Delphi Collected Works of Hugh Walpole (Illustrated)
Page 85
Mr. Moy-Thompson sat down, hot and inspired amidst a burst of frantic cheering and clapping, but was suddenly chilled by the consciousness of Mr. Perrin’s eyes glaring at him in the strangest manner across the room. He shifted his chair a little to the left, so that a boy’s head intervened. The Governing Body at the conclusion of his speech moved their heads to the right, then to the left, smiled once, and resumed their immovability.
Sir Arthur Spalding was nervous, but found courage to say that he believed in our public schools — that was the thing that made men of us — he should never forget what he himself owed to Harrow. He should like to say one thing to the boys — that they were not to think that winning prizes was everything. We couldn’t all win prizes; let those who failed to obtain them remember that “slow and steady wins the race.” It wasn’t always the boys who won prizes who got on best afterwards. No — um — ah — he never used to win prizes at school himself. It wasn’t always the boys — here he pulled himself up and remembered that he had said it before. There was something else that he’d wanted to say, but he’d quite forgotten what it was. Here he was conscious of Mr. Perrin’s eyes, and thought that he’d never seen anything so discouraging. He did not seem to be able to escape them. What a dangerous-looking man!
So he hurriedly concluded. Just one word he’d like to leave them from our great poet Tennyson — !
He looked for the little piece of paper on which he had written the verse. He could not find it; he searched his pockets — no — where had he put it? Lady Spalding, in the third row, suffered horrible agonies. He recovered himself and was vague. He would advise them all to read Tennyson, a fine poet, a very fine poet — yes — and now he would give away the prizes.
He drew a deep breath and moved to the back of the table; he could see that horrible man’s eyes no longer, enough to drive any man’s ideas out of his head.
They began with a minute boy, who had won the First Form Prize. He was very small and very hot, and his boots made a noise like a tree blown by the wind. Six Arthur talked to him a little, asked him what he was going to be when he grew up, and was preparing to be pleasant when he found to his horror that the next two boys to receive prizes were waiting at his elbow and breathing heavily and anxiously in his ear. After that he made no more speeches, but hurried along.
This giving of prizes was a dreary affair, and any excitement or emotion that there may have been over the earlier stages soon evaporated entirely.
There was a feeling of restlessness throughout the hall, and the signal for the School song was received with relief by every one. The boys stood up on the benches, and presently “Procul in Cornubia” rang through the building. The noise was terrific, and every one except the boys was glad when that also was over.
“God save the King!” followed, and Sir Marmaduke’s shadow was appeased.
All this had taken some time, and it was quite dark when they all came out into the air again and hurried to have tea.
IV
Mr. Perrin went back to his room. He lit his lamp and sat down in his arm-chair. Now that the prize-giving was over, it seemed to have cleared the air. There was nothing now between himself and Traill. He had done with the school, he had done with schoolmastering. He was at last alone with his enemy.
What a long business it had been! That first meeting on the first day of term — he had liked him then — then his impertinence, his conceit, his lack of deference. Then things like the bath and the paper — little things — then the quarrel in that very room — then — the umbrella! — good heavens, how long ago that’ seemed! Then Miss Desart... yes, from the first he had been his enemy. He had taken everything from him, even Garden Minimus. He supposed that people would say that he had been his own enemy, that it had been all his own fault. Well, that was not true altogether, because he had meant to do well this term, he had meant to try. But everything had gone wrong. He had failed at everything... always. And his headaches. Yes, life had treated him very cruelly, and now, at the end of everything, he was going to get back on it. He had always prayed to God to give him his chance, and God had never given it him — so now he must take it himself. God would be sorry that so fine a young fellow as Traill should be killed; he would much rather that he, Perrin, should die.
Well, for once, God should be outwitted. It was his revenge.
He took the knife out of the drawer and looked at it. He laid it on the table beside him.
The hours passed The bell for supper rang. There was to be a concert at the Upper School Soon he could hear them going to it, with laughter and shouting — Traill was taking them up, probably... Well, it was the last concert that he would ever hear.
There was absolute stillness in the place No sound at all. The lamp had not enough oil, and at last it flickered and went out. The room was in absolute darkness, but Mr Perrin thought that he would not go to bed, because then he might go to sleep.
So he sat there, staring into the dark, with the knife on the table beside him.
CHAPTER IV — MR. PERRIN MAKES GOOD
NEVERTHELESS, Mr Perrin slept.
His head fell forward on his lap, and with his hands clenched tightly, the hours crept darkly about him, and the first grey dawn came, and still he did not waken. The knife lay, through all these hours, gleaming on the table, but he did not dream about it, or about anything his was a sleep of sheer exhaustion with all the turmoil and distress that his poor head had suffered during these last weeks hanging down upon him like a heavy weight.
Could his face have been seen during those dark morning hours, he would have looked neither pompous nor avenging, but only pathetic, with his ragged, wild moustache, and the heavy grey lines beneath his eyes, and his white, drawn cheeks — some one for whom life had been too much, some one who should, in spite of himself, have been treated kindly, with tenderness, some one who had once had possibilities....
II
When the distant, clocks struck eight he awoke with a start and realised at once what had happened. He jumped to his feet and counted the remaining strokes with a passionate sensation of protest. He had nearly missed his chance again! He could go and sleep when the deed to which he had, so firmly and resolutely, strung himself was waiting to be done!
He looked at the table and saw the knife. The sun would soon be up, and then everything would be light, and what he had to do must be done in the dark. He looked at the knife, and his knees trembled beneath him. What he had to do must be done in the dark.... And then he knew that he was faced at last with the inevitable last moment. There was to be no further choice after this. If he did not do it now, within the next half-hour, it could never be done at all! He picked up the knife, and it fell clattering from his hand. He picked it up from the floor and looked at it.
Well, it must be done — he set his teeth. His hated enemy should laugh at him no more, the world should laugh at him no more; he should be an emblem of terror, of horror — a portentous vengeance — he, Perrin, at whom they had once mocked. And so, quivering and shaking, the knife in his hand, he went to the door. The room was very dark, and he stumbled against the furniture and bruised his leg against the chair. He cursed and blinked his eyes and then yawned, because he was still very sleepy.
His hand trembled on the latch — then he turned it and looked round down the passage. It was all terribly silent and quite dark, except for a faint grey light that hung, like a mist, about the corners and along the ground. It hung about Traill’s door, and the dark outline of it could be very distinctly seen.
The sweat poured down Mr. Perrin’s face; he had set his teeth grimly, but the silence of it all was so appalling.
If only he could have worked himself into a rage, if only those moments when he would willingly have killed Traill could return! — but now here, in this cold passage, it was all so absurd, so deliberate, so frightening.
And yet, on the other hand, if the night passed and nothing had been done, things were worse than ever — Perrin was beaten.
Then, with staring eyes, with a hot, burning mouth, with a hand that gripped the knife until it hurt, he beheld a miracle — Traill’s door opened. It was opened and quickly shut — some one stepped quietly out; it was Traill himself.
The place swam about Mr. Perrin, and he wondered whether he were, as he had been last week, caught with a ghostly Traill who followed him about wherever he went. But that other Traill had always slipped away when he looked at it — this Traill was there with a solidity about which there could be no possible question; there with a Norfolk jacket turned up about his ears, a grey cap, grey trousers, and at once swiftly turning down the passage and disappearing.
So Perrin, staring with frantic eyes, saw that the gods gave him his chance in no uncertain measure. He had asked for it; now he must take it. Here was his victim before him, ready to his hand — there must be no hanging back. He slipped the knife into his coat, and crept down the passage very softly, lest Traill should hear; moreover, it was after eight, and already the school servants must be about. He did not know where Traill was going — he must keep him in sight. The grey figure passed round the curve at the bottom of the stairs, down the long passage, and round the curve of the next staircase: Mr. Perrin followed very silently. His head was still beating tumultuously, and he now had a frantic desire that Traill should not stop — he did not know what he would do if Traill stopped. Once he felt that he could not go on, and he leant against the wall to get his breath — then he stumbled on once more.
Traill crossed the lower passage, through the dining-hall, with its shining cloths and plates, into the outer hall; there he turned the locks of the hall door, and, closing it gently behind him, but without locking it, passed outside. Perrin followed.
As the coolness and dark mystery of the garden met him, he drew a great breath. Although it was so dark, the trees in the hedges hung in the air, a deeper black, like great animals waiting about the wall of the buildings. There was that stir in the air that always foreruns the rising sun, so that the world seemed peopled with fife that was, as it were, holding its breath before the signal to break into sound. Mr. Perrin could hear, even as he waited that instant by the door, that there were innumerable things stirring in the warm, wet earth at his feet — this sense of the imminence of some preconcerted signal gave Perrin an added urgency. If all things round him were going to happen so immediately, if the world were suddenly in another five minutes to burst into light, and all these animals and things that grew in the ground were to be witnesses of his action, then all the more must that action be swift. He saw that Traill had hesitated a moment by the big iron gates — they were only a few yards away, and his grey figure was outlined in the dark — but soon the gates were opened, and Traill stood in the road. Perrin hanging by the dark wall of the hedge, followed him. He had no cap on his head and only slippers on his feet, and he thought that it was very cold; his teeth were chattering so loudly that he was afraid lest Traill should hear.
Traill was walking down the hill now very slowly his hands in his pockets and his head in the air, as though he were taking the freshness of it in, and Perrin followed him like a shadow, sometimes running a step or two, and then stopping for a moment, and crouching as though he thought that Traill would turn round, and Perrin’s one thought was that he would catch a terrible cold, and in any case he might suddenly sneeze — and then Traill would see him, and then — !
As he crept thus miserably down the road, he watched with anxiety the gathering brightness in the sky — the way the lighter grey came in sheets and layers over the darker grey; and the sound of a little wind, rising from the heart of the road, seemed to announce in some mysterious fashion the rising sun. The wind whispered about the hedges, the stones of the road began to shine whitely from their dark surface, the trees were more sharply defined in their arrows and hoops of black — the little church clock struck quarter-past eight.
Traill paused near the bottom of the wood and finally turned through a wicket-gate, over a path through the fields that led to the cliff road. Mr. Perrin followed him: his slippers hung loosely about him, his socks were wet, his moustache and hair draggled with damp; but his fingers were twitching and his breath came sharply, as though he had been running. The dark grass rose about his feet, and the bending hill above him leant, with its dark shoulder, upon him, with its rounded shape cutting into the grey sky. Traill passed in front, shadowed in outline; at a turn of the fields there came suddenly upon them both the full plunge of the sea. Now they were on the cliff road, and Perrin knew that at its edge were the black rocks and the sands below; here the cliff was not high, and the fall was not far, but further along the road the depth was tremendous....
The sea was as space, and the indefinite grey of the sky — only the sand of the beach was a little whiter than the grey of the sea — and far out through the mist the first stirring of the cloud, with flecks and bars of silver light, showed the advancing sun. Suddenly Traill stopped and faced the sea. He took a pipe out of his pocket and felt for matches. Perrin was quite close to him. He found to his increasing horror that he could not stop. He was stumbling along, his head hanging, his shoes clapping behind him on the pebbly path. He seemed to have no control over his legs, because they were trembling so, and between his clenched teeth there came forth little exclamations like “Oh!” and “Ah!” and “My!” — gasps. Suddenly his loose slipper caught in a pebble, and down he came, catching at the air and uttering a sharp cry as he fell. He knew that Traill turned round at the sound and uttered an exclamation, he knew that he came towards him and picked him up, and so at last he stood there facing him, the two of them alone in a grey, empty world.
But Mr. Perrin was trembling so that he could not speak — trembling with cold, trembling with excitement, but trembling also with rage because Traill had found him in so ludicrous a position.
III
Traill’s first exclamation had been one apparently of surprise at there being any one there at all; but now, as he stepped back and looked at the white, untidy figure before him — wild enough in that uncertain light — it seemed an exclamation of recognition and surprise, and a little of alarm.
“Why — Perrin!”
He had stepped back some steps away.
“Yes.” Perrin tried to pull himself together. He drew himself up and flung back his straggling hair. “I am very wet — I am very cold.” His teeth chattered furiously. “Why did you come out?” It was almost, in the way he said it, a pathetic appeal to him not to have come out — to have left things, if he could only have known, just as they were.
“I came,” Traill said as lightly as he could, although his voice was grave, “because I couldn’t sleep; you know, I’ve been overdone lately and sleeping badly.” Then he repeated almost sharply, “I couldn’t sleep, so I came out.”
“Yes — I saw you come out.”
“I know. I knew that you were following me.”
“You knew — all the time?”
“Yes, I heard you coming downstairs. I wanted to know why you were following me.”
“Do you know now?”
“No.”
They stood in silence, facing one another. Traill had never lighted his pipe, but he was pulling at it furiously. His eyes never left Perrin’s face.
“I followed you because I hate you — because I meant — I mean — to do for you.” Mr. Perrin’s teeth were chattering with cold.
Traill did not seem disturbed at that; he shifted a little from one foot to the other, and then he went on gravely: “Yes, I suppose I know that — really, I have known it a long time. I was awake when you came into my room the other night. I have been watching you. But what I do really w
ant to know — what I’ve wanted to know all along — is your reason, or reasons. I suppose you ought to tell me.”
“No.” Mr. Perrin shook his head miserably.
“It’s so cold — I’m so cold. Can’t you hear my teeth? There’s been too much hanging about — we can’t talk here. My mind’s made up.” He put his hand inside his pocket.
But Traill made no movement, although it might have been a revolver that he had there. “Yes, I know it isn’t quite the place for talking, but before you kill a fellow it is only decent to give your reasons. I know that you have disliked me ever since I’ve been here. Of course that’s been obvious enough; but what I haven’t been able to see is why you should hate me so and do for me as you say.” All this very gravely, and his eyes never left Perrin’s face.