Chapter I: Common Room Faces (2)

For, after all, what a useless life his had been. The road he had travelled seemed white with the skeletons of broken hopes. In the glowing coals he saw the pageant of his past unroll itself. He had never been quite the normal person. His father was a minor poet, and for as long as he could remember his house had been full of literary people. Arthur Symons and George Moore had often discussed the relations between art and life across his fireplace. Yeats had told him stories of strange Irish myths; Thomas Hardy had read to him once or twice. He had spent his whole life with men who thought for themselves, who had despised the conventions of their day, and he himself had ceased to believe in anything except what personal experience taught him. He had resolved to find out things for himself. And what, after all, had he discovered? Little except the vanity of mortal things. In his friendship with Stapleton he had for a term or so found a temporary peace, but it had not been for long. As soon as he achieved anything it seemed to collapse before him. He had at times sought to forget his failures in blind fits of passion, but when the fire was burnt out the old world was the old world yet! In books alone he found a lasting comfort. The school looked on him as "quite a decent chap, awfully fast, of course, doesn't care a damn what he does, just lives to enjoy himself and have a damned good time." He smiled at the irony of it all. If they only knew! But they could never know. He had made a mistake in saying so much to Betteridge; he must not do it again. He must go on probing everything to discover where, if anywhere, was that complete peace, that perfect beauty that he had set out to find. In the meantime the destiny of his life would unfold itself. He would follow where his inclinations led him.

The evening bell broke into his reverie.

He stretched himself.

"Come on, Betteridge. Let us have a rag to-night."

"Oh, I don't think I will, I am rather sleepy." Betteridge was aware of his position. To Tester being a prefect signified very little.

That night Carter's dormitory was submitted to a most fearful raid. Water flowed everywhere. Two sheets were ripped and a jug broken. Rudd's bed was upset on the floor with Rudd underneath.

"By Jove, Caruthers," said Lovelace, from Harding's well-behaved dormitory, "that man Tester is some lad."

And Gordon thought, as he saw him laying about him full lustily with a pillow, that all his talk about games must be merely a damned affectation. He was really like any ordinary fellow.

When peace was at last restored, and he had led home his victorious forces, Tester laughed quietly to himself, as he watched the moonlight falling across a huge pool of water. He had played his part pretty well.

* * * * *

For the rest of the term life flowed easily with Gordon. There were no further rows with "the Bull"; in fact their row seemed, for a time at any rate, to have brought them closer together. Both seemed anxious to be friends with one another, and on the football field Gordon's play gave really very little cause for complaint. For this term his football reached his highest level. In following seasons he played good games on occasions, but he never equalled the standard he set himself in the Colts. It was one of Gordon's chief characteristics that he usually did well while others failed, and this term the Colts for some reason or other never properly got together. The side kept on being altered. For a week after the row Lovelace was kept out of the side; but it was soon obvious that his presence was absolutely necessary.

"What did I say," said Gordon. "You see, 'the Bull's' madness doesn't last for long. He got a bit fed up with you, Lovelace, so he made himself imagine your football was bad. He can always make himself think what he likes."

"Yes; but it is rather a nuisance," Mansell remarked, "when you realise it is always House men who have to do the Jekyll and Hyde business."

"Good Lord! Mansell, you are becoming literary," laughed Gordon. "How did you hear of Jekyll and Hyde?"

"Claremont has been reading the thing on Sunday mornings; not so bad for a fool like Stevenson. It rather reminded me of _The Doctor's Double_, by Nat Gould; only, of course, it is not half so good."

"No, that is a fact," said Lovelace. "Nat Gould is the finest author alive. I read some stuff in a paper the other day about books being true to life. Well, you could not get anything more true than _The Double Event_; and race-horsing is the most important thing in life, too. I sent up the other day for six of his books; they ought to be here to-morrow."

"Well, for God's sake, don't bring them in here," said Gordon, "there is enough mess as it is with _The Sportsmans_ of the last month trailing all over the place."

"Oh, have some sense, man; you don't know what literature is."

Gordon subsided. All his new theories of art collapsed very easily before the honest Philistinism of Lovelace and Mansell; for he was not quite sure of his own views himself. He loved poetry, because it seemed to express his own emotions so adequately. Byron's "Tempest-anger, Tempest-mirth" was as balm to his rebellious soul. Rebellion was, in fact, at this time almost a religion with him. Only a few days back he had discovered Byron's sweeping confession of faith, "I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments," and he found it a most self-satisfying doctrine. That was what his own life should be. He would fight against these masters with their old-fashioned and puritanic notions; he would be the preacher of the new ideas. It was all very crude, very impossible, but at the back of this torrid violence lay an honest desire to better conditions, tempered, it must be owned, with an ambition to fill the middle of the stage himself. In his imagination he became a second Byron. He saw, or thought he saw, the mistakes of the system under which he lived; and--without pausing to consider its merits--wished to sweep away the whole foundation into the sea, and to build upon some illusory basis a new heaven and new earth. He had yet to read the essay in which Matthew Arnold says that "Byron shattered, inevitably shattered himself against the black rock of British Philistinism." He was at present full of hope. The Poetry of Revolt coloured his imagination to such a degree that he saw himself standing alone and triumphant amid the wreck of the world he had overthrown. He was always protesting that Swinburne's finest line was in the _Hymn to Proserpine_:

"_I neither kneel nor adore them, but standing look to the end._"

It raises a wonderful picture to a young imagination: Swinburne standing on a mountain, looking across the valley of years in which man fights feverishly for little things, in which nations rise to empire for a short while, in which constitutions totter and fall, looking to where, far away behind the mountains, flickered the faint white streamers of the dawn. Oh, he was very young; very conceited too, no doubt; but is there anyone who, having lived longer, having seen many bright dreams go down, having been disillusioned, and having realised that he is but a particle in an immense machine, would not change places with Gordon, and see life once more roseflushed with impossible loyalties?

* * * * *

In its passage school life seems very long; in retrospect it appears but a few hours. There is such a sameness about everything. A few incidents here and there stand out clear, but, as a whole, day gives place to day without differing much from those that have gone before it. We do not realise this till we can look back on them from a distance; but it is none the less true.

In the Sixth Gordon's scholastic career took the way of all other fugitive things. It had once given promise of leading somewhere, of resulting in something, but it wanted more than ordinary perseverance to overcome the atmosphere of the deep-rooted objection to work that overhung all the proceedings in the Sixth Form room. And that perseverance Gordon lamentably lacked.

The Lower Sixth was mainly under the supervision of Mr Finnemore; and it was a daily wonder to Gordon why a person so obviously unfitted should have been entrusted with so heavy a responsibility. Finally he came to the conclusion that the last headmaster had thought that the Sixth Form would probably make less fun and take fewer liberties with him than any other form, and that when the present Chief had come he had not had the heart to remove a school institution. Mr Finnemore was an oldish man, getting on for sixty, and his hair was white. He had a long moustache, his clothes carried the odour of stale tobacco, his legs seemed hung on to his body by hooks that every day appeared less likely to maintain the weight attached to them. His face wore a self-depreciatory smile. He was most mercilessly "ragged."

The day when he took exams in big school will never be forgotten. Gordon was then in V.A. The Sixth, the Army class and the Upper Fifth were all supposed to be preparing for some future paper. All three forms had, of course, nothing to do. The Chief was in London.

At four-fifteen Finnemore was observed to be moving in his strange way across the courts. With an almost suspicious quietness the oak desks were filled.

"What are you doing to-day, Lane?" Finnemore asked the head of the school.

"I believe, sir, we are supposed to be preparing something."

"Ah, excellent; excellent, a very good opportunity for putting in some good, hard work. Excellent! Excellent!"

For about three minutes there was peace. Then Ferguson lethargically arose. He strolled up the steps to the dais, and leaning against the organ loft began to speak:

"Gentlemen, as not only the Sixth Form, but also the Army class and Upper Fifth, are gathered here this afternoon with no very ostensible reason for work, I suggest that we should hold, on a small scale, a Bacchic festival. This will, of course, be not only entertaining but also instructive. 'Life consists in knowing where to stop, and going a little further,' once said H.H. Monro. Let us follow his advice--and that of the Greeks. First, let us shove the desks against the wall and make ready for the dance."

It had all been prepared beforehand. In a few minutes several hundred books had been dropped, several ink-pots lay smashed on the floor. There was a noise of furious thunder, and at last all the desks somehow got shoved against the wall.

Finnemore was "magnificently unprepared." He lay back nervously in his chair, fingering his moustache.

"This must now cease," he said.

"No, really, sir" protested Ferguson; "everything is all right. Mr Carter, will you oblige us by playing the piano. I myself will conduct."

The floor of the big school is made of exquisitely polished oak, and is one of the glories of Fernhurst. It was admirably suited for the dance which within five minutes was in progress. It was a noble affair. Finnemore sat back in his chair powerless, impotent; Carter hammered out false notes on a long-suffering piano. Ferguson beat time at the top of the dais, with a pen gently waving between his fingers, as gracefully as the pierrots of Aubrey Beardsley play with feathers. Down below heavy feet pretended to dance to an impossible tune. Someone began a song, others followed suit, and before long the austere sanctity of the room was violated by the flat melodies of _Hitchy-Koo_. It was indeed an act of vandalism. But the rioters had forgotten that they were distinctly audible from without. In the Chief's absence they had thought a row out of the question.

Unfortunately, however, "the Bull's" class-room was only a few yards off. When first he heard the strains of revelling borne upwards he thought it must be the choir practising for the Christmas concert. But it did not take long for him to appreciate that such a supposition was out of the question. The noise was deafening. He could hardly hear himself talk; investigation must be made. He got up and walked out into the courts, made his way to the big school, and opening the door revealed the scene that has just been described. For a second or so he stood speechless. He felt much as Moses might have felt, if he had seen a tribe of Gentiles invading the Holy of Holies. Then his voice rang out:

"What is the meaning of this unseemly disturbance?"

A sudden silence fell over the revellers, as in Poe's story of the red death when the stranger entered the room.

Buller looked around.

"My form, the Army class, will follow me."

Disconsolately his form found their books and moved out of the room, fully aware that they would shortly have to pay full price for their pleasure. Over the remainder there fell a chill feeling of uncertainty. A few spasmodic efforts were made to carry on, but the light-heartedness was gone. The laughter was forced. Finally noise subsided into whispering, and whispering into silence and the scratching of pens.

There loomed before the Sixth Form visions of a very unpleasant interview with the Chief, and their expectations were not disappointed. The whole form had to stay back on the last day and write out a Georgic. Only the Fifth got off scot-free. Macdonald was told to deal with them, but he saw the humour of the affair too strongly to do anything but laugh.

"These Cambridge men--can't keep order. No good at all. Can't think why the Chief took him." And then, after a pause; "I wish I had been there!"

The result of this was that for the future Finnemore was treated with a little more respect. The Sixth decided that dances did not pay, and so contented themselves with less noisy but little less aggravating amusements. For instance, Finnemore's hatred of Browning was a byword; so one day the entire form decided to learn _The Lost Leader_ for repetition. For a while Finnemore bore it patiently, but when a burly chemistry specialist walked up to within two feet of him and began to bawl so loudly that his actual words were distinguishable in the School House studies, the master covered his face with his hands and murmured: "Oh, heaven spare me this infliction!"

On another occasion Betteridge walked quietly up to him, handed him a Shelley, and without any warning suddenly shrieked out:

"He hath outsoared the shadow of our night."

Finnemore looked at him sadly: "My dear Betteridge, so early in the morning!"

By many little things his life was made wretched for him. But yet he would not have chosen any other profession. He had once started life with very high hopes, but had discovered that the world is not in sympathy with men of ideas who do not prophesy smooth things. And so at an early age he found himself disappointed in all his personal aims. It seemed that he had to harbour only the simplest wish to find it denied. And then he realised that for the loss of youth there can be no compensation, and that in youth alone happiness could be found. And so he had decided to spend his life in company with high hopes and smiling faces. There were times when an immense sadness came over him, when he thought that disillusionment was waiting for so many of them and that there were few who would "carry their looks or their truth to the grave." But on the whole he was as happy as his temperament could allow him, and Gordon, although in a sense he was the very antithesis of all that he admired most, found himself strangely in sympathy with his new master. One day the subject for an essay was "Conventionality," and Gordon unpacked his torrid soul in a wild abuse of all existing governments. After he had written it, he got rather nervous about its reception, but it was returned marked _a_-, and Finnemore had written at the bottom: "We all think like this when we are young; and, after all, it is good to be young."

Gordon felt that he had found someone who understood him.

Finnemore lived in two rooms over the masters' common room, which had from time immemorial been the possession of the Sixth Form tutor, and in the evenings when Gordon used to have his prose corrected Finnemore would often ask him to stay behind and have some coffee. Then the two would talk about poetry and art and life till the broken bell rang out its cracked imperious summons. Finnemore had once published a small book of verses, a copy of which he gave to Gordon. They had in them all the frail pathos of a wasted career; most of them were songs of spurned affection, and inside was the quotation: "_Scribere jussit amor_."

"When I look at that book," said Finnemore to Gordon, "I can't associate myself with the author, I seem to have quite outgrown him. And as I recall the verses I say to myself, 'Poor fellow, life was hard to you,' and I wonder if he really was myself."

With him Gordon saw life from a different angle. He presented the spectacle of failure, and it rather sobered Gordon's wild enthusiasm, at times, to feel himself so close to anything so bitterly poignant. But the hour of youth's domination, even if it be but an hour, is too full of excitement and confidence to be overclouded by doubts for very long. Usually Gordon saw in him a pathetic shadow whom he patronised. He did not realise that it was what he himself might become.

Through the long tedious hours in the shadowy class-room Gordon dreamed of wonderful successes, and let others pass him by in the rush for promotion. He began to think that prizes and form lists were not worth worrying about; he said a classical education had such a narrowing effect on character. We can always produce arguments to back up an inclination if we want to. And in Finnemore there was no force to stir anyone to do what they did not want.

Only once a day was Gordon at all industrious, and that was when the Chief took the Lower and Upper Sixth Form combined in Horace and Thucydides.

For the Chief Gordon always worked; not, it is true, with any real measure of success, for he had rather got out of the habit of grinding at the classics, but at any rate with energy. And during these hours he began to perceive vaguely what a clear-sighted, unprejudiced mind the Chief had. To the boy in the Fourth and Fifth forms any headmaster must appear not so much a living person as the emblem of authority, the final dispenser of justice, the hard, analytical sifter of evidence, "coldly sublime, intolerably just." Gordon had always before looked on the Chief as a figurehead, who at times would unbend most surprisingly and become a man; on the cricket field, for example, when in a master's match he had fielded cleanly a terrific cut at point, and played a sporting innings; at House suppers, and, most surprisingly of all, when a row was on, Gordon had been unable to understand him. He could not dissociate him from his conception of a headmaster--a sort of Mercury, a divine emissary of the gods, sent as a necessary infliction. Yet at times the Chief was intensely human, and when Gordon came under his immediate influence and caught a glimpse of his methods, he saw in a flash that at all times his headmaster was a generous, sympathetic nature, and that it was his own distorted view that had ever made him think otherwise. The Chief was so ready to appreciate a joke, so quick with an answer, so unassuming, so utterly the antithesis of any master he had met before.

There were one or two incidents that stood out clearer than any others in Gordon's memories of his Chief.

At the very beginning of the term, before a start had been made on the term's work, the Chief was talking about Horace's life and characteristics.

"Now, Tester," he said, "if you were asked to sum up Horace's outlook on life in a single phrase, what would you say?"

Tester thought for a minute or so.

"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," he hazarded.

The form laughed. It seemed rather a daring generalisation. But the Chief's answer came back pat:

"Well, hardly that, Tester. Shall we say, Let us eat and drink, but not too much, or we shall have a stomach-ache to-morrow?"

He had taken Tester's quite erroneous estimate as a basis, and had exactly hit off Horace's character.

But the following incident more than any other brought home to Gordon how extraordinarily broadminded the Chief was. Carter was construing, and had made a most preposterous howler, it does not matter what. He had learnt the translation in the notes by heart, and quite failed to connect it verbatim with the Greek.

"There now, you see how utterly absurd you are," said the Chief. "You have not taken the trouble to look the words up in a dictionary. Just because you see what you think is a literal translation in the notes. There lies the fatal error of using cribs. Of course when I catch a boy in Shell or IV. A using one, I drop on him not only for slackness but dishonesty. The boy is taking an unfair advantage of the rest and getting promotion undeservedly. But in the Sixth Form you have got beyond that stage. We don't worry much about marks here, so there is nothing immoral in using a crib. It is merely silly. It tends to slack translation which in the end ruins scholarship. And by using the notes as you do, Carter, you are doing the same thing. You really must use more common-sense. Go on, please, Harding."

Gordon was amazed at such a broadminded view of cribbing. He had long since grown weary of preachers who talked about dishonesty, without seeming to draw a line between active dishonesty and passive slackness. The Chief realised that it was deliberate slackness that led to dishonesty, not dishonesty that was incidentally slack. The Chief must be a very wise man.

Nevertheless his admiration of the Chief did not make him do any more work than was strictly necessary; and Gordon began to drift into a peaceful academic groove, where he did just enough work to pass unnoticed--neither good nor bad. He had grown tired of ragging. It was such an effort, especially when the call of football demanded of every ounce of energy. To drift down-stream may spell mediocrity, but it also spells security, and, after all, there was little danger of Gordon becoming a mediocrity in other branches of school life. He was far too ambitious for that, but his ambitions were not academic. House politics and athletics were sufficient burdens for one man in one lifetime. "Other heights in other lives"; and Gordon believed in doing a few things well.

It was more than lucky for Gordon's future that this term he found himself a success on the football field. If he had not, he would probably have sought a prominent position in the eyes of the school by more doubtful paths; but as it was there was no need for him to plunge into wild escapades to get noticed. His football attracted quite enough attention. People spoke of his chances of getting into the Fifteen next year. The Milton match was his greatest triumph, mainly because the rest of the side did badly. Lovelace played back and made one or two fine runs when he got the ball, but as a whole the side played very half-heartedly. Burgoyne was off colour, and Collins's excuse that he had been overworking lately did not save him from being kicked out of the side after the match. But Gordon, who had got his Colts' badge on the morning of the match, and so was relieved of any anxieties about his place, played what he always said was his best game; so much so, in fact, that Buller after the match, said:

"Rotten, absolutely rotten, with the exception of Caruthers, who played magnificently."

There was only one blot on his performance, and that, though everyone laughed about it, caused Gordon some regretful moments afterwards. Rightly or wrongly Gordon thought the opposite scrum half was not putting the ball in straight. Gordon told him what he thought of him. The scrum half called him "a bloody interfering bastard," and told him to go to hell. The next time the scrum half got the ball Gordon flung him with unnecessary force, when he was already in touch, right into the ropes. And from then onwards the relations between Gordon and the scrum half were those of a scrapping match. Gordon came off best. He got a bruise on the left thigh, but no one could notice that, while his opponent had a bleeding nose and a cut lip. The school was amused, but Gordon overheard a Milton man say: "I don't think much of the way these Fernhurst men play the game. Look at that tick of a forward there. Dirty swine!"

After the game Gordon apologised to the half, and exchanged the usual compliments; but he could see that the rest of the Milton side were not at all pleased.

He spoke to Mansell about it.

"My dear man, don't you worry. You played a jolly fine game this afternoon, and if you go on like that you are a cert. for your Firsts next year. You played a damned hard game."

"Yes; but it is rather a bad thing for the school, isn't it, if we get a reputation for playing rough?"

"But you weren't playing foul, and Buller always tells us to go hard and play as rough as we like."

"Yes; but still----"

He was not quite reassured, though everyone told him it was all right. However, if "the Bull" made no comment, it looked as if nothing could be wrong. As a matter of fact, "the Bull" had not noticed; and though Christy, in a fit of righteous indignation, poured out a long story to him, he only smiled.

"Oh, well, I expect he got a bit excited. First time he had played footer for a school side.... I was a bit fierce my first game for England. Don't blame him. He's a keen kid, and I am sure the other side did not mind."

Christy mumbled indistinctly. No one ever seemed to take much notice of what he said. That evening, however, he and Rogers, over a glass of port, agreed that Caruthers was a thoroughly objectionable young fellow who ought to be taken in hand, and with this Christian sentiment to inspire him Rogers went home to put a few finishing touches to his sermon for the next day.