II.
And so it was suddenly, without warning or preparation, that the storm broke—the storm that was to be remembered for years afterwards at Moffatt's: the great Battle of the Umbrella, about which strange myths grew up, that will become, doubtless, in later centuries at Moffatt's a strange Titanic contest, with gods for its warriors and thunderbolts for their weapons; the great battle that involved not only the central combatants, not only Traill and Perrin and their lives and fortunes, but also others—the Combers, the matrons, the masters, the whole world of that place seized by the Furies... and, in the corner, in that umbrella-stand by the hall door, underneath the stairs, that faded green umbrella—now, we suppose, passed into that limbo into which all umbrellas must eventually go, but then the gage, the glove, the sign token of all that was to come.
Let, moreover, no one imagine that these things are not possible. This Battle of the Umbrella stands for more, for far more, than its immediate contest. Here is the whole protest and appeal of all those crowded, stifled souls buried of their own original free-will beneath fantastic piles of scribbled paper, cursing their fate, but unable to escape from it, seeing their old age as a broken, hurried scrambling to a no-man's grave, with no dignity nor suavity, with no temper nor discipline, with nerves jangling like the broken wires of a shattered harp—so that there is no comfort or hope in the future, nothing but disappointment and insult in the past, and the dry, bitter knowledge of failure in the present—this is the Battle of the Umbrella.
It was Monday morning, and Monday morning is worse than any other day of the week.
There has been, in spite of many services and the reiteration of religious stories concerning which a shower of inconvenient questions are flung at the uncertain convictions of authority, a relief in the rest and repose of the preceding day.
Sunday was, at any rate, a day to look forward to in that it was different from the other six days of the week, and although it might not on its arrival show quite so pleasant a face as earlier hours had given it, nevertheless it was something—a landmark if nothing else.
And now on this dark and dreary Monday—with the first hour a tedious and bickering discussion on Divinity, and the second hour a universal and embittered Latin exercise—that early rising to the cold summoning of the hell was anything but pleasant.
Moreover, on this especial Monday the rain came thundering in furious torrents, and the row of trees opposite the Lower School wailed and cried with their dripping, naked boughs, and all the brown leaves on the paths were beaten and flattened into a miserable and hopeless pulp.
Monday was the only morning in the week on which Traill took early preparation at the Upper School, and he had noticed before that it nearly always rained on Mondays. He was in no very bright temper as he hurried down the cold stone passages, pulling on his gown and avoiding the bodies of numerous small boys who flung themselves against him as they rushed furiously downstairs in order to be in time for call-over.
He heard the rain beating against the window-panes and hurriedly selected the first umbrella that he saw in the stand and rushed to the Upper School.