by Hugh Walpole
Mrs. Comber was outrageously happy. Mr. Comber had only the evening before received the offer of a post at the Kensington Museum which would suit exactly, and the salary attached to it, although nothing very tremendous, made the acceptance of the post comfortable. For years Mrs. Comber had expected such a letter. At one time it had seemed that it must come, that it was merely a question of waiting. Then gradually hope had died. Freddie was too old — men did not get posts at his age — and then suddenly, through the urgency of an old friend, this piece of work had been found for him.
Escape at last, and just when she had given up all hope! “My dear,” she said, when she was telling Isabel about it, “you could have done anything you liked to me when I heard about it, and I shouldn’t have known. I cried, and then I kissed Freddie, and then I cried again. Oh, my dear, such a mess, and it isn’t right we should all be so happy!”
But they were all just as happy as they could be, and Freddie himself seemed to change, to brighten, to broaden, under the influence of his approaching escape.
When breakfast was over, Mrs. Comber and Isabel stood at the window, their arms linked, looking out on to the grass that shone and glittered beneath the sun.
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Comber, “that, although I’ve hated the place so much and so long, and wanted, God knows, with all my heart and soul to get away from it, I have never, until now, realised the wickedness of it. When I think of what this term has been, of the way we all felt, of the things we might have done—”
“Yes,” said Isabel, very gravely, “it was having a dreadful effect on Archie. I have never seen any one change so quickly. His nerves seemed to be going all to bits. I am most tremendously glad we are going. I wish with all my heart that every one else was going too. Places like this oughtn’t to be allowed to continue another week.”
“Where is your Archie?” said Mrs. Comber.
“Oh, he will be over here in a minute. I expect that he will sleep late this morning after so many mornings of getting up at half-past six. By the way, what’s poor little Garden Minimus doing wandering round in that disconsolate way?”
“Oh, he doesn’t leave until to-night; his brothers are going to London, but he is crossing over to Ireland. Yes, he looks rather disconsolate. Yes, dear, now that we are going to London too, I am tremendously glad that you are both leaving here. It would never have done for Archie, although of course he had a bad start, fighting Mr. Perrin like that.”
“Poor Mr. Perrin!” Isabel sighed. She still saw him as he had been on that day when he congratulated her on her engagement. She felt in some secret, undefined way that she was responsible, a little, for his unhappiness. “Poor Mr. Perrin!”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Comber, “now that we’re going, I suppose it is fair enough to say that I never liked Mr. Perrin — in fact, I disliked him very much. I am sure I don’t know what those kind of people are for, with all their stiff, awkward manners, and their selfishness, and their difficulties. People say, ‘Oh, it’s nerves,’ and then think they have excused a man, but I think it’s downright selfishness. Now, you never can imagine Mr. Perrin doing anything for anybody, or thinking about anything in the world except his own silly squabbles. He’s a nasty, selfish, ill-tempered man, and I’m glad I’m not going to see any more of him.”
“That’s unlike you,” Isabel said; “you aren’t generally unkind about people.”
“Well, his making such a fuss about his silly umbrella annoyed me. He’s a selfish, horrid creature.”
“But we all made a fuss,” said Isabel.
“We wouldn’t have if he hadn’t,” said Mrs. Comber triumphantly. But in any case Isabel was bound to feel that Mr. Perrin didn’t matter very much, and that, in a way, was tragedy sufficient. He was a part of Moffatt’s, as the ink-stained benches and the long stone corridors were part of it. Now they were leaving Moffatt’s and all that belonged to it, and they would never think of it or of Mr. Perrin again. As she moved back from the window, humming a little tune, she dismissed Mr. Perrin for ever.
As she turned her back and moved down the room, she was conscious suddenly of steps, many steps, on the gravel outside; but there were no voices, only the tread of feet.
She turned back to the window; but before she reached it, the door was opened sharply, and Mrs. Comber stood there, her face very white, her hands outstretched. Behind her, as in a mist, there were other faces.
Isabel knew. Her lips moved, and she gasped, “Archie.” Then, with a supreme effort, she pulled herself together, and stood very straight and still, whilst Mrs. Comber came forward.
Then she said, very quietly, “Tell me — is he dead?”
“No, dear.” Mrs. Comber eagerly took her hands. “He has had a bad fall from the cliff; he is unconscious, concussion, and his leg is broken. The doctor is there, there is no — —”
Isabel went, very straight, with her head up, out of the room, upstairs, to the little white-boarded chamber where they had laid him.
The doctor was there; the window was open, and the sun streamed in across the blue carpet, and with its light came the scent of the trees and the cold, sharp air of the winter morning. She was on her knees by his bedside and had taken his white hand in hers.
In the afternoon he came to himself, and knew her and held her hand very tight. But in that long vigil that she had by the side of his bed, she had, suddenly, become a woman. In the stress of the instant, in the summoning of all her forces to her aid, she had flung aside once and for all the inexperience, the hesitations, of growing up. Life had become a battle — it had before been a game — but now the prize was greater....
II
Garden Minimus had to wait for the evening train. He cursed his fate, but no amount of cursing altered the fact that he had to put in a day with nothing very especial to do and no one very especial to talk to. There were one or two other unfortunates in the same case as himself, but they were none of them people with whom he had anything in common: Thompson Major was too lofty, being in the Sixth, and having his colours for cricket; Crebbett Minor was too lowly, being in the First, and having nothing at all except a stammer and a spotty complexion.
Moreover, there was something that Garden wanted to do — he wanted to speak to Mr. Perrin. He had wanted to speak to him for a great many days, but he had put it off from hour to hour because “a chap felt such an awful fool saying he was sorry and all that kind of rot.” But he was sorry, tremendously sorry. Perrin had been most awfully kind to him for terms and terms, but this time Garden’s back had been up: he’d behaved like a most awful rotter, and he would have liked to put Perrin’s mind all right about things before the holidays came. He had intended to speak to him last night at the concert, but Perrin had not been at the concert. He got up very early to share in the jubilations of his departing friends, and then, after they had gone, he wandered about, and nearly plucked up courage to knock on Perrin’s bedroom door.
He could not find Perrin — he asked people, but they were all very busy “Mr. Perrin had not got up yet.”
Garden felt very unhappy Everything was so empty now that every one had gone; the spirit of desolation was abroad. Life was a thing of littering paper, of gaping forms, of dusty floors He went down to the cliffs, and here the splendour of the day cheered him. It was amazingly warm for December. The sea in the cove sparkled and glittered, and even the black rock seemed to smile He stood above the cove and looked out to sea.
Perrin, although he was a bit of an ass, was really a good sort.... He would behave more decently next term. He would make up a bit... He was a queer beggar, Perrin, but he meant to be decent to him... next term His tiny figure made a black dot against the surface of the long, white road.
THE END
LATER US ENDING.
CHAPTER XIII — MR. PERRIN LISTENS WHILE THEY ALL MAKE SPEECHES
I.
THE next day, its brilliant sun and hard, shining cold, brought in its train great things.
Th
e last day of the Christmas term was in some ways greater than the last day of the summer term, because it was a more private family affair.
One addressed one’s ancestors, one arrayed one’s traditions, one fashioned one’s history, with flags and flowers and orations, but it was in the midst of the family that it was done.
Parents — mothers and fathers and cousins — were indeed there, but they, too, must recognize that it was not for their immediate individual Johnny or Charles that these things were done, but rather for the great worship and recognition of Sir Marmaduke Boniface.
Sir Marmaduke Boniface has hitherto received no mention in this slender history, but his importance in any chronicle of Moffatt’s cannot be over-estimated. He was a Cornish; magnate, living and dying some hundred years ago, growing rich in the pursuit of jam, building large stone mansions out of that same delicacy, fat, pompous, and fading at last into a heavy stone monument in the corner of the church at the bottom of the Brown Hill — a great man in his day and in his place, amongst other things the founder of Moffatt’s.
It was not very long ago; outside the confines of Cornwall he had been perhaps but vaguely recognized — perchance, perchance, the surest foundation of an extravagant record.... No matter, here we have our tradition, and let us make the best possible use of it.
But this Marmadukery — a hideous word, but it serves — spread far beyond that stout originator. It was the spirit of the public school, the esprit de corps signified by the School song (it began “Procul in Cornubia,” and was violently shouted at stated intervals during the year), the splendid appeal “to our fathers who have played in these fields before us” — this was the cry that these banners and orations signified. Moffatt’s was not a very old school, true — but shout enough about some founder or other and the smallest boy will have tears in his eyes and a proud swelling at his breast. Sir Marmaduke becomes medieval, mystic, “the great, good man” of history, and Moffatt’s is “one of our good old schools. There’s nothing like our public school system, you know — has its faults, of course; but tradition — that’s the Thing.”
The stout figure of Sir Marmaduke hangs heavy over the day. Everyone feels it — everyone feels a great many other things as well, but Sir Marmaduke is the Thing.
He was the Thing in some vague, blind way even to Mrs. Comber, so that he kept coming into the confused but happy conversation to which she treated anxious parents on the morning of this great day. Mothers arrived in great numbers on these occasions, and these three great days of the three terms were to Mrs. Comber the happiest and most confused events in the year. They marked an approaching freedom, they marked the immediate return of her own children, and they marked an amazing number of things that ought to be done at once, with the confusing feeling about Sir Marmaduke also in the air.
But to-day she was happy; this horrible, terrible term was almost over. She had been so sure that something dreadful was going to happen, and nothing dreadful had happened, after all. They were safe — or almost safe — and her dear Isabel and Isabel’s young man would be out of the place before they knew where they were. Then her own Freddie had last night, suddenly, before going to bed, taken her in his arms and kissed her as he had never kissed her before. Oh! things were going to be all right... they were escaping for a time at any rate. In the thought of the holidays, of a month’s freedom, everything that had happened during the term was swiftly becoming faint and vague and distant.
Now she was smiling in her sitting-room with four mothers about her, one very fat and one very thin, one in blue and one in gray, and they all sat very stiff in their chairs and listened to what she had to say.
She had a great deal to say, because she was feeling so happy, and happiness always provoked volubility, but she made the mistake of talking to all four of them at once, and they, in vain, like anglers at a pool, flung, desperately, hurried little sentences at her, but secured no attention. Beyond and above it all was the shadow of Sir Marmaduke.
But her happiness, when she drove them at length from her, caught at the advancing figure of Isabel, with a cry and a clasp of the hand: “My dear! — no, we’ve only got a minute, because lunch is early — one o’clock, and cold — you don’t mind, do you, dear; but there’s to be such a dinner to-night, and I’ve just had four mothers, and wise isn’t the word for what I’ve been, although I confused all their children as I always do, bless their hearts. But, oh! the term’s over, and I could go on my knees and thank Heaven that it is, because I’ve never hated anything so much, and if it had lasted another week I should have struck off Mrs. Dormer’s head for the way she’s treating you, for dead sure certain—”
“Archie’s not coming back, you know,” Isabel interrupted.
“Oh, my dear, I knew. He went and saw Moy-Thompson last week, and of course it’s the wisest thing, and I only wish my Freddie was as young and we’d be off from here tomorrow.” She stopped and sighed a little and looked through the window at the hard, shining ground, the stiff, bare trees, the sharp outline of the buildings. “But it’s no use wishing,” she went on cheerfully enough, “and we won’t any of us think of next term at all but only of the blessed month of freedom that’s in front of us.” Her voice softened; she put her hand on Isabel’s arm. “All the same, my dear, I’m glad you and Archie are getting away from it all. It was touching him, you know.”
“Yes, I saw it,” the girl answered. “And I don’t want him to schoolmaster again if he can help it. I think with father’s help he’ll be able to get a Government office of some sort.” She hesitated, then said, smiling a little, “Are you and Mr. Comber—” She stopped.
“Yes, my dear,” said Mrs. Comber bruskily, “we are — and there’s no doubt that things are better than they have been. I suppose marriage is always like that: there’s the thrilling time at first, and then you find it isn’t there any longer and you’ve got to make up your mind to getting along. Things rub you up, you know, and I’m sure I’ve been as tiresome as anything, and then there’s a good big row and the air’s cleared — and shall I wear that big yellow hat or the black one this afternoon?”
“The black one fits the day better,” said Isabel absent-mindedly. She was wondering whether the time would ever come when she and Archie would feel ordinary about each other.
“But isn’t it funny,” she went on, “that here we are at the end of the term, and already, with the holiday beginning, all our quarrels and fights about things like that silly umbrella are seeming impossible? It was all too absurd, and yet I was as angry as anyone.”
“It all comes,” said Mrs. Comber, “of our living too close. Now that we’re going to spread out over the holidays, we’re as friendly as anything, although really, my dear, I hate Mrs. Dormer as much as ever” — which was difficult to believe when that lady arrived at a quarter-past two to pick up Mrs. Comber and Isabel and to go with them to the prize-giving.
Her dress was obviously very stiff and difficult, with a high, black neck to it, with little ridges of whalebone all around it, and out of this she spoke and smiled. The two ladies were very pleasant to one another as they walked down the path to the school hall.
“And where are you going for your Christmas vacation, Mrs. Comber?”
“I really don’t know. It depends so much on the boys and the housemaid. I mean the housemaid’s given notice, you know, because I had to speak to her about breathing when handing round the vegetables; and she gave notice on the spot, as they all do when I speak to them, and unless I can get another, I really don’t think I shall ever be able to get away.”
“Really, what servants are coming to!” Mrs. Dormer was struggling with her collar like a dog. “Poor Mrs. Comber, I am so sorry — of course management’s the thing, but we haven’t all the gift and can’t expect to have it.”
“And Mrs. Dormer, I do hope that you are going to be here over Christmas, so that we can keep each other company. It would be so nice if you and Mr. Dormer would come to us on Boxing evening, e
ven if I haven’t got a housemaid, and I heard of a very likely one from Mrs. Rose yesterday — quite a nice girl she sounded — who’s been under-parlormaid at Colonel Forster’s now for the last five years, and never a fault to find with her except a tendency to catching cold, which made her sniff at times.”
“Oh, thank you, dear Mrs. Comber; but my husband and I are hoping to spend a few days in London about that time. Otherwise we should have loved—”
For so much charity is the presence of Sir Marmaduke Boniface responsible.
II.
Sir Marmaduke, and all that his coming signified, was also responsible for clearing the air in other directions. Young Traill found, on this morning, that people were very much pleasanter to him than they had hitherto been. The coming holidays were obviously to be a truce, and, as he was not returning next term, it was an end of things so far as he was concerned. He could not feel proud of it all. The events of the term had shown him that he was not nearly so fine a fellow as he had thought himself. His pride, his temper, his irritation — all these things were lions with which he had never fought before: now they must always, for the future, be consciously kept in check.
He was tired, exhausted, worn-out. He was very glad that he was going away — now he would be able to have Isabel to himself, and they might, together, forget this horrible nightmare of a term. He looked on the buildings of Moffatt’s as the iron prison of some hideous dream. He could not sleep for the thought of it. Last night he had had some bad dream... he could not remember now what it had been, but he had wakened suddenly in a great panic, to imagine that someone was closing his door. Of course it had only been the wind, but he hoped that he would sleep properly to-night.