"Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em!"
"Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em!"
"Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em!"
"Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em!"
The words aptly described the internal relationships of the Press Gang. The smallest fag marched under the suspicious eye of one slightly larger than himself, the slightly larger was in turn under the surveillance of a fag yet larger. There was an eleventh-hour flicker of mutiny, promptly extinguished.
"I'm hanged if I can see the fun of this," cried Venables, flinging down the pen.
Sinclair, Palmer and Cottrell had already signed and were with difficulty restrained from tearing the would-be deserter limb from limb.
"It's the damnedest silly rot I was ever mixed up with," he grumbled, as he signed his name viciously in the Recruits' Book. "Nobody but a congenital idiot like Raney——Here, Carlisle, come and sign, curse you!"
Two days later, term came to an end. My mother and sister were in Cairo, and as I did not fancy spending Christmas by myself in the wilds of the County Kerry, I had accepted Loring's invitation to stay with him in London. We were almost the last to shake little Matheson's hand and leave the house, for Loring never cared what train he took, so long as he was not hurried. He was now lying contentedly back in his arm-chair, divested of his responsibilities as Head of the house and appreciatively tasting the first savour of the holidays. It was three o'clock in the afternoon, and O'Rane had just finished packing the last box of books.
"Is there anything more?" he asked, stretching his back and brushing the dust from his clothes.
"I think not, thanks. You're not a bad fag, young man. I'm quite sorry you've got into the Sixth."
"No more of our ten-day meetings," said O'Rane.
Loring half-closed his eyes.
"Believe me or not," he said, "I always regarded those meetings as a blot on our otherwise delectable friendship. Are you going home for the holidays, Spitfire?"
"I haven't got a home," O'Rane answered, with a sudden return of his old sullenness.
Loring opened his eyes and bowed apologetically.
"Sorry. I didn't know. No offence meant. Whatareyou going to do with yourself?"
"Oh, I shall find something to do."
"Would it amuse you to stay with me any part of the time? Oakleigh's coming, in case you feel you can't stand me alone. I'll take you to a Christmas pantomime as a reward for being a good little fag."
"It's awfully kind of you, Loring." O'Rane hesitated and grew very red. "I don't think I shall have time, though."
"Not for one night, even? Loring House, Curzon Street, will find me all the holidays."
"I'm afraid I shall be working."
"Bunkum! You've not got any work to do."
"Ihave."
"What kind?"
The old expression of defiance battling with prolonged persecution came into O'Rane's black eyes. "If youmustknow," he said, "I came here with enough money for one term and I must raise some more. It's awfully kind of you, though. Good-bye. I hope you'll have a pleasant time. Good-bye, Oakleigh."
As the door closed behind him, Loring turned to me with a rueful shake of the head.
"I seem to have a genius for putting my foot into it with him," he observed.
"It couldn't be helped," I said. "He's a mysterious little animal."
Loring sat staring into the fire. At length he roused himself with the question:
"But what's he going to do with his little self? I ratherfeel as if I'd been what he'd call a 'God-Almighty brute' to him this term. I'd no idea he was ... I wonder if the Guv'nor can do anything for him."
"I shouldn't dare," I said.
Loring stretched himself and looked for his coat and hat.
"Come along if we're going to catch the 4.10," he said. "I say, what a cheerful prospect for the little beast to look forward to, if he has to do this every holiday."
We were a small party at Loring House that Christmas. The Marquess divided his time between London and Monmouthshire according to the weather and the possibility of hunting; Lady Loring departed to San Remo with the New Year; and Lady Amy arrived spasmodically for a night and a day between visits to school friends, sometimes alone, but once with my cousin, Violet Hunter-Oakleigh, with whom at this time Loring was unblushingly in love. For the most part we had the great house to ourselves for such times as we could spare to be at home. And the arrangement suited all parties. Though devoted to his mother and sister, I always fancied there was a perplexed misunderstanding between Jim and his father. I do not suggest a want of affection, but their minds were cast in different moulds, and I sometimes wonder if the Marquess, with his zest for pleasure and society, ever found common ground with his serious, detached and incurably romantic son. Be that as it may, we had no time to get bored with our own society. Loring's passion for the theatre dated from early years, and if we went once we went five times a week for the period of the holidays. The day was not hard to get through, as we ran breakfast and luncheon into one, rode in the Park on fine afternoons and returned in time to drink a cup of tea, dress, and dine out at one or other of Loring's favourite eating-houses. Lady Amy accompanied us when she was in town,—a tall, grey-eyed, dark-haired girl of sixteen she was then, wonderfully like her good-looking brother in speech, appearance and manner,—but as a rule the two of us roamed London by ourselves.
Taken all in all, they were very pleasant holidays, though in the last seventeen years I have forgotten nine-tenths ofwhat we did or where we went. Our New Year's Eve party, however, lingers in my memory. Lord Loring took us all to supper at the Empire Hotel. It was the first time I had been there, and from our place overlooking the river we commanded the room. To this day I can recall something of the crowded, brilliantly lit scene; the little tables with their pink-shaded lights, the red uniforms of the orchestra, the waiters in their knee-breeches and silk stockings, the white shoulders of the women and the shimmer of their diamonds. Party followed party, till it seemed as if the great room could never contain them, and in the entrance-hall beyond the stairs we could see fresh parties arriving, more ermine cloaks being shed, new ranks of men settling their waistcoats and straightening their ties as they approached with an air of well-bred, bored indifference, bowing to friends here and there and working slowly forward in search of their tables.
"Not a bad sight, is it?" said Lord Loring. "They stage-manage the thing very fairly well. If only our waiter would unbend to take our orders." He looked round and caught sight of the manager with a plan of the restaurant in his hand, allotting tables and ushering parties through the narrow gangways.
"I'll catch hold of this fellow," said Jim, rising up and intercepting the manager. There was a moment's conversation, punctuated by deprecatory play of the hands and apologetic shrugging of the shoulders. "He says our man will be here in a minute. A wild Grand Duke has just arrived here from Russia and lost his suite on the way. Apparently our waiter is the only man who speaks the lingo."
Lord Loring accepted the situation and began to describe the arrangements for marking the arrival of midnight. On the first stroke of twelve all lights were to be put out; as the last died away there would be a peal of bells, limelight would be thrown on the entrance-hall, and a sledge drawn by dogs would make its appearance with a child on board to symbolize the advent of the New Year.... He interrupted his account to give the order for supper to our waiter who had at last arrived.
"Then link hands for 'Auld Lang Syne,'" added Lady Loring.
At that moment I received a disconcerting kick and looked up to find Jim gazing at the end of the table where his father was seated. I followed the direction of his eyes, saw the waiter raise his head and take the wine-list, and as he did so I caught a glimpse of his face.
In a claret-coloured livery coat, black knee-breeches and white stockings stood David O'Rane. Our eyes met, but he gave no sign of recognition and a moment later he had hurried away with an obsequious "Very good, my lord."
As we waited for our coats an hour or two later, Jim whispered, "I'm going to tell the Guv'nor. It's hardly decent, you know. A Meltonian assing about like that. The Guv'nor must get him out of it." He turned to his father. "I say, dad, did you particularly notice our waiter?"
"Yes. Rather a capable youngster, I thought."
"Well, he's ... he's...." Jim stammered unwontedly and seemed suddenly to repent his purpose.
"What about him?" asked Lord Loring.
"Oh, nothing. He comes from Melton, that's all."
"From the 'Raven'?"
"No, another place farther up the hill," Jim answered vaguely.
"Funny you should meet him here," observed Lord Loring, as he lit a cigar.
And with those words the subject was dropped.
τἡν τε γἁρ πολιν χοινἡν παρἑχομεν, χαἱ οὑχ ἑστιν ὁτε ξενηλασἱαις ἁπεἱργομἑν τινα ἡ μαθἡματος ἡ θεἁματος, ὁ μἡ χρυφθἑν ἁν τις τὡν πολεμἱων ἱδὡν ὡφεληθεἱη, πιστεὑοντες οὑ ταἱς παρασχευαἱς τὁ πλἑον χαἱ ἁπἁταις ἡ τὡ ἁφ ἡμὡν αὑτὡν ἑς τἁ ἑργα εὑψὑχψ χαἱ ἑν ταἱς παιδεἱαις οἱ μἑν ἑπιπὁνω ἁσχἡσει εὑθὑς νἑοι ὁντες τὁ ἁνδρεἱον μετἑρχονται, ἡμεἱς δἑ ἁνειμἑνως διαιτὡμενοι οὑδἑν ἡσσον ἑπἱ τοὑς ἱσοπαλεἱς χινδὑνους χωροὑμεν.—THUCYDIDES, ii, 39.
[Greek: tên te gar polin koinên parechomen, kai ouk estin hote xenêlasiais apeirgomen tina ê mathêmatos ê theamatos, ho mê kryphthen an tis tôn polemiôn idôn ôphelêtheiê, pisteuontes ou tais paraskeuais to pleon kai apatais ê tô aph' hêmôn autôn es ta erga eupsychô kai en tais paideiais hoi men epiponô askêsei euthys neoi ontes to andreion meterchontai, hêmeis de aneimenôs diaitômenoi ouden hêsson epi tous isopaleis kindynous chôroumen.]—THUCYDIDES, ii, 39.
After the tempestuous months consequent on O'Rane's arrival at Melton, the two succeeding terms were a time of slumber and peace. The omnibus study next to Prayer Room became vacant at Christmas, and on our return at the end of January we found Mayhew, Sinclair and O'Rane in possession. We found also an ominous hand-printing-press clamped on to the window-sill, and from this injudicious outcome of an uncle's Christmas largess Mayhew set himself to produce a weekly sheet rivalling "The Times" in authority, the "Spectator" in elegance, and the "Junius Letters" in pointedness of criticism and personality.
Before the term was a month old the Editor had sunk to the thankless and unclean position of compositor, while O'Rane, with his natural taste for ascendancy, poured forth aneffervescent stream of leaders, lampoons, parodies, dialogues, stories and poems. It was not easy for anyone of less dominant personality to get his voice heard or his pen's product read during the periods of O'Rane's midsummer madness. At such times he seemed to lose every restraint of sobriety and in a riot of high spirits would be found organizing stupendous practical jokes or subjecting the very stones of Great Court to satirical tirades in facile impromptu verse. Throughout life his vitality was amazing, and from time to time at school and Oxford it seemed as though he must break out or choke.
Thanks to the printing-press, Mayhew found the circulation of the "Junior Mathesonian" rising with each issue. I have a complete set somewhere, and to read again the ebullitions of O'Rane's untiring pen is to see again the wild, black-eyed, lean-faced, Villonesque figure of the author. He was always at enmity with someone, and the last word in each altercation is usually to be found in his weekly "Dialogues of the Damned," in which the enemy of the moment is depicted explaining to the Devil his presence in hell.
Beresford, Second Master, headed the list. As a disciplinarian who had six several times failed to secure a headmastership elsewhere, he was a formidable authority on the rules and traditions of the school and knew to a nicety exactly where Burgess's loose grip and casual methods were lowering the prestige of Melton. Without in any way opposing the existing policy of letting the Sixth run the school, Beresford gladly conceded that the Sixth should at least set an example. This, he held, was not done when one member roamed dreamily along the Southampton road and engaged in conversation with the varied, disreputable, semi-seafaring tramps who begged their way through Melton to London and on whose account the great road was put out of bounds for all juniors. Burgess declined to limit bounds farther, but supported his colleague to the extent of a few words with O'Rane—a course that strengthened Beresford's conviction that Melton was going to the dogs and sowed plentiful resentment in the breast of O'Rane.
I see no purpose in following up in detail the quarrel withGreenwood (Dialogue III) over the Promenade Concert and the unexplained wrecking of No. 1 Music Room; nor with Ponsonby (Dialogue VII-) over the Freedom of the Press. The "J.M.," smudgily printed by Mayhew and ornately illustrated by Draycott, was certainly not intended to enter the shabby, panelled Common Room over Big Gateway. The internecine animosity of the great, however, is sometimes more marked than their discretion, and Hanson, who had not spoken to Grimshaw since their whist quarrel five years earlier, allowed himself to be seen in one of the bursting Common Room arm-chairs with his feet in the fender and his trousers scorching, engaged in delighted perusal of the Grimshaw Dialogue. Inasmuch as Grimshaw favoured the boys of his own house against all comers, he was unpopular, and the Grimshaw number of the "J.M." was received with grateful appreciation by all his colleagues, with the exception of Beresford, who had suffered in silence from an earlier week's attack. Succeeding issues were received with slightly less favour, as the minority of victims grew in number. With the appearance of "J.M. VII," Ponsonby decided to refer the case to Burgess and with the support of six actual fellow-sufferers and a dozen awaiting their turn, he constituted himself a deputation. The Head was sympathetic but not helpful. The paper, he pointed out, was issued only to subscribers and seemingly contained nothing of the blasphemous or obscene.
"If it were a matter of wrong, or wicked lewdness," said Burgess, "reason would that I should bear with you."
"I don't feel that any boy—let alone a Sixth-form boy—should be allowed to circulate studied insults to the Staff," rejoined Ponsonby.
"If it be a question of words and names," Burgess advised, "look ye to it."
"O'Rane's in the Sixth," Ponsonby objected. "Unless he's degraded from Sixth-form rank, what am I to do?"
Burgess affected to think deeply.
"The Lord will provide," he said.
The "Dialogues of the Damned" are an incomplete series, arrested in mid-course at No. VII; the "J.M.," however, hada life of more than two years and only died when O'Rane, as captain of the school, had to edit the official "Meltonian."
A remove into the Sixth at Melton marked an epoch in most lives. There was, and is, only one Burgess in the scholastic system, and until you met him five hours a day for six days a week you could form no estimate of the range of his knowledge. Every school has its Under Sixth, its Villiers and its mixed assembly of brilliant boys awaiting their remove, mediocre boys who have come to stay and dull boys charitably piloted and tugged into the haven of rest because their housemasters do not care to make monitors of boys in the Fifth. In my time the lot of Villiers was not to be envied, for the dullards slept, the mediocre ragged, and the scholars had to do their best to snatch instruction from the ruins of Babel, assisted by a man whose boast would never have been that he was a ruler of men or an inspired teacher and whose blood almost audibly rushed to his head as he strove to maintain discipline.
Thirty years before Villiers had taken a first in Mods., and though the fine edge of his mind had lost its keenness, he held to the Mods. tradition that the Classics should be read in bulk. That, indeed, is the best thing I remember about the man or his system. We scampered through the "Odyssey," "Æneid," and plays of Sophocles at a great rate and with no attention to detail. Pure scholarship, if it ever came, was to come later, and in the meantime Villiers saved succeeding generations from the reproach levelled against a classical education—that the fruit of many years' plodding is to be measured by the assimilation of one book of Horace's Odes or a single play by Euripides. Villiers left us, and we left Villiers, with more than a smattering of great literature.
In the Sixth we read as much or as little as we pleased. Most of us had a scholarship in view, and the degree of our unpreparedness was the degree of attention with which we confined ourselves to the text. Beyond that minimum the rule was to sit and encourage Burgess to talk. Sometimes he would forget a book and, for want of fixed work, open a Lexicon and choose a word at random. He would give usthe childhood and old age of that word, its parents and uttermost collaterals; and from a single word he would treat of ethnology as revealed by language and comparative civilization as measured by the limits of a vocabulary. And from comparative civilization to the institutions and faiths on which a society is built up—the religion and magic that shroud the dark days of the human mind.
Even to a temperamental iconoclast such as O'Rane, I fancy Burgess came as a revelation. At the term's end he showed me a manuscript book entitled "Notes on Theophrastus." To do Burgess justice we had read three pages in thirteen weeks; the rest of the book was consecrated toobiter dicta: "The Trade Routes of Turkestan"; "Lost Processes in Stained Glass"; "The Origin of Playing Cards"; "The Margin of Error in Modern Field Artillery"; "The Institution of Arbitrage"; "The Minaret as a Feature in Architecture"; "Surgery in Mediæval China"—and a score of other subjects. Theophrastus bored us, and we decided to take him as read. The decision once adopted, there was no difficulty in keeping Burgess away from the text.
On reflection I think that O'Rane may, in his turn, have been a revelation to Burgess as much as to the rest of the form. If omniscience were the order of the day, O'Rane seems to have decided to be omniscient. It was a fixed principle with him never to bring books into form. Burgess would look wearily round and say, "O'Rane, wilt thou read from 'Protinus Aeneas celeri certare sagitta,' laddie?" And Raney, with his hands clasped behind his back and eyes gazing across to the big open fire, would recite thirty, fifty or a hundred lines as Burgess might decide, in a voice that would cause him to be taken untrained on any stage. In part it was a studied pose, in part I believe he never forgot anything he had twice read. And his memory was minutely accurate. I recall a disputation on one of Bentley's emendations of Horace; neither Burgess nor O'Rane had a book, but each was prepared to go to the stake for his own version. Sutcliffe was eventually dispatched to School Library, and a reference to the text showed that Burgess was wrong.
"Where were you before you came here?" Loring asked that evening, when O'Rane and I were sitting in his study after prayers.
"Guess I was in most places," O'Rane answered from the depths of the arm-chair and a book.
"Where were you educated, fathead? And don't 'guess,' it's a vile Americanism."
Loring affected great precision of speech.
"I—fancy—I—received—instruction—from—numerous—persons—in—a—var-i-ety—of—places." And then with a sudden blaze of light in his big eyes:
"Much have I seen and known, cities of men,And manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honoured of them all...
"Much have I seen and known, cities of men,And manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honoured of them all...
"Much have I seen and known, cities of men,And manners, climates, councils, governments,Myself not least, but honoured of them all...
"Much have I seen and known, cities of men,
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all...
My God! 'honoured of them all!'" He stopped suddenly.
"The next time you break out, you'll get the cocoa-saucepan at your head," I warned him. "Now answer Jim's question."
O'Rane sat staring at the fire until Loring threw a wastepaper basket at him.
"If you start scrapping——" he began. "Oh, what was your dam' silly question? Dear man, I was born in Prague, and, as I never stayed six months in the same country till I came to England, you can see my education was a bit of mixed grill. Father ..." he hesitated; it was the first time I had heard him mention any relation, " ... father used to teach me a bit himself. And once or twice I had a tutor. And for the most part he used to lay on a local priest. That's why I can hardly understand the way you chaps pronounce Latin and Greek. And then the Great Interregnum, the Wanderjahre...."
"Most of your life's been that," I commented.
"Ah, I did this stunt alone—before I came here. After the war."
"The Greek War?" Loring asked.
"Surely. They killed my father, did the Turks. And when I'd buried him there was nothing much to wait for.He'd given every last penny to the Greeks, so I cleared out and came to England by way of Japan and the States and a few other places. It was all valuable experience," he added, with a concentrated bitterness that made my blood run cold. When O'Rane spoke in that tone, I could imagine him primed and anxious for murder.
"And drunk delight of battle with my peersFar on the ringing plains of windy Troy,"
"And drunk delight of battle with my peersFar on the ringing plains of windy Troy,"
"And drunk delight of battle with my peersFar on the ringing plains of windy Troy,"
"And drunk delight of battle with my peers
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy,"
he went on. "'Delight of battle'! Oh, my God! These poets and modern war!"
"Did you see anything of it?" I asked.
He shook his head. "I was a kid of thirteen. I saw the—results ... when they brought my father back to the Piræus."
Loring had been lying on his back with his hands locked under his head. He roused himself now to turn on one side and face O'Rane.
"Was your father Lord O'Rane?" he asked.
Raney's face grew hard and defiant.
"He was."
Loring nodded. "When he was killed the Guv'nor noticed the name. I rather think your property marches with some of ours. You're County Longford, aren't you?"
"The property is. I, Lord Chepstow, am what you would doubtless call a bastard."
Loring sprang to his feet.
"Raney, you damned little swine——!"
"It's true!" O'Rane answered, jumping up and facing him.
"It's not true that I would ...!"
"Oh, perhaps not. But I've been called it—and by lineal descendants of the Unrepentant Thief, too. You've got nickel-plated manners, of course."
"If you were worth a curse, you'd apologize," said Loring, hotly.
O'Rane reflected.
"What for?" he demanded. "I'm not ashamed of my father, Loring."
"You'd be a pretty fair louse if you were. Don't make me lose my temper again, you little beast."
O'Rane held out his hand with a curious, embarrassed smile.
"Sorry, Loring. Is that good enough?"
"We can rub along on that."
Some years later my guardian, Bertrand Oakleigh, appeased my curiosity on the subject of the O'Rane fortunes. "The Liberator," after a crowded boyhood of agitation and intrigue, became so deeply implicated in certain acts of Fenianism that he had to leave Ireland in disguise and live abroad for the rest of his life. For thirty years he wandered from one capital to another, preaching insurrection and being disowned by the Government of his own country. When the Foreign Office papers of the period are made public, his name will be found forming the subject of heated diplomatic dispatches. As a neutral his conduct was far from correct in the Polish rising of '63 and the Balkan trouble of '76. When he lived as the guest of the exiled Louis Kossuth, pressure was brought to bear by the secret police, and he moved north into Switzerland. There he met Mrs. Raynter, one of the famous three beautiful Taverton sisters. The influence of Lord O'Rane's personality was not confined to political audiences: she lived with him for three years, and died in giving birth to a son. When Lord O'Rane himself succumbed to wounds received in the Græco-Turkish War, he was only in the fifties. The measure of his power and sway is to be found less in any positive achievement than in the terror he inspired in the less stable Governments of Europe from Russia to Spain.
Winter softened into spring, and spring lengthened into the summer that was to be my last at Melton. The few remaining months are engraved deeply on my memory as though I lived an intenser life to capture the last shreds of heritage that the school held out to me. As in a sudden mellowing Ifound myself on terms of unexpected friendliness with people I had previously disliked or despised. Beresford—lank disciplinarian—invited me to dine in College, and revealed himself unwontedly human and well-informed on Rudyard Kipling; Ponsonby, whom I had lightly written of as a pretentious ass, proved on better acquaintance to be a man of self-paralysing shyness who lived in almost physical dread of his form; Grimshaw, most stolid of men in official life, shone without warning as a raconteur and mimic of his colleagues. I dined or breakfasted with them all, not excluding little Matheson with his unwieldy tribe of children, and we talked unbroken "shop" and disinterred old scandals and parted with a sentimental, "You'll be sorry to leave Melton?" "Very sorry, sir."
The vanity of eighteen is long dead, and I can recall with amusement that I had serious misgivings for the school's future after I should have left. For five years and more it had been all my world. I remembered the veneration with which, as a fag, I had gazed on the gladiators of the Eleven and the Witan of the Sixth—gazed and flushed with self-consciousness and shy gratification when one of them ordered me to carry his books across Great Court. In time I too had made my way into the Sixth; there was at first nothing very wonderful or dignified about the position, but by no immoderate stretch of imagination I could fancy myself venerated as I had venerated the heroes of five years before. And without doubt I looked proudly on my work in the Monitorial Council: we had been strict but not harsh, reserved but not aloof, reformers but not iconoclasts—statesmen to a man. At every point we seemed superior to our immediate predecessors, and the only bitterness in our cup was brought by the reflection that this Golden Age would so soon pass away. It was inconceivable that youngsters like Marlowe, Clayton or Dennis could fill our shoes. They were boys. I remember that Loring and I took Clayton on one side and revealed some few of the secrets of our successful rule; I remember, too, how extraordinarily Clayton resented our patronage....
The recorded history of the last two terms is meagre, but I recollect that O'Rane came twice into conflict with authoritybefore we parted. The first time was an unhappy occasion when the May-Day celebrations of the Melton carpet-makers coincided with one of his periodical outbursts. A plethoric meeting of somnolent workmen was being somewhat furtively held in the more somnolent market square; moist, earnest speakers declaimed under a hot sun to a listless audience. When Dainton and I passed through the square, oratory was getting worsted, and the meeting was summoning resolution to spend the rest of the warm May afternoon in sleep. Then O'Rane appeared galvanically from the West. And soon afterwards from the East, with dragging steps and eyes glued to his book, came Burgess in cap and cassock, his pockets swollen with the books he had bought in Grantham's.
That night O'Rane spent forty-five minutes in the Head's house—an unusual time for anything but sentence of expulsion. Loring and I were walking up and down Great Court with our watches in our hands, prepared to intercede with speeches of incredible eloquence if the worst came to the worst. Through the bright, unblinded library windows we could see Raney pleading; the back of Burgess's white head was visible above his chair, motionless, and seemingly inexorable.
"What's happened?"
The door had opened slowly and shut with a clang. O'Rane was walking towards us with a white face that belied his jaunty step.
"It's not to occur again." The anticlimax was an unintentional trick of phrasing. "Well, it won't. I can't workthatlay a second time. D'you know he sacked me within five seconds of my entering the room? I—had—to—fight—for—very—life." He breathed hard, linked arms and marched us off for a walk around the Cloisters.
"Drive ahead," said Loring.
"'Laddie, thy portion is with the malefactors. Get thee gone, and walk henceforth in outer darkness.' I say, the old man's formidable when he's angry. I said nothing, and he waved me to the door. I didn't move. 'Get thee gone, laddie,' he thundered, 'and let not the sun of to-morrow rise to find thee in this place.' I asked him what I'd done; he sort ofsuggested that I really knew all the time. I told himmyversion." O'Rane stopped and drew back a step with arms outstretched. "I told him I'd found that sweet May-Day meeting with potbellied whimperers gassing over an Eight Hour Day and drinking enough beer to drown 'emselves in. The May-DaysIknow were the ones where the mob broke up half Turin and were shot down by the soldiery: they were men with something to fight for—and ready to fight for it. These sodden voter vermin! If they'd organize with their cursed votes—if they'd fight—if they'd do anything—if they were in earnest——! My God, your English Labour!" His utterance quickened and his voice grew animated to the point of passion. "I told these scabrous dogs to put their lousy shoulders to the wheel. God knows what I didn't call 'em, but they were too sodden to mind, and I found I was speaking in French half the time. Then they got an idea I'd come over from Paris to champion them, and they cheered no end. So I taught 'em the 'Marseillaise,' and half-way through the second verse Burgess drifted into view. I told him in his library as I'm telling you here...."
"I hope to the Lord you didn't!" Loring interjected.
"I told him every last word." The Cloisters echoed with his excitement. "You bat-ears, you don't understand!Hedid!"
"What did he say?" I asked.
O'Rane hesitated. "He hinted that I wasn't accountable for my actions."
I burst out laughing. The words were so obviously inadequate.
"That's a curious reason for not sacking you," was Loring's comment.
O'Rane's black eyes, seemingly fixed on a gargoyle over Chapel door, were gazing into infinity.
"He said it was the Call of the Blood. And I—I—I just said nothing." His voice sank to a whisper. "I hardly understood."
The vision was for his eyes alone, and to us, uncomprehending, the rapt expression of his face and tense poise of the body was curiously disconcerting. Awkwardly self-conscious, Loring stepped forward and thrust his arm through O'Rane's.
"Pull yourself together, my son," he said.
O'Rane shook free of his arm. "You don't understand! Buthedid. He knew it all. There was one crossed to France in the Revolution, and him they guillotined because he was too powerful. And two died for Greece, and one went fighting for the North and the slaves. And one died by the wayside as the king's troops entered Rome. And one tended lepers in a South Pacific island." He strode up to Loring and stared him defiantly in the face. "And some day men will follow me as they never followedoneof the others!"
"Come to earth, you lunatic," said Loring; and I was grateful to him for the chill banality of the words.
O'Rane turned disgustedly on his heel.
"You wouldn't understand if you lived to be a thousand," he flung back over his shoulder.
"Come back!" Loring called. "There's nothing to get shirty about."
"You've the soul of a flunkey!"
"All right; so much the worse for me."
"And anyone who's not got your own servants' half spirit you call a lunatic!"
Loring sat down on the stone seat that ran round the inner wall of Cloisters and beckoned to O'Rane to join him.
"Come and cool down a bit, Raney," he urged. "And for the Lord's sake don't make such a row or you'll bring Linden and Smollet out of their rooms."
"You've got a bourgeoise mind, Loring," said O'Rane reflectively.
"Agreed, but don't shout," Loring returned imperturbably. "I want you to tell me—quitequietly—how you prove your nobility of soul by running the risk of getting sacked for the sake of making an idiotic speech to a mob of workmen who didn't particularly want to hear you? You tell me I shall never understand, but do at least tell me what I've missed."
"A soul," O'Rane answered simply.
"It's like trying to argue with a woman," said Loring in despair.
The prayer-bell began to ring in the distance, and we madeour way out of the Cloisters and across Great Court. O'Rane, at the last moment, decided to stay behind, and we left him curled up on the stone seat, his thin, clean features white in the moonlight and his great deep-set eyes gazing abstractedly across Fighting Green. He was back in Matheson's for Roll Call and sauntered into my study with his hands in his pockets and a straw in his mouth. The flame of emotion had burnt itself out, and he seemed cold, tired, and a little melancholy.
"Humble apologies and all that sort of thing," he began, holding out his hand to Loring.
"You haven't told us why you did it?" I reminded him.
He wrinkled his brow and shook his head in perplexity.
"Didn't seem as if I could help it. 'Man was born free and is everywhere in chains.' I've been through a bit—trying to get enough to feed and clothe myself—and it was hell. And sometimes it all comes back to me and I want to blow the whole world up.... And sometimes I dream what a glorious thing we could make of life, even for the men who sweep the chimneys and mend the sewers.... To-day...." He shrugged his shoulders. "I'd forgotten the everlasting Press. After the kings, the nobles; after the nobles, the people; and after the people, the Press. So Burgess says. And Melton's not strong enough to stand the racket if every beach-comber with a halfpenny in his pocket can read that a Melton boy led the 'Marseillaise' in Market Square."
"Quite right, too. It gives the school a dam' bad name."
"Oh, I agree—now," he answered limply. "He told me to choose my punishment."
"And what did you say?" I asked.
"I said, 'You aren't sacking me then, sir?' He said, 'Sacking, laddie? What strange tongue is this?' And then I knew I was all right. Clayton'll be captain next year. He'd have mademe, otherwise. Can't be helped. And I guess I got Melton in my vest pocket most ways. Good-night, bat-ears. I'm going to bed."
As the door closed behind him Loring sighed to himself.
"If he isn't sacked for this, he'll be sacked for something else," he predicted. "I hope it won't be till I'm gone, becausehe refreshes me. D'you remember his first term?"
"He's extraordinarily popular now," I said.
"He's the most fearless little beast I ever met. And there's such a glorious uncertainty about him. One moment he's your long-lost brother, the next he's slanging you like a pickpocket in about six languages, the next he's apologizing and shaking hands. I suppose he'll be captain the year after next. It'll be an eventful time for the school."
O'Rane's other conflict with authority was less impassioned and on a smaller scale. He had absented himself from Chapel for the better part of the term, and Burgess one day inquired the reason.
"I don't believe all the stuff they hand out there, sir."
"Have I asked thee to believe it, laddie?" demanded Burgess, who had almost ceased to expect polished diction from O'Rane.
"Well, sir, if Ipretendto believe it...."
"Have I asked thee to pretend, laddie?"
"But if I go, sir, people naturally assume...."
"And how long has David O'Rane given ear to the vain repetitions of the Synagogue and Market-place?"
For the moment Raney experienced some difficulty in finding an answer. Then he said:
"I'll go if you want me to, sir."
"Laddie, thou art of an age to determine this for thyself. I am an old man, broken with the cares and sorrows of this life. Peradventure the wisdom and truth that were taught me while I hanged yet upon my mother's breast no longer charm the ears of the younger men. Peradventure
"The Saints and Sages that discussedOf the two Worlds so learnedly are thrustLike Foolish Prophets forth; their words to scornAre scattered, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust."
"The Saints and Sages that discussedOf the two Worlds so learnedly are thrustLike Foolish Prophets forth; their words to scornAre scattered, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust."
"The Saints and Sages that discussedOf the two Worlds so learnedly are thrustLike Foolish Prophets forth; their words to scornAre scattered, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust."
"The Saints and Sages that discussed
Of the two Worlds so learnedly are thrust
Like Foolish Prophets forth; their words to scorn
Are scattered, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust."
Herein thou must walk thine own road, laddie.
"Certain points, left wholly to himself,When once a man has arbitrated on,We say he must succeed there or go hang.. . . . he must avouch,Or follow, at the least, sufficiently,The form of faith his conscience holds the best,Whate'er the process of conviction was:For nothing can compensate his mistakeOn such a point, the man himself being judge:He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul."
"Certain points, left wholly to himself,When once a man has arbitrated on,We say he must succeed there or go hang.. . . . he must avouch,Or follow, at the least, sufficiently,The form of faith his conscience holds the best,Whate'er the process of conviction was:For nothing can compensate his mistakeOn such a point, the man himself being judge:He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul."
"Certain points, left wholly to himself,When once a man has arbitrated on,We say he must succeed there or go hang.
"Certain points, left wholly to himself,
When once a man has arbitrated on,
We say he must succeed there or go hang.
. . . . he must avouch,Or follow, at the least, sufficiently,The form of faith his conscience holds the best,Whate'er the process of conviction was:For nothing can compensate his mistakeOn such a point, the man himself being judge:He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul."
. . . . he must avouch,
Or follow, at the least, sufficiently,
The form of faith his conscience holds the best,
Whate'er the process of conviction was:
For nothing can compensate his mistake
On such a point, the man himself being judge:
He cannot wed twice, nor twice lose his soul."
An thou thinkest thou canst learn aught from the life of the man Christ Jesus, laddie, thy time will not be lost."
Thereafter O'Rane attended Chapel with assiduity until the breaking-up service on the last day.
For weeks we had been saying good-bye to Melton, dismantling our studies, packing our books, seeking our porters and groundmen to press upon them our last tip. The final morning saw us seated betimes at Leaving Breakfast—a quaint Saturnalia whereat all discipline departed and every junior in Hall was compelled to read a rimed criticism of the departing monitors. I recall that Tom Dainton, who had almost single-handed won the Cricket Shield and established Matheson's in a tenth year of unbroken tenure, received a rousing send-off; Loring and I were let down lightly, while Draycott was pointedly informed that his hair was unduly long and his clothes an eyesore.
We were allowed no reply to the chastening criticism, but acerbity was forgotten when we joined hands and sang "Auld Lang Syne" with one foot on the table. For five years to my certain knowledge the long table had collapsed annually under the unwonted strain; to break at least one leg was now part of the accepted ritual, and, though Matheson had spent money and thought on a cunning scheme of underpinning, by dint of concerted rocking and a sword-dance executed by Dainton, we wrung a groan from the ill-used board and doubled all four legs into the attitude of a kneeling camel before the bell sounded for first Roll Call.
My last Chapel was Loring's first. Catholic or no he felt the service was not to be missed. We sat side by side, and determined there should be none of the foolish weakness exhibited by other generations of leaving monitors. Yet as the organ started to play the last hymn, he failed to rise, and, asvoices all around me began to sing, "Lead, Kindly Light," I found I could not join in.
From Chapel we went to Big School for our last Roll Call. The prize compositions of the year were read aloud, and the scholarship results at Oxford and Cambridge announced. There followed a long distribution of gilt-edged, calf-bound books; three malefactors were led to Bishop Adam's Birch Table and flicked publicly across the back of the hand; there remained but one thing more.
"School Monitors!" Burgess called out.
All ten of us lined up facing the Council with our backs to the school. The birch was handed to Sutcliffe, who reversed it restored it to Burgess and returned—divested of authority—to Second Monitor's seat. The ritual was repeated with the other nine, and Burgess called up the new monitors. To each of them the birch was handed and by each returned. Then Clayton, the Captain-Elect, rose from Sutcliffe's old seat, advanced to the edge of the dais, knelt down in front of the Birch Table, facing the school, and read the old Latin prayers that—despite their taint of popery—Queen Elizabeth had authorized us to continue, always provided we dropped the monkish pronunciation.
The last scene was laid in Burgess's library, where each of us was presented with a copy of Browning's "Men and Women."
"Peradventure ye have heard his words upon my lips ere now," he said. "Laddie, these partings like me not. I am an old man, broken with the cares and sorrows of this world, yet it may be that in this transitory life an old man's counsel may avail you in the dark places of the earth. Come to me, laddies, if ye judge not an old man's arm to be too weak to help you. At this time and in this place will I say but this: Sutcliffe, thou wilt consume thy days weighing the jots and tittles of learning. Therein is thine heart buried, and I do not gainsay thee. Dainton, thou shalt be known in Judah as a mighty man of valour. Thou art ceasing to be a child and must put away childish things. Hearken no more to the voice of children playing in the market-place; gird thee for battle to bea soldier of the Lord. Oakleigh, thine heart melteth away and becometh water all too easily. Thou hast riches and learning, but little singleness of purpose. Not for thee the dust of the arena—thou art too prone to hesitate and weigh thy doubt. Best canst thou serve thy neighbour by girding on the harness of others; thou hast friends and kinsmen in the first places of the Synagogue: succour them."
He looked at Loring and paused. "Laddie, I could have made of thee a scholar, but thou wouldst not. Thou canst be a statesman, but thou wilt not. The illusion of a great position surrounds thee, and thou art content to gather in thy vessels of gold and silver, thine ivory and peacocks, thy choice books and paintings. Anon thou wilt awaken and question thyself, saying, 'Wherefore have I lived?' Ere that day come I counsel thee to journey to a far country on an embassage from thy soveran lord. I charge thee to scorn the delights of Babylon lest, in the empty show of Kingship, the vanity of gorgeous apparel, the uttering of words in thy Council of Elders, thou conceive that thy duty to God and to thy neighbour hath been fulfilled. Laddies, an old man's blessing goeth with you."
And thus we were taught and fitted to be rulers of men.
As the London train steamed away from Melton Station, Loring leant out of the carriage window for a last sight of the school buildings clustering white in the July sunshine on the crest of the hill. Secretly I believe we were both feeling what a strange place Melton would be without us.
"Six years, old son!" he observed, drawing his head in. "Dam' good years they were, too. Wonder how long it'll be before you Radicals abolish places like this."
"There are lots of other things I'd abolish first," I said. It was a mental convention with Loring to regard me as a jaundiced, fanatical Marat, and with the argumentativeness of youth I played up to his lead.
"Whatgoodhas Melton done?" he challenged.
At one time my faith in public schools was such that I generously pitied anyone who had struggled to manhood in outer darkness. Infirmity of judgement or approaching middle age make it daily harder for me to divide the institutions of the world into the Absolutely Good or the Utterly Bad. It is probably wise to raise up a class of men who shall be educated and not technically instructed—wide horizons and an infinite capacity for learning constitute an aim sufficiently exalted. That was the aim of Melton, and we were well educated within narrow limits that excluded modern history, economics, English literature, science and modern languages. We never strove to be practical and had a pathetic belief in the validity of pure scholarship as an equipment for life.
I still regard the study of Greek as invaluable training in accuracy, subtlety of thought and sense of form; but I am not so ready as once to go to the stake for Greek in preference to all other subjects. Again, I still hold that the character-moulding in a great public school is adequate—conceivably, however, as fine characters might be moulded in other ways, and there are moments when I sympathetically recall O'Rane's impatient oft-repeated outcry that England survived in spite of her public schools.
The good and bad were so inextricably mixed. Cricket and football kept us physically fit and morally clean; we learned something of co-ordination and discipline—as other nations may perhaps learn those same lessons from military training. We picked up an enduring and light-hearted acquaintance with responsibility and acquired among members of our own class a rigid sense of even-handed justice which I seem always to find breaking down when that same class is weighed in the scales against another. Most doubtful blessing of all, we were brought up to the public-school standard of conduct.
No foreigner, no Englishman unless he be of the public-school class, will ever understand that strange medley. It is triumphantly characteristic of higher social England in its inconsistency, its intolerance and its inadequacy; in its generosity, too, its loftiness and its pragmatical efficiency. I never'sneaked' though the price of silence were an undeserved thrashing; I never lied to master or monitor, though I have adorned my crimes before appearing in the dock; I never entered for an examination with dates or names scrawled on my cuff, though I habitually used translations, and syndicated my work with others in my form. The standard forbade the one and allowed the other, and I have spent half my life doing things that are rationally unjustifiable and only to be defended on the ground that they were Good Form. For all my Radicalism I was not brave enough to fling down the challenge.
Thereisno Radicalism in schools—I had no business to use the word. After devastating the Debating Society with proposals for disembowelling kings or strangling priests, I have gone back to my study and duly thrashed some junior who forewent the age-old custom of walking bareheaded past Burgess's house. Never once dared I stand up to the conventional, "Thou shalt not brag. Thou shalt not affect an interest in thy work. Thy neighbours' likes and dislikes shall be thine." The list could be extended indefinitely, and for ten years after leaving Melton I was to find those queer schoolboy limitations and inconsistencies reproduced throughout the governing class in England. "One must pay a cardsharper," says Tolstoi, in describing Vronsky's code of principles, "but need not pay a tailor ... one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman ... one must never cheat anyone, but one may a husband; ... one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one, and so on."
In moments of uncritical pride I judge the tree by its fruit. It is the public school men, grumbling at their work, who—shall we say?—govern the Indian Empire, with resentment of praise from others and no thoughts of praising themselves. Versatile, light-hearted and infinitely resourceful if cholera sweep the land, they will step from one dead man's shoes to another's and leave a village to govern a province. Haggard and drawn with long weeks of eighteen-hour days, they will yet find time to mistrust the man who is not of their race or speech or school and growl at him who offends by his clothesor enthusiasm or aspirates. And the Indian Empire goes afresh to perdition with every new fall in the rupee or change in the colour of the Government minute paper. In moments of pride I think of the unwritten law, "Thou shalt never let a man down": it is the breath of the public school spirit. Yet criticism tells me that the public schools have no monopoly, and, if one miner be unjustly discharged from employment, a hundred thousand of his fellows will come out on strike.
"What good has Melton done you?" Loring blandly repeated.
In his mood of mockery I could not speak of my opal-tinted dreams, my consciousness that Melton and Burgess had inspired me with a hundred visions of mankind regenerated through my efforts. At eighteen everything seemed so easy: the world was blind but not selfish—except for the high and dry Tories who were to be quietly put out of the way if they proved obdurate; everyone else would yield to reason—and my eloquence.
The favourite vision was a crowded meeting swayed to laughter or tears or passion by my words—a memory of Mr. Gladstone's last public speech on the Armenian atrocities. At other times when my Irish fluency had been too rudely interrupted, I pictured myself as heir to Parnell's heritage of masterful silence. Cold, inflexible, contemptuous—I had seen him in Dublin when I was a boy of seven, and externals counted for so much that will-power seemed a matter of compressed lips and folded arms. I was but eighteen, and my Radicalism a matter of inheritance rather than conviction. It took years of painful disillusionment to discover how much fanaticism is required to shake the resolution of others; and years more to find how completely I was lacking in it. One morning, when I had attempted to catch the Speaker's eye some fourteen times in the course of an all-night sitting, I walked out of the House and spent the day asleep in a Turkish bath; on waking I recalled Burgess's words, "Not for thee the dust of the arena, laddie." The superman vision was at last dispelled.
"Well, I had a dam' good time there," I said to Loring, by way of closing the Melton debate.
In common with many others Loring drew pleadings against Radicalism which would have delighted a lawyer. To begin with, therewereno such people as Radicals—he at any rate had never met them. The professed Radicals of his acquaintance were a handful of mere agitators, misleading a too credulous electorate that was not yet fit to exercise the franchise; morally the Radical party was negligible because its sole ambition was, by sheer force of numbers, to take away anything anybody had got—he for one would never acquiesce in confiscation merely because a majority voted it. Then in our arguments I would confront him with the Will of the People—for some strange reason only capable of interpretation by Radicals. The phrase had a curious hypnotic effect on us both, for he would invariably retaliate with the statement that the sole custodians of the People's Will were to be found in the House of Lords. And infallibly we would both lose our tempers over the first Home Rule Bill.
"At heart you're quite sound," he was good enough to say on this occasion.
On reaching London we drove to Loring House, where I spent the night before crossing to Ireland. A month later we met for Horse Show week. Loring stayed with me, and we went to Dublin together to join the Hunter-Oakleighs, who were cousins of mine and at this time head of the Catholic branch of the family. Half-way through September I put in a week at House of Steynes, and was not surprised to find that Loring had included my cousin Violet in the party. In the first week of October we returned to London, picked up Draycott, who had spent a stifling summer, loose-tied and low-collared, in the Quarter Latin, and descended upon Oxford to order the decoration of our rooms.
Draycott had been banished to Old Library, to his present disgust and subsequent reconciliation, and allotted a gloomy first-floor set which for the next three years was the scene of "Planchette" séances and roulette parties. Loring and I had been given one of the coveted double suites in Tom, and for the length of an afternoon we condemned furniture and carpets, issued orders to a deferential, tired upholsterer, andfinally emerged into the autumn sunlight of the Quad with a feeling of modest triumph that there would be few rooms in Oxford to compare with ours.
On the following Friday we made our first informal appearance.
Writing after sixteen years that have been neither unvaried nor uneventful, I find that Oxford lingers in my memory as an adventure never before experienced even in my first days at Melton, never afterwards repeated even when I lived first in London, or fought my Wiltshire elections, or entered the House. I like to fill a fresh pipe and lean back in my chair, conjuring up a thousand little personal scenes—of no importance in the world to anyone but myself: my first Sunday luncheon, when I was the guest of Jerry Westermark, and if the rest of the company were third-year men like him, entitled to an arm-chair by the fire in Junior Common Room. The first luncheon I myself gave half-way through the term, my anxiety not to leave out even one of my new friends, and my anger with Crabtree of Magdalen who invited himself at the last moment and filled me with eleventh-hour fears that the food would run short. My first "Grind," where I pocketed ten pounds by backing Loring, who won the race at the price of a broken collar-bone. My first Commem. when I lost my heart to Amy Loring. My first appearance in the schools and my confoundingad hocknowledge of St. Paul's journey. My first....
It is always the first impression that seems to endure longest, but there were friendships I made and lost wherein I can fix no date. Tom Dainton, over the way at Oriel, dropped out of my circle some time or other; we nodded on meeting at the Club, and each would invite the other's assistance in entertaining his relations, but a day came when I felt unworthy of Tom's earnest and muscular Blues. And I have no doubt he shook a puzzled head over the "footlers" with whom I had cast in my lot. Equally there came a day when I found myself using a man's Christian name for the first time, and the last piece of ice drifted out to sea.
I like to recreate the atmosphere of eager activity, of new-won freedom and approaching maturity. Six years at Meltonhad been a time of bells and chapels, first schools and roll-calls, compulsory games and "Lights Out"; at Oxford I was a man, with liberty in moderation to cut lectures and private hours, go to bed when I liked, organize a banquet and participate from time to time in wholesale destruction of property, no man saying me nay. The differences were great enough to mask the resemblances. I hardly noticed that I was being regulated by a new House Standard with more than Meltonian observance of taboo rules and caste distinctions. We wore no College colours, we dressed for the theatre, and the "Rowing Push" were at pains not to know the "Footlers" who beagled or hunted. But we were all unconscious and in deadly earnest, whether we testified to our abhorrence to Balliol, or walked up Headington Hill and back by Mesopotamia discussing the abolition of private property or lounged in chairs round a piled-up fire talking and smoking—and, for variety, smoking and talking.
Not unless I die and be born again shall I a second time know the joy of living in a city of three thousand men, all of them my soul's friends—save such as came from other colleges or the despised quarters of my own.
"Oakum, come and talk to me!"
I can still hear the voice echoing through the morning silence of Peck, still see a foreshortened face, chin on hands, and white teeth gripping a straight-grained pipe.
"Hallo, Geoffrey! D'you think I could get one of your windows?"
"Better not try!"
There is a pause in the dialogue while I kick up a handful of small stones and leap nimbly away from the siphon which Geoffrey Hale has just stolen from Rawbones, his neighbor across the landing, and shattered in a thousand pieces not three feet from where I stand. A stone rises.
"Poor shooting!" from Geoffrey.
My next aim is better, and there is the sharp musical note of broken glass. Thirty heads projecting over thirty flower-boxes chant in chorus, "Porter-r-r! Mr. Oakleigh!" while I abandon dignity and hasten to the nearest staircase, to the endthat one broken window may be distributed throughout the College and charged to "General Damage Account." Rawbones will bear the undivided charges of his siphon.
In the early months of the war I had occasion to spend a few hours in Oxford. The colleges were filled with soldiers and the Schools had been turned into a hospital, while Belgian refugees looked unfamiliarly down from the choicest rooms in St. Aldates or the High. It was the Oxford of a nightmare, but, though I saw no more than a dozen undergraduates throughout the city, there was hardly college or shop or house that did not hold the spirit of a man I had known. Ghostly, muffled rowing men still ran through the Meadows in the gathering dusk of a winter afternoon; ghostly scholars on bicycles, with tattered gowns wrapped round their necks and square notebooks clutched precariously under their arms, shot tinkling under the very wheels of the sempiternal horse-trams; ghostly hunting men, mud-splashed and weary, cracked conscientious whips in the middle of the Quad. At six-and-thirty the elasticity andabandonare gone, but I would give much to shout one more conversation from one drawing-room window to another, to spend an hour pouring hot sealing-wax into the keyhole of a neighbor's oak, to deck a life-size Apollo Belvedere in cap and gown and deposit him in Draycott's bed. The power and daring have left me, but I thank Heaven that the wish remains.
On the first day Loring and I advanced silently and with sudden shyness through Tom Gate. The knots of men in lodge or street were embarrassingly preoccupied and indifferent to us. Never had I imagined that the great personalities of a public school could count for so little. "The Earl of Chepstow; Mr. G. Oakleigh," picked out in white on a black ground, reminded us reassuringly that we too had a stake in the College, but for an hour we were well content to arrange our books and experiment with the ordering of our furniture, deliberately shrinking from an appearance in public until the time came for us to present ourselves to the Dean. In Hall, and on our way to be admitted by the Vice-Chancellor, we fell in with other Meltonians and offered the effusivefriendship of loneliness to men perhaps previously ignored. Here and there I met someone I had not seen since private-school days. Once the alliance was formed under stress of agglomeration, we spent the remainder of the afternoon in a serried mass inspecting each other's rooms, ordering wine, tobacco and bedroom ware in the town and at tea-time valorously venturing into the Junior Common Room.
Within the next two days Loring and I received a number of cards, unceremoniously doled out by a messenger in short-sighted communion with a manuscript list of all freshmen worth knowing, as compiled by an informal committee of second and third year men. A number of Athletic Secretaries wrung from us promises of conditional allegiance which we were too timorous to withhold, and our respective tutors propounded what lectures and private hours we were to attend. Within a week we had returned many of the calls, ceremoniously and in person, returning a second and third time if our host were not at home; breakfast invitations began to be bandied about, and the Clubs in search of new members examined our eligibility.
As the one Liberal in a room full of silent Imperialists who consumed surprising quantities of dessert and paid no attention to the debate beyond applauding perfunctorily at the end of each oration, I remember impassionately haranguing the "Twenty Club" on the unreasonableness of Chamberlain's attitude towards President Kruger. At the "Mermaids," where the consumption of food and drink was even greater, I read the part of "Charles Surface"; nay, more, in a burst of enthusiasm I perpetrated a paper on "Irish Music" for the Essay Club, in those days a despised and persecuted church not infrequently screwed up in the catacombs of Meadow Buildings and left to support life on coffee, walnut cake, pure reason and some astonishingly rich Lowland dialects. Liberalism burned flickeringly in the autumn of '99, and the University Liberal clubs contended with flattering rivalry for my unresisting and largely uninterested body.
The term was still young when Loring was elected a members of the Loders, and soon afterwards he joined theBullingdon. As he now dined at the Club table in Hall, I gathered Draycott and Mowbray, a Wykehamist named Finck-Boynton and two Etonians, Bertie Grainger and Mark Seton, and founded a mess next to the Guest Table, whence we could throw bread at almost any friend in Hall. There we sat and criticized the kitchen, the High Table and our neighbors, decided a hundred knotty points of conduct and elaborated a pose which should mark us out as men of originality, fearlessness and distinction without any of the distressing immaturity of mind betrayed by our fellow-freshmen.
In looking back on the early days I find something very ingenuous and engaging in our delusion of originality. Whether we ragged the rooms of the meek, hysterical Ainsworth (who was alleged to hold private prayer-meetings and intercede by name for the souls of lost undergraduates), whether we serenaded Greatorex, the mathematical tutor, on the night he had a Colonial Bishop staying with him, whether we established an informal breakfast club at the Clarendon because we could get no hot food in College on Sundays, we were soberly and seriously convinced that earlier generations had never thought of doing such things before. For three years I watched with mild exasperation three successive drafts of amazingly juvenile men clumsily aping the achievements of us, their seniors.
New prejudices grew to a rank birth, but one or two old convictions came to be shaken. I no longer looked on Eton as a forcing-house of ineffective snobbery, nor on Winchester as the home of well-bred, uniform inertia; I ceased to say that while one Carthusian was occasionally tolerable, more than one would dominate and scatter the most varied society; gradually I found that something might be said even for men who had never been to a public school. Loring shook his head in puzzled and not entirely affected disapproval of my social adventures and, though punctiliously courteous to my guests, would not infrequently condemn them categorically as "stumers" when they were gone.
Yet on reflection I learned more of men and books from a reserved and aggressively sensitive colony of young Scotchgraduates than from many a more decorative sect in the first-floor rooms of Canterbury. McBain, a threadbare Aberdonian, would drift in on a Sunday night, when Loring was away dining with the Loders, and we would sit till the small hours talking of Renan and a non-miraculous Christianity. Frazar, who was taking the Modern Language School, would lie back sipping whisky and filling the grate with half-smoked cigarettes as he talked of life at the Sorbonne and the wonderful appreciation of modern French poetry that he would one day publish. Carmichael, an embittered, one-idea revolutionary, would throw Marx at my head and give fierce descriptions of his Board-school struggles before a scholarship set him free to peddle his brains in the market on equal terms with his fellows. At Melton we seemed all drawn from one class, brought up in the same channels of thought, given the same books to read.
When educational reformers fill "The Times" with their screeds, I am tempted to wonder whether it much matters what a man be taught so long as he meet enough men who have been taught something else. I worked hard at Oxford and did tolerably well in the Schools: perhaps they taught me how to learn, but the gaps in my knowledge when I came down make me look on the curriculum as "a chaos upheld by Providence." And then I think of three thousand men from a hundred schools and a thousand homes, flung behind the enchanted, crumbling walls to bring their theories, ethics, enthusiasms and limitations into the common stock; and at such times I wonder what better schooling a Royal Commission could secure for the plastic imagination of nineteen.
For all our poses Oxford gave us a taste of that world in which most of us were to pass our lives—an obsolete, artificial, inadequate world if you will, but the one wherein we had to find social and administrative salvation. We felt the heavy democratic control of public opinion when the notoriety-hunting Glynne was ducked in Mercury for giving luncheons in his rooms to the too-well-known Gracie (I never discovered her surname) from the florists in the Broad; we saw something of the ideal Equality of Opportunity whenCarmichael went from a scholarship to a fellowship and then to a provincial Professorship of Economics and ultimately to an exalted position in, I think, the Board of Education; by the College cliques and fashions, the social mistrust and jealousies, the canons and taboos, we were in some sort forearmed against the absurdities, the unworthiness and irreconcilabilities that awaited us outside Oxford.
A fruitful lesson of my first term was furnished by the Duke of Flint. He was a freshman, an Etonian, a "Gourmet" and a member of the Bullingdon. Any week in which he was drunk less than five times was no ordinary week; any story that could be repeated in decent company was not from his hiccoughing lips. Without question the most unmitigated degenerate I have ever met, the sole excuse to be made for him was that by inheritance his blood was sufficiently tainted to infect a dozen generations. Yet I cannot think it was in a spirit of commiseration that Oxford took the little ruffian to its bosom, inviting him to its luncheons and electing him to its clubs; there was something at once shamefaced and defiant in the way his friends proclaimed—without challenge—that he was "not at all a bad fellow, really; rather fun, in fact." From the night when he staggered down the High in the purple dress coat of the "Gourmets," breaking the shop windows with his bare hand and I bound him up and put him to bed, to the day not many weeks ago when he died of general paralysis, I watched his social career with interest.
We none of us had much time for introspection in those eager, early days. I was swearing rapid friendships, eating aldermanic banquets and conscientiously flitting from one to another of my new clubs with the zeal of a neophyte and the greed of a man who knows that after the dull, inadequate dinner of Hall an unlimited dessert awaits him. Loring and I had refused to compete for the Melton close scholarships, as the money was not essential to us, and we could now idle for a twelvemonth over Pass Mods. and leave three serious years for our final schools. A minimum of lectures satisfied our tutors, and the rest of the time we could argue and readand smoke eternally new and expensive mixtures, which we backed against all comers and changed perhaps thrice in a term.
Once I came near my sole acquaintance with martyrdom. It was in the early weeks of the South African War, when to be a pro-Boer was not healthy. The wholeness of my skin and the peace of our rooms were due in equal measure to the fact that I had many friends and that those who knew me not agreed with Loring that I could not really mean what I said. My fellow-rebel Manders, who knew no one and only left his garret in Meadows to bicycle hotly round outlying Oxfordshire villages preaching sedition, was incontinently divested of his trousers and hurled into Mercury.