CHAPTER XI—MR. PERRIN SEES DOUBLE
I.
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.
CHAPTER XII—MR. PERRIN WALKS IN SLEEP
I.
WITH examinations there comes a new element into the life of the term—it is an element of triumph in so far as it marks the approaching end of an impossible situation; it is, an element of despair in so far as it provides an overpowering number of answers, differing in the minutest particulars, to the same questions; and is even an element of romance, because it heralds the appearance of a final order in which boys will beat other boys, generally in a surprising and unforeseen manner. But whatever it means it also tightens to a higher pitch any situation that there may have been before, so that anything that seemed impossible now appears incredible; the days are like years, and the hours, filled with the empty scratching of pens and the rubbing of blotting-paper, stretch infinitely into the distance and hide release.
Their effect on everyone on the present occasion was to force extravagantly the longing that everything might soon be over, that the situation couldn't stand the kind of strain that was being put upon it unless the curtain were rung down as soon as possible. Everyone was hideously busy with long periods of doing nothing except the aforesaid attention to pens and blotting-paper. Mr. Moy-Thompson had, moreover, invented a little scheme which always provided, as far as he was concerned, the pleasantest and most happy results. This was a plan whereby every master set and corrected the papers of some other master's form and then wrote a report on them. Here obviously was a most admirable opportunity for the paying off of old scores, as a bad report always led, next term, to a miserable period of bullying and baiting, with the hapless master who had incurred it in the rôle of victim. Therefore, if, as was usually the case, your especial enemy was correcting the papers of your form and would write a report on them, unless something were done to appease him, you were, during the whole of the next term, delivered over mercilessly to the Rev. Moy-Thompson. You might perchance appease your enemy, or you might yourself be examining his form, in which case you had every opportunity of a pleasant retort. At any rate, this plan invariably inflamed any hostilities that might already be in existence and resulted in the provision of at least half a dozen victims for Mr. Moy-Thompson's games on a later occasion.
For once, however, these examinations came to Perrin as very vague and misty affairs. This was not usual with him. As a rule they pleased him, because he could hold over hoys who had been rude to him during the term the terror of being detained all the first day of the holidays—also he considered that he was ingenious in the invention of pleasant Algebraic conundrums and fascinating, derisive questions in Trigonometry that prevented any possible solution. The devising of these gave him, as a rule, pleasure and amusement, but this term he could not face them.
He set his papers, in an odd, abstracted way, with questions from earlier papers, and then he sat with his hands folded in front of him and waited. There was only one subject now in the whole world, and all these curious boys, these strange, visionary class-rooms, these appalling noises, and then these equally appalling silences, only diverted his attention and prevented his thinking.
There were always three of them now—himself, the other Mr. Perrin, and Traill—they always went about together. When he was taking an examination and was sitting at his desk, isolated, by the wall, the other Mr. Perrin, a gray, thin figure, was behind him, looking into the room, and Traill stood, as he always did now, just inside the door, but away from Mr. Perrin's eye, because when he turned round and looked at him he always slipped, in the cleverest way, out of the door.
Perrin wondered that other people didn't notice that he was accompanied by these persons, but probably they were all too occupied with their own affairs. Of course Traill must be got rid of—one couldn't possibly have anyone whom one hated as much as that always with one. Sometimes it was curiously confused, because there were two Traills—a Traill who moved about and spoke to people (although never to Perrin), and the Traill who stood always by the door and never moved at all except to slip away.
Perrin was quite clear in his own mind now that he hated Traill very much indeed, but he could not be very definitely sure of any reasons. There had been something once about an umbrella, and there was something else about Miss Desart, and there was even something about Garden Minimus; but none of these things were fixed very resolutely in his mind, and his thoughts slipped about like goldfish in a pond.
It was quite certain, however, that Traill must not be allowed to go on like this, because he was a nuisance, and Perrin would sit for long hours whilst he was superintending examinations thinking about this and what he could do.
There were moments, even hours, when the consciousness of the two figures at his side and the weighty burden of his decision left him. He saw suddenly as clearly as he had ever seen, and he was frightened; it was like waking from an evil dream, and just when he was gazing hack at it, frightened, even terrified, it would come slipping about him again, and the world would once more grow dark.
At last he was frightened at these intervals, because he seemed to realize then how dismal and unhappy it all was, and also how dangerous it was.
Once, during one of these clear moments, he was standing, a melancholy figure, by the iron gate, looking down the Brown Hill road, and Garden Minimus passed him. Perrin stopped him, and then when he saw the boy's round face and shining eyes, a little frightened now, and the mouth quivering a little, he had nothing to say.
At last he said, “Oh!—Ah!—Garden—I haven't seen much of you lately. How do the exams go?”
Perrin had an absurd impulse to take the boy by the arm and ask him to be kind to him. He was so dreadfully unhappy.
But Garden was very frightened; he choked a little in his throat, and his eyes moved frantically down the white road as though appealing for help.
“Oh! very well, sir, thank you, sir—I—I could n't do the geography this morning, sir.”
There was a long pause. Garden gave frightened glances up and down the road.
“When do you go for—um, ah,—your holidays, Garden?”
Garden looked up in Mr. Perrin's face, and suddenly, young though he was, felt that Mr. Perrin was, as he put it afterwards, “awfully sick about something—not ratty, you know, but jolly near blubbing.”
He had, with his friends, noticed that Perrin was “jolly odd” during these days, but now this thought struck him to the extinction of every other feeling. He had a sudden desire to help—after all, Old Pompous had been beastly decent to him—and then there came an overwhelming sensation of shyness, as though his feminine relations had suddenly appeared and claimed him in the company of his contemporaries. He looked down, rubbed one boot against the other, and then suddenly, with a murmured word about “having to meet some fellows—beastly late,” was off.
Perrin watched him go and then turned slowly back towards the school buildings. The shadows were creeping about him again. He felt that the other Mr. Perrin was behind him. He walked stealthily, a little as a cat prowls....
About this time he took great curiosity in Traill's bedroom. He had never been inside it—he knew only that plain brown door with marks near the bottom of it where the paint had been scratched.
But he sat now in his room and thought about it. He sat in a chair by the windows and looked across the room at his own door, at the square black lock and the shining brass handle. It was of course very easy to turn, and then he would be inside. It would be interesting to be inside—he would know then where the bed was, and the washing-stand, and the chairs... it might be useful to know.
He went to his own door and opened it, and looked very cautiously down the passage; there was no one there—it was all very silent. The sun of the December afternoon flooded the cold passage, and from downstairs the shouts of some boys floated up.... There were no other sounds.
He walked very softly down the passage, his head lowered, his hands behind his back. He stopped outside Traill's bedroom door and listened again—he was surprised to hear that his heart was beating very loudly indeed. He pushed the door open and looked inside. The bed was near the window—the sun flooded the room and shone on the silver hair-brushes and the china basin and jug.
It was a very simple room, and the bed took up most of it; there was one photograph.
He went very softly up to it and saw that it was a photograph of Miss Desart—Miss Desart, smiling, out of doors with the sun on her dress.
He bent towards the photograph, over the china basin, and kissed it. Then he went out, closing the door softly behind him.
III.
And the week wore away, and Monday came round. Thursday was Speech-Day, and on Friday everybody went home; all marks and form lists had to be in the headmaster's room on Wednesday night before nine.
Perrin, on Monday evening, was vaguely conscious that he had corrected no papers at all. They lay about his room now in stacks—none of them were corrected. Some masters posted results as they corrected the papers; other masters left all the results until the end. It was not considered strange that Perrin had posted no results.
But he knew as he looked at these white sheets that he ought to have done something with them. He stood in the middle of the room with his hands to his head and wondered what he ought to have done. Why, of course, he ought to correct them—he ought to say what was good and what was bad.
He took up a large pile of them, and they almost slipped from his fingers because there were so many. He found that it was a paper on French Grammar. He looked at the slip with the questions.
“I. Give the preterite (singular only) and past participle of donner, recevoir, laisser, s'asseoir...”
Ah! s'asseoir was a hard one—he had always found that that was difficult. He turned over the page:
J'eu, tu eus, il eut—that looked wrong.. .
Again, here was Simpson Minor—“Je fus, tu fus, il fut”—surely that was confused in some way.
The papers at the bottom slipped: he bent to prevent them falling, and all of them tipped over. They rose in a cloud about him, a white cloud, flying into the air, sailing to the other end of the room, diving under the table and into the fireplace, and a great white pile lay-scattered wildly on the floor.
The silly papers stared at him:
“Je dors tous...”
“Il faut que...”
“I used to love my mother, but now I love my aunt...”
“Rule for the conjunctive and disjunctive pronouns...”
And then, Simpson Minor: “Je fus, tu fus...”
He was infuriated with their silly, stupid faces. They lay there on the floor, staring up at him and making no attempt whatever to move. He was maddened by their impassivity. He began to stamp on them, and then to trample on them—he rushed about the room, uttering little cries and wildly stamping... .
And then something suddenly seemed to go in his brain, and he stopped still. What was he doing? He bent feebly to pick them up, but he could not collect them. He sat down at his table with his head in his hands.
Then he gave up trying to correct them. After all, they were not the important thing—the important thing was between himself and Traill; that was what he must think about.
This was Monday, and on Friday everyone would go away. He would go away, he supposed, with the rest: of course he would go to his mother. Traill would go away with Miss Desart... would he?
The other Mr. Perrin leant over and whispered in his ear.
It was from this moment that Mr. Perrin came to the definite decision that something must be done before Friday. He made five black marks with a pencil on the yellow wallpaper in his bedroom, and he would lie hack on his bed at night, staring up at the marks whilst his candle guttered on the chair at his side. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday... Monday passed, and he scratched another mark across the mark that he had already made. Tuesday passed, and that he also scratched out. Wednesday morning came.
Divinity was the only examination left except Repetition on Thursday morning: Wednesday afternoon was a half-holiday.
He gave out the Old Testament questions:
“1. Say what you know about the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; its cause and effects.
“2. Write briefly a life of Aaron...”
He found that now suddenly his brain was perfectly clear. To-day was Wednesday—before Friday he would kill Traill. The determination came to him perfectly plainly in the midst of these questions:
“6. Give context of: 'Kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favor in thy sight.' “'Let us make a captain and let us return into Egypt.'
“'Is the Lord's hand waxed short?'.rdquo;
He would kill Traill. He did not mind at all what happened to him afterwards. What did it matter? Perhaps he would kill himself. He was a complete failure; he had never been any use at all, and had only been there for people to laugh at and mock him.
If it had not been for Traill he might have been of use—he might have married Miss Desart. Traill had been against him in every way, and now the only thing that was left for him to do was to kill Traill. He hated Traill—of course he hated Traill; but it was not really because of that that he was going to kill Traill—it was only because he wanted to show all these people that he could do something: he was not useless, after all. They might laugh at him and call him Pompous, but, after all, the laugh would be on his side at the end.... Traill would not be able to kiss Miss Desart very much longer—another day, and he would never be able to kiss her again.... That was a pleasant thought.
Now that he had decided this question he felt a great deal happier and easier in his mind. There was no longer any self-pity.
He had given God His opportunity—he had prayed to God and besought Him; he had tried very hard at the beginning of this term to go right and to be agreeable to people and to keep the other Mr. Perrin in the distance, but everything had been very hard, and that was God's fault for making it so hard.
He thought that he would surprise God by killing Traill. God would not be expecting that.
Still more would he surprise the place—Moffatt's—that place that had treated him so cruelly all these years. It would be a grand, big thing to kill his enemy!
On that Wednesday, half an hour before the midday dinner, he walked slowly, with his hands behind his bent back, through the long dining-hall. The long, black tables were laid for dinner, and beside every round, shining plate there lay two knives. These knives made a long, glittering line right down the table, and the sun caught their gleaming steel and flashed from knife to knife. The sight of them fascinated Mr. Perrin—it was with a knife that he would kill Traill—he would cut Traill's throat. He picked them up, one after the other, and felt their edges—they were all wonderfully sharp. There were a great many of them—you could cut a great many throats with all those knives, but he did not want to cut anyone else's throat except Traill's—Traill was his enemy.
At dinner that day he was pleasant and cheerful. He joked with the boys on either side of him and asked where they were going for the holidays.
“Ah! Cromer—um—yes, very pleasant. Our little friend will amuse himself hugely at Cromer, no doubt. Sure to over-eat on Christmas Day. Um, yes—and you, Larkin, where do you go?... Ah! Whitby—long way. Yes, able to read your holiday task in the train.”
He sent the servant out to sharpen the carving-knife, and when it was brought back he attacked the mutton in the most furious way, scattering the gravy over the cloth.
After dinner he stood above the playing-fields, watching the clouds sail across the sky. It was a very gray-colored day, but there was the light of the sun behind it, so that everything shone without color but with a transparency as though one should be able to see other lights and colors behind it.
Perrin thought that he had never seen the clouds assume such curious shapes—perhaps they were not clouds at all, but rather creatures of the sky that only his eye could see, just as it was only his eye that could see the other Mr. Perrin. There were birds with long, bending necks, and fat, round-faced animals with only one eye, and stiff, angular creatures with wings and legs like sticks, and then again there were splendid galleons with sails unfurled, and cathedral towers and trees and mountain ranges—they were all very strange and beautiful, and perhaps this was the last time that he would see them.
Then he saw, passing down the path to the right and walking fast in the direction of the road, two figures; another glance, and he saw that they were Miss Desart and Traill—there was no doubt at all that that was Miss Desart in her gray dress, and that man with his swinging stick was Traill.
The sight of them together suddenly roused him to fury; it would be amusing to kill Traill now, there, before Miss Desart. He did not know how he would do it, perhaps he would spring on to Traill's back from behind and strangle him with his hands.
And so, with the other Mr. Perrin at his ear, he followed them down the path.
It was a day of ghosts—even the brown color of the earth of the hill that so seldom left it was gone to-day. It was not a cold day, and one felt that the sun was burning with intense heat in some neighboring place, but gray wisps of mist crept in and out of the black, naked hedges, and, at the bottom of the hill, banks of mist lay, visiting the cottages of the village.
The two figures passed in front of him down the hill and became, like the rest of the day, gray and misty, and he followed them, stealthily, with his hands behind his back. Their heads were very close together, and he could see that they were talking very eagerly. They were discussing, probably, their plans for the holidays, and it pleased him to think that he would make all their plans of no avail. It pleased the other Mr. Perrin also.
They passed down the village street and then up the steep, narrow path to the road that led along the top of the cliffs. At the top of the path the mists had cleared again, and the rocks, hidden at the floor of the sea by gray vapor, stood as it were in mid-air, their black edges piercing the sky. When Mr. Perrin climbed to the top of the path, the other figures had preceded him some way along it and were almost hidden by boulders. He hastened a little so that he might keep them in sight, and then he hung back a little lest he should be too close to them. They were still talking very eagerly and crossed down a stony path that led to a sheltered cove. At the bottom of this they sat down on the sand, and Perrin hid behind a rock and watched them.
The world was terribly still, because, although there was a wind that made the clouds race along, it seemed to leave the sea alone, and the water made the very faintest sound as it touched the beach and faded away into the mist again.
Mr. Perrin found that his legs were very tired, and so he sat down behind his stone and peered out at them. They sat very close together on the sand, and then Traill put out his arm and Miss Desart crept into it and sat there with her head against his shoulder. And when Perrin saw that, he knew that he never could do anything to Traill whilst Miss Desart was there. A dreadful feeling of home-sickness came over him, and his eyes filled with tears. It was so unfair, so unfair. If only there had been someone there to whom he could have done that: if only there had ever been anyone in his life!... but he dashed the tears from his eyes. He had not come there to cry—he had come there for vengeance, and then, at that thought, he wondered whether after all he were not so poor a creature that he would never be able to kill anyone. Supposing he were to miss even this chance of achievement! There, behind his rock, he tried to gather together all his reasons for hating Traill; but he couldn't think properly, and the pebbles on which he was sitting were pressing into his trousers, and his neck was hurting because he craned it so.
At any rate he was very uncomfortable, and as he could certainly do nothing whilst Miss Desart was there, he had better go away. And so he got up very slowly and painfully from behind his rock and went timidly up the path again.
IV.
And that night, after going the round of the dormitories for the last time, he went into his room and closed his door with the clear determination of settling things up.
His head had not been so clear for weeks. He saw at once that he had corrected no papers and that something must be done about that.
He sat down and, with the term's marks beside him, made out imaginary examination lists. Of course it was all very wrong, but it was for the last time, and he had, after all, put the boys in the order in which they would probably; occur. This took him about an hour.
Then he took all the files of examination papers and tore them up. This took a long time, and they filled, at last, his waste-paper basket to overflowing. Then he sat down to write to his mother.
Dear Old Lady:
This is the last time that you will see or hear from me. Do not regret it or anything that I have done, because I am no good, and am just a failure. There is £100 in the bank which I have saved, and you will get things with it. Sell my things: they will bring a little. I love you very much, old lady, but I am no good.—Your loving son,
Vincent Perrin.
He fastened up the letter and addressed it to—
Mrs. Perrin,
Holly Cottage,
Bubblewick,
Bucks.
Just as he finished it he heard eleven o'clock strike. He waited until the clocks had ended, then he opened his door and looked down the passage. It was quite silent. He walked quietly down the stairs, down the lower passage, and so to the dining-room.
Here the long tables were laid for breakfast. He paused at one of the tables and chose one of the knives; they did not seem very sharp, and he tried others on the hack of his hand. At last he had selected one and put it under his coat. He returned to his room and closed his door. When he got there he stood in the middle of his room, and looked stupidly at the knife. What had he got it for? There was Traill next door... of course.
But he could not do anything now. He had fancied that when one had got the knife, then the next thing was to go straight and do something with it. But he found that he could not, that he could not move from where he was, and that his hand was shaking as though with an ague.
The knife dropped on to the floor with a sharp sound, and he sank into a chair. What a wretched, miserable creature he was, after all! There was nothing fine about him—there was nothing fine about anyone at Moffatt's—they were all a miserable lot... and to-morrow there would be speeches and prizes and cheering! What a funny thing life was!
But it was no use thinking about life with that knife on the floor. It was quite clear that he wasn't going to do anything to-night—he might just as well go to bed. His headache was dreadfully bad, and he was shivering all over. He put the knife into a drawer and blew out his lamp.
He hated the dark—he had always hated it—and so he hurried into his bedroom and tried to light his candle, but his hand was shaking so that it was a long time before he could strike a match, and he cursed the matches feebly and felt inclined to cry.
He was a long time undressing and sat on the edge of the bed in his shirt and looked at his long, thin legs and hated them; then he saw the black marks on the yellow paper, and he scratched another off.... At last he blew out the candle and got into bed.
He seemed to fall asleep all at once and was aware that he was asleep—but after a time he felt that although he was asleep, he was conscious of someone watching him. He opened his eyes and saw that the other Mr. Perrin was sitting by his bed, watching him, and although the room was quite dark, the gray figure was in some way luminous, so that he could see that he wore a long, gray cloak and that his features were exactly the same as his own. He was forced against his will to get out of bed and to follow the other Mr. Perrin out of the house, down the long, white road, down to the sea. Here they were in that little cove where Traill and Miss Desart had been that afternoon. They sat with their backs against the rocks, and in all the air there was a strange, uncertain light, and the sea came over the shore in sullen, dreamy movements, as a tired woman's fingers move when she is sewing.
Then Mr. Perrin saw that down the beach there passed a long procession of gray, bending figures with heavy burdens on their backs. Their faces were white and hopeless, and their hands, with long, white fingers, hung at their sides.
He was conscious of some great feeling of injustice—that this must not be allowed—and an over-mastering impulse to call out that it was all wrong and to run forward and relieve them of their burdens—but he could not move nor utter any sound. Then suddenly he recognized faces that he knew, and he saw White and Birkland and Combers and Dormer and then—his own.
He gave a great cry and broke from his companion and rushed swiftly back up the white road, in through the black gates, up the stairs, and into his room.
He stood in the middle of his room and felt suddenly cold. To his surprise he saw that the moon was shining through the window, although there had been no moon on the beach. The room was so bright that he could distinguish every object perfectly—and then he realized slowly that things were different. Those silver-backed hair-brushes were not his, his bed was not there—that photograph....
Someone was in the bed.
For an instant his heart stopped beating. There was a draught between the window and the door... someone else was in the bed; he had been walking in his sleep; he was in Traill's room.
He could see Traill quite clearly now, lying with one hand on the counterpane, his head on an arm. He was fast asleep, and his month was smiling.
Mr. Perrin shook from head to foot. Here was his opportunity—here was his enemy fast asleep... now. He stepped nearer to the bed—he bent over the face. Traill's pyjama-jacket was open at the neck... it would be very easy.
Then suddenly, with a little cry and his face in his hands, he crept from the room.