“Why, of course I do,” said Traill, coming up to him. “We 'll do it together—we 'll see heaps of each other.”
“Ah! heaps!” said Birkland, shaking his head. “No, I'm too dry and dusty a stick by this time for young fellows like you. No, I'm better alone. But I 'll come and see you one day.”
“You were quite right,” said Traill suddenly, “in what you said about the place the evening at the beginning of the term when I came in to see you. You were quite right.”
“Poor boy,” said Birkland, looking at him affectionately, “you had a hard dose of it. Perhaps it was all for the best, really. It drove you out. If I'd been treated to that kind of row at the beginning, I mightn't have been here twenty years. And, after all, you met Miss Desart here.”
“Yes,” said Traill, “that makes it worth it fifty times over.”
“And now,” went on Birkland grimly, “this afternoon you shall see the closing scene of our pageant. You shall see our glory, our tradition. You will hear the head of our body state his satisfaction with the term's work, proclaim his delight at the friendly spirit that pervades the school, allude, through the great Sir Marmaduke Boniface, maker of strawberry jam, to our ancient and honorable tradition in which we all, from the eldest to the youngest, have our humble share.” He spread his arms. “Oh! the mockery of it! To get out of it!—to get out of it! And now, at last, after twenty years, I'm going. If it hadn't been for you, Traill, I believe I'd be here still. Well, perhaps it's to breaking stones on a road that I'm going... at any rate, it won't be this.”
And so here, too, Sir Marmaduke Boniface is remembered and has his influence.
III.
But with all these fine spirits, with all this stir and friendly feeling, with all this preparation for a great event, Mr. Perrin had little to do. This morning had, in no way, been for him a reconciling or a triumph at approaching freedom. After some three or four hours' troubled and confused sleep he awoke to the humiliating, maddening consciousness that he had again, now for the second time, missed his chance.
This one thing that he had thought he could do he had missed once more; not even at this last, blind vengeance was he any good.