by Hugh Walpole
He saw himself at Eton or Harrow, or a school-inspectorship. Why not? He was able enough. It only needed something to force him out of the rut.
But Traill had taken her in....
And then she turned and spoke to him, and at once he put up his hand as though he would stroke his chin, but really it was to cover the stud — the large soup-plate stud. He stroked his straggling mustache, and used his official voice. He spoke as he always did when he wanted to create an impression, as though in the cloistral courts of Cambridge.
Slow, deliberate, a little majestic... he shot his cuff back into his sleeve. He spoke of ambition, of the things that a man could do if he tried, of the things that he could do, if —
“If?” said Isabel.
“Oh! well, if... marriage, for instance, was such a help to a man... one never knew—” He drank furiously and finished at a gulp a glass of Freddie Comber’s very bad claret.
Young Traill was having a very good time indeed with Miss Madder, and Isabel turned round to hear what they were talking about. The meringues had arrived — there was also fruit-salad, but everyone took meringues although they would have liked, had they dared, to take both — and conversation was quite lively.
“I do hope,” said Mrs. Dormer, “that there will be several extra halves this term.”
And at once poor Mrs. Comber, who was eagerly congratulating herself on the success with which, so far, she had escaped danger, burst in:
“Oh, so do I. You know, they always used to give the boys a half for every new baby born on the establishment. Well, you and I have done our duty nobly in that direction, haven’t we, Mrs. Dormer?”
It is impossible that those who are not acquainted with both ladies should have any conception of the disaster that this simple sentence involved.
Mrs. Dormer had a glorious, pugnacious prudery in her stiff, angular body that rejoiced in any opportunity for display. She hated Mrs. Comber; she had now an excuse for being offended for weeks.
She could embroider and discuss to her heart’s delight. She saw in the amusement of Miss Madder, the discomfort of her husband, the dismay of Miss Desart, the distaste of Mr. Perrin, the wrath of Mr. Comber, ample confirmation of her exultant prophecies. It does not take much to make a scandal at Moffatt’s — and the propriety of the schoolmaster, the anxious, eager propriety, exceeds the propriety of every other profession.
Mrs. Dormer had the game in her hands, and she played the first move by sitting silently, whitely, protestingly in her chair.
“I do hope the football will be good this season,” she said at last, quietly and patiently, to Mr. Comber.
Mrs. Comber realized at once that she was defeated. She did not know why she had said a thing like that — she knew that Mrs. Dormer didn’t like such things to be talked about. She smiled and laughed and talked about gardens and the school bell and Mrs. Moy-Thompson’s hat. “It always rings half a note flat, and it’s no use speaking about it; and how she can bear that colored green when it’s the last color she ought to wear, I can’t think; if it weren’t for these flies — what do you call them! — the roses would have done quite well.” But her eyes stared desperately down the table at Freddie, and she saw that he would not look at her, and she knew that the dinner had been only one more nail in her coffin.
There was still, of course, Bridge.
V.
Sitting at the little tables in the tiny drawing-room afterwards, they were all tremendously — as of course you must be at such small tables — conscious of each other.
They had drawn lots, and Mrs. Comber was playing with Dormer against her husband and Miss Madder at one table, and Mr. Perrin was playing with Mrs. Dormer against Isabel and young Traill at another.
It may seem a slight thing, but it was certainly a factor in the whole situation that Perrin was forced to gaze — over a very small intervening space — at Traill’s immaculate clothes for the rest of the evening. He was always a bad Bridge player — he thought that he disguised his bad play by a haughty manner and a false assurance; to-night the confusion of his thoughts, his incipient dislike for Traill, the bad claret that he had drunk, the distracting way that Miss Desart held her cards, caused his play to be something insane.
Mrs. Dormer disliked intensely losing money, and there seemed every prospect, if Perrin continued to play like that, of her losing at least five shillings before the end of the evening. She was convinced that she had every reason for being angry, and when, at the end of the first deal, her partner had thrown away a splendid heart hand by refusing to follow any of her leads, she could not resist a stiff movement in her chair and a sharp, “Well, Mr. Perrin, I think we ought to have done better than that.”
For the first time in his experience his usual assured reply, containing an implication that it was all his partner’s fault, that he had been at Cambridge for three years, and that he taught Algebra and Euclid six days a week and therefore ought to know how to play Bridge if anyone did, failed him. He stared at her miserably, gathered the cards hurriedly together, and began to shuffle them in a dreadfully confused way. He knew that Miss Desart must think him a fool, and he wanted her so terribly badly to think him clever and even brilliant. He was sure that Traill was laughing at him. He hated the assurance with which he played. If only he, Perrin, had been playing with Miss Desart what things he might have done.... His head ached, and his shirt creaked a little every time he moved, and every time it creaked Mrs. Dormer made a little stir of disapproval.
At the other table also things were not as they should be. The drawing of lots had secured precisely the combination of players that Mrs. Comber had most wished to avoid. Whatever she did, however she played, she was lost. If she played badly, her husband, although playing against her, was infuriated at her stupidity; if she won, he hated being beaten. As it was, she was playing extremely badly, but was winning because of the good cards that she held. His brow was growing blacker and blacker. She held her cards so badly — she never could make them into a fan, and every now and again one fell with a sharp rattle against the table.
Also she forgot sometimes that they were playing and broke into sentences that had to be instantly checked — as, for instance: “Oh, I saw Mrs. —— —— I’m so sorry, it’s my lead.”
“I believe this term.... Oh! I beg your pardon.... What are trumps?”
Every now and again she gazed at the peacock screen, and the clock, and the dark corner of the room where there was a little water-color in a gilt frame, and they gave her comfort.
The end of the rubber came, and Mrs. Dormer refused to play any more; they had had magnificent cards, but she had lost three shillings. She wouldn’t look at Mr. Perrin. He stood nervously moving one foot against the other, pulling his mustache.
“No, really I’m afraid we must go. You’ve finished your rubber, Mrs. Comber? Yes, we ought to have won.... No, I can’t think how it was.”
“Considering the way my wife’s been playing,” said Freddie Comber brutally, “I think it is just as well to stop.”
Mrs. Comber chattered with amazing confusion as she helped Mrs. Dormer to get her cloak. In her eyes something bright was shining, and every now and again she put up her band to push back some of her black hair (always on the edge of a perilous descent) with a little, desperate action.
“Good night. I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed it. We meet to-morrow, of course, although I can’t think why they aren’t going to play golf — there’s going to be such a storm in an hour or two, isn’t there? — probably because it’s football to-morrow afternoon. Yes, good-by.” Everyone departed. Mr. Perrin stood desperately with something going up and down in his throat. He had a sentence in his head: “Please, Miss Desart, do let me see you back to the lodge.” (Mrs. Comber had had to plant her out there to sleep because there was no room in their own tiny house.) He meant to say it, he wanted to say it. He clutched his mortar-board frantically in his hand. Then suddenly be heard Traill’s voice:
“Oh! pl
ease, Miss Desart — of course, I’ll see you back. Good night, Mrs. Comber. Thank you so much — I’ve loved it. Good night, Comber. Night, Perrin. Look out, Miss Desart, it’s dark.”
Perrin felt his hand just touched by Miss Desart’s, and her voice, “Good night, Mr. Perrin.”
He was left alone on the step.
VI.
I don’t suppose that at this stage of things Isabel had the very slightest idea of all the emotions that had been in play that evening. Her head, as they walked away down the dark gravel path, was full of her hostess.
“Poor Mrs. Comber,” she said, and then checked herself as though there were some disloyalty in talking about her. “I hate Mrs. Dormer,” she added quietly.
“I don’t like her,” Traill said. “And Dormer’s such a jolly little man. I don’t envy; him.”
“Oh! I don’t suppose it’s her fault any more than it’s anyone’s fault here about anything they do. It’s all a case of nerves.”
There was going to be a storm soon. Already that little preparatory whisper of the wind, the ominous, frightened rustle of the leaves down the path, was about them. It was all very dark, with a curious white light on the horizon, and the dark buildings of the Lower School huddled against it in sharp, black outline like the broad backs of giants bending to the soil.
The scent of trees — vague and uncertain in the daytime, but now clear and pungent — was borne through the air, and the voice of the sea, rolling in long, mournful cadences far below the hills, came up to them. The wind’s whisper grew into a furious, strangled cry; little eddies of it swept about their feet, and cascades of withered leaves fell wildly against them and were blown, sweeping, streaming away.
They were silent. Traill was thinking of her voice. It was so grave and assured and restful. He thought that he could trust her tremendously. But there was reserve in it too, and he felt, a little hopelessly, that he might never perhaps get to know her better.
When they got to the lodge gates, they stopped and stood for a moment silently.
Then she said, looking very gravely in front of her at the dark bend of the road, “There must be such a storm coming up. I feel it all through me. It was depressing to-night, wasn’t it?”
“Just a little,” he said.
“Anyhow, I’m glad you like it — being here. Mind you always do. I don’t want to be pessimistic when you are just beginning; but — well, you don’t mean to stay here for ever, do you?”
“I should think not,” he answered eagerly. “Only a term or two at the most, and then I hope to go back to Clifton, my old school.”
“That’s right — because — really it isn’t a very good place to be — this.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“It’s difficult to explain without maligning people and making things out worse than they really are.” She paused a moment, and then she went on: “Do you know, at the bottom of the hill, just before you get into the village, a melancholy orchard? One always passes it. You will see at the right time of the year lots of green apples on the trees, but they never seem to come to anything. And such blossoms in the spring! I’ve seen men working there sometimes. I don’t know what it is, but nothing’s any good there. They call it in the village ‘Green Apple Orchard.’... Well, I’ve stayed here a great deal, and there’s an obvious comparison.”
“That’s cheerful,” he said, laughing. “It would, I suppose, be awful if one had to stay here for ever like Perrin and Dormer and the rest of them; but this time next year will see me somewhere better, I hope.”
“Mind you stick to that,” she said eagerly. “I have a horrible kind of feeling that they all meant to go very soon; but here they are still — soured, disappointed. Oh! it doesn’t bear thinking of.”
“One must have ambition,” he answered her confidently.
She smiled at him, and took his hand, and said good night.
He went, smiling, to his room. As he climbed into bed, the storm broke furiously.
CHAPTER IV — BIRKLAND LOQUITUR
I.
AT the end of his first month young Traill looked back, as it were from the top of a hill, and thought that it all had been very pleasant. How much of this pleasantness was due to Isabel (although he had seen her during that period extremely seldom) and how much of it was due to his agreeable acceptance of things as they were without any very definite challenge to them to be different, it is impossible to say.
The crowded day had of course something to do with it: the fact that there was never from the first harsh clanging of the bell down the stone passages at half-past six to the last leap into bed, jumping as it were from a heap of Latin exercises and the cold challenge of Perrin’s voice as he went round the dormitories turning lights out — never a moment’s pause to think about anything extra at all. But he was in no way a reflective person. He saw that his own small boys in their untidy, scrambling kind of way liked him and that the bigger boys of the Upper Fourth, to whom he taught French twice a week, revered him because of his football.
The masters at the Upper School seemed pleasant fellows, although he might, had he thought about it, have perceived dimly an atmosphere of unrest and discomfort in their common room.
With Moy-Thompson as yet he had had no dealings at all. He had been to supper there once on Sunday night, had been appalled by the dreariness of the whole affair, the shrivelled ill-temper of Moy-Thompson’s parents (aged about ninety apiece), the inadequacy of the food, the melancholy inertia of Mrs. Moy-Thompson; but he had had no nearer relations with him.
He had, indeed, already begun to perceive that in his own common room things were not quite as they should be. He was always an exceedingly equable and easy-tempered person, and he had been surprised at himself on several occasions for being irritated at very unimportant and insignificant details. There were, for instance, the incidents of the bath and the morning papers. Both of these incidents derived their irritation from their original connection with Perrin, and this might have led him, had he thought about it, to the discovery that he did not like Perrin and that Perrin did not like him. But he never dwelt upon things — he was always thinking of the matter immediately in hand, and where there was an empty reflective quarter of an hour his eyes were on Isabel.
The incident of the bath was, it might have been thought, inconsiderable.
Perrin’s bedroom was next to Traill’s. Opposite their doors, on the other side of the passage, was a bathroom containing two baths. In this bathroom Traill always arrived some minutes after Perrin. Try as he might, he never succeeded in arriving first. Perrin always filled both baths, one with hot and one with cold, and stood moodily, his naked body gaunt and bony in the gray light, watching them whilst they filled. Traill was forced to wait until Perrin had had both his baths before he could have his. At first it had seemed a small matter. Gradually as the days passed the irritation grew. There was something in Perrin’s complacent immobility as he stood above his bath that was of itself annoying. Why should a man wait? One morning they rushed out together. There were words.
“I say, Perrin, why not have hot and cold in the same bath?”
“Really, Traill, it isn’t, I should have thought, quite your place....”
Traill sometimes dreamt early in the morning of French exercises, of the midday mutton, of Perrin’s bony, ugly body watching the bath. If Traill had thought about it, he would have seen that Perrin did not like him.
The incident of the morning paper was equally trivial. Dormer always had breakfast in his own house, and that left therefore three of them. They clubbed together and provided three newspapers — the Morning Post, the Daily Mail, and a local affair. It was obvious that the person who came in last was left with the local paper. Perrin generally came in last, because he took early prep, in the Upper School, and he expected that the Morning Post should be left for him. But Traill, as he paid the same subscription as Perrin, did not see why this should be. Clinton always took the Daily Mail, and therefore Perri
n had to be contented with the Cornish News. There was at last an argument. Traill refused to give way. The rest of the meal was eaten in absolute silence. Perrin came no more to Traill’s room for an evening chat — a very small matter.
But at the end of the first month Traill did not see these things as in any way ominous. He could keep his boys in order. He liked his game of football; he was in a glow because he was in love — moreover, he had never quarreled with anyone in his life. He did not know that he had made any progress with Isabel. It was very difficult to see her. She came down sometimes to watch them play football; after Chapel in the evening, he had walked up the little dark lane with her, the stars above the dark, cloudy trees, and the leaves a carpet about their feet — and at every meeting he loved her more. When he had spare hours in the afternoon he liked to walk to the Brown Wood or down to the sea. Once or twice he bicycled over to Pendragon and had tea with the Trojans. Sir Henry Trojan was a man who had appealed to him immensely. In spite of his size and strength and simplicity, his air of a man who lived out of doors and read little, he had a tremendous poetic passion for Cornwall. He showed Traill a great many things that were new to him. He began to feel a sense of color; he saw the Brown Wood, the twisting, gray-roofed village, the sweeping, striving sea with fresh vision. He stopped sometimes in his walks and drew a deep breath at the way that the lights and colors were hung about him. Of course the contrast of his school life drove these other things against him — and also his love for Isabel.
These little things would have no importance were it not that they all helped to blind him to his true relations with Perrin. He did not think about Perrin at all; he did not think about his life even in any very definite way.
He never analyzed things; he took things and used them.
And then at the end of that first month Birkland talked in the most amazing way....
II.