Hugh Walpole

“ Every plan, every idea, will be immediately killed. You must not have them—they are not good for examinations—you are trying to show that you are superior.”
Birkland paused. Traill moved uneasily in his chair.
“Wait! You must hear me out. It all goes deeper than these things. It is murder—self-murder. You are going to kill—you have got to kill—every fine thought, every hope, that you possess. You will be laughed at for your ambitions, your desires. You will not even be allowed any fine vices. You must never go anywhere, because you are neglecting your work. ”

“ When he had spare hours in the afternoon he liked to walk to the Brown Wood or down to the sea. Once or twice he bicycled over to Pendragon and had tea with the Trojans. Sir Henry Trojan was a man who had appealed to him immensely. In spite of his size and strength and simplicity, his air of a man who lived out of doors and read little, he had a tremendous poetic passion for Cornwall. He showed Traill a great many things that were new to him. He began to feel a sense of color; he saw the Brown Wood, the twisting, gray-roofed village, the sweeping, striving sea with fresh vision. ”

“ The holidays come, and you go out into the world to find that you are different from all other men—to find that they know that you are different. You are patronizing, narrow, egotistic. You realize it slowly; you see them shunning you—and then back you go again. God knows, they should not hate us—these others! they should pity us. If you marry, see what it is—look at Mrs. Dormer, Mrs. Comber, Mrs. Moy-Thompson. Look at their husbands, their life. There is marriage—no money, no prospects, perhaps in the end starvation! ”

“ Traill was almost forgotten as Perrin stepped a little forward from the wall in order that he might hear better. The sight of Moy-Thompson's face up there on the platform smiling, so complacent, patriarchal with that white beard wagging at the end of it, brought the blood to his head. He clenched his thin hands. What were the other men doing that they could stand there and listen to these lies? Why did they not step forward and tell the truth to all those stupid women and those fat governors, to the little man with the shining boots on the platform? They knew that these thing were lies. ”

“ Birkland remains a crabbed shadow; life is sharp, pungent—formed with faint blue skies, dim and shining like clear glass with a hard yellow sun stuck like a tethered balloon between saucer-clouds.
Archie Traill, on a free afternoon—an early frost had made the ground too hard for football—in the week after that Birkland evening, stood in the village street as the church clock struck half-past three, and he thanked God for a half-holiday. ”

“ Mr. Perrin remained discontented, unhappy. He was continually attempting to make the boys fond of him and at the same time to retain his dignity. He never succeeded in this, because so definite an attempt on his part immediately precluded any capitulation on theirs. They thought he was a fool to try, and they resented his airs.
He was really fond of Garden Minimus, he thought, as he sat with his head between his arms in his dingy, dusty room. The dust wove patterns above his head in the pale, dim sunlight. He must go down and watch the football. ”

“ Here is the whole protest and appeal of all those crowded, stifled souls buried of their own original free-will beneath fantastic piles of scribbled paper, cursing their fate, but unable to escape from it, seeing their old age as a broken, hurried scrambling to a no-man's grave, with no dignity nor suavity, with no temper nor discipline, with nerves jangling like the broken wires of a shattered harp—so that there is no comfort or hope in the future, nothing but disappointment and insult in the past, and the dry, bitter knowledge of failure in the present—this is the Battle of the Umbrella. ”

“ Comber was in the chair of honor, the only arm-chair in the room; Birkland and Pons, White and Dormer, and the little science master, West, were also there. Little West was so obvious and striking an example of his type that it seemed as though he had been especially created to stand to the end of time as an example of what a Board School education and a pushing disposition can do for a man. He was short and square, with a shaggy, unkempt mustache and that sallow, unhealthy complexion that two generations of ill-fed progenitors tend to produce. ”

“ To them that sudden cry, that sudden lifting of a fist as though he would strike the patriarch to his feet, could have come with no uncalculated emotion. But to the rest, to the governors heavily somnolent, to Sir Arthur Spalding plaintively desiring his tea, to Mrs. Moy-Thompson, to Mrs. Comber, the matrons, the staff, the rest of the school, it came driving through the place like a wind, “What? Who?...” They rose in their places, they uttered little cries, they stood on the forms, but no one stopped that voice—they were held, paralyzed. ”

“ They walked into the garden and strolled about the paths together; he was much improved since the Cambridge days, Traill thought—less self-assured and with wider interests. And then Sir Henry Trojan always gave Traill a broader feeling of life—sanity and health and strength—and lie had an admirable sense of humor.
And then it was over, and Traill was speeding back over the hill again. He thought of Isabel all the way back. He fancied that she was with him in the dark. The night was so black that he could only see the little round white circle that his lamp flung on the road in front of him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Beyond the drab windows the wind howled, and the dry leaves blew against the panes.
His temper rose as the hour advanced. The fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid was scarcely calculated to show dull boys at their brightest and best, and Perrin found that, by changing the letters of the figure on the board, the form knew nothing about it at all.
He proceeded, as was his way, to secure the dullest, fattest, and heaviest boy (a youngster with spectacles and a protruding chin, called Somerset-Walpole) and to make merry at his expense. ”

“ Moreover, on this especial Monday the rain came thundering in furious torrents, and the row of trees opposite the Lower School wailed and cried with their dripping, naked boughs, and all the brown leaves on the paths were beaten and flattened into a miserable and hopeless pulp.
Monday was the only morning in the week on which Traill took early preparation at the Upper School, and he had noticed before that it nearly always rained on Mondays. ”

“ He had not even had the pluck to hate Traill properly, as any other man would do.
And yet he did not feel that it was all his fault. He was a pleasant enough man if only someone had tried to like him—and then these headaches—and then those days when his brain was so strangely confused—no, it was not entirely his fault. And, last of all, if Isabel Desart.—-Well, why think about it? They all mocked him—even Moy-Thompson did not think him important enough to be angry with. He was very sick and tired of life. ”

“ And so it was suddenly, without warning or preparation, that the storm broke—the storm that was to be remembered for years afterwards at Moffatt's: the great Battle of the Umbrella, about which strange myths grew up, that will become, doubtless, in later centuries at Moffatt's a strange Titanic contest, with gods for its warriors and thunderbolts for their weapons; the great battle that involved not only the central combatants, not only Traill and Perrin and their lives and fortunes, but also others—the Combers, the matrons, the masters, the whole world of that place seized by the Furies... ”

“ What rot! what rot! what rot! He could have shouted it to the roof—“Lies! Lies! Lies!”
There was a little stir and rustle as Moy-Thompson finished his speech—ladies' dresses moved against the chairs, boots slipped along the floor—and then a burst of cheering and clapping. Perrin rubbed his hands against one another—they were hot and dry and something rather like a bobbin on a latch went up and down in his throat—his eyes were burning. ”

“ Birkland was thin—sticks of legs and arms; a short, wiry mustache; heavy, overhanging eyebrows; thin, straight, stiff hair turning a little gray. He gave Traill a drink, watched him fill a pipe; and then, huddled in his armchair, his legs crossed under him, his eyes full on the open window and the night sky, he asked Traill questions.
“And so you like it?”
“Yes—immensely!”
“Why?”
“Well—why not? After all, it gives a fellow what he wants. There's plenty of exercise—the hours are healthy—the fellows are quite nice fellows. I like teaching.” ”

“ Moy-Thompson, the head master—a venerable-looking clergyman, with a long grizzled heard and bony fingers—sat at the end of the table in an impatient way, as though he were longing for an excuse to fly into a temper. For the others, Traill only noticed one or two; Perrin, Dormer, and Clifton were there, of course. There was a large stout man with a heavy mustache and a sharp voice like a creaking door; a clergyman, thin and rather haggard, with a white wall of a collar much too big for him ”

“ He wished, as he went across the quadrangle, that his heart was not beating quite so quickly and that his brain was clearer. Moy-Thompson's study was dark save for the circle of light from the lamp on his table by the fire; the firelight leapt and danced, flinging the classical busts on the high shelves into a sudden derisive proximity to the white beard at the table, playing with the tables and chairs, dancing with flashes of golden light up and down the heavy, somber carpet. ”

“ Traill broke in. “As though a man mightn't take another man's umbrella without all this disturbance. It's too absurd.”
“Oh! is it?” said Perrin, his voice shaking. “That's all of a piece—that's exactly like the rest of your behavior here. You come here thinking that everything and everyone belongs to you. Oh, yes! we've all got to bow down to everything that your Highness chooses to say. We must give up everything to your Highness—our clothes, our possessions—you conceited—insufferable puppy!” ”

“ A preparation hour always invited the Seven Devils to dance across the two hundred of open books, and the tweaking of boys' bodies and the digging of pins into unsuspecting legs was the inevitable result. Traill rose at the end of the hour, cross, irritable, and already tired. He hurried down to the Lower School to breakfast and forgot the umbrella.
The rain was driving furiously against the window-panes of the Junior common room. The windows were tightly closed, and still the presence of yesterday's mutton was felt heavily, gloomily, about the ceiling. ”

“ She was so serious about it that Isabel at once became serious too. Her worst suspicions about it all were suddenly confirmed, so that the room, instead of its quiet and peace, was filled with a thousand sharp terrors and crawling fears. She was afraid of Mr. Perrin, she was afraid of the crowd of people, she was afraid of all the ill-feeling that promised soon to overwhelm her. She clutched Mrs. Comber's arm.
“Oh!” she cried, “will they hate us?”
“They 'll do their best, my dear,” said that lady solemnly, “to hate somebody.” ”

“ He would die rather than ring.
He went round to the other side of the building and looked up. Then he saw that the dining-room windows were not very high and that he might climb. He caught on to a buttress and pulled himself up; then another hand on the window-sill drew him level.
He found to his delight that the window was not latched. He pushed it up, and then, with one hasty look into the dark cavern beneath him, jumped. He was saluted on his descent with a noise as though all the crockery in the world had fallen about his ears. ”

“ If one of us dies, we do not mind—we do not think about it. Only, towards the end of the term, when the examinations come, there creeps about the place a new devil. All our nerve is gone; our hatred of each other begins to be active. It is the end-of-termy devil.... Another week or two, and there is no knowing what we might do. We are all tired, horribly tired. Be careful then what you do and what you say.”
“My word!” said Traill, filling his pipe, “what a horrible picture of things! You must be out of sorts. Why, it's hysteria!”
Birkland had crawled back into his chair again. ”

“ Traill told Isabel about his quarrel with Perrin, and she urged him to make it up.
“When we ourselves are so happy,” she said, “we can't quarrel with anyone—and, poor man, no wonder his temper is irritable. He's a miserably disappointed man, and I don't think he's very well either. He looks dreadfully white and strained sometimes. We can afford to put up with some ill-temper from other people, Archie, just now. When we are so happy and he is so unhappy, it is a little unfair, isn't it?” ”

“ Comber was perfectly aware of all the conversation that it would give rise to, of all the people that would in all probability be angry with all the other people because they had been asked or because they had not. There was, generally, a reason for a dinner. Some important person had to be asked, some unimportant people had to be worked off, someone was conscious that there had not been a dinner-party for a very long time. But on this occasion there was no reason except that Mrs. Comber had liked the look of young Traill, had at once thought of Isabel, and had conceived a plan. ”

“ 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. ”