As often as not, it is mere chance that provides the most essentially important moments in our lives. It is easy to talk of the inevitable march of Fate, but more usually a chance word or look alters our entire outlook on life. And so it was that the course of Gordon's whole career was suddenly changed into a different channel, at a moment when he was drifting placidly on the stream of a lax conventionality, and was frittering away all his opportunities for sheer lack of anything that would spur him on to a clearer conception of what life means.
During the whole of the term, Tester and Gordon had done their early morning preparation on the V. A green.As they had answered their names at roll, they would take out deck-chairs and cushions and luxuriously pass the three quarters of an hour before breakfast reclining back, putting the finishing touches to the evening's work. It is a very beautiful spot, the V. A green. On three sides it is flanked with buildings; on the fourth is a low wall, which is used as an exit for nocturnal expeditions. It was under the V. A class-room that Gordon and Tester put their chairs. Opposite them was the grey library; beyond rose the Abbey, solemn and austere; on the left was the chapel and the long cloister leading to big school. In the early morning a great hush pervaded the place. The only sound was the faint tolling of the Almshouse bell. Between the Abbey and the library the sun rose in a blaze of glory.
On the last morning of the term Gordon and Tester lolled back in their comfortable chairs. Gordon was trying to learn his rep. for the exam. that morning. Tester was readingThe Oxford Book of English Verse; the exams for the Sixth were over.
"Oh, damn this," said Gordon. "I can't learn the stuff."
He flung the book down, and lay back watching the first rays of the sun flicker on the cold bronze of the Abbey.
"This has been a rotten term, you know," he said at last.
"Yes?" said Tester. He was engrossed in poetry.
"Well, I got into the deuce of a row with Chief, and I never got my House cap, and I've broken it off with Jackson."
Tester put down his book and sat up.
"Caruthers, you know you are wasting your time. Here are you with all your brilliance and your personality worrying only about House caps and petty intrigues, and little things like that. What you want to realise is that there is something beyond the aim of a Fernhurst career. You are clever enough; but poetry and art mean nothing to you."
"Oh poetry, that's all right for Claremont and asses like that, but what's the use of it?"
"Oh, use, use! Nothing but this eternal cry about the use of a thing. Poetry is the sort of beacon-light of man. What's wrong with you is that you've read the wrong stuff.It is all very well for a middle-aged man to worship Wordsworth and calm philosophy. But youth wants colour, life, passion, the poetry of revolt. Now look here, let me read you this, and then tell me what you think of it."
"Oh, all right. Is it long?"
"No, not very."
In a low, clear voice, Tester began to read the great spring Chorus inAtalanta, into which Swinburne has crowded all that he ever knew of joy and happiness. In everyone there lies the love of beauty—"we needs must love the highest when we see it"—but the pity is that so few of us are ever brought face to face with the really lovely, or perhaps, if we are, we come to it too late. Our power of appreciation has lain too long dormant ever to be aroused. And at school it is the common thing for boys to pass through their six years' traffic without ever realising what beauty is. They are told to read Vergil, Tennyson and Browning, the philosophers, the comforters of old age, poets who "had for weary feet the gift of rest." But boys never hear of Byron, Swinburne and Rossetti, men with big flaming hearts that cried for physical beauty and the loveliness of tangible things. As a result they drift out into the world, to take their place with the dull, commonplace Philistine who has made the House of Commons what it is.
But as Gordon heard Tester reading the wonderful riot of melody, which conjures up visions of rainbows, and far-receding sunsets, of dew gleaming like crystals in the morning, of water gliding like forgotten songs, a strange peace descended on him. He had not known that there could be anything so intensely beautiful. Over the great Abbey the sun was rising heavenwards; down the street past the Almshouses he heard the happy sound of a young girl laughing. The world was full of strange new things; there was a new meaning in the song of the blackbird, in the rustle of the leaves, in the whispering of the warm wind. And suddenly there came over him a sensation of how far he himself was below the splendour of it all. He had walked through life with blinded eyes; with dulled senses he had stared at the ground, while all the time the great ideal of beauty was shining from the blue mountains of man's desire.
Tester had finished reading.
"Well what do you think of it?"
"Oh, it's wonderful. I never dreamt of such music."
"Yes, you see, masters grow old; they forget what it was like to be young; they want us to look at life through their spectacles, and, of course, we can't. Youth and age is an impossible combination; we have to cut a way for ourselves, Caruthers, sometimes we fail, sometimes we succeed. I've made a pretty fair mess of things, because I have gone on my own way; because I have had no one to guide me. I found little consolation in mature thought, and I am not one of the fools who has just taken things for granted; I strike out by myself. I want to find what beauty really is, and I shall find it by sifting out everything first. I have probed a good many things one way and another, some ugly, some beautiful. I have followed the course of Nature. After all, Nature is more likely to be right than an artificial civilisation. I follow where my inclinations lead me. I hate laws and regulations. As I've often said, I did not ask to come into this world, so I shall do as I please, and I think that I shall reach home all right in the end. Literature is a great sign-post!"
"Yes," said Gordon simply. "I never imagined it before. Who wrote that, by the way?"
"Swinburne, the great pagan who was sick of the sham and pretence of his day, and cried for the glories of Rome. Look here, Caruthers, come down to Gisson's afterwards, and as a memento of our year together in Study 1, just let me give you Swinburne'sPoems and Ballads. It's great stuff; you'll like it, and you'll find there something a bit better than your caps and pots."
Gordon did not answer. The sun had now risen high above the Abbey. Across the silence was wafted the cracked notes of the School House bell; there was a rush of feet from the studies. For a few minutes Gordon lay back in his chair quite quiet. A new day had broken on his life. The future opened out with wide promises, with possibilities of great things. For he had heard at last the call which, if ever a man hears it, he casts away the nets and follows after—the call of beauty—"which is, after all, only truth, seen from another side."
"... and drank delight of battle with my peers."Tennyson.
"... and drank delight of battle with my peers."
Tennyson.
"Yet would you tread againAll the road over?Face the old joy and pain—Hemlock and clover?Yes. For it still was good,Good to be living,Buoyant of heart and blood;Fighting, forgiving."Austin Dobson.
"Yet would you tread againAll the road over?Face the old joy and pain—Hemlock and clover?Yes. For it still was good,Good to be living,Buoyant of heart and blood;Fighting, forgiving."
Austin Dobson.
"Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard."Lindsay Gordon.
"Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard."
Lindsay Gordon.
Miracles do not happen, nor do sudden conversions. Man very rarely changes. What he is at the beginning, he is at the end; all that occurs is that at various stages of his journey he looks at life from a different point of view, or rather through a different pair of spectacles, for never on this earth do we really see things as they are. When Gordon found new influences at work upon him, when he discovered through literature that there is something higher than the ignoble monotony of the average individual routine, he did not suddenly change his whole way of life, and, "like a swimmer into cleanness leaping," put out of sight behind him the things that had pleased him once. Right and wrong are merely relative terms. What was considered right in the days of Cæsar spells social ostracism to-day. And there are a few who prefer to see life as the Romans saw it, and to follow the ideals of power and physical beauty. For such life is not easy. Yet we are not so much better than "when Cæsar Augustus was Egypt's Lord!" The question of what is really right and what is really wrong will never be satisfactorily decided, on thisearth at any rate, for we cannot all wear the same spectacles for long. Temperament is all-powerful.
And Gordon made no attempt to settle the question. He did not suddenly feel a loathing for his former pleasures, but during the long summer holidays, as he bathed in the waters of English poetry, it seemed to him as if he had outgrown them, and cast them aside. Perhaps in the future they might momentarily appear beautiful once more, but he did not think that he would ever again wear them for very long, for they were, after all, little, insignificant, trivial, and contrasted poorly with the white heat of Byron's passion, and the flaming ardour of Swinburne, that cried for "the old kingdoms of earth and their kings." As he read on, while the summer sun sank in a red sea behind the gaunt Hampstead firs, read of the proud, domineering soul of Manfred, visualised the burst of passion that had prompted the murder inThe Last Confession, felt the thundering paganism of theHymn to Proserpine, he was overcome with a tremendous hatred for the system that had kept literature from him as a shut book, that had offered him mature philosophy instead of colour and youth, and tried to prevent him from seeking it for himself. So this is the way, he thought, the youth of England is being brought up. Masters tell us to fix all our energies on achieving school successes, and think of calf-bound prizes and tasselled caps all day long. No wonder that, if they bind us down to trivial things, we become like the Man with the Muck-Rake, and drift on with low aims, with nothing to help us to live differently from cattle. No wonder the whole common room is repeatedly shocked by the discovery of some sordid scandal.
Gordon's soul was very arrogant and very intolerant, and it was rather unfortunate that, at a time when he was bubbling over with rebellion, Arnold Lunn's novel,The Harrovians, should have been published, as no previous school story had done it stripped school life of sentiment, and a storm of adverse criticism broke out. Old Harrovians wrote to the papers, saying that they had been at Harrow for six years, and that the conversation was, except in a few ignoble exceptions, pure and manly, and that the general atmosphere was one of clean, healthy broadmindedness.Gordon fumed. What fools all these people were! When they were told the truth, they would not believe it. Prophets must prophesy smooth things, or else were not prophets. How was there ever going to be any hope of improvement till the true state of affairs was understood?
And then a sudden doubt came to Gordon. What if these old Harrovians were right? What if this man Lunn had depicted the life of the exceptional, not of the average boy? What then of Fernhurst? He had judged the book by his own experiences. Was it possible that his school was worse than other schools, and what was usual there, would be exceptional at Rugby, Eton and Winchester? He had been so proud of Fernhurst, with its grey cloisters and dreaming Abbey, with its magnificent Fifteen and fine boxers. He had cursed at the Public School system because he thought it had done harm to Fernhurst. What if Fernhurst and not the system were at fault? For several days this worried him.
One evening, however, during the last week of the holidays, a Mr Ainslie came to dinner. He had been a contemporary of Lunn's at Harrow, and had himself been head of his house for two years. The conversation had drifted to a discussion of recent books:The Woman Thou Gavest Me,Sinister Street,The Devil's Garden,Round the Corner.
"By the way, Gordon," said Ainslie, "read that book,The Harrovians?"
"Oh yes, sir."
"What did you think of it?"
"I liked it very much—thought it was the finest school story I had ever read." Gordon felt rather nervous. He was aware that he was on thin ice, and timidly blurted out: "But, sir, was it true to Harrow life?"
"Absolutely; and it's as true to the life of any other Public School. They are all much the same, you know, at the root."
An immense weight was lifted from Gordon's mind.
"I thought so, sir, but such a lot of fellows wrote to the papers saying it was all rot, and I began to wonder if——"
"My dear Gordon, don't you make any mistake about it. Lunn knows what he is talking about. But old Public Schoolmen shroud their school life in a mist of sentiment; so they forget what they really did. All they remember is how they ragged the 'stinks' master, and pulled off the Senior cricket cup. Why, when that new house master—oh, what's his name, Lee? Well, at any rate, when he came to Lunn's house he was slowly getting rid of undesirables for terms, actually for terms. Cayley was not the only one who had to go, and, of course, no one thought of anything but games. I got a schol. there from my prep., and I literally had to live it down. It took me some time, too. We want a good deal of improvement in this rusty old system."
So after all it was the system that was at fault, not Fernhurst.... Fairly contentedly he went back by the three-thirty from Waterloo; but as he saw the evening sun steeping the gravel courts in shadows, and watched the lights flickering behind the study panes, it came home to him with a poignant vividness that Fernhurst, which should have been a home of dreams and of ideas, had, by the inefficiency of a vacillating system, become immersed in petty intrigues, and was filled with a generation that was being taught to blind itself to the higher issues.
But in a moment he was caught up in the tear and bustle of an opening term. There was the rush to the notice-board to see what dormitory he was in, who were the prefects; then the hurried interview with the Chief, and the inevitable Health certificate. The meeting of the eight-ten from Exeter; prayers; the arrival of the last train; and finally sleep. The hold of tradition is very strong; in a few moments Gordon had flung aside his doubts and scruples. Arm-in-arm with Collins he rolled down to the day-room to look at the new boys. There were twelve of them in all, very frightened, very timid, huddled round the day-room fire, wondering what was before them.
"Well, Caruthers, what do you think of that lot?" said Collins, as they swaggered back again to the studies.
"Oh, not much; that fellow second from the left was not bad. What's his name, oh yes, Morcombe. Believe me, he is some stuff."
"Oh, I thought him rather a washed-out specimen, but, I say, that fat fellow looks rather a sport. You know, the man like a dormouse."
"Oh yes, that podgy lad. Morgan, he is Welsh, I know about him. He was captain of the prep, last year at football—not a bad forward, I believe. Oh, but there's Lovelace—Lovelace."
"Hullo, Caruthers."
In a huge brown coat, Lovelace charged across from the porter's lodge. "Had any cricket? What price Middlesex—below Hants, rotten county—you should watch Leicester now."
"Oh, dry up, Middlesex has had bad luck this year." The defeat at Lord's by Worcester and Kent in the same week was a sore point with Gordon.
"Oh, did they? I call them rotten players. But, look here, who are pres?"
"Oh, Tester, Betteridge, Clarke, Mansell, all the whole crowd."
"Good God, 'some' pres! Wait a sec. for me. I am only going to see Chief for a second. I am going to get confirmed, I think. I heard you get off some work for it. Half a sec."
Back to the old life again. Nothing was changed. The same talk, the same interests, all the old things the same. Only he was altered. He felt as if he wanted to stand on the Abbey tower, and shout aloud that the School was wasting its opportunities, and was struggling blindly in the dark, following will-o'-the-wisps. And yet, for all that, he would not have Lovelace, or Mansell or any other of his friends the least bit different. He did not know what he wanted. It was better to let them go on as they were. As it had been, it would be. He could not do much, and at the moment he decided that, whatever he might think or feel, he would outwardly remain the same. The world was not going to look at his soul. He would go on as he had begun, putting things behind him as he outgrew them, and as they appeared childish to him. Only a very few should ever see him as he really was. The rest would not understand him, they would think him strange, unnatural; and he did not want that.
The first few days passed quickly. The entrance of Ferrers, the new master, into the placid Fernhurst atmosphere caused a mild sensation. The school first sawhim walking across the courts after the masters' meeting on the first day of term. His walk was a roll; he talked at the top of his voice; his left arm sustained a pile of books; his right arm gesticulated wildly.
"Good Gawd," said Tester, "what a bounder."
"Maybe, but he's the sort of man to wake up the school," said Betteridge.
"Isn't it rather like applying a stomach-pump to a man who is only fit for a small dose of Eno's Fruit Salt?"
"Nous verrons."
And in the bustle of a new term Ferrers was forgotten.
Gordon was in the Sixth, and its privileges were indeed sweet. He felt very proud as he sat in the same room with Harding, a double-first, and head of the House, and with Hazelton, the captain of the House. Though it was an ordeal to go on to "con" before them, it was very magnificent to roll down to the football field just before the game began without attending roll.
"I say, Caruthers," Lovelace would yell across the changing-room, "do buck up; it's nearly twenty-five to three, and roll is at a quarter to."
"I don't go to roll," came the lordly answer.
And he felt the eyes of admiring juniors fixed on him. It was sheer joy, too, to wear the blue ribbon of the Sixth Form and to carry a walking-stick; to stroll into shops that were to the rest of the school out of bounds; to go to the armoury and the gym. after tea without a pass. But it was in hall that the new position meant most.
While the rest of the house had to stay in their studies and make some pretence of work, he would wander indolently down the passage and pay calls. When he paused outside a study he heard the invariable sound of a novel flying into the waste-paper basket, of a paper being shoved under the table, or a cake being relegated to the window-seat. Then he came in.
A curse always greeted him.
"Oh, damn you, Caruthers, I thought it was a prefect. Foster, hoist out that cake; we were just having a meal."
He now had the freedom of studies that had before been to him as holy places. Where once Clarke had dealt out justice with a heavy hand, Tester and he sat before the firediscussing books and life. In the games study, where once he trembled before the rage of Lovelace major, he sat with Carter in hall preparing Thucydides. Steps would sound down the passage, a knock on the door.
"Come in," bawled Carter.
"Please, Carter, may I speak to Smith?" a nervous voice would say. No one could talk without leave from a prefect during hall.
"Yes; and shut the outer door," Carter answered, without looking round. The prefectorial dignity seemed in a way to descend on Gordon; just then life was very good. But there were times when he would feel an uncontrollable impatience with the regime under which he lived. One of these was on the second Sunday of term. It was Rogers' turn to preach, and, as always, Gordon prepared himself for a twenty minutes' sleep till the outburst of egoistic rhetoric was spent. But this time, about half-way through, a few phrases floated through his mist of dreams and caught his attention. Rogers was talking about the impending confirmation service. With one hand on the lectern and the other brandishing his pince-nez, as was his custom when he intended to be more than usually impressive, he began the really vital part of the sermon.
"In the holidays there appeared as, I am sorry to say, I expect some of you saw, a book pretending to deal with life at one of our largest Public Schools. I say, pretending, because the book contains hardly a word of truth. The writer says that the boys are callous about religious questions and discuss matters which only grown-up people should mention in the privacy of their own studies, and still more serious, the purport of the book was to attack not only the boys but even the masters who so nobly endeavour to inculcate living ideas of purity and Christianity. I am only too well aware when I look round this chapel to-night—this chapel made sacred by so many memories—that nearly every word of that accusation is false. Yet perhaps there are times—in our mirth, shall we say?—when we are engaged in sport, or genial merriment, when we are inclined to treat sacred matters not with quite that reverence that we ought. Perhaps——"
Rogers prosed on, epithet followed epithet, egotism andarrogance vied with one another for predominance. The school lolled back in the oak seats and dreamt of house matches, rags, impositions, impending rows. At last the Chief gave out the final hymn. Into the cloisters the school poured out, hustling, shouting, a stream of shadows. Contentedly Rogers went back to his house, ate a large meal, and addressed a little homily to the confirmation candidates in his house on the virtues of sincerity.
"What a pitiable state of mind old 'Bogus' must be in," sighed Tester, when the scurry of feet along the passage had died down kind of quiet, and he and Gordon were sitting in front of a typically huge School House fire.
"I don't think I should call it a mind at all," muttered Gordon, who was furious about the whole affair. "The man's an utter fool. When he is told the truth he won't believe it, but stands there in the pulpit rambling on, airing his rotten opinions. Good God, and that's the sort of man who is supposed to be moulding the coming generation. Oh, it's sickening."
"Well, my good boy, what more can you expect? The really brilliant men don't take up schoolmastering; it is the worst paid profession there is. Look at it, a man with a double-first at Oxford comes down to a place like Fernhurst and sweats his guts out day and night for two hundred pounds a year. Of course, the big men try for better things. Rogers is just the sort of fool who would be a schoolmaster. He has got no brain, no intellect, he loves jawing, and nothing could be more suitable for him than the Third Form, the pulpit, and a commission in the O.T.C. But perhaps he may have a few merits. I have not found any yet."
"Nor I. But, you know, some good men take up schoolmastering."
"Oh, of course they do. There is the Chief, for instance, a brilliant scholar andtheauthority on Coleridge. But he is an exception; and besides, he did not stop an assistant master long; he got a headmastership pretty soon. Chief is a splendid fellow. But I am talking of the average man. Just look at our staff: a more fatuous set of fools I never struck. All in a groove, all worshipping the same rotten tin gods. I am always repeating myself, but I can't help it.Damn them all, I say, they've mucked up my life pretty well; not one of them has tried to help me. They sit round the common room fire and gas. Betteridge swears Ferrers is a wonderful man; personally, I think he is an unmitigated nuisance. But at any rate, he is the only man who ever thinks for himself. Oh, what fools they all are."
For the rest of the evening Gordon and Tester cursed and swore at everyone and everything, and on the whole felt better for having got it off their chests. At any rate, next day Gordon was plotting a rag on an enormous scale with Archie Fletcher; and in a House game assisted in the severe routing of Rogers' house by seventy-eight points to nil. It takes a good deal to upset a boy of fifteen for very long. And the long evenings were a supreme happiness.
It must be owned that during hall Lovelace was rather unsociable. It was not that he studied Greek or Latin; he had a healthy contempt for scholastic triumphs; horse-racing was the real interest of his life. "This is my work," he used to scoff, brandishingThe Sportsmanin Gordon's face. "I am not going to be a classic scholar, and I sha'n't discover any new element, or such stuff as that. I am going on the turf. This is my work."
For an hour every evening he laboured perseveringly at "his work" with form books,The Sportsman, and huge account books. For every single race he chose the runners, and laid imaginary bets; each night he made out how much he had lost or made; and it must be confessed that if he had really laid money on the horses, he would most certainly have done a good term's work. By Christmas he was one hundred and seventeen pounds up. This pursuit, of course, rather militated against his activities in the class-room; but, as he said, "It was only Claremont, the old Methuselah—and they had a damned good crib." Lovelace did his work from seven to eight, and during this time Caruthers, who seemed to be in the happy condition of never having any work to do at all, wandered round the studies. And during his peregrinations many who had been to him before merely units in a vast organisation detached themselves from the rest, and became to him living characters; especially was this so with Foster. He had playedwith Foster for two years in the Colts and in A-K sides, but there had never been anything in common between them; their interests had been far apart; neither stood for anything to the other. But now, when Gordon found himself frequently dropping into Foster's study for half-an-hour or so, he realised how many qualities Foster had. Foster was strong-willed, obstinate almost, quite regardless of tradition, in his own way slightly a rebel, and a past master in the art of deceiving masters. There are two ways of making a master look a fool: one is by introducing processions and coloured mice; the other by bowing before him, making him think you are hard-working and industrious, and all the while laughing at him behind his back. Gordon preferred the former, because he had the love of battle; but Foster held to the second method, in its way equally effective, and anyone who shook a spear against authority was sure of sympathy from Gordon.
It was a great sight to see Foster bamboozle Claremont. With the greatest regularity Foster was ploughed in his con., failed to score in Latin prose, and knew nothing of his rep. And yet he never got an imposition. He would point out how hard he worked; he often stayed behind after school for a few seconds to ask Claremont a point in the unseen. Such keenness was unusual, and Claremont could not connect it with the slovenly productions that he had learnt to associate with the name of Foster. For a long time it was a vast enigma. At half term Foster's report consisted of one word, typically Claremontian—"Inscrutable." But manners always win in the end. Foster showed so much zeal, such an honest willingness to learn, that Claremont finally classed him as a hard-working, keen, friendly, but amazingly stupid boy. The Army class, which Foster honoured with his presence, always did Latin and English with Claremont, and for over two years Foster sat at the back of Claremont's room, scoring marks by singles when others scored by tens. Yet his reports were invariably good; he never had an imposition; he never needed to prepare a line of anything.
"Well, Foster," Claremont used to say, as he returned a prose entirely besmirched with blue pencil, "I believe you really try, but the result is most disheartening."
Foster always looked profoundly distressed; and at the end of the hour he would go up, prose in hand, and ask why the subject of an active verb could not be in the ablative. Two minutes later he would emerge with a broad grin on his face, and murmur to whoever might be near that Claremont was "a most damnable ass, but none the less a pleasant creature." And in the evening hall he and Gordon would discuss how one or other of them had advanced a step further into the enemy's country, and taken one more pawn in the gigantic game of bluff. They were both in their own fashion working to the same end.
But at this point the serene calm of Gordon's life was suddenly rudely interrupted by an incursion on the part of "the Bull." About three weeks after the term had begun the Colts played their first game, and like most sides at the beginning of a season, they were terribly disorganised. Lovelace, who had been in under-sixteen teams for years, was the Senior Colts badge and was captain. Burgoyne led the scrum; he was a rough diamond, if indeed a diamond at all, and was not too popular with the side. Foster was scrum half; Collins and Gordon were in the scrum. It was really quite a decent side, but this particular afternoon it started shakily. "The Bull" raged so madly and cursed so furiously that the side became petrified with funk, and could do nothing right.
Once and only once did the Colts look like scoring, and then Lovelace knocked on the easiest pass right between the posts.
"Never did I see anything like it," bellowed Buller. "For eighteen years I have coached Fernhurst; and before that I coached Oxford and Gloucestershire; and I am not going to stand this. Lovelace, you are not fit to be captain of a pick-up, let alone a school Colts side. Burgoyne, skipper the side. Now then, two minutes more to half-time; do something, Colts."
The Colts did do something. They let the other side score twice. At half-time Buller poured forth a superb torrent of rhetoric. And suddenly there came over Gordon an uncontrollable desire to laugh. "The Bull" looked so funny, with his hair ruffled, and his eyes flaming with wrath. Gordon had to look the other way, or he wouldhave burst into paroxysms of laughter. When one is overexcited and worried, hysteria is not far absent. Gordon turned away.
Then suddenly he felt a terrific assault on his backside. Someone had booted him most fiercely, and turning round he saw the face of Buller still more distorted with rage.
"Never saw such rudeness! Here am I trying to coach the rottenest side that has ever disgraced a Fernhurst ground, and you haven't the manners to listen to me. Good man, are you so perfect that you can afford to pay no attention to me? For heaven's sake, don't make your footer like your cricket, the slackest thing in the whole of Fernhurst. Come on, we'll go on with this game."
For ten more minutes "the Bull" watched the Colts making feverish endeavours to do anything right. But his powers of endurance were not equal to the strain.
"Here," he shouted, as Harding was going up to change after superintending a pick-up, "you might referee for about ten more minutes here, will you? I can't bear the sight of the little slackers any longer."
A sigh of relief went up as the figure of Buller rolled out through the field gate. Strangely enough, the Colts did rather better after this, and Collins scored a really quite fine try. But the side left the field glowing with resentment. None more than Gordon and Lovelace.
"What does the fool mean by making a little ass like Burgoyne captain?" complained Gordon. "Dirty little beast, who does not wash or shave. And he hacked me up the bottom, too, the swine. I'm getting a bit sick of 'The Bull.'"
"So am I. What we really want is my brother back again. He kept him in order all right. My brother was a strong man, and did not stand any rot from Buller or anyone else."
"Hullo, you two, you look about fed up! What's the row?"
They turned round; Mansell was coming up behind them. Lovelace burst out perfervidly:
"It's that fool Buller. He cursed the Colts all round, and he made Burgoyne captain instead of me, and hehacked Gordon's bottom, and told him he had no manners. Believe me, we have had a jolly afternoon."
"And I suppose he said that he had captained Oxford, Cambridge, New Zealand and the Fiji Islands, and that in his whole career he had never seen anything like it."
"Oh yes, he fairly rolled out his qualifications, like a maid-servant applying for a post."
"Oh, well, never mind," said Mansell; "he is a good chap, really, only he can't keep his temper. He'll probably apologise to you both before the end of the day. I remember Ferguson said once: 'All men are fools and half of them are bloody fools.' Not so bad for Ferguson that! Cheer up!"
"Yes; but, damn it all, it is a bit thick," said Lovelace. "And a tick like Burgoyne to boot."
As they were changing, a fag from Buller's made a nervous entry; he looked very lost, but finally summoned up enough courage to ask Davenport if he knew where Caruthers was.
"Yonder, sirrah, lurking behind the piano."
The fag came up.
"Oh—I say—er—Caruthers. 'The Bull'—er, I mean Mr Buller wants to see you as soon as you are changed."
"Right," said Gordon.
"I said so," said Mansell; "he will weep over you and shake your hand like a long-lost brother; and after you will follow Lovelace, who will once more lead the lads with white jerseys and red dragons to victory against Osborne. Good-bye; you needn't stop, you know," he informed the fag, who was giving a stork-like performance, by gyrating first on one foot then on another.
"That means I shall miss my tea," said Gordon.
"I fear so," answered Mansell. "I don't really think you can expect 'the Bull' to receive you with crumpets and muffins and other goodly delights. Of course to-morrow is Sunday; you might manage to work a supper-party, but don't rely on it. Come and tell me the result of your chat; you will find me in my study; don't knock; just walk in; you are always welcome."
As Gordon walked across the courts to Buller's study he had not the slightest doubt as to how the interview wouldend. "The Bull" was often like this. Only yesterday Foster had told him some long yarn of how he had beaten a lad in Christy's and had hit his hand by mistake; and to kick a person was, after all, a far more undignified method of assault. It was almost actionable. Quite contentedly he knocked on the door and went in. He was not, however, welcomed with open arms. "The Bull" stood with his back to the door, facing the fireplace, his hands behind his back. He did not speak for a minute or so. Gordon wondered if it would be correct to take a chair. "The Bull" broke the silence.
"Well, Caruthers, are you sorry for what happened this afternoon?"
This took Gordon by surprise: it was hardly the interview he had been led to expect. He murmured "Yes, sir" rather indistinctly.
"Are you, though? Because if you are going to come in here and say you are sorry, when you are not, simply to smooth things over, you would be a pretty rotten sort of fellow."
"Yes, sir." Gordon had recovered his self-control and was ready for a fight.
"Well, this is the way I look at things. I am here to coach Fernhurst sides; it is my life's work. I love Fernhurst, and I have devoted all my energy and care to help my old school, and it seems to me that you are trying—you and Lovelace between you—to ruin my work and stand in my light. Both of you as individuals are well worth your places in both under-sixteen sides, football and cricket. As individuals, I say; and you think you are indispensable to the side, and that we can't do without you. You can afford to laugh when you miss catches, and not pay attention to me when I am trying to give you the benefits of my experience."
"I heard every word——"
"Will you kindly wait till I have finished. Fernhurst has done very well in the past without you and Lovelace, and five years hence it will have to do without you, and I am not going to have you interfere with the present. You hate me, I dare say; from all I hear of you, you hate my house; and you stir up sedition against me. You show theothers how much you care for me. And you are both people who have some influence in your house, and wherever you are, for that matter. And are you using it for the good of Fernhurst? You ruined all my pleasure in the cricket Colts; but I don't care about myself. All I care for is Fernhurst. Why did I stop Lovelace being captain? Because I want a man who is going to back me up, who is going to play for the side and not for himself. And I tell you I am going to drop Lovelace; he plays for himself; he gives rotten passes; he upsets combination; and I won't have him on my side."
Gordon could stand it no longer.
"Sir, I am not going to hold a brief for myself. But you have not treated Lovelace fairly. Last year on a trial game you kicked him out of the side, only to find in a week that you could not do without him. And to-day, sir, on a trial game you deposed him from the captaincy."
"Do you mean to say that after playing Rugby football for twenty-five years I don't know what I am talking about?"
Gordon saw he had said too much.
"And I am not talking about his play, I am talking about his general attitude. Now, didn't you two rag about a good deal at the nets last term?"
"Well, sir, it was hardly ragging, sir——"
"Oh, hardly ragging.... There must be no ragging.... If we are going to turn out good sides we must be in dead earnest the whole time. You imagine you are loyal to Fernhurst. My old sides followed me implicitly. I loved them, and they loved me. We worked together for Fernhurst; now, are you doing your best for Fernhurst?"
Gordon was overwhelmed. He wanted to tell "the Bull" how mistaken he was; that he and Lovelace did not hate him at all; that they were doing their best; but that their sense of humour was at times too strong. But it was useless. "The Bull" would not give him a chance. And he had learnt from Mansell and Tester that "the Bull" could only see one point of view at a time. And yet he was filled with an immense admiration for this man who thought only of Fernhurst, who had worked for Fernhurst all his life, who made Fernhurst's interests the standard for every judgmentand action. There was something essentially noble in so unswerving a devotion. If only his love of Fernhurst had not made him so complete an egoist.
"Well, what is it to be, Caruthers?" Buller went on. "Are you going to work with me or against me? When you first came you were keen and willing. You are still keen, but you think too much of yourself now; you imagine you know more than I do. Is all this going to stop? Are we going to work together?"
There was nothing to be gained by arguing.
"Sir, I shall do my best to."
"Well, I hope so, Caruthers. It is not for my own sake I mind; you see that, don't you? It is Fernhurst that matters. We must all do our best for Fernhurst. I hope we sha'n't have any more trouble, you will be a power in the school some day, we must work together—for Fernhurst."
"Yes, sir."
Gordon walked to the door; as he put his hand on the knob he paused for a second, then turned round.
"Good-night, sir."
"Good-night, Caruthers."
He was out in the street again. There was a tremendous noise going on in one of the Buller's studies. From the courts came sounds of barge football. He did not feel as if he wanted to go and discuss everything with Mansell for a minute or so. Slowly he wandered round the shrubbery, past the big school, past the new buildings into the Abbey courtyard. He sat down on a seat and tried to think. A girl came and sat beside him and smiled at him invitingly. He took no notice. She sat there a minute or so, then got up and walked off stiffly. The Abbey clock boomed out the quarter to six. In a minute or so he would have to go back to tea. He was worried. He liked "the Bull," admired him intensely; and yet "the Bull" thought he hated him, thought him disloyal. Why could not Buller keep his temper? Why must he rush to conclusions without weighing the evidence? And "the Bull" was such a splendid man; he was one of the very few masters Gordon respected in the least. He wanted "the Bull" to like him. And then there was Lovelace. Why couldn't "the Bull" try tosee life as Lovelace saw it? Why must he want everyone to share the same views as he, look at everything through the same spectacles? It wouldn't have mattered if he was merely an insignificant busybody like Christy. He was such a splendid fellow, such a man. It was all such a pity. And yet he realised that he would have to try and bend his will to that of Buller; he must endeavour to work side by side with him. It would not do to have Fernhurst split up into two camps. In the past he had thought he was doing his best; but "the Bull" wanted absolute subservience. And what "the Bull" wanted he usually got.
Lovelace, however, took quite a different view. He was mad with Buller.
"Damn it all, it is not the first time the swine has done the dirty on me. Look at the way he kicked me out of the side last year."
"I know, that's what I told him. And he owned that both of us as individuals were worth our places, but that we upset the side and rotted about, and were always up against him."
"Silly ass the man must be. We are keen enough, aren't we? But I damned well don't see why we should treat footer and cricket like a chapel service. We can laugh in form if anything funny happens; then why the hell shouldn't we laugh on the field? And, my God, Caruthers, you did look an ass when you missed that catch." Lovelace roared with laughter at the thought of it. "The way you juggled with it, and old Bull tearing his hair, oh, it was damned funny."
"But, you see, 'the Bull' thinks games are everything, and, damn it all, they are the things that really matter. We each may have our own private interests. But games are the thing. Only personally I don't see why we should not see the funny side of them. To 'the Bull' a dropped catch is an everlasting disgrace."
"Oh, let 'the Bull' go to blazes, I am sick of him. If he wants to kid me out of the Colts, he can; and I'll go and enjoy myself on House games. But look here, there is a Stoics debate to-night and it's nearly roll-time. You had better go down and bag two seats."
The Stoics society was of elastic proportions, including everyone above IV. A, for a life subscription of sixpence, and during the winter term it held meetings every other week in the School House reading-room. The actual membership was over a hundred, but rarely more than fifty attended, and of those who went only fifty per cent. paid any attention to the proceedings. The rest looked on it as a good excuse for getting off work. Three quarters of the society were from the School House, and these arrived with deck chairs, cushions and a novel, and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Christy was the president, and this was to a great extent the reason for so general an atmosphere of boredom and indifference. For Christy was the typical product of conventionality and pharisaism. He was so thoroughly contented with anything he superintended that he refused to believe any improvement was possible. But this year Betteridge was honorary secretary and had tried to infuse a little life into the society. The subject for the first debate of the term was "Classical and Modern Education," and Ferrers was going to speak for the modern side. Ferrers was always writing to the papers, and was already well known in the common room as a feverish orator. A good deal had been rumoured about him, and the school were rather anxious to hear him. There was quite a large audience. At about twenty past seven Christy came in, and everyone stood up till he had sat down. Burgess was to open the debate for the classics, and Christy was to second him. Ferrers and Pothering, the head of Claremont's, were for the moderns. The debate was supposed to open at twenty past the hour. But Ferrers had not arrived. There was an awkward pause. At last Christy got up.
"I really think it is useless to wait any longer for Mr Ferrers. We will proceed. The motion before the House is: That in the opinion of this House a classical education is more efficacious than a modern one. I will call on Mr Burgess to open the motion."
There was a little clapping as Burgess got up with a customary display of conceit. He ran his hand through his hair and took a glance at his notes, and then beganwith the blasé air of Mercury addressing a Salvation Army meeting.
"Of course those in favour of modern education will defend themselves on the grounds of general utility. They will point out the uselessness of Greek in business; all I can say to that is that the Public School man should be too much of a gentleman to wish to succeed in business. He should aim higher; he should follow the ideals set before him by the classics. Nearly all the poets and politicians of to-day are Public School men; nearly all ..."
He went on rolling off absurdly dogmatic statements that were based solely on ignorance and arrogance. He was of the Rogers' school of oratory. He believed that a sufficient amount of conceit and self-possession would carry anyone through. About half-way through his speech he was interrupted by the approach of a whirlwind. There was a sound of feet on the stone passage, something crashed against the door, and in rolled Ferrers in a most untidy blue suit, a soft collar, an immense woollen waistcoat, and three books under his arm. These he slammed on the table, in company with his cap.
"Awfully sorry, Christy, old fellow ... been kept ... new lot of books from Methuen's ... had to take one up to my wife ... rather ill, you know.... Fire away, Burgess."
All his remarks were flung off in jerks at a terrific rate. The abashed orator concluded rather prematurely and rather wildly; such an incursion was most irregular and very perplexing.
"I will now call on Mr Ferrers to speak."
Up leapt Ferrers and began at once firing off his speech at the pace of a cinematograph. He was full of mannerisms. He would clap his hand over his eyes when he wanted to think of something, and would then spread it out straight before him. It was rather dangerous to get close. He would pick up one of his books and shake it in the face of Christy.
"This is what Mackenzie says ... inSinister Street... fine book ... smashes up everything, shows the shallowness of our education ... this is what he says...."
After he had read a few words, he would bang the book down on the table and continue pouring forth inextricable anacolutha. Everyone was listening; they had never heardanything like this before. It was a revelation. Christy chewed his finger-nails. Burgess assumed an air of Olympian content. The flood of rhetoric rolled on:
"It is like this, you see; the classical education makes you imitate all the time ... Greek Prose like Sophocles ... Latin Verse like Petronius.... I don't know if I have got the names right ... probably not ... never could stick doing it. There is no free thought. Classics men do very well in the Foreign Offices, but they can't think.... What do classics do in the literary world? Nothing. Bennett, Lloyd George, Wells—the best men never went to a Public School.... We want originality; and the classics don't give it. They are all right for a year or so to give a grounding of taste ... though they don't give that to the average boy ... but no more. What did I learn from classics?—only to devise a new way of bringing a crib into form.... Is that an education? No, we want French, jolly few cribs to be got of Daudet that are any use to the Lower Fifth ... Maths, that's the stuff ... makes them think.... Riders ... get them out your own way—not Vergil's way or Socrates' way—your own way—originality...."
In this strain he talked for a quarter of an hour, and held the audience spellbound. He had really interested them. Here was something new, something worth listening to. He was received with a roar of clapping.
After his speech everything else fell flat. Christy made one or two super-subtle remarks which no one understood. There was nothing left for Pothering to say; the motion was then put before the House and the debate developed into a farce. Idiot after idiot got up and made some infantile qualification of an earlier statement—all of them talked off the point. So much so, in fact, that Turner was beginning a tale of a fight he had had with a coster down Cheap Street when Christy called him to order.
Gordon at once rose in protest.
"Gentlemen, I address the Chair. It is preposterous that Mr Turner should have been refused a hearing. We may have lost what would perhaps have thrown new light on the subject. Doubtless he had carefully selected this particular anecdote out of a life, alas, too full of excitement"(a roar greeted this, Christy had beaten Turner that very morning for eating chocolates in German), "with the express view of pointing out the superiority of the classics. Doubtless the rough in question, not knowing the custom in Homeric contests, had failed to propitiate the gods, while he, the narrator, had rushed into Back Lane behind Mother Beehive's charming old-world residence, and having offered a prayer to Mars, waited for his burly antagonist in the darkness, and as the vile man, clearly one of St Paul's 'god haters'" (that time the Sixth were reading the "Romans") "thundered by, he smote him with a stone above the eye, and left him discomfited and, like Œdipus, well nigh blind. Here we see——"
But the meeting never found out what they really saw. Gordon was called to order, and sat down amid a tumult of applause. One or two more speakers brought fresh evidence to bear on the subject; and then there was the division. The moderns won by a huge majority. As the rabble passed into the passage Gordon heard Ferrers say to Christy in his most patronising manner:
"Rather wiped the ground with you, didn't we?... Well, never mind, you stood no earthly.... Days of the classics are over. Still, you fought well.... Third line of defence—ad triarios.... I remember a bit of my classics."
Gordon was borne out on the stream past the matron's room to the end of the passage, and the rest of Ferrers's speech was lost.
From this day the Stoics underwent a complete change. The whole nature of the society was altered. Ferrers was so absolutely different from anything that a master had appeared to be from time immemorial. He was essentially of the new generation, an iconoclast, a follower of Brooke and Gilbert Cannan, heedless of tradition, probing the root of everything. At the end of the term Christy resigned his presidency. He could not keep pace with the whirlwind Ferrers.
"You know, Caruthers," said Tester in second hall, "whatever our personal feelings may be, we have got to allow that this man Ferrers has got something in him."
"Something! Why, I thought him simply glorious.Here he is bursting in on the prude conventionality of Fernhurst full of new ideas, smashing up the things that have been accepted unquestionably for years. By Jove, the rest of the staff must hate him."
"There was a thing by him in theA.M.A.the other day that caused considerable annoyance, I believe. I didn't read the thing myself, but I heard 'the Bull' saying it was disgraceful that a Fernhurst master should be allowed to say such things. I suppose he said something against games."
"Well, damn it all, if he did, he is in the wrong. Games are absolutely necessary. What on earth would the country be like without them?"
"A damned sight better, I should think."
"Oh, don't be an ass. Just look at the fellows who don't play games, Rudd and Co. What wrecks they are! Utterly useless. We could do perfectly well without them. Could not we now?"
At this point Betteridge strolled in very leisurely. Authority had made him a dignified person. The days of ragging Trundle seemed very distant. He did not go about with Mansell so much now. He was more often with Carter and Harding.
"Betteridge, come in and sit down," said Tester; "we were arguing on the value of games. Don't you agree with me that it's about time a man like Ferrers made a sensible attack on them?"
"Yes; though I doubt if Ferrers is quite the man to do it. He is such a revolutionary. He would want to smash everything at once. A gradual change is what is needed. I look at it like this. Games are all right in themselves. A man must keep himself physically fit; but games are only a means to an end. The object of all progress is to get a clear, clean-sighted race, intellectual and broadminded. And I think physical fitness is a great help in the production of a clear, clean mind. The very clever man who is weak bodily is so apt to become a decadent; and because he himself can't stand any real exertion, despises those who can. Games are necessary as a means to an end. But Buller and all the rest of the lot think games are the actual end. Look at the way a man with his footer capis idealised and worshipped. He may be an utter rake; probably is, most likely he has no brains at all. If he ever had them, he soon ceased to use them, and devotes all his energies to athletic success. Why should we worship him? Merely because he can kick a rotten football down a rotten field. It is this worship of athletics that is so wrong."
"Oh, you are talking rot," burst out Gordon angrily; "the English race is the finest in the whole world and has been bred on footer and cricket. I own the Public School system has its faults; but not because of games. It stamps out personality, tries to make types of us all, refuses to allow us to think for ourselves. We have to read and pretend to like what our masters tell us to. No freedom. But games are all right. We all have our own interests. Poetry is my chief one at present. But that doesn't blind me to the fact that games are what count. Where should we be without them? And I damn well hope the House is not going to get into a finicky, affected state of mind, despising them because they are too slack to play them. That's why you hate them, Betteridge, because you are no good at them. My great ambition is to be captain of this House and win the Three Cock. Of course the worship of sport is all right. Our fathers worshipped it, and damned good fellows they were, too. I can't stand you when you talk like this. I am going to find Lovelace; he has got a bit of sense."
The door slammed noisily behind him.
"He is very young," said Betteridge.
"Yes; and full of hopes," murmured Tester. "It is a pity to think he will have to be so soon disillusioned. Very little remains the same for long. Pleasure is very evanescent."
Betteridge looked at him a little curiously.
"I should not have thought you would have found that out," he said.
Tester shrugged.
"Oh, well, you know, even the fastest of us get tired of our licence at times. Byron would have become a Benedictine monk if he had lived to be fifty."
Betteridge smiled, and picking up a Browning from the table sank into an easy-chair to read.
Tester remained looking into the fire. What a fool he had been to give himself away just then. It was his great object never to let anyone see into his soul. He had once shown Caruthers what he was, because he could not bear to see a person of ability wasting himself for want of high ideals. He had tried to show him that there was something above the commonplace routine of life. And in a way he had succeeded. Caruthers often came in in the evenings to discuss poetry with him, and those were some of the happiest moments of his life. He was not sorry that he had poured out his heart to him. Of course Caruthers was still young, was still under the influence of environment. But in time he was sure to realise that athletics were not the aim of life, but only a tavern on the wayside, where we may rest for a little, or which we may pass by, just as our fancy takes us. If Caruthers saw this at last, he would then have done at least something not altogether vain.
For, after all, what a useless life his had been. The road he had travelled seemed white with the skeletons of broken hopes. In the glowing coals he saw the pageant of his past unroll itself. He had never been quite the normal person. His father was a minor poet, and for as long as he could remember his house had been full of literary people. Arthur Symons and George Moore had often discussed the relations between art and life across his fireplace. Yeats had told him stories of strange Irish myths; Thomas Hardy had read to him once or twice. He had spent his whole life with men who thought for themselves, who had despised the conventions of their day, and he himself had ceased to believe in anything except what personal experience taught him. He had resolved to find out things for himself. And what, after all, had he discovered? Little except the vanity of mortal things. In his friendship with Stapleton he had for a term or so found a temporary peace, but it had not been for long. As soon as he achieved anything it seemed to collapse before him. He had at times sought to forget his failures in blind fits of passion, but when the fire was burnt out the old world was the old world yet! In books alone he found a lasting comfort. The school looked on him as "quite a decent chap, awfully fast, of course, doesn't care a damn what he does, just lives to enjoyhimself and have a damned good time." He smiled at the irony of it all. If they only knew! But they could never know. He had made a mistake in saying so much to Betteridge; he must not do it again. He must go on probing everything to discover where, if anywhere, was that complete peace, that perfect beauty that he had set out to find. In the meantime the destiny of his life would unfold itself. He would follow where his inclinations led him.
The evening bell broke into his reverie.
He stretched himself.
"Come on, Betteridge. Let us have a rag to-night."
"Oh, I don't think I will, I am rather sleepy." Betteridge was aware of his position. To Tester being a prefect signified very little.
That night Carter's dormitory was submitted to a most fearful raid. Water flowed everywhere. Two sheets were ripped and a jug broken. Rudd's bed was upset on the floor with Rudd underneath.
"By Jove, Caruthers," said Lovelace, from Harding's well-behaved dormitory, "that man Tester is some lad."
And Gordon thought, as he saw him laying about him full lustily with a pillow, that all his talk about games must be merely a damned affectation. He was really like any ordinary fellow.
When peace was at last restored, and he had led home his victorious forces, Tester laughed quietly to himself, as he watched the moonlight falling across a huge pool of water. He had played his part pretty well.
For the rest of the term life flowed easily with Gordon. There were no further rows with "the Bull"; in fact their row seemed, for a time at any rate, to have brought them closer together. Both seemed anxious to be friends with one another, and on the football field Gordon's play gave really very little cause for complaint. For this term his football reached his highest level. In following seasons he played good games on occasions, but he never equalled the standard he set himself in the Colts. It was one of Gordon's chief characteristics that he usually did well while others failed, and this term the Colts for some reason or other never properly got together. The side kept on beingaltered. For a week after the row Lovelace was kept out of the side; but it was soon obvious that his presence was absolutely necessary.
"What did I say," said Gordon. "You see, 'the Bull's' madness doesn't last for long. He got a bit fed up with you, Lovelace, so he made himself imagine your football was bad. He can always make himself think what he likes."
"Yes; but it is rather a nuisance," Mansell remarked, "when you realise it is always House men who have to do the Jekyll and Hyde business."
"Good Lord! Mansell, you are becoming literary," laughed Gordon. "How did you hear of Jekyll and Hyde?"
"Claremont has been reading the thing on Sunday mornings; not so bad for a fool like Stevenson. It rather reminded me ofThe Doctor's Double, by Nat Gould; only, of course, it is not half so good."
"No, that is a fact," said Lovelace. "Nat Gould is the finest author alive. I read some stuff in a paper the other day about books being true to life. Well, you could not get anything more true thanThe Double Event; and race-horsing is the most important thing in life, too. I sent up the other day for six of his books; they ought to be here to-morrow."
"Well, for God's sake, don't bring them in here," said Gordon, "there is enough mess as it is withThe Sportsmansof the last month trailing all over the place."
"Oh, have some sense, man; you don't know what literature is."
Gordon subsided. All his new theories of art collapsed very easily before the honest Philistinism of Lovelace and Mansell; for he was not quite sure of his own views himself. He loved poetry, because it seemed to express his own emotions so adequately. Byron's "Tempest-anger, Tempest-mirth" was as balm to his rebellious soul. Rebellion was, in fact, at this time almost a religion with him. Only a few days back he had discovered Byron's sweeping confession of faith, "I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments," and he found it a most self-satisfying doctrine. That was what his own life should be. He would fight against thesemasters with their old-fashioned and puritanic notions; he would be the preacher of the new ideas. It was all very crude, very impossible, but at the back of this torrid violence lay an honest desire to better conditions, tempered, it must be owned, with an ambition to fill the middle of the stage himself. In his imagination he became a second Byron. He saw, or thought he saw, the mistakes of the system under which he lived; and—without pausing to consider its merits—wished to sweep away the whole foundation into the sea, and to build upon some illusory basis a new heaven and new earth. He had yet to read the essay in which Matthew Arnold says that "Byron shattered, inevitably shattered himself against the black rock of British Philistinism." He was at present full of hope. The Poetry of Revolt coloured his imagination to such a degree that he saw himself standing alone and triumphant amid the wreck of the world he had overthrown. He was always protesting that Swinburne's finest line was in theHymn to Proserpine: