alone. Can't you see that we 're all as tired out as we can be? We've
had enough fighting this term to last us a century.”
With common consent they seemed to sink their private differences in a
common thought of that strange, silent man sitting behind them.
They all drew closer together. The pale gas-light fell on their faces,
and they were all white and tired, with heavy, dark marks under their
eyes.
With their dark gowns, their long white hands, their pale faces, their
heavy eyes, they moved silently about the room and gathered at last in
a cluster by the fire, and stood and sat silently without a word. Only
Perrin, hidden in the shadow behind them, did not move.
Then suddenly Birkland, who was standing a little away from the rest
with his back against the wall, spoke.
“You're right, Dormer. We've fought enough this term to fill a great
many years. We 're a wretched enough crew.”
He paused; but no one spoke, and no one moved.
“I wonder sometimes,” he went on, “how long we are going to stand it.
Most of us have been here a great many years—most of us have had our
hopes broken a great many years ago—most of us have lost our pluck—”
Perhaps he expected a vehement denial, because he paused; but no one
spoke, and no one moved. “This term has been worse than any other since
I have been here. We have all been very near doing things as well as
thinking them. I wonder if you others have ever thought, as I have
thought sometimes, that we have no right to be here?”
“How do you mean,” said Comber slowly, “no right?”
“Well, we were not always like this. We were not always fighting
and cursing like beasts. We were not always without any decency or
friendliness or kindliness. We did not always have a man over us who
used us like slaves, because he knew that we were afraid to give him
notice and go. I was a man myself once. I thought that I was going to do
things—we all thought that we were going to do things. Look at the lot
of us, now—” He paused again, but there was still silence. “They say to
us—the people outside—that it is our own fault, that other men have
made a fine thing of teaching, that there are fine schools where life is
splendid, that we have the interests of the boys under us in our hands.
I know that—we all know that there are splendid schools and splendid
lives; but what is that to do with us?... Do you know the kind of man
that we have got over us? Do they know that every time that we have
tried to do decently, it has been crushed out of us by that devil? Not a
minute is our own; even in the holidays we are pursued. Let others come
and try and see what they will make of it.”
A little stir like a wind passed through the listeners, but no one
spoke. Birkland was leaning forward; his eyes were on fire, his hands
waving in the air.
“But it is not too late—it is not too late, I tell you. Let us break
from it, let us go for the governors in a body and tell them that unless
they improve our conditions, unless they remove Moy-Thompson, unless
they give us more freedom, we will leave—in a body. There is a chance if
we can act together, and better, far better, that we break stones in the
road, that we die free men than this... that this should go on.”
His voice was almost a shout. “My God!” he cried, “think of it! Think of
our chance! We are not dead yet. There is time. Let us act together and
break free!—free!”
He had caught them, he had held them. They saw with his eyes. They moved
together. Cries broke from them.
“You 're right, Birkland; you 're right. We won't stand it. It's our
last chance.”
“Now! Let us go now!”
“Let us go and face him!”
Birkland held them all with his uplifted hand. “Now or never!” he cried.
Suddenly the door opened. Into the midst of their noise there came the
voice of the school-sergeant, cold, unmoved—the voice of a thousand
years of authority: “The headmaster would like to see Mr. White as soon
as possible.”
It was the test. They all realized it as they turned to White to see
what he would do.
For a moment he stood there, tall, gaunt, haggard, his eyes held
by Birkland's, the fire dying from them. For a moment he seemed to
hesitate, his lips moved as though he would speak—then, with a helpless
gesture of his hand, he moved slowly, with hanging head, down the room,
and passed out through the door.
There was silence, and then from his chair in the dark corner Perrin
laughed.