The Gods and Mr. Perrin

Several men, Comber, Clinton, Dormer, and another, were bending over the table, supervising the selection of the team for the afternoon’s match. As Traill came in he heard Comber’s voice: “Toggett at three-quarter is perfectly absurd. That’s obviously Traill’s choice. Traill may be able to play, but his knowledge of the theory of the game is absolutely nil.” Comber has resented Traill’s entrance into the school football from the very first. He, although many years past his game, had hitherto led the Rugby enthusiasts of the school—he had been supreme on the Committee and had had the last word about the teams. Traill’s football, however, was so obviously superior to anything that the school had had for a great many years that he was received with open arms. He had not perhaps been as judiciously submissive to Comber as he might have been, but he had always deferred his opinion and had never been goaded by Comber’s caustic contradictions into ill-temper.

He did not now show any ill-temper, but only, with a laugh as he came up to the table, said, “Thanks, Comber.”

Dormer hurried to make peace, but Comber continued to mutter: “What the devil you want to put the man there for, I can’t think....” By the window Birkland and Monsieur Pons were arguing about the latter’s discipline.

“I should get them to stamp and rush about a bit more, Pons, if I were you,” Birkland was saying. “It’s so delightful for me, being just under you. It is so easy for me to do my work, so nice to think that they really are enjoying themselves.”

Monsieur Pons was waving his arms, excitedly. “I keep them perfectly still this morning, as still as one mouse. No one stirs. You can hear a pin drop.”

“You must have dropped a cartload of them,” said Birkland, frowning. “Try and drop less next time.”

Suddenly in the middle of the room there appeared the school sergeant. That could only mean one thing, and conversation instantly ceased.

“Mr. Moy-Thompson wishes to see Mr. Traill at twelve,” he said.

Comber gave a grunt of satisfaction. Traill laughed. “I thought things were a little too pleasant to last,” he said. His mind flew back to the incidents of last night. Surely Perrin couldn’t have said anything. Probably Moy-Thompson had heard of it in some other way. He shrugged his shoulders and thought, as he looked round the dreary room, that schoolmastering wasn’t always pleasant. He wondered, too, a little unhappily, why, when one wanted things to go well everything should go wrong, through no fault of one’s own.

Here were Perrin and Comber, for instance; they both obviously disliked him, and yet he had done nothing to either of them. As he went out, he caught White looking at him timidly, but sympathetically, and he smiled at him. And indeed at twelve, when he knocked on the door at the end of the dark passage, it was chiefly his memory of the last occasion that he had been there, of White’s pale face, that remained with him.

Pathos has, too, often its intense, pathetic moment coming, for no definite reason, out of a mysterious distance and choosing to fill, as water fills a pool, rooms and places and companies of people. Now, suddenly, this study; with Moy-Thompson in it was a place, to Traill, of the intensest pathos, so that it seemed strange that, with such brilliant things as the world contained, it should be allowed to continue. His own position was lost in the perpetual vision of White standing, as he had seen him, with bent head.

“Ah, Traill,” said Moy-Thompson. “Sit down. I have been wanting to have a talk with you. I hope that this time is quite convenient?”

“Perfectly,” said Traill.

“I’ve been intending to come down and look at your form, but I have had no opportunity. I must try and manage next week.”

Traill said nothing. Moy-Thompson smiled at him. “I hope that you have had no trouble with discipline.”

“None. The boys are excellent.”

“Ah! that is splendid.” There was a pause; then the beard was suddenly lifted, and a glance was flashed across the table. “I hope that you take your work seriously, Mr. Traill.” Traill flushed a little. “I think that I do,” he said.

“That is well.... Because we are—ah! um—a great institution, a very great institution. We owe our traditions—um, eh—a very serious and determined attention to detail. To work together, as one man, for the good of our race, that must be our object. Yes. No divisions, all in friendly brotherhood—um, yes.” Traill said nothing.

“I hope that you realize this. We want every energy, every nerve, at work. We must not waste a moment, nor grudge every instant to the cause we have at heart. Um, yes, I hope that you agree, Mr. Traill.”

“I hope,” Traill said, “that you have not found me wanting, that you have nothing to complain of. I think that I have worked—”

“Worked? Ah, yes.” Moy-Thompson caught him up, cracking his fingers together. “But what about play, eh? What about play?” Traill flushed. “As to football—”

“No, it is not football. It is merely a detail—quite a detail. But Mr. Perrin informs me that you came in at one o’clock this morning through the window. I confess that I was surprised.”

“That is quite true,” said Traill, in a low voice. “I went—”

“Ah! no! please!” Mr. Thompson lifted a large white hand. “No details are necessary. The facts are sufficient. I need not, I think, say any more. You must see for yourself.... Only, I think you will agree with me that it should not occur again.”

“I am sorry—” Traill said.

“Ah, please! No more; it shall not be mentioned again. Only work and play together are impossible. We have long vacations that give us all we ask. To pass for a moment to another matter.” Moy-Thompson put his hand on some papers. “Here are the scholarship questions that you have set—geography and history. I think they are scarcely what we require. If you would not mind resetting them and bringing them to me to-morrow. Yes. Thank you.... Good morning.” Traill rose, took the papers in his hand, and left the room. He knew, surely, certainly, as though Birkland himself had told him, that this was to be the beginning of persecution. The Reverend Moy-Thompson had got his knife into him, and he had Perrin to thank for it.

The interview that had lasted barely five minutes hung heavily over him throughout the midday dinner. He always hated the meal: the great joints of mutton, waiting to be carved, in shapeless, thick hunks, the incessant noise throughout the meal, the clatter of plates and noise and voices, the dreary monotony and repetition of it—Perrin’s face seen at the end of a long white table with the two rows of boys in between.

But to-day as he sat there he felt that he could kill Perrin if he had the opportunity. What business was it of his? He had at any rate lost no time in running to tell Moy-Thompson about it. The thought of the savage joy that must have filled Perrin’s breast whilst he told his news, made Traill grind his teeth. Well! he would be even with him!

The moment the meal was over, and grace had been chanted in a loud, discordant yell, Traill left the table and, without a word to anyone, rushed down to the sea.

A tremendous wind was blowing. There was a certain part of the cliff that jutted out into the water, and this was surrounded now, on three sides, by a furious, heaving flood.

Wet mist hung over the sea, so that the enormous breakers leapt out of the sea, came whistling with a thousand arms into the sky, and them fell with a deafening roar upon the rocks. One after another, in swift succession, first suspended in mid-air, hanging there like serpents about to strike, then falling with a curve and glistering, shining backs, then sweeping, tearing, at last lashing the iron rock. About him the wind screamed and tugged at his clothes; behind him the trees bent and creaked along the road; the rain lashed his face.

He was seized with a kind of fury; he stood, facing the sea, with his hands clenched, his head up, his cap in his hand, and Isabel Desart, as she came battling down the road and saw him there, knew, in that moment, that she loved him and had loved him from the first moment that she saw him. He saw her, but they could not speak to one another: the noise was too great—the waves, the wind, the bending trees caught them into their clamor; they stood, side by side, in silence. Suddenly he put out his hand and caught hers. He held it; still, without a word, with the wind almost flinging them to the ground, they drew together. The mist swept about their heads, the spray beat in their faces. He drew her closer to him, and she yielded. For a moment he held her with his face pressed close against hers, and then their lips met. At last, and still without a word, they moved slowly down the road....

It was about half-past nine when Perrin, looking up at the sound of the opening door, saw Traill standing there. Traill filled the doorway, and Perrin knew at once that there was going to be a disturbance. He had had disturbances before, a good many of them, and always it had brought to him a sense of pathos that he, with an old mother (he always saw her as a crumpled but vehement background), should have always to be fighting people—he, so unoffending if they would let him alone. However, if anyone (especially Traill) wished to fight him, he would do his best.

Traill was frowning. Traill was very angry.

Perrin said, “Ah, Traill! Come in for a chat? That’s good of you. Splendid! Sit down, won’t you? Anything I can do for you?” But he wasn’t smiling.

“No,” said Traill, slowly. “There’s nothing you can do for me. But I want to speak to you.”

“Ah, well, sit down; won’t you?”

“No, thanks. I ‘ll stand.” Traill cleared his throat. “Did you by any chance say anything to the Head about my coming in last night?”

Perrin smiled. “My dear Traill, I really can’t remember; and is it really, after all, any business of yours?”

“Only this much, that he has been speaking to me about it. He says that you told him—I want to know why you told him.”

“It is my business,” Perrin said, “as housemaster here to find out anything that may be harming my house. I consider your late hours, your disregard of your work, prejudicial to the school’s progress,—um, yes.”

The impulse that had brought Traill to Perrin’s room had not altogether been one of anger. He was much too excited by the other event of the afternoon to have any very angry feelings against anyone, and indeed it had been rather a desire for peace, for clearing things up and being well with the world, that had brought him there. He was a little ashamed of the way that he had allowed, during these last weeks, his anger against Perrin to grow, and he seemed to be losing some of his good-humor and equability.

So now he put all the self-command that he possessed into play, and said quietly, “I’m sorry, Perrin, if you feel that I have been neglecting my duty. I don’t think that, after all, one night’s outing during the term can do anyone very great harm. But I only spoke to you about it because I have been feeling during these last weeks that we have not been very good friends. It seems a pity when we are cooped up together here so closely that we should not get on as well as possible; it makes everything uncomfortable. And, in so far as I am to blame at all, I am very sorry.”

The little red and yellow china man on the mantelpiece, Perrin said, had been watching the conversation with great curiosity, and Perrin felt that he was a little disappointed now when matters promised to finish comfortably. Perrin himself was only too ready for peace. These quarrels always brought on headaches, and, in his heart, he longed eagerly, hungrily, for a friend. He already was beginning to feel again that he liked young Traill very much.

He sat back in his chair and meant to be pleasant once more; but it was his eternal misfortune, his curse from the deriding gods, that he had ever at his hack the memory of all these jesting years that had already passed him by: the memory of the men, the boys, the women, who had laughed at him: the memory of the ways that he had suffered, of the taunting jeers that had been flung at him, of the jests that so many of his fellow-beings had, in his time, played upon him.

And so now he felt that at all costs he must regain his dignity, he must show this young fellow his place and then be nice to him afterwards; and really, somewhere in the hack of his mind, he saw his old mother with her white lace cap sitting stiffly in her chair, and Traill on his knees, kissing her hand.

“Well, Traill, I ‘m sure I ‘m glad you feel like that—um, yes. One must, you know, maintain discipline. You are young; when you are older you will see that there is something in what I say—um. We know, you see; schoolmastering is a thing that takes some learning; yes, well, I’m sure I’m very glad.”

But Traill was white again; his good determinations, his pleasant tempers were flung, suddenly screaming, helter-skelter to the winds. The patronage of it, the stupid, blundering fool with his “When you are older,” and the rest.

“All right,” he said hotly; “keep that advice for others. I don’t know that I was so wrong, after all. What business of yours was it to go sneaking to the Head like that? There are certain things that a gentleman doesn’t do.”

“Oh, really!”—the little man on the mantelpiece was smiling again. Perrin was snarling, and his hands gripped the sides of his chair. “Your apologies seem a little premature. One can forgive something to your age, but that sort of impertinence—I don’t think you remember to whom you are speaking. You are the junior master here, you must be taught that, and when those who are wiser than yourself choose to give you some advice, you should take it gratefully.”

Traill took a step down the room, his hands clenched.

“My God! you conceited, insufferable—”

“Get out of my room!”

“All right, when I ‘ve told you what I ‘ve thought of you.”

“Get out of my room!” Perrin’s eyes were starting out of his head.

Traill swung on his heel. “I won’t forget this in a hurry,” he said.

“Take care you don’t come in here again,” Perrin shouted after him. The door was banged.

Perrin sat back in his chair; the room was going round and round, and he had a confused idea that people were running races. He pressed his hands to his head; the little china man leapt, screaming, off the mantelpiece and ran at him, kicking up his fat little legs; and with the breeze from under the door, a pile of French exercises fluttered, blew like sails in the wind, and then slid, scattering, to the floor.