The Loom of Youth Page 4

  “And now I have a message to the House from the old boys. Let us have the Three Cock Cup back again on the School House sideboard. It is the place where it should be, and that’s the place where we are going to put it! Gentlemen, The Three Cock!”

  Amid a deafening noise the toast was drunk, and a voice from the back yelled out: “Three cheers for Lovelace!” His health, too, was drunk, and they sang For he’s a Jolly Good Fellow.

  After this all else seemed tame. Ferguson made a speech that was meant to be very funny, but rather missed fire. He had read Dorian Gray the whole of the evening before, underlining appropriate aphorisms. But to the average boy Oscar Wilde is (rather luckily perhaps) a little too advanced. The evening finished with Auld Lang Syne. Everyone stood on the table and roared himself hoarse. The score in damage was twenty plates broken beyond repair, sixteen punch glasses in fragments, fourteen cracked plates, two broken gas mandes. When the revellers had departed the hall looked rather gloomy, as probably Nero’s did when his guests fled after the murder of Britannicus.

  Next morning there was early service for communicants. But the School House was entirely pagan. Hardly a man went. On Sunday there was a great feed in Study 16. Somehow or other ten people got packed into as many square feet of room. Gordon was there; and Mansell, of course; Collins came to act as general clown; Fitzroy, a small friend of Jeffries, sat in a far corner looking rather uncomfortable. Spence, Carey and Tiddy made up the number; the last were quite the ordinary Public School type, their conversation ran entirely on games, scandal and the work they had not done. Lovelace was mildly bored.

  “It’s pretty fair rot, you know. Here have I been fair sweating away at the exams, every minute of my time, and Jeffries, who has not done a stroke, is above me.”

  Jeffries was bottom but one.

  “Oh, rotten luck,” said Mansell. “You should do like me. Old fool Claremont said I had done damned well!”

  “He hardly put it that way,” came from Gordon; “but I believe Mansell has managed more or less to deceive the examiners.”

  “Oh, I say, that’s a bit thick, you know,” said Mansell. “Oh, damn, who is that at the door?”

  There was a feeble knock. “Come in!” shouted at least six voices simultaneously.

  Davenham came in looking rather frightened.

  “I’m sorry . . . Is Caruthers in here?”

  “Yes, young fellow, he is.”

  “Oh, Caruthers, Meredith wants you!”

  “Damn him,” said Gordon. “What a nuisance these prefects are.”

  Very unwillingly he got up and strolled upstairs.

  He was away rather a long time. After twenty minutes’ absence he returned rather moodily.

  “Hullo, at last; you’ve been the hell of a long time,” said Hunter. “What did he want?”

  “Oh, nothing; only something about my boxing subscription.”

  “Well, he took long enough about it, I must say. Was that all?”

  “Of course. Cake, please, Fitzroy!”

  The subject was dropped.

  But just before chapel Jeffries ran into Gordon in the cloister.

  “Look here, Caruthers, what did Meredith really want you for? I swear I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Oh, well, I don’t mind you knowing . . . You know what Meredith is, well—I mean—oh, you know, the usual stuff. He wanted me to meet him out for a walk tomorrow. I told him in polite language to go to the ‘devil.’”

  “Good Lord, did you really? But why? If Meredith gets fed up with you he could give you the hell of a time.”

  “Oh, I know he could, but he wouldn’t over a thing like that. Damn it all, the man is a gentleman.”

  “Of course he is, but all the same he is a blood, and it pays to keep on good terms with them.”

  “Oh, I don’t know; it’s risky—and well, I think the whole idea is damned silly nonsense.”

  Jeffries looked at him rather curiously.

  “Yes,” he said, “I suppose that is how the small boy always looks at it.”

  It was only for an hour or so, however, that Gordon let this affair worry him. The holidays were only forty-eight hours off and he was longing to hear the results of the exams., and to know whether he had a prize.

  Prize-giving was always held at five o’clock on the last Monday. And the afternoon dragged by very slowly. Mansell assumed a cheerful indifference. He thought his motor bike fairly certain. Rumour had it there were going to be at least twelve promotions into the Lower Fifth. Jeffries and Lovelace had also nothing to worry about; there was little doubt as to their positions. Hunter specialised in chemistry, and had done no examination papers. But for Gordon the suspense was intolerable. He could find nothing to do; he climbed up the Abbey tower, and wrote his name on the big hand of the clock; he roped up his playbox, tipped the school porter; and still there was an hour and a half to put in. Disconsolately he wandered down town. He strolled into Gisson’s, the school bookseller’s: it contained nothing but the Home University Library series and numerous Everymans. It was just like his first day over again. But at last five o’clock came, and he sat with his four friends at the back of the big schoolroom. He grew more and more tired of hearing the lists of the Second and Third Forms read out. What interest did he take in the doings of Pappenheim and Guttridge tertius? IV. A was reached at length. The list was read from the bottom.

  Not placed—Hunter.

  Slowly the names were read out; the single figures were now reached:

  Mansell—term’s work, eighteen. Exams., one. Combined order, four.

  This difference of position caused a titter to run round among those of the School House who knew the cause of it. The third name and then the second was reached:

  Caruthers—Term’s work, one. Exams., three. Combined order, one.

  Term’s Prize—Caruthers. Exams.—Mansell.

  The latter’s performance was the signal for an uproarious outburst of applause, in which laughter played a large part. There was still more merriment when it was discovered that he had got as a prize Sartor Resartus. As he crudely put it: “What the bloody hell does it mean?” Gordon got the Indian Mutiny, by Malleson. Both books now repose, as do most prizes, in the owners’ book-cases, unread.

  “Congrats, Mansell, old fellow,” yelled Lovelace minor, as the school poured out at the end of the prize-giving. “Glorious! What a School House triumph.”

  “Yes, you know,” said Mansell. “But it doesn’t seem quite fair, and I am damned if I want this book. It looks the most utter rot. I say, shall I give it to that little kid in Buller’s, I forget his name, who was second? He looks a bit upset. Shall I, I say?”

  “Don’t be a silly fool, Mansell,” said Lovelace major, who happened to overhear the conversation. “You’ve just got the only prize you’re ever likely to get for work; stick on to it.”

  The rest of the day was pure, unalloyed joy to Gordon. He rushed off after tea to wire the news home; then he sat in the gallery and listened to the concert. He had expected to enjoy it rather; but the seats were uncomfortable, the music too classical, and he soon stopped paying any attention to the choir, and began a long argument with Collins as to the composition of the Two Cock scrum.

  The next morning as the train steamed out of Fernhurst, and he lay back in the carriage smoking a cigarette, outwardly with the air of a connoisseur, inwardly with the timid nervousness of a novice, he reflected that, in spite of the Rev. Rogers, school was a pretty decent sort of place.

  Chapter IV

  New Faces

  “I say, it is true; Lovelace major has left.”

  “Good Lord, no; is it?”

  “He’s not on the House list?”

  “I heard he’d passed into the army at last.”

  “I wonder who he was sitting next.”

  “And we shall have that silly ass Armour captain of the House.”

  “Ye gods!”

  A small crowd had gathered in front of the studies on the first ni
ght of the Easter term. Consternation reigned. The almost impossible had happened. Lovelace major had passed into Sandhurst at his fifth attempt, and Armour would take his place as house captain. It was a disaster. Armour was doubtless a most worthy fellow, a thoroughly honest, hard-working forward. But he had no personality. When he passed by, fags did not suddenly stop talking, as they did when Clarke or Meredith rolled past them. The term before, he had not even been a house prefect. The Three Cock, which had once seemed such a certainty, now became a forlorn hope.

  “It’s rotten,” said Lovelace minor that night in the dormitory. “My brother didn’t think he had the very ghost of a chance of passing. He’d mucked it up four times running, only the silly ass had done both the unseens with “the Bull” the week before, and he was too damned slack to alter them, and write them down wrong. He always was an ass, my brother.”

  Everyone was sorry. Even “the Bull” regarded him with a sort of indulgent sentimentality. He never saw very much good in a School House captain as long as he was there; but as soon as he left, all his faults were forgotten and virtues that he had never possessed were flung at him in profusion. The result was that “the Bull” said to the School House captain of each generation: “I have had more trouble with you than any Fernhurst boy I have ever met. You can’t see beyond the length of your own dining-hall. See big. See the importance of Fernhurst, and the insignificance of yourself.”

  But no one was more sorry than Armour. He did not want responsibility; he had not sought for it. He wished to have fought in the School House battles as a private, not as an officer. He loved the House, and longed for its success, and trembled to think that he might ruin its chances by a weak and vacillating captaincy. Moreover, he felt that he had no one to back him up. Meredith, Robey and Simonds, the other members of the First Fifteen in the House, were all grousing and wondering how large a score the outhouses would run up in the Three Cock. No one placed any confidence in his abilities. He was entirely alone.

  The next day was pouring wet; the ground was under water. Most house captains would have sent their houses for a run. But Armour wanted to make his start as early as possible. He couldn’t bear to delay. That afternoon the probable Thirds side played against the rest of the House, with the exception of the Second colours. Armour had never felt so nervous before; it was actually the first time he had refereed on a game. Jeffries was captain of the Thirds, and kicked off. It was, of course, a scrappy game. On such a day good football was impossible. The outsides hardly touched the ball once. But the forwards, covered in mud from head to foot, had their full share of work. Jeffries was ubiquitous; he led the “grovel” (as the scrum was called at Fernhurst), and kept it together. Gordon had very little chance of distinguishing himself; but he did one or two dribbles, and managed to collar Mansell the only time he looked like getting away. Lovelace minor, who played fly-half, had nothing to do except stop forward rushes, was kicked all over his body, got very cold and never had a chance once. He was utterly miserable the whole hour. All this was in favour of Armour. He knew nothing about three-quarter work, but he had played forward ever since he had gone to the Fernhurst preparatory at ten years of age, and could always spot the worker and the slacker, which Lovelace major never could. On the whole, taking a house game was not so terrifying after all; by half-time he had forgotten his nervousness in his excitement at watching how his side was going to shape.

  “You know, I don’t think Armour so rotten as people said he would be,” said Gordon, as they came up after the game. “I thought he was all right.”

  “Oh yes, he’s not so bad; but he does not seem much when you shove him next to Lovelace major.”

  “Well, you know,” said Jeffries, “he does know something about forward play, which I am damned if Lovelace did.”

  “Perhaps so; but all the same Lovelace was the man to win matches.” Mansell was an outside, and loved dash and brilliance, but the forwards were not sorry to have someone in command who understood them. Armour had begun well.

  * * * * *

  There are still people who will maintain that the ideal schoolboy in school hours thinks only about Vergil and Sophocles, and in the field concentrates entirely on drop kicks and yorkers. But that boy does not exist; and in the Easter term it is impossible to think of anything but house matches. Those who were in the power of some form martinet had a terrible time this term. But Gordon and Mansell found themselves safely at rest in Claremont’s form and Greek set, and made up their minds just to stay there and do only enough work to avoid being bottled.

  For the Lower Fifth was certainly the refuge of many weather-beaten mariners. Pat Johnstone had laboriously worked up from the bottom form, led on only by the hope that one day he would reach V. B, and there repose at the back of the room, living his last terms in peace. Ruddock had once set out with high hopes of reaching the Sixth; his first term he had won a Divinity prize in the Shell. But under Claremont he had discovered the truth, learnt long ago in the land of Lotus Eaters, “that slumber is more sweet than toil!” The back benches of that room were strewn with shattered hopes. Small intelligent scholars came up and passed by on their way to Balliol Scholarships; but the faces at the back of the room remained terribly somnolent and happy. A certain Banbury had been there for three years and had earned the nickname of “old Father Time,” and Mansell, too, swore he would enrol himself with the Lost Legion, while even Gordon said that nothing would shift him from there for at least a year.

  Claremont had many strange ideas, the most striking of which was the belief that boys felt a passionate love for poetry. The average boy has probably read all the poetry he will ever read terms before he ever reaches the Fifth Form. By the time he is in Shell he has learnt to appreciate Kipling, the more choice bits of Don Juan and a few plain-spoken passages in Shakespeare. If English Literature were taught differently, if he were led by stages from Macaulay to Scott, from Byron to Rossetti, he might perhaps appreciate the splendid heritage of song, but as it is, swung straight from If to the Ode to the Nightingale he finds the “shy beauty” of Keats most unutterable nonsense. Claremont, however, thought otherwise, and ran his form accordingly. In repetition this was especially noticeable. Kennedy, a small boy with glasses, who was always word-perfect, would nervously mumble through Henry V’s speech (they always learnt Shakespeare) in an accurate but totally uninspired way. Mansell would stand at the back of the form and blunder out blank verse, much of which was his own, and little of which was Shakespeare, but which certainly sounded most impressive.

  “Well, Kennedy,” Claremont would say, “you certainly know your words very well, but I can’t bear the way you say them. Five out of twenty. Mansell, you evidently have made little attempt to learn your repetition at all, but I love your fervour. One so rarely finds anyone really affected by the passion of poetry. Fifteen out of twenty.”

  During his two years in the Lower Fifth Mansell never once spent more than five minutes learning his “rep,” yet on no occasion did he get less than twelve out of twenty. A bare outline was required, a loud voice supplied the rest.

  In this form it was that Gordon first began to crib. He did not do it to get marks. He merely wished to avoid being “bottled.” Some headmasters, and the writers to The Boy’s Own Paper, draw lurid pictures of the bully who by cribbing steals the prize from the poor innocent who looks up every word in a big Liddell and Scott; but such people don’t exist. No one ever cribbed in order to get a prize: they crib from mere slackness. Mansell’s exam, prize in IV. A is about the only instance of a prize won by cribbing. Besides, cribbing is an art.

  Ruddock, for instance, when he used to go on to translate, was accustomed to take up his Vergil in one hand and his Bohn in the other.

  “What is that other book, Ruddock?” Claremont asked once.

  “Some notes, sir,” was the perfectly truthful answer.

  Ruddock was, moreover, an altruist; he always worked for the good of his fellow-men. One day, when Mansell was bun
gling most abominably with his Euripides, he flung his Bohn along the desk, Mansell picked it up, propped it in front of him and read it off. Claremont never noticed. This was the start of a great system of combination. Everyone at the beginning of the term paid twopence to the general account with which Ruddock bought some Short Steps to Accurate Translations. As each person went on to translate, the book was passed to him and he read straight out of it. The translating was, in consequence, always of a remarkably high standard. Claremont never understood why examinations always proved the signal for a general collapse. History, however, was a subject that had long been a worry to the form. Dates are irrevocable facts and cannot be altered, they must be learnt. At one time, when Claremont said, “Shut your book. I will ask a few questions,” everyone shut their Latin grammars loudly and kept their history books open; but this was rather too obvious a ruse; Claremont began to spot it. Something had to be done. It would be an insult to expect any member of the form to prepare a lesson. It was Gordon who finally devised a plan.

  “Please, sir,” he said one day, “don’t you think we should find history much more interesting if we could bring in maps.”

  “Well, perhaps it would,” said Claremont sleepily. “I am sure the form is very much indebted to you for your kind thought. Anyone who wants to, may bring in a map.”

  Next day everyone had found a huge atlas which he propped up on the desk; and which completely hid everything except the student’s actual head. There was now no fear of an open book being spotted, it was so very simple to shut it when Claremont began to walk about, and besides . . . it made the lesson so much more interesting.

  And so Gordon and Mansell were able to discuss football the whole of evening hall, never do a stroke of work, and yet get quite a respectable half-term report.

  The interest in the Thirds was now becoming intense. As was expected, Buller’s easily beat all the outhouses, with Claremont’s house as runners-up. Claremont’s house had once been the great athletic house, but when a house master takes but little interest in a house’s performances, that house is apt to get stale, and soon Claremont’s became a name for mediocrity. As a house it was like V. B, a happy land where no one worried about anything, and it was quite safe to smoke in the studies on a Sunday afternoon. A side made up of two houses that had never played together before was bound to lack the combination of a side that had played together for several weeks. But the School House was always playing against superior weight and strength, and more than once had found itself unable to sustain their efforts, and after leading up to half-time went clean to pieces in the last ten minutes. It is pretty hard to hold a “grovel” several stones heavier for over an hour, and this year even Armour was a little doubtful about the lightness of his side. To Gordon and Jeffries, of course, defeat seemed impossible. Last year Jeffries had played in a winning side and Gordon had yet to see the House lose a match. But Mansell smiled sadly; he had played in a good many losing sides. Gordon dreamed football night and day. He saw himself securing wonderful last-minute tries, and bringing off amazing collars when all seemed lost. But all his hopes were doomed to disappointment. Two days before the game he slipped coming downstairs, fell with his wrist under him, and with his arm in splints and sling had to watch from the touch-line an outhouse victory of ten points to nothing. The usual thing happened—the House was just not strong enough. Jeffries played a great game, and fought an uphill fight splendidly; Lovelace only missed a drop goal by inches; Fletcher, an undisciplined forward, did great damage till warned by the referee. But weight told, and during the whole of the last half the House were penned in their twenty-five, while the school got over twice. Very miserably the House sat down to tea that evening. It added insult to injury when an impertinent fag from Buller’s walked in in the middle and demanded the cup. Armour managed to keep his temper, but that fag did not forget for weeks the booting Gordon gave him the next day. Still it was a poor revenge for a lost cup.