She could not, of course, make Archie see that. “The fellow's always wanted to be lonely—thinks himself much too good for other people's society, that's the fact, and if a man behaves like a beast, he must expect to be left alone.”
That did not worry Archie. The whole of his annoyance arose from the fact that there should be such a fuss. He had never really quarreled with anyone before—people never did quarrel with him; and now suddenly here were Comber and West and the little French worm Pons, stiff and sulky whenever they met him, and Moy-Thompson bullying him whenever he got the opportunity.
Of course he wasn't going to stay! he couldn't stay under these circumstances—but it was all unpleasant and disagreeable. Isabel herself was only too anxious to take him out of it all as soon as possible. He wasn't wearing well under it. He had been full of light and sunshine at the beginning of the term, pleasant to everyone, equable, comfortable, a splendid creature to be with. Now the boys of his class found that nothing pleased him, little things roused him to a fury, and he snapped at people when they spoke to him. With Isabel he was always gentle, but his eager eyes were tired, and once he wasn't very far away from tears.
But she did not allow any of these things to worry her. She was proud with Miss Madder, haughty with Moy-Thompson, gentle with Mrs. Comber, always amusing and cheerful with Archie. But when she had gone to bed and was at last alone, she would lie there, trying to puzzle it all out, afraid of what the future might bring, and praying that she might drag Archie out of it all before they had damaged him. He was such a boy, and all this discussion was so new to him; but she felt that she herself was ninety at least, and she would wonder sometimes that all men's difficult education seemed to leave them just where they began, which was several stages earlier than the place where women commenced. Love and death were very simple things, it seemed to her, beside the tangled daily worries of people getting along together. Her present feeling was something akin to Alice's sensation at the Croquet party when the hoops (being flamingoes) would walk away and climb up trees, and the balls (being hedge-hogs) would wander off the ground. They were all flamingoes and hedge-hogs at Moffatt's.
III.
But towards the end of this month, Isabel became suddenly conscious of Mr. Perrin in a very different way. It was now only three weeks before the end of term, and in another week examinations would begin. That something in the atmosphere that signified the coming of examinations was busy about the place. People were very quiet, and then suddenly in the most singular way would break out; there was continual quarreling in the common room, strange rumors were carried of things that people had said—it was all a question of strain.
There came, it now being the first week in December, the first day of snow, and the light, feathery flakes fell throughout the afternoon, and when the sun set there was a soft, white world with the buildings black and grim and a sky of hurrying gray cloud. Isabel and Mrs. Comber sat in Mrs. Comber's little drawing-room over a roaring fire, and there was no other light in the room.
Mrs. Comber sat, as she so often sat now, with her chin resting in her hand, silently staring at the fire.
Isabel was unhappy; the silent whiteness of the world outside, the consciousness of Miss Madder's rudeness to her that afternoon, the trouble that she had seen in Archie's eyes when she had said good night to him after Chapel, above all, a general sense of strain and nerves stretched to breaking-point—all this overwhelmed her. She had never felt so strongly before that she and Archie, if they were to keep anything at all of their vitality, must escape at once... to-night... to-morrow; it might be too late.
She knew that Archie had lost his temper with West that afternoon, that he had called him a “rotten little counter-jumper,” and that West had made an allusion to “stealing things.” Where were they all? What were they all doing to be fighting like this?