by Hugh Walpole
Suddenly he came quite close to her, looking into her eyes; he grasped her hand and held it.
“I’ve been wanting to say...” he said in an odd voice, and there he stopped and stood staring at her.
“Yes,” she said gently.
His throat was moving convulsively, and he put his hand up to his face with a helpless gesture and pulled his mustache.
“I’ve wanted to say — um, ah — to congratulate you...”
He cleared his throat, and suddenly she saw tears in his eyes.
“Oh! thank you!” she said impulsively, coming up to him and putting her hand on his arm. “Thank you so very much!” and then she could say no more.
He moved his arm away, and his eyes passed her again, out of the distant horizon. Then he said very rapidly, as though he were reciting a speech that he had learnt, “I wanted to congratulate you on your engagement. I hope you’ll be very happy. I’m sure you will. I’m afraid I’m a little late in my good wishes. I’m afraid I’m a little late. Yes. Good morning!”
Then, before she could say any more, he had moved away and gone down the path.
As she watched his black gown waving a little behind him she knew that her vague fears of the night before had taken definite form.
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 wi
th 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.