"I neither kneel nor adore them, but standing look to the end."
"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 notrealise 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 ofHitchy-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 takelong 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 learnThe Lost Leaderfor 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 actualwords 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."
"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 markeda-, 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 Gordonused 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 mustappear 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 mostpreposterous 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 hehad 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 area 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.
The tradition of Pack Monday Fair at Fernhurst is almost as old as the School House studies. The legend, whether authenticated or not only Macdonald, the historian of Fernhurst, could say, was handed down from generation to generation. It was believed that, when the building of the Abbey was finished, all the masons, glass-workers and artificers packed up their tools and paraded the town with music and song, celebrating the glory of their accomplished work. And from time immemorial the townspeople havecelebrated the second Monday in October by assembling outside the Abbey at midnight, and ushering in a day of marketing and revelry by a procession through the town, beating tin cans and blowing upon posthorns. With the exception of this ritual, the day had become merely an ordinary fair. But there was no sleeping on that Sunday night, and for the whole week tantalising sounds of shrieking merry-go-rounds, of whistling tramcars and thundering switchbacks were borne across the night to disturb those who were trying to work in hall. It used to be the custom for the bloods to creep out at night and take part in the revels; but when the new Chief had come, four years before, he put a firm hand upon such abuses, and had even threatened to expel anyone he found in the act, a threat which he had carried out promptly by expelling the best half-back in the school a fortnight before the Dulbridge match; so that now only a few daring spirits stole out in the small hours of the night on the hazardous expedition. Those courageous souls were the objects of the deepest veneration among the smaller boys, who would whisper quietly of their doings in the upper dormitories when darkness lent a general security to the secrets that were being revealed.
This term about three days before Pack Monday, Gordon, Mansell, Carter and a few others were engaged in their favourite hobby of shipping Rudd's study. One chair had already gone the way of all old wood, and the table was in danger of following it, when Rudd suddenly burst out:
"Oh, you think yourselves damned fine fellows, six of you against one!"
A roar of laughter went up. It was the traditional complaint of all weaklings in school stories, and was singularly of the preparatory school type of defence.
"Jolly brave, aren't you? I'd like to see any one of you do anything that might get you into trouble. I don't mind betting there's not one of you that would dare to come out with me to the fair next Monday."
There was an awkward pause. The challenge was unconventional; and the Public School boy is not brought up to expect surprises. The only thing to do was to pass it off with a joke.
Lovelace stepped into the breach.
"Do you think any of us would go anywhere with a swine like you who does not wash? Dirty hog!"
"Of course you would not; you are afraid."
At that point Gordon's hatred of taking the second place, which had before led him into difficulties, once again asserted itself. "Damn it all," he thought, "I am not going to be beaten by Rudd!"
"Do you say we are all funks if we don't go?"
"Yes!"
"All right then, damn you, I will go with you, just to show you that you are not the only person in this rotten school who's fool enough to risk being bunked."
Rudd was taken aback. He had made the challenge out of bravado. He had regretted it instantly. In the same spirit Gordon had accepted the challenge; he also wished he had not the moment afterwards. But both saw that they would have to go through with it now.
"Good man," said Rudd, not to be outdone. "I wanted someone to go with me; rather lonely these little excursions without company."
He spoke with the air of one who spent every other night giving dinner-parties at the Eversham Tap.
"Look here, now," broke in Mansell, "don't make bloody fools of yourselves. You will only get the sack if you are caught, and you probably will get caught; you are sure to do something silly. For God's sake, don't go. It's not worth it. Really, not!"
"Oh, shut up; don't panic," was Gordon's scornful answer; "we are going to have a fine time, aren't we, Rudd?"
"Splendid," said Rudd, who wanted to laugh; the whole situation was fraught with such a perfectly impossible irony.
"Oh, do have some sense, man." Lovelace was impatient with him. "What is the use of rushing about at midnight in slouch hats with a lot of silly, shrieking girls?"
"You can't understand, you live in the country. I am a Londoner. You want the true Cockney spirit that goes rolling drunk on Hampstead Heath on Easter Monday."
"Well, thank God, I do want it, then," said Lovelace.
Rumour flies round a house quickly. In hall severalpeople came up and asked Gordon if it was true. They looked at him curiously with an expression in which surprise and admiration were curiously blended. The old love of notoriety swept over Gordon once more; he felt frightfully bucked with himself. What a devil of a fellow he was, to be sure. He went round the studies in hall, proclaiming his audacity.
"I say, look here, old chap, you needn't tell anyone, but I am going out to Pack Monday Fair; it will be some rag!"
The sensation he caused was highly gratifying. By prayers all his friends and most of his acquaintances knew of it. Of course they would keep it secret. But Gordon knew well that by break next day it would be round the outhouses, and he looked forward to the number of questions he would get asked. To be the hero of an impending escapade was pleasant.
"I say, Davenport," he said in his dormitory that evening, "I am going out to the fair on Monday."
Davenport said nothing, and showed no sign of surprise. Gordon was disappointed.
"Well, what do you think of it?" he said at last.
"That you are a sillier ass than I thought you were," said Davenport.
And as Gordon lay thinking over everything in the dark, he came to the conclusion that Davenport was not so very far wrong after all.
Cold and nervous, Gordon waited for Rudd in the dark boot-hole under the Chief's study on Pack Monday night just before twelve. In stockinged feet he had crept downstairs, opened the creaking door without making any appreciable noise, and then waited in the boot-room, which was filled with the odour of blacking and damp decay. There was a small window at the end of it, through which it was just possible to squeeze out on to the Chief's front lawn. After that all was easy; anyone could clamber over the wall by the V. A green.
There was the sound of feet on the stairs. It seemed to Gordon as if they were bound to wake the whole house. Rudd's figure was framed black in the doorway.
Silently they wormed their way through the window. The damp soil of a flower bed was cold under their feet; with his hand Rudd smoothed out the footprints.
They stole down the silent cloisters, echoing shadows leered at them. The wall of the V. A green rose dark and sinister. At last breathless among the tombstones by the Abbey they slipped on their boots, turned up coat collars and drew their caps over their eyes.
A minute later the glaring lights of the booths in Cheap Street engulfed them. They were jostled in the crowd. It was, after all, only Hampstead Heath on a small scale.
"Walk up, walk up! All the fun of the fair! Buy a teazer! Buy a teazer! Buy a teazer! Tickle the girls! Walk up! Try your luck at the darts, sir; now then, sir, come on!"
The confused roar was as music to Gordon's soul. He had the Cockney love of a fair. The children of London are still true to the coster legends of the Old Kent Road.
Gordon and Rudd did not stop long in Cheap Street. The real business was in the fair fields by Rogers's house. This was only the outskirts.
The next hour passed in a dream. Lights flared, rifles snapped at fugitive ping-pong balls leaping on cascades of water, swing-boats rose heavenwards, merry-go-rounds banged out rag-time choruses. Gordon let himself go. He and Rudd tried everything. After wasting half-a-crown on the cocoanuts, Rudd captured first go at the darts a wonderful vase decorated with the gilt legend, "A Present from Fernhurst," and Gordon at the rifle range won a beautiful china shepherdess which held for days the admiration of the School House, until pining perhaps for its lover, which by no outlay of darts could Gordon secure, it became dislodged from the bracket and fell in pieces on the floor, to be swept away by Arthur, the schoolcustos, into the perpetual darkness of the dustbin.
Weary at last, the pair sought the shelter of a small café, where they luxuriously sipped lemonade. Faces arose out of the night, passed by and faded out again. The sky was red with pleasure, the noise and shrieks grew louder and more insistent. There was a dance going on.
"I say, Rudd, do you dance?"
"No, not much."
"Well, look here, I can, a bit; at any rate I am going to have a bit of fun over there. Let us go on our own for a bit. Meet me here at a quarter to four."
"Right," said Rudd, and continued sipping the lurid poison that called itself American cream soda, and was in reality merely a cheap illness.
Gordon walked in the direction of the dancing. The grass had been cut quite short in a circle, and to the time of a broken band the town dandies were whirling round, flushed with excitement and the close proximity of a female form. "The Mænads and the Bassarids," murmured Gordon to himself, and cursed his luck for not knowing any of the girls. Disconsolately he wandered across to the Bijou Theatre, a tumble-down hut where a huge crowd was jostling and shouting.
He ran into something and half apologised.
"Oh, don't mind me," a high-pitched voice shrieked excitedly.
He turned round and saw the flushed face of a girl of about nineteen looking up at him. She was alone.
"I say," Gordon muttered nervously, "you look a bit lonely, come and have some ginger beer."
"Orl right. I don't mind. Give us your arm!"
They rolled off to a neighbouring stall, where Gordon stood his Juliet countless lemonades and chocolates. He felt very brave and grown-up, and thought contemptuously of Davenport in bed dreaming some fatuous dream, while he was engulfed in noise and colour. This was life. From the stall the two wandered to the swing-boats, and towering high above the tawdry glitter of the revel saw through the red mist the Abbey, austere and still, the School House dormitories stretching silent with suspended life, the class-rooms peopled with ghosts.
A plank jarred under the boat.
"Garn, surely it ain't time to stop yet," wailed Emmie.
He had gathered enough courage to ask her her name.
"Have another?" pleaded Gordon.
"No; let us try the lively thing over there. These boats do make me feel so funny-like."
The merry-go-round was just stopping. There was a rush for the horses. Gordon leapt on one, and leaning down caught Emmie up and sat her in front of him; she lay back in his arms in a languor of satisfied excitement. Her hair blew across his face, stifling him; on every side couples were hugging and squeezing. The sensuous whirl of the machine was acting as a narcotic, numbing thought. He caught her flushed, tired face in his hands and kissed her wildly, beside himself with the excitement of the moment.
"You don't mind, do you?" he murmured in a hoarse whisper.
"Don't be so silly; I have been waiting for that. Now we can get comfy-like."
Her arms were round his neck, her flushed face was hot on his, her hair hung over his shoulders. The strains ofYou Made Me Love Youcame inarticulate with passion out of the shrieking organ. Her elbow nudged him. Her lips were as fire beneath his. The machine slowed down and stopped. Gordon paid for five extra rounds. Dazed with new and hitherto unrealised sensations, Gordon forgot everything but the strange warm thing nestling in his arms; and he abandoned himself to the passion of the moment.
At last their time was up. Closely, her hair on his shoulder, they moved to the dancing circle, and plunged into the throng of the shouting, jostling dancers. Of the next two hours Gordon could remember nothing. He had vague recollections of streaming hair, of warm hands, and of fierce, wild kisses. Lights flickered, shot skywards, and went out. Forms loomed before him, a strange weariness came over him, he remembered flinging himself beside her in the grass and burying his face in her hair. She seemed to speak as from a very long way off. Once more the dance caught them. ThenAuld Lang Synestruck up. Hands were clasped, a circle swayed riotously. There were promises to meet next night, promises that neither meant to keep. Rudd was waiting impatiently at the café. Once more the wall by the Abbey rose spectral, once more the cloisters echoed vaguely. The boot-hole window creaked.
As the dawn broke tempestuously in the sky Gordon fellacross his bed, his brain tired with a thousand memories, all fugitive, all vague, all exquisitely unsubstantial.
With heavy, tired eyes Gordon ran down to breakfast a second before time. He felt utterly weary, exhausted, incapable of effort. People came up and asked him in whispers if everything had turned out well. He answered absentmindedly, incoherently.
"I don't believe you went there at all," a voice jeered.
Gordon did not reply. He merely put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the china shepherdess that he was about to place on the rickety study bracket.
Doubt was silenced.
The long hours of morning school passed by on leaden feet; he seemed unable to answer any question right; even the Chief was annoyed.
Rain fell in torrents. The Colts game was scratched.
On a pile of cushions laid on the floor Gordon slept away the whole afternoon. From four to six he had to write a Greek Prose in his study. The tea bell scattered his dreams. He rose languidly, with the unpleasant sensation of work unfinished.
The row of faces at tea seemed to frighten him. He felt as if he had awakened out of a nightmare, that still held on to him with cold, clammy hands, and was trying to draw him back once more into its web. Visions rose before him of shrieking showmen's booths, blinking with tawdry yellow eyes. Emmie's hoarse laugh grated on his ears; he was overwrought and wanted to shout, to shriek, to give some vent to his feelings. But he seemed chained to the long bench, and his tongue was tied so that he could only mouth out silly platitudes about the weather and the Fifteen's chances.
On his way back to the studies he felt an arm laid in his. He shivered and turned round, half expecting to see Emmie's flushed, exciting face peering up at him. He almost sighed with relief when he found it was Tester.
"Look here, just come for a stroll round the courts. The rain's stopped. I want to talk to you."
They wandered out under the lindens.
"I suppose you did go out last night, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"What on earth did you do it for?"
"I am sick of the whole affair," Gordon said petulantly. "Rudd called the lot of us funks, so——"
"I know that tale quite well," Tester broke in. "I want to know why you went out. At least I don't mean that. I mean to tell you why you went out, because I don't think you know yourself. You have made an awful fool of yourself. You have run the risk of getting sacked, merely because you wanted to be talked about."
"I didn't. I went because I was jolly well not going to have Rudd calling me a funk."
"Comes to the same thing in the end, doesn't it? You did not want to play second fiddle; you didn't want Rudd to appear to have scored. You wanted to be the central figure. Much the same, isn't it? The love of notoriety."
Gordon murmured something inaudible.
"And it is all so damned silly. You are running the risk of getting the sack, and for nothing at all. I can understand quite well anyone being drawn into anything dangerous by a strong emotion or feeling. It is natural. Masters say we should curb our natures. I don't know if they are right. That's neither here nor there. There was nothing natural in what you did. It was merely rotten imbecility—your self-consciousness, your fear of not seeming to have done the right thing. You can't go on like this. I own that this term you have been more or less sane. The last two terms I have often wondered what was going to happen to you. You had no balance; you kept on doing silly little things so as to hold the attention of a more stupid audience. This term you have stopped that sort of rot. But what is the use of it going to be, if you go and do things like this on the impulse of the moment, merely because you don't want to look silly? You can't think how much more silly you look by playing the ruddy ass during the small hours inside a stinking booth! You can't afford to do that sort of thing. Your ambition is to be captain of the House, and not a bad ambition either. But do you realise that if you are going to be a real power in the House, if you are going to fight the masters, as you say you will, you can't afford to fling away points? You must appear impregnable. Don'tbe an ass. A master holds all the high cards. If you play into his hand, he has you done to the world. Suppose you were caught going out at night your last year, what would happen? You might get the sack at once; and all your rebellion would be wasted. And, mark you, a rebellion is wanted. There is real need of a man who has the strength of his opinions and sticks out. What's the use of it if you go and get sacked? Of course, they might keep you on, and ask you to go at the end of the term to save your face. What would your position be then? You would be bound hand and foot, powerless to do anything. Life would slip past you. You have got to be above suspicion. Think, however much you may want to do a thing now, however much praise you may think an action of yours would get, stop and consider how it will appear two years hence. A really serious row might knock you out for the rest of your time here: a bad name sticks. Remember that. Think of the day when you are going to be a real power, and stand up for the independence of the individual to think as he likes, not as Buller likes; for the independence of the House to run itself. 'The Bull' runs our house to-day. You hear men say, 'We can't do that, Buller would be sick!' You have to free them of Buller's tyranny, if you are going to be a man; and if you do, you can't fight in rusty armour. These masters may be fools, but they have the cards."
Gordon listened to Tester's flow of words. He was furious. But when at last lights were put out and he lay back in bed and watched the stars steadfast in love and splendour, and the moon immutable, enigmatic, smiling quietly, he appreciated the truth of Tester's argument. A great battle was before him; he would have to go into it strong and prepared at every point. There must be no chink in his coat of mail.
Some day his hour would come; till then he had to wait in patience, and during the long vigil he would keep his shield clean of rust. He would have to think, to weigh his decisions, to keep before his eyes the goal towards which his ambition was set.
Like a huge reel of thread the long winter term unrolled itself. November drifted by with its gusty winds that shrieked in the empty cloisters. December came with its dark mornings and steadily falling rains. The First Fifteen matches were over. Dulbridge and Tonford had both been beaten handsomely; Mansell had got his Firsts. The Colts drew at Limborne, and finished their season with an overwhelming victory over Weybridge. House games began again, and the Thirds and Two Cock became the only possible topics of conversation. During the first half of the term Hazelton, as was inevitable, had had to spend nearly all his time in First Fifteen puntabouts and upper ground games. The House had seen little of him. But now, with all the big matches over, and only the old Fernhurstians' match to come on the last Saturday of the term, he had time to devote all his energies to the training of house sides. If he had not talked so much he would have been one of the strong, silent Englishmen. For to all outward appearances he was taciturn, unimaginative, self-willed. But he had a very nasty tongue, and never hesitated to use it at the expense of his enemies. As a house captain he was a distinct success. He knew the game well, and was able to inspire a keenness that was not jingoistic. He also had the rare virtue of knowing where to stop. He never made sides play on till they were speechless with fatigue, as some over-enthusiastic house captains had been known to do. He was very popular with his sides.
Every evening before hall there congregated in Gordon's study all the old faces of his first year, with one or two new ones. Nowhere so easily as at a Public School does one find oneself drifting apart from an old acquaintance; not for any real reason, not for any quarrel, but merely because circumstances seem to will it so. But when the thought of House matches returned, the old lot came back together to fight their battles over again, and to dream of the silver cups glittering below the statue of Edward VI. They were all there: Hunter, who had seemed to pass almost out of Gordon's life since he had begun to play in the Fifteen;Mansell, who now spent much of his time with Hazelton; Betteridge, who was more often than not with Harding. No. 1 Study was very convenient. Roll was held just outside, and when the prefect's voice was heard calling the first name the door would be flung open, and still reclining in arm-chairs they shouted out the immemorial "sum." About five minutes before the hour of roll-call juniors from the day-room and the farther studies would begin to collect round the hot pipes in the passage, fearful of being late. Then in No. 1 Lovelace would wind up the gramophone, and the strains ofWhen the Midnight Choo-choo leaves for Alabamabroke out with deafening violence. The concert lasted till the first strokes of the hour had boomed out. Roll over, they all separated to their various studies. Lovelace took out hisSportsmanand began to total up his winnings; Gordon either lay full length in the hammock, a new and much envied acquisition which was slung across from door to window, and read for the hundredth time the haunting melodies ofRococo, or else, as was more usual, wandered round the studies with the magnificent air of indifference that marked all members of the Sixth.
Then came prayers; after which Gordon and Davenport made for the seclusion of their double dormitory. Lights were out at nine-fifteen for the big upper dormitories, and till then they used to wander down the passage for the ostensible reason of getting hot water, but in reality to watch, with the superior air of Olympians, the life of lesser breeds. They imagined themselves great bloods during these few minutes after prayers. Sometimes when the House tutor was supposed to be out they would join in a game of football in the passage; but as they were caught once and each got a Georgic, this pastime lost its charm. Usually they lolled in the doorway with a perfect superiority, and talked of the old "rags" and discomfitures of two years back, for the benefit of admiring listeners.
"Do you remember when Mansell slept in that bed?" Gordon would say.
"No; I was not here that term," Davenport would reply; "but I sha'n't forget when the Chief found Betteridge's bed pitched on the floor, with Betteridge underneath and Lovelace sitting on top."
Was it possible, thought some small fry, that the great Mansell, who played for the Fifteen, had once actually slept in the same bed as he occupied now? Had Betteridge, who had only that night given half the day-room a hundred lines, once had his bed shipped on that very floor! It all seemed like a gigantic fairy story. And to think that Caruthers had seen these things!
But they were not long, these moments of the assumption of the godhead. Darkness soon fell on the long passage, and only whispered talking sounded faint and far away. Gordon and Davenport then went back to their room, and on evenings after a hard game they had a small supper. They had managed to discover a loose board, and the floor space caused by its removal served as a cupboard, a cupboard so damp and unhealthy that the most lenient sanitary inspector must infallibly have condemned it. Here, just before afternoon school, they secreted ginger beer bottles, a loaf of bread, butter, some tomatoes and a chunk of Gorgonzola cheese. In the morning they carried away the bottles in their pockets. It would have been much easier and much more comfortable to have had a meal in their study, but then it would have lacked the savour of romance. The rule forbidding the importation of food into the dormitories was very strict. At the end of the term, when both were going to leave that particular room, they nailed down the board, so that no other marauder should imitate them. They wished to be unique. But before they did so, they put in the mouldy cupboard a lemonade bottle and one of the blue Fernhurst roll-books for the Michaelmas Term, 1913. They underlined their names in it, and left it as a memento of a few happy evenings.
"I wonder," said Caruthers, "if years hence someone will pull up that board and find the book, and seeing our names will wonder who we were."
"Perhaps," said Davenport. "And, you know, they may try and find out something about us in back numbers ofThe Fernhurstian, or in the photographs of house sides. Do you think they will be able to find out anything about us?"
"I hope so; but how little we know even of the bloodsof 1905, and as likely as not we sha'n't ever be bloods. It will be rather funny if some day of all the things we have done nothing remains but the blue roll-book."
"Funny?" said Davenport. "Rather pathetic, I should say."
At fifteen one is apt to be sentimental.
Perhaps some rude fingers have already torn up that board; perhaps even now some new generation of Fernhurstians is using it as a receptacle for tobacco, or cheese, or any other commodity contraband to the dormitories. But perhaps underneath a board in No. 1 double dormitory there still repose that identical lemonade bottle and the roll-book with its blue cover, now sadly faded and its leaves turned up with age, to serve as Gordon's epitaph, when all his other deeds have perished in oblivion.
There is perhaps nothing that has made so many friendships as a big row, or the prospect of one. We always feel in sympathy with people whose aims are identical with our own, and the principals in some big row or escapade cannot help being bound close together by common ties. A mutual danger has brought together many ill-assorted pairs, and among others it showed Gordon and Rudd that they had something in common with one another. Gordon had always looked upon Rudd as a guileless ass who was no good at games, did nothing for the House, and was only useful as the universal provider of cribs. But after the Pack Monday Fair incident Gordon saw that there was in Rudd a something which, if not exactly to be admired, came very near it. It was a daring thing to challenge anyone who was willing to come to the fair with him, and he had not shown the slightest wish to back out of his agreement. Gordon decided to make his better acquaintance, and in the process was brought face to face with another fresh character, a type that was to set before him different aims and standards. For Gordon was sharp enough to see more or less below the surface. Rudd was a new type to him. It was clear that he had some merits, especially pluck; and yet he was no good at games, and, what was more extraordinary, did not seem in the least worried about his failures. Gordon had always pitied those who could not scrape into the Thirds.
"Poor devils!" he used to say in the arrogance of his own self-satisfaction. "I expect they tried just as much as we did. And it must be pretty awful for them to realise that they are no real use at games at all."
He had never thought it possible that anyone with the slightest claims to respectability could be quite indifferent to athletic success. But Rudd was, after all, a presentable fellow, and yet he did not mind in the least.
It was all very strange.
Only by trying to see the points of view of others do we get any real idea of the trend of human thought. It is quite useless to start life with fixed standards, and try to bring everyone to realise their virtues. We must have some standard, it is true, or we should be as rudderless boats; but it is of paramount importance that our standards should be sufficiently elastic to include new movements; and not until we have tried and weighed in the balance, and considered and sifted the philosophies of others, should we attempt to form a philosophy for ourselves.
By nature Gordon was arrogant and self-satisfied; but by meeting types different from himself and in their company gaining glimpses of goals other than his own, his character was undoubtedly broadened, his horizon extended, and he managed to get things into better proportion.
For several people just at this time were influencing Gordon. But none more so than Ferrers. Ever since the Stoics debate Gordon had become a profound admirer of the new master, who had banged into the cloistered Fernhurst life, bubbling over with the ideas of the rising generation, intolerant of prejudice and tradition, clamorous for reform. It was a great sight to see him walking about the courts. He was nearly always dressed the same, in his blue woollen waistcoat, soft collar and serge suit. He never walked anywhere without at least two books under his arm. He was recognisable at once. If a stranger had glanced round the courts in break, and had been asked afterwards if any of the masters had attracted his attention, he might perhaps have mentioned "the Bull's" powerful roll; with a smile he might have remarked on the prelatical Rogers, stalking like Buckingham "half in heaven." There were six or seven hemighthave noticed, but there was only oneperson whom he must have seen, whom he could not possibly have failed to pick out immediately, and that was Ferrers. Personality was written on every feature of his face, every movement was typical of youthful vigour and action. His half-contemptuous swing suggested a complete scorn of everything known before 1912. He was the great god of Gordon's soul, greater even than Lovelace major had been, far greater than Meredith.
As he sat listening to Finnemore discussing artistic questions in form, he felt wildly impatient to hear Ferrer's opinion. Nothing seemed settled definitely until Ferrers had spoken, and only the Army and Matriculation classes had the tremendous advantages of doing English with him. Most of Ferrer's time was wasted in attempts to drive home mathematical theories into the dense brain of a lower school set.
As to his influence in the school there could be no two opinions. The bloods, of course, were too completely settled in their grooves of Philistinism and self-worship to feel the force of innovation. But even on a mild character like Foster's his effect was startling. Ferrer's great theory was: "Let boys take their own time. The adage that it does a boy good to do what he hates may be all right for the classics, but it is no good to try that game with literature. Find out what a boy likes. Encourage him, show you are in sympathy with his taste, and once in his confidence gradually lead him step by step to the real stuff. He will follow you, if you only make out you like what he likes. A boy hates the superior attitude of 'Oh, quite good in its way, of course.' A master must get to the boy's level; it is fatuous to try and drag the boy to his at once." And there is abundant proof to show that this plan was a success. When Ferrers first came, Foster, for example, read nothing but Kipling and Guy Boothby. During his last term Gordon found him absorbed inVanity FairandThe Duchess of Malfi. It would be difficult to over-estimate the good Ferrers did at Fernhurst. From afar Gordon worshipped him. He learnt from Foster what Ferrers had read to his form and what he recommended them to read, and as soon as he could he borrowed or bought the book. The school book-shop about this time began to find inGordon its most generous patron. At times Gordon would tell Foster to ask Ferrers questions that interested him. And the answers, usually a little vague and elastic, spurred Gordon on to fresh fields. His taste was beginning to grow, and football "shop" was no longer his only topic of conversation.
There was only one thing that at all worried Gordon just now, and that was the behaviour of the Hazlitt brethren. Mention has already been made of this couple. During their first few terms they gave every promise of developing into the very worst types that banality and athletic success can produce, and these expectations had been abundantly fulfilled. The elder brother had his points, but they were few, the chief one being that he was fairly good at games, which, after all, is but a negative quality. But the younger, who was as useless as he was generally officious, was entirely devoid of any redeeming feature. His ways were the ways of a slum child playing in the gutter, and his sense of humour was limited to shouting rude remarks after other people, knocking off hats, and then running away. His language was foul enough to disgust even a Public School's taste. Gordon loathed him. One evening he and Lovelace discussed the child.
"Look here," said Gordon, "it's no good, this. That unutterable little tick Hazlitt knocked off my hat as I was looking at the notice-board to-day, and I am not going to stand it. By the time I had turned round he was half-way across the courts."
"The little swine! He is not fit to be in a decent school. If he can't get rid of the habits he learnt with street cads in the holidays of his own accord, he'll have to be kicked out of them. We will wait for him one day, and if we see him knock a School House straw off, my God, we will boot him to blazes!"
"Right you are. It won't be bullying. It will be treating a dirty beast in the only way he can understand."
About three days later, from their study window, they saw Hazlitt minor proceeding to the notice-board after lunch. They left their study and walked into the cloisters.
Hazlitt minor read the notices, discovered that, as he was posted on no game, he must of necessity take himself to the "pick-up," and then looked round. Davenham was conscientiously perusing a notice, although there was no likelihood of his own name appearing on any. (It is almost true to say that nobody looked at the board except the people about whom there are no notices to read.) There was an announcement four days old to the effect that C.J. Mansell had been presented with his First Fifteen colours. Davenham seemed to find it vastly interesting. Hazlitt stole up behind, and knocked his hat flying across the cloister. In a second Gordon and Lovelace were on him. They did not care in the very least what happened to Davenham. He played no part in their life. But a School House man had been "cheeked" by a filthy little outhouse swab. These aliens had to be taught their place.
"What do you mean by that, you awful tick?" shouted Lovelace. "Davenham, go and fetch a hockey stick from Tester's study."
Hazlitt let out with his feet and caught Gordon on the ankle, but the horrible hack he got in return quieted him.
Davenham appeared with a hockey stick.
Gordon managed to get Hazlitt's head between his knees, and Lovelace began to give that worthy a beating he was never likely to forget. In a few minutes he was blubbering for mercy. Fletcher passed by.
"Here you are, Archie," yelled Gordon; "come and have a shot at this swine Hazlitt; we are teaching him that he can't go about knocking off School House hats with impunity."
"Right you are, my lads."
By the time Archie had finished, Hazlitt had almost collapsed. Gordon let him go, and with a hefty boot sent him flying into the cloisters.
"I don't think we shall have any more of him for a bit," said Lovelace, with satisfaction.
"No; these outhouse lads want showing their place from time to time. The School House, after all, istheplace.We are like Rome, the mother city; the other outhouses are merely provinces of ours. Jolly good of us to let them use our buildings at all. Come and change; we have done a good deed, my friends."
But the matter did not end there. That evening in Buller's dormitories Hazlitt told a story of how Caruthers had been bullying him for no reason, and hacking him till he could hardly sit down. He left out Lovelace's name, because Lovelace was popular with the Buller's crowd. News of this reached Felston, the second prefect. He fumed with rage, and sought Gregory, the Buller's house captain.
"Have you heard the latest? That swine Caruthers has been bullying Hazlitt. He drove him all round the cloisters, hitting him with a hockey stick."
"Good God, the swine! Did he really! My word, I'll lay him out in the Three Cock. You wait, that's all. When he plays in the Three Cock, I'll lay him out for dead in the first ten minutes."
In due course this story found its way to the Buller's day-room, where was great rejoicing. So Caruthers was going to be laid out, was he? How damned funny! Hazlitt's heart leapt within him. His evil little mind pictured Gordon being carried off the field, absolutely smashed up. He gloated.
Gordon laughed when he heard of it.
"Oh, well, at any rate I shall have my shot at them first in the Thirds and Two Cock."
He was secretly rather pleased to see that even his enemies had not the slightest doubt about his getting a place in the Three Cock. A House cap was just then his great ambition. But for all that he suffered considerable annoyance. Whenever he went up to the tuck-shop a voice from the Buller's doorway croaked: "Wait for the Three Cock!"
At first it was rather amusing. But soon it got distinctly tiresome. Deep in his heart he cursed the tick Hazlitt and the whole Buller crowd. A joke could be carried to an extreme. And it slowly dawned on him that, if he did play in the Three Cock, he was in for a remarkably thin time.
Almost the last words he heard as the eight-forty swept out of Fernhurst station on the last morning, with itswaving hands and shoutings, was a shriek from the Buller's day-room: "Wait for the Three Cock!" Gordon laughed for a second, and then looked bored. The jest had ceased to have a shred of humour left upon it. It was naked and ought to be ashamed.
The Easter term opened in the conventional way with rain, slush and influenza. The fields were flooded, the country a lake; the bare branches dripped incessantly. But for all that the first round of the Thirds began on the first Saturday.
Buller's drew Rogers's. There was no doubt as to the result. It would be a walk-over for Buller's, though Burgoyne might get over the line once or twice.
There was a crowd in front of the pavilion.
"Well, do something, at any rate," said Gordon. "Don't let Buller's get above themselves. You keep them in order."
"Oh yes, we'll sit on them!" laughed Burgoyne. "By the way, I think it would be rather a good scheme to lay out Hazlitt minor, don't you?"
Never did any forward in any house match at Fernhurst take the field without the sworn intention of laying out some hated opponent. Nevertheless during the whole time Gordon was at school only one boy was hurt so badly that he had to leave the field. And that was an accident. He broke his collar-bone, falling over by the goal-posts. It had become almost a custom to state whom you were going to lay out before the match. The idea sounds brutal, but it never led to anything. Gordon knew this as well as anyone.
"Good man! And look here, if you do, I'll give you a bob."
"A bargain?"
"Of course."
"Right, my lad. We will have a good supper to-night in my study."
The match followed the ordinary course. Frenzied juniors rushed up and down the touch-line inarticulate with excitement; the bloods, strolling arm in arm, patronised the game mildly. Buller's won very easily. Hazlitt played quite decently and scored once. Burgoyne went supperless.
The second and third rounds were played; everywhere Buller's triumphed. No house was beaten by less than forty points. Not a try was scored against them. Christy's, who had lost by forty-four points to nil, had, as the least unsuccessful house, the doubtful honour of joining forces with Buller's to play the School House in the final.
The betting was fairly even. Buller's thought they would win; the House, as usual, was certain of victory. The school expected a level game, and on the whole wanted to see a School House win. Buller's had had too much success of late years; and envy was inevitably at work.
The selection of the combined outhouse side caused a lot of consideration. There was once an idea of playing Hazlitt minor, but much to the annoyance of the House this plan was, from the outhouse point of view, wisely dropped. And now Jack Whitaker—he was always known as Jack—enters the story.
Jack was a very decent sort of kid, much (in the School House estimation) above the standard of Buller's day-room. He was a little rowdy and ostentatious, but had the justification of being really good at something. He was a promising half-back, and his cricket was so good that there was talk of his getting a trial for the School Eleven. Gordon and he got on rather well. But he was very young; under fifteen, in fact, and very impetuous.
About a week before the Thirds "the Bull" was discussing the match in the dormitories. Jack was very full of words.
"I say, sir, isn't it awfully lucky for Hazlitt that he is not playing?"
"The Bull" was surprised. Only that evening he had been talking with Hazlitt, and telling him how sorry he was that there was no place for him in the side.
"Why, Jack? I don't know what you mean."
"Oh, well, you see, sir, all the School House fellows had sworn to lay him out!"
"You must not talk like that, Jack. It is not sporting. And it stirs up ill feeling in the school. You can't honestly believe that any gentleman would play a game in that spirit. You have no proof of what you say except mere rumour, I suppose. You mustn't talk like that."
"The Bull" was not at all pleased, and walked away to turn out the light. Whitaker saw he had gone too far and had said more than he meant to. But he couldn't stand the idea that "the Bull" should think he had been repeating merely idle chatter.
"But, sir, I know for certain that in the Christy's match the School House men were offering money to Christy's to lay Hazlitt out."
Buller stopped with his hand on the gas-tap.
"That is a very serious accusation, Jack. Are you telling me that any Fernhurst boys so lack sportsmanlike feeling as to bribe boys in other houses to lay out their rivals, so that it will be easier for them to win."
"Oh, sir, I don't think that they meant that."
"Well, you said it, at any rate."
The gas went out suddenly. "The Bull" strode out without saying good-night. In his study he turned over in his mind the extraordinary story he had heard. If what Jack had told him was the truth, Fernhurst football, which was to him, and to many others, the finest thing in the world, had become little better than league professionalism. Bribes were being offered for men to be laid out. He had never heard of such a thing. There was no one to remind him that the offering of bribes means little to a schoolboy, and the mere talk of "laying people out" still less. It is all a question of custom, of the sense in which phrases are used by the particular speakers who use them.
There are certain words which to-day are vulgar and disgusting, but which in the days of Shakespeare would have been used in any company without a blush. And this is so merely because time has given the words a different significance. Indeed, from the point of view of the average person, to leave schoolmasters out of the question, the idea of offering bribes to lay out athletes is revolting. And so it is. It is unsportsmanlike, unworthy of English traditions. But when Gordon offered Burgoyne a shilling to lay out Hazlitt, although he said it was a bargain, he meant nothing at all by his offer. He knew that Burgoyne, once he got on the field, could think of nothing but the game, and would forget all about Hazlitt and himself. Everyone offered bribes, but no one had been known to receive apenny of them. Still, Buller could not be expected to know this. He saw in the affair a menace to the future of Fernhurst sport. Jack's story might be only idle chatter, or it might have some foundation. At any rate he had got to go to the bottom, and sift out the truth for the good of Fernhurst.
After evening chapel on the Sunday before the match the Chief sent for Gordon; when Gordon arrived he found Harding, the head of the House, there too. The Chief looked worried. There was a row in prospect. Gordon racked his brain to think of anything that could possibly have been found out about him. Of course there were many old troubles that might have been raked up. He had always realised that the hand of the past would still be near the shoulder of the present. Yet, what had he been doing recently?
"Isn't Hazelton coming, Harding?" The Chief was speaking.
"Yes, sir; but I believe he is collecting chapel cards."
Hazelton too. Complications, forsooth. There was an awkward pause. Then Hazelton came in, quite at his ease.
"Sir, the chapel cards; and I believe you wanted to see me, sir?"
"Ah, yes, Hazelton; put the cards on my desk. Now, Caruthers, I want to ask you a question before the head and captain of the House that I hope you will answer truthfully. Did you offer a boy in Mr. Christy's house money to 'lay out,' I believe that was the phrase, a boy in Mr. Buller's house in the recent house match."
Gordon thought for a moment. Had he? It was quite likely he had; but he could not remember. Then the scene came back. The crowd in front of the pavilion. Burgoyne: Hazlitt in the offing.
"Yes, sir," he replied, after the instant's hesitation.
"You seem rather doubtful about it."
"Well, sir, I was trying to remember whether I had or not."
The Chief was nettled by such apparent callousness.
"You talk as if you were in the habit of offering such rewards. Are you?"
"Well, sir, it is the sort of thing any fellow might do."
"That is neither here nor there. I doubt the truth of your statement very much. But even if the school had become so generally demoralised as you suggest, that would not be any excuse for you. As a matter of fact, how much did you offer the boy?"
"A shilling, sir."
"Was that a genuine offer, now? If he had done what you wanted him to, would you have paid him?"
Gordon was now well out of his depth. Explanation seemed impossible. Had the offer been genuine? He supposed it had. If the tick had been laid out, Gordon would have been so delighted that he would have stood the whole of Christy's drinks all round.
"Yes, sir," he said quite cheerfully.
A smile that rose to Hazelton's lips was instantly suppressed.
"Ah! rather like hiring assassins in the cheap novelettes. What was your idea? Did you think Hazlitt would have been a help to the School side?"