on the front of the shirt near the collar. His suit—it had done duty for a great many years—was painfully shiny in the back: he had never noticed it before; and there was a small tear in one sleeve that he knew everyone would see. His hair, in spite of water, was lanky and uneven; his mustache was raggeder than ever; his coat fell over his cuffs and shot them into obscurity in the most distressing manner.
All these things were new discomforts and distresses—he had never cared about them before. Then, when Isabel was so kind to him, he felt that they did not matter; he began in another few minutes to believe that he was rather well dressed after all; after ten minutes’ conversation he was proud of his appearance.
Then suddenly his eye fell on Traill, and that moment must be recorded as the first moment of his dislike. Traill was absurd, quite absurd—over-dressed in fact.
His hair was brushed and parted so that you could almost see your face in brown glossiness. His coat fitted amazingly. There was a wonderful white waistcoat with pearl buttons, there were wonderful silk socks with pale blue clocks, there was a splendid even line of white cuff below the sleeves.
But Perrin was forced to admit that this smartness was not common; it was quite natural, as though Traill had always worn clothes like that. Could it be that Perrin was shabby… not that Traill was smart?
Perrin dragged his cuffs from their dark hiding-places, then saw that there was a new frayed piece that had escaped his scissors, and pushed them back again.
They all went in to dinner.
Traill took Isabel in. That was the first time that she had consciously recognized him—even then it was fleeting and was confined in reality to a vague approval… and she liked his voice.
He had never seen her before—that is, he had never detached her from the vague background of people moving in the distance against the trees and the buildings; but now at once he fell in love with her. He had been in love before, and the strange suddenness of the ending of those fugitive episodes—the way that it had been, in an instant, like a candle blown out—had led him to fancy that love was always like that; he had even begun to be a little cynical about it. But he was in no way a complicated person. It didn’t seem to him in the least strange that yesterday he should have laughed at love and that now he should have a sense of beauty and strange wonder—something that had suddenly, like streaming silk or a sweeping, golden sunlight, flooded Mrs. Comber’s dining-room.
He thought her very grave; he noticed the white, crinkly sound of the silk of her dress against the table, the broad bands of light in her hair, and the way that her fingers, so slim and soft and yet so strong, touched the white cloth; and when she asked him whether he had ever been a schoolmaster before, the soup suddenly choked him and he could not answer her, but blushed like a fool, waving a spoon.
“And you like it!”
“I love it.”
“So far. Well, you shall cherish your illusions.” She still looked at him very gravely. “The boys like you so far.”
“Ah! they told you!” He was pleased at that.
“Oh! one soon knows—they are cruelly frank.”
Suddenly she caught her eyes away from him and looked down the table. Mrs. Comber was in distress. Everyone had finished their soup a terribly long time before, and there was no sign of the fish. One of those pauses that are so cruelly eloquent fell about the table. Freddie Comber was moodily staring at his plate and paying no attention at all to Dormer, who was trying to be pleasant. Mrs. Dormer was sitting up stiffly in her chair and gazing at Landseer’s “Dignity and Imprudence” that hung on the opposite wall as though she had never seen it before.
It was at moments like this that Mrs. Comber felt as though the room got up and hit one in the face. She was always terribly conscious of her dining-room. It was a room, she felt, “with nothing at all in it.” It had a wallpaper that she hated; she had always intended to have a new one, but there had never been quite enough money to spend on something that was not, after all, a necessity. The Landseer picture offended her, although she could give no reason—perhaps she did not care about dogs. The sideboard was a dreadfully cheap one, with imitation brass knobs to the doors of the cupboards, and there were three shelves of dusty and tattered books that never got cleared away.
All these things seemed to rise and scream at her. She noticed, too, with a little pang of dismay that one of the glass dessert dishes was missing. The set had been one of their wedding-presents—the nicest present that they had had. Oh! those servants!… She talked with a brave smile to anybody and everybody, but she watched furtively her husband’s gloomy face.
But Isabel, having given her a smile, turned back and attacked Mr. Perrin, feeling, as she always did about him, that she was sorry for him, that she wanted to be kind to him, and that she would be so glad when her duty would be over. She also noticed that she wanted to talk to Traill again.
Perrin himself had been in a state of torture during dinner that was, for him, an entirely; new experience. Traill had taken her in.... His thoughts hung about this fact as bees hang about a tree. Traill—Traill… with his elegant waistcoat and his beautiful shirt. He splashed his soup on to his plate. As through a mist people’s words came to him—Miss Madder’s fat, cheerful voice: “Oh! I think we shall fill the West Dormitory this term. There are five small Newsoms—all new boys, poor dears.”… Comber himself, growling at the end of the table to Dormer: “It’s perfectly absurd. It means that Birk-land has one hour less than the rest of us—that middle hour ten to eleven…”
The same old subjects, the same old dinners—but with her he was going to escape from it all; with her by his side, his ambition would grow wings.
He saw himself at Eton or Harrow, or a school-inspectorship. Why not? He was able enough. It only needed something to force him out of the rut.
But Traill had taken her in....
And then she turned and spoke to him, and at once he put up his hand as though he would stroke his chin, but really it was to cover the stud—the large soup-plate stud. He stroked his straggling mustache, and used his official voice. He spoke as he always did when he wanted to create an impression, as though in the cloistral courts of Cambridge.
Slow, deliberate, a little majestic… he shot his cuff back into his sleeve. He spoke of ambition, of the things that a man could do if he tried, of the things that he could do, if—
“If?” said Isabel.
“Oh! well, if… marriage, for instance, was such a help to a man… one never knew—” He drank furiously and finished at a gulp a glass of Freddie Comber’s very bad claret.
Young Traill was having a very good time indeed with Miss Madder, and Isabel turned round to hear what they were talking about. The meringues had arrived—there was also fruit-salad, but everyone took meringues although they would have liked, had they dared, to take both—and conversation was quite lively.
“I do hope,” said Mrs. Dormer, “that there will be several extra halves this term.”
And at once poor Mrs. Comber, who was eagerly congratulating herself on the success with which, so far, she had escaped danger, burst in:
“Oh, so do I. You know, they always used to give the boys a half for every new baby born on the establishment. Well, you and I have done our duty nobly in that direction, haven’t we, Mrs. Dormer?”
It is impossible that those who are not acquainted with both ladies should have
