The Gods and Mr. Perrin

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.

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.