The Gods and Mr. Perrin. Hugh Walpole

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 any conception of the disaster that this simple sentence involved.

      Mrs. Dormer had a glorious, pugnacious prudery in her stiff, angular body that rejoiced in any opportunity for display. She hated Mrs. Comber; she had now an excuse for being offended for weeks.

      She could embroider and discuss to her heart’s delight. She saw in the amusement of Miss Madder, the discomfort of her husband, the dismay of Miss Desart, the distaste of Mr. Perrin, the wrath of Mr. Comber, ample confirmation of her exultant prophecies. It does not take much to make a scandal at Moffatt’s—and the propriety of the schoolmaster, the anxious, eager propriety, exceeds the propriety of every other profession.

      Mrs. Dormer had the game in her hands, and she played the first move by sitting silently, whitely, protestingly in her chair.

      “I do hope the football will be good this season,” she said at last, quietly and patiently, to Mr. Comber.

      Mrs. Comber realized at once that she was defeated. She did not know why she had said a thing like that—she knew that Mrs. Dormer didn’t like such things to be talked about. She smiled and laughed and talked about gardens and the school bell and Mrs. Moy-Thompson’s hat. “It always rings half a note flat, and it’s no use speaking about it; and how she can bear that colored green when it’s the last color she ought to wear, I can’t think; if it weren’t for these flies—what do you call them!—the roses would have done quite well.” But her eyes stared desperately down the table at Freddie, and she saw that he would not look at her, and she knew that the dinner had been only one more nail in her coffin.

      There was still, of course, Bridge.

V

      Sitting at the little tables in the tiny drawing-room afterwards, they were all tremendously—as of course you must be at such small tables—conscious of each other.

      They had drawn lots, and Mrs. Comber was playing with Dormer against her husband and Miss Madder at one table, and Mr. Perrin was playing with Mrs. Dormer against Isabel and young Traill at another.

      It may seem a slight thing, but it was certainly a factor in the whole situation that Perrin was forced to gaze—over a very small intervening space—at Traill’s immaculate clothes for the rest of the evening. He was always a bad Bridge player—he thought that he disguised his bad play by a haughty manner and a false assurance; to-night the confusion of his thoughts, his incipient dislike for Traill, the bad claret that he had drunk, the distracting way that Miss Desart held her cards, caused his play to be something insane.

      Mrs. Dormer disliked intensely losing money, and there seemed every prospect, if Perrin continued to play like that, of her losing at least five shillings before the end of the evening. She was convinced that she had every reason for being angry, and when, at the end of the first deal, her partner had thrown away a splendid heart hand by refusing to follow any of her leads, she could not resist a stiff movement in her chair and a sharp, “Well, Mr. Perrin, I think we ought to have done better than that.”

      For the first time in his experience his usual assured reply, containing an implication that it was all his partner’s fault, that he had been at Cambridge for three years, and that he taught Algebra and Euclid six days a week and therefore ought to know how to play Bridge if anyone did, failed him. He stared at her miserably, gathered the cards hurriedly together, and began to shuffle them in a dreadfully confused way. He knew that Miss Desart must think him a fool, and he wanted her so terribly badly to think him clever and even brilliant. He was sure that Traill was laughing at him. He hated the assurance with which he played. If only he, Perrin, had been playing with Miss Desart what things he might have done.... His head ached, and his shirt creaked a little every time he moved, and every time it creaked Mrs. Dormer made a little stir of disapproval.

      At