Traill now took complete possession of his mind. He never thought of anyone else, and it was exactly as though an iron weight was pressing on his head, shutting him down. He must get rid of that iron weight, because it was so disagreeable and prevented him thinking; but he was sure that it would not go until he had got rid of Traill: therefore Traill must go.
He did not know how Traill would be likely to go, but he began to consider it....
These days before the examinations began were very difficult for everybody, and Perrin began that hideous “getting behind-hand” that made things accumulate so that there seemed no chance of ever catching up. There were all the term's marks to be added up before the examinations began, there were trial papers and test questions to be set, and therefore a great many papers to be corrected. He found that he was not able to keep at it for very long at a time, but would sit in his chair with his hands folded in front of him and think of—Traill—and then he would find that the papers were not corrected and that there were others to be done, and they would be in dingy piles about his room—sometimes a pile would slip from the table on to the floor and would lie there scattered, and he would feel his rage rising so that if he had not, with all his force, kept it down he would have rushed screaming about his room.
But with the whole staff this irritation was at work, and Perrin welcomed it because it amused him, and because it seemed to him in tune with his own moods. Always this week before the examinations was a very difficult one, but now, this term, it was worse than it had ever been before.
The place was badly understaffed, and always at this time the work was multiplied so that any spare hours that there had been before were now filled to overflowing. Also the examination scheme had now appeared and, whether by design or not, Moy-Thompson always arranged it so that one or two men seemed to have scarcely any work at all, and the others naturally had a great deal more than they could do. The quarrels that had broken out over the umbrella incident had developed until there was very little to prevent physical struggle. It happened that on this occasion, West was the person who was let off easily by the examination list, and he was not the kind of man to allow his advantage to pass without comment.
Perrin passed a considerable amount of time now in the Senior common room. He never talked to anyone, but would sit in a dark corner by the window and watch them all. The funniest thoughts came to him as he sat there: for instance, he fancied that it would be pleasant, when they were not watching, to crawl under the table and bite White's legs—it would be amusing to spring suddenly from behind on to Comber's back, and to strip all the clothes from him until he was stark naked, and must run, screaming, from the room—or to twist Birk-land's ears round and round until they were tom and hung.... All these things would be pleasant to do, but he sat in his corner and said nothing.
At last the day before the examinations arrived, and they were nearly all gathered in the Senior common room in the half-hour before Chapel.
Perrin, with his white face and untidy hair, watched them from his corner.
“It will be very pleasant,” West said, smiling a little, “to have that third hour off all through this week. I can't think, Comber, why Moy-Thompson's given you all that extra Latin to do—I—”
“For God's sake,” Comber broke out furiously, “stop it! Aren't we all sick to death with hearing of your beastly good luck? Don't we all know that the whole thing's about as unfair as it is possible for anything to be? Just keep quiet about it if you can.”