The Gods and Mr. Perrin

Once, during one of these clear moments, he was standing, a melancholy figure, by the iron gate, looking down the Brown Hill road, and Garden Minimus passed him. Perrin stopped him, and then when he saw the boy’s round face and shining eyes, a little frightened now, and the mouth quivering a little, he had nothing to say.

At last he said, “Oh!—Ah!—Garden—I haven’t seen much of you lately. How do the exams go?”

Perrin had an absurd impulse to take the boy by the arm and ask him to be kind to him. He was so dreadfully unhappy.

But Garden was very frightened; he choked a little in his throat, and his eyes moved frantically down the white road as though appealing for help.

“Oh! very well, sir, thank you, sir—I—I could n’t do the geography this morning, sir.”

There was a long pause. Garden gave frightened glances up and down the road.

“When do you go for—um, ah,—your holidays, Garden?”

Garden looked up in Mr. Perrin’s face, and suddenly, young though he was, felt that Mr. Perrin was, as he put it afterwards, “awfully sick about something—not ratty, you know, but jolly near blubbing.”

He had, with his friends, noticed that Perrin was “jolly odd” during these days, but now this thought struck him to the extinction of every other feeling. He had a sudden desire to help—after all, Old Pompous had been beastly decent to him—and then there came an overwhelming sensation of shyness, as though his feminine relations had suddenly appeared and claimed him in the company of his contemporaries. He looked down, rubbed one boot against the other, and then suddenly, with a murmured word about “having to meet some fellows—beastly late,” was off.

Perrin watched him go and then turned slowly back towards the school buildings. The shadows were creeping about him again. He felt that the other Mr. Perrin was behind him. He walked stealthily, a little as a cat prowls....

About this time he took great curiosity in Traill’s bedroom. He had never been inside it—he knew only that plain brown door with marks near the bottom of it where the paint had been scratched.

But he sat now in his room and thought about it. He sat in a chair by the windows and looked across the room at his own door, at the square black lock and the shining brass handle. It was of course very easy to turn, and then he would be inside. It would be interesting to be inside—he would know then where the bed was, and the washing-stand, and the chairs… it might be useful to know.

He went to his own door and opened it, and looked very cautiously down the passage; there was no one there—it was all very silent. The sun of the December afternoon flooded the cold passage, and from downstairs the shouts of some boys floated up.... There were no other sounds.

He walked very softly down the passage, his head lowered, his hands behind his back. He stopped outside Traill’s bedroom door and listened again—he was surprised to hear that his heart was beating very loudly indeed. He pushed the door open and looked inside. The bed was near the window—the sun flooded the room and shone on the silver hair-brushes and the china basin and jug.

It was a very simple room, and the bed took up most of it; there was one photograph.

He went very softly up to it and saw that it was a photograph of Miss Desart—Miss Desart, smiling, out of doors with the sun on her dress.

He bent towards the photograph, over the china basin, and kissed it. Then he went out, closing the door softly behind him.

And the week wore away, and Monday came round. Thursday was Speech-Day, and on Friday everybody went home; all marks and form lists had to be in the headmaster’s room on Wednesday night before nine.

Perrin, on Monday evening, was vaguely conscious that he had corrected no papers at all. They lay about his room now in stacks—none of them were corrected. Some masters posted results as they corrected the papers; other masters left all the results until the end. It was not considered strange that Perrin had posted no results.

But he knew as he looked at these white sheets that he ought to have done something with them. He stood in the middle of the room with his hands to his head and wondered what he ought to have done. Why, of course, he ought to correct them—he ought to say what was good and what was bad.

He took up a large pile of them, and they almost slipped from his fingers because there were so many. He found that it was a paper on French Grammar. He looked at the slip with the questions.

“I. Give the preterite (singular only) and past participle of donner, recevoir, laisser, s’asseoir…”

Ah! s’asseoir was a hard one—he had always found that that was difficult. He turned over the page:

J’eu, tu eus, il eut—that looked wrong.. .

Again, here was Simpson Minor—“Je fus, tu fus, il fut”—surely that was confused in some way.

The papers at the bottom slipped: he bent to prevent them falling, and all of them tipped over. They rose in a cloud about him, a white cloud, flying into the air, sailing to the other end of the room, diving under the table and into the fireplace, and a great white pile lay-scattered wildly on the floor.

The silly papers stared at him:

“Je dors tous…”

“Il faut que…”

“I used to love my mother, but now I love my aunt…”

“Rule for the conjunctive and disjunctive pronouns…”

And then, Simpson Minor: “Je fus, tu fus…”

He was infuriated with their silly, stupid faces. They lay there on the floor, staring up at him and making no attempt whatever to move. He was maddened by their impassivity. He began to stamp on them, and then to trample on them—he rushed about the room, uttering little cries and wildly stamping… .

And then something suddenly seemed to go in his brain, and he stopped still. What was he doing? He bent feebly to pick them up, but he could not collect them. He sat down at his table with his head in his hands.

Then he gave up trying to correct them. After all, they were not the important thing—the important thing was between himself and Traill; that was what he must think about.

This was Monday, and on Friday everyone would go away. He would go away, he supposed, with the rest: of course he would go to his mother. Traill would go away with Miss Desart… would he?

The other Mr. Perrin leant over and whispered in his ear.

It was from this moment that Mr. Perrin came to the definite decision that something must be done before Friday. He made five black marks with a pencil on the yellow wallpaper in his bedroom, and he would lie hack on his bed at night, staring up at the marks whilst his candle guttered on the chair at his side. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday… Monday passed, and he scratched another mark across the mark that he had already made. Tuesday passed, and that he also scratched out. Wednesday morning came.

Divinity was the only examination left except Repetition on Thursday morning: Wednesday afternoon was a half-holiday.

He gave out the Old Testament questions:

“1. Say what you know about the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram; its cause and effects.

“2. Write briefly a life of Aaron…”

He found that now suddenly his brain was perfectly clear. To-day was Wednesday—before Friday he would kill Traill. The determination came to him perfectly plainly in the midst of these questions:

“6. Give context of: ‘Kill me, I pray thee, out of hand, if I have found favor in thy sight.’ “‘Let us make a captain and let us return into Egypt.’

“‘Is the Lord’s hand waxed short?’.rdquo;

He would kill Traill. He did not mind at all what happened to him afterwards. What did it matter? Perhaps he would kill himself. He was a complete failure; he had never been any use at all, and had only been there for people to laugh at and mock him.

If it had not been for Traill he might have been of use—he might have married Miss Desart. Traill had been against him in every way, and now the only thing that was left for him to do was to kill Traill. He hated Traill—of course he hated Traill; but it was not really because of that that he was going to kill Traill—it was only because he wanted to show all these people that he could do something: he was not useless, after all. They might laugh at him and call him Pompous, but, after all, the laugh would be on his side at the end.... Traill would not be able to kiss Miss Desart very much longer—another day, and he would never be able to kiss her again.... That was a pleasant thought.

Now that he had decided this question he felt a great deal happier and easier in his mind. There was no longer any self-pity.

He had given God His opportunity—he had prayed to God and besought Him; he had tried very hard at the beginning of this term to go right and to be agreeable to people and to keep the other Mr. Perrin in the distance, but everything had been very hard, and that was God’s fault for making it so hard.

He thought that he would surprise God by killing Traill. God would not be expecting that.

Still more would he surprise the place—Moffatt’s—that place that had treated him so cruelly all these years. It would be a grand, big thing to kill his enemy!

On that Wednesday, half an hour before the midday dinner, he walked slowly, with his hands behind his bent back, through the long dining-hall. The long, black tables were laid for dinner, and beside every round, shining plate there lay two knives. These knives made a long, glittering line right down the table, and the sun caught their gleaming steel and flashed from knife to knife. The sight of them fascinated Mr. Perrin—it was with a knife that he would kill Traill—he would cut Traill’s throat. He picked them up, one after the other, and felt their edges—they were all wonderfully sharp. There were a great many of them—you could cut a great many throats with all those knives, but he did not want to cut anyone else’s throat except Traill’s—Traill was his enemy.

At dinner that day he was pleasant and cheerful. He joked with the boys on either side of him and asked where they were going for the holidays.

“Ah! Cromer—um—yes, very pleasant. Our little friend will amuse himself hugely at Cromer, no doubt. Sure to over-eat on Christmas Day. Um, yes—and you, Larkin, where do you go?… Ah! Whitby—long way. Yes, able to read your holiday task in the train.”

He sent the servant out to sharpen the carving-knife, and when it was brought back he attacked the mutton in the most furious way, scattering the gravy over the cloth.

After dinner he stood above the playing-fields, watching the clouds sail across the sky. It was a very gray-colored day, but there was the light of the sun behind it, so that everything shone without color but with a transparency as though one should be able to see other lights and colors behind it.

Perrin thought that he had never seen the clouds assume such curious shapes—perhaps they were not clouds at all, but rather creatures of the sky that only his eye could see, just as it was only his eye that could see the other Mr. Perrin. There were birds with long, bending necks, and fat, round-faced animals with only one eye, and stiff, angular creatures with wings and legs like sticks, and then again there were splendid galleons with sails unfurled, and cathedral towers and trees and mountain ranges—they were all very strange and beautiful, and perhaps this was the last time that he would see them.

Then he saw, passing down the path to the right and walking fast in the direction of the road, two figures; another glance, and he saw that they were Miss Desart and Traill—there was no doubt at all that that was Miss Desart in her gray dress, and that man with his swinging stick was Traill.

The sight of them together suddenly roused him to fury; it would be amusing to kill Traill now, there, before Miss Desart. He did not know how he would do it, perhaps he would spring on to Traill’s back from behind and strangle him with his hands.

And so, with the other Mr. Perrin at his ear, he followed them down the path.

It was a day of ghosts—even the brown color of the earth of the hill that so seldom left it was gone to-day. It was not a cold day, and one felt that the sun was burning with intense heat in some neighboring place, but gray wisps of mist crept in and out of the black, naked hedges, and, at the bottom of the hill, banks of mist lay, visiting the cottages of the village.

The two figures passed in front of him down the hill and became, like the rest of the day, gray and misty, and he followed them, stealthily, with his hands behind his back. Their heads were very close together, and he could see that they were talking very eagerly. They were discussing, probably, their plans for the holidays, and it pleased him to think that he would make all their plans of no avail. It pleased the other Mr. Perrin also.

They passed down the village street and then up the steep, narrow path to the road that led along the top of the cliffs. At the top of the path the mists had cleared again, and the rocks, hidden at the floor of the sea by gray vapor, stood as it were in mid-air, their black edges piercing the sky. When Mr. Perrin climbed to the top of the path, the other figures had preceded him some way along it and were almost hidden by boulders. He hastened a little so that he might keep them in sight, and then he hung back a little lest he should be too close to them. They were still talking very eagerly and crossed down a stony path that led to a sheltered cove. At the bottom of this they sat down on the sand, and Perrin hid behind a rock and watched them.

The world was terribly still, because, although there was a wind that made the clouds race along, it seemed to leave the sea alone, and the water made the very faintest sound as it touched the beach and faded away into the mist again.

Mr. Perrin found that his legs were very tired, and so he sat down behind his stone and peered out at them. They sat very close together on the sand, and then Traill put out his arm and Miss Desart crept into it and sat there with her head against his shoulder. And when Perrin saw that, he knew that he never could do anything to Traill whilst Miss Desart was there. A dreadful feeling of home-sickness came over him, and his eyes filled with tears. It was so unfair, so unfair. If only there had been someone there to whom he could have done that: if only there had ever been anyone in his life!… but he dashed the tears from his eyes. He had not come there to cry—he had come there for vengeance, and then, at that thought, he wondered whether after all he were not so poor a creature that he would never be able to kill anyone. Supposing he were to miss even this chance of achievement! There, behind his rock, he tried to gather together all his reasons for hating Traill; but he couldn’t think properly, and the pebbles on which he was sitting were pressing into his trousers, and his neck was hurting because he craned it so.

At any rate he was very uncomfortable, and as he could certainly do nothing whilst Miss Desart was there, he had better go away. And so he got up very slowly and painfully from behind his rock and went timidly up the path again.

And that night, after going the round of the dormitories for the last time, he went into his room and closed his door with the clear determination of settling things up.

His head had not been so clear for weeks. He saw at once that he had corrected no papers and that something must be done about that.

He sat down and, with the term’s marks beside him, made out imaginary examination lists. Of course it was all very wrong, but it was for the last time, and he had, after all, put the boys in the order in which they would probably; occur. This took him about an hour.

Then he took all the files of examination papers and tore them up. This took a long time, and they filled, at last, his waste-paper basket to overflowing. Then he sat down to write to his mother.

Dear Old Lady:

This is the last time that you will see or hear from me. Do not regret it or anything that I have done, because I am no good, and am just a failure. There is £100 in the bank which I have saved, and you will get things with it. Sell my things: they will bring a little. I love you very much, old lady, but I am no good.—Your loving son,

Vincent Perrin.

He fastened up the letter and addressed it to—

Mrs. Perrin,

Holly Cottage,

Bubblewick,

Bucks.

Just as he finished it he heard eleven o’clock strike. He waited until the clocks had ended, then he opened his door and looked down the passage. It was quite silent. He walked quietly down the stairs, down the lower passage, and so to the dining-room.

Here the long tables were laid for breakfast. He paused at one of the tables and chose one of the knives; they did not seem very sharp, and he tried others on the hack of his hand. At last he had selected one and put it under his coat. He returned to his room and closed his door. When he got there he stood in the middle of his room, and looked stupidly at the knife. What had he got it for? There was Traill next door… of course.

But he could not do anything now. He had fancied that when one had got the knife, then the next thing was to go straight and do something with it. But he found that he could not, that he could not move from where he was, and that his hand was shaking as though with an ague.

The knife dropped on to the floor with a sharp sound, and he sank into a chair. What a wretched, miserable creature he was, after all! There was nothing fine about him—there was nothing fine about anyone at Moffatt’s—they were all a miserable lot… and to-morrow there would be speeches and prizes and cheering! What a funny thing life was!

But it was no use thinking about life with that knife on the floor. It was quite clear that he wasn’t going to do anything to-night—he might just as well go to bed. His headache was dreadfully bad, and he was shivering all over. He put the knife into a drawer and blew out his lamp.

He hated the dark—he had always hated it—and so he hurried into his bedroom and tried to light his candle, but his hand was shaking so that it was a long time before he could strike a match, and he cursed the matches feebly and felt inclined to cry.

He was a long time undressing and sat on the edge of the bed in his shirt and looked at his long, thin legs and hated them; then he saw the black marks on the yellow paper, and he scratched another off.... At last he blew out the candle and got into bed.

He seemed to fall asleep all at once and was aware that he was asleep—but after a time he felt that although he was asleep, he was conscious of someone watching him. He opened his eyes and saw that the other Mr. Perrin was sitting by his bed, watching him, and although the room was quite dark, the gray figure was in some way luminous, so that he could see that he wore a long, gray cloak and that his features were exactly the same as his own. He was forced against his will to get out of bed and to follow the other Mr. Perrin out of the house, down the long, white road, down to the sea. Here they were in that little cove where Traill and Miss Desart had been that afternoon. They sat with their backs against the rocks, and in all the air there was a strange, uncertain light, and the sea came over the shore in sullen, dreamy movements, as a tired woman’s fingers move when she is sewing.

Then Mr. Perrin saw that down the beach there passed a long procession of gray, bending figures with heavy burdens on their backs. Their faces were white and hopeless, and their hands, with long, white fingers, hung at their sides.

He was conscious of some great feeling of injustice—that this must not be allowed—and an over-mastering impulse to call out that it was all wrong and to run forward and relieve them of their burdens—but he could not move nor utter any sound. Then suddenly he recognized faces that he knew, and he saw White and Birkland and Combers and Dormer and then—his own.

He gave a great cry and broke from his companion and rushed swiftly back up the white road, in through the black gates, up the stairs, and into his room.

He stood in the middle of his room and felt suddenly cold. To his surprise he saw that the moon was shining through the window, although there had been no moon on the beach. The room was so bright that he could distinguish every object perfectly—and then he realized slowly that things were different. Those silver-backed hair-brushes were not his, his bed was not there—that photograph....

Someone was in the bed.

For an instant his heart stopped beating. There was a draught between the window and the door… someone else was in the bed; he had been walking in his sleep; he was in Traill’s room.

He could see Traill quite clearly now, lying with one hand on the counterpane, his head on an arm. He was fast asleep, and his month was smiling.

Mr. Perrin shook from head to foot. Here was his opportunity—here was his enemy fast asleep… now. He stepped nearer to the bed—he bent over the face. Traill’s pyjama-jacket was open at the neck… it would be very easy.

Then suddenly, with a little cry and his face in his hands, he crept from the room.