He paused and relit his pipe, and his voice was, too, measured, but showing in its tensity his emotion.
“It's a different thing with the bigger places. There, there is more room; the men don't live so close together; they are paid better; there is a chance of getting a house; there is the esprit de corps of the school... but here, my God!”
Birkland bent forward, his face white, over the candles.
“Get out of it, Traill, you fool! You say, in a year's time. Don't I know that? Do you suppose that I meant to stay here for ever when I came? But one postpones moving. Another term will be better, or you try for a thing, fail, and get discouraged... and then suddenly you are too old—too old at thirty-three—earning two hundred a year... too old! and liable to be turned out with a week's notice if the Head doesn't like you—turned out with nothing to go to; and he knows that you are afraid of him and he has games with you.”
Traill stared at the little man's burning eyes. How odd of Birkland to talk like this!
“You think you will escape, but already the place has its fingers about you. You will be a different man at the end of the term. You will be allowed no friends here, only enemies. You think the rest of us like you. Well, for a moment perhaps, but only for a moment. Soon something will come... already you dislike Perrin. You must not be friends with the Head, because then we shall think that you are spying on us. You must not be friends with us, because then the Head will hear of it and will immediately hate you because he will think that you are conspiring against him. You must not be friends with the boys, because then we shall all hate you and they will despise you. You will be quite alone. You think that you are going to teach with freshness and interest—you are full of eager plans, new ideas. 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. You have no time. Here we are—fifteen men—all hating each other, loathing everything that the other man does—the way he eats, the way he moves, the way he teaches. We sleep next door to each other, we eat together, we meet all day until late at night—hating each other.”
“After all,” said Traill, still smiling, “it is only a month or two, and there are holidays.”
“If term lasted another week or two,” went on Birkland quietly, “murder would be committed. 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! And gradually there creeps over you a dreadful and horrible inertia: you do not care—you do not think—you are a ghost. 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.”