The Loom of Youth Read online

  Whatever little chance there had ever been of Gordon getting a place in the Two Cock was, of course, quite destroyed by his accident. The doctor said he ought not to play again for at least three weeks. And so it was that, as far as football was concerned, Gordon found himself rather out of it. All his friends were in the thick of everything. Mansell was captain of the Two Cock, Jeffries was leading the scrum, Hunter was being tried as scrum half, and Lovelace was in training as a reserve. He alone was doing nothing. For a few days the afternoons seemed unbearably long. But Gordon had a remarkable gift for adapting himself to circumstances. And he had very little difficulty in striking up new acquaintances. So far, he had had very little to do with those outside his actual set; with the majority of the House he was hardly on speaking terms, and of Archie Fletcher he knew little except the name.

  Archie Fletcher was a great person; “great” in fact was the only adjective that really fitted him. He had only two real objects in life, one was to get his House cap, the other was to enjoy himself. And his love of pleasure usually took the form of ragging masters. Ragging with him did not consist in mere spasmodic episodes of bravado which usually ended in a beating. He had reduced it to a science. It was to him the supreme art. At present he was suffering from a kick on the knee which he had received in the Thirds, and he and Gordon found themselves constantly thrown together.

  Archie (no one ever called him anything else), was a splendid companion. He had an enormous repertoire of anecdotes which he was never tired of telling, and every one finished in exactly the same way: “Believe me, Caruthers, some rag.” Oh, a great man, forsooth, was Archie! He had cynically examined every master with whom he had anything to do, picked him to pieces, found out his faults, and then played on his weaknesses. Sometimes, however, he went a little too far. On one occasion he was doing chemistry with a certain Jenks, a very fiery little man, who really believed in the educational value of “stinks.” So did Archie; it gave him scope to exercise his genius for playing the fool. But this day he overstepped the bounds. In the distance, he saw Blake, his pet aversion, carefully working out an experiment. A piece of glass tubing was at hand; Jenks was not looking; Archie fixed the tube to the waterspout, turned the tap;a cascade of H{2}O rose in the air and fell on Blake’s apparatus; there was a crash of falling glass. Jenks spun round.

  “Oh, is that you, Fletcher, you stupid fellow? Come over here. I shall have to beat you. Now then, where’s my cane gone! Oh, then I shall have to use some rubber tubing—stoop down, stoop down!”

  Laboriously Archie bent down; Jenks bent a piece of india-rubber tubing double—its length was hardly a foot—and gave Archie a feeble blow. It could not possibly have hurt him. But the victim leapt in the air, clutching the seat of his trousers.

  “Oh!” he screamed. “Oh, sir, oh, sir! You have hurt me, sir. You are so strong, sir.”

  “Oh, then you are coward, too, are you?” said the delighted Jenks. “Stoop down again; stoop down!”

  The form rocked with laughter.

  Archie received four strokes in all, and after each he went through the same performance. Jenks thought himself a second Hercules; he repeated the story in the common room. Archie repeated it also, in the studies: “Believe me, you fellows, some rag!”

  A great man, and after Gordon’s own heart!

  On a bleak, rainy afternoon Gordon and Fletcher watched the overwhelming defeat of the House in the Two Cock. The score was over thirty points; Mansell played only moderately; Jeffries was off his game. A gloom settled down over the House, everyone became peevish and discontented. It was said that the great days of House footer were over. To lose both the Thirds and the Two Cock was a disgrace. No one expected anything but a rout in the Three Cock. There were bets in the day-room as to whether the score would be under fifty. Interest centred entirely on who would get their House caps. With Lovelace away, the three-quarter line would be innocuous: the forwards always had been weak. The House were bad losers, they had grown accustomed to victories.

  Chapter V

  Emerging

  “Jeffries was pretty hot stuff today, wasn’t he?”

  “Good Lord! yes. If he plays half as well as that in the Three Cock he’ll get his House cap.”

  It was just after tea. Mansell was lying back in an easy-chair with his feet on the table; he was dead tired after a strenuous game. Gordon was sitting on the table. Hunter reclined in the window seat.

  “Where is he, by the way?” said Gordon. “I didn’t see him in to tea.”

  “Oh, I believe someone asked him out. Isn’t he rather a pal of the Jacobs in Cheap Street?”

  “I heard that there was a bit of a row on,” said Hunter. “I couldn’t quite make out what about. . . Oh, by Jove, that’s him.”

  Jeffries’ voice was heard down the passage: “Mansell.”

  A voice answered him: “Here, No. 34.”

  Jeffries was heard running upstairs; he entered looking very dejected.

  “Hullo! Cheer up!” shouted Mansell. “I shouldn’t have thought you could have run like that after this afternoon’s game. Where’ve you been?”

  “I say . . . I’m in the deuce of a row.”

  There was a shriek of laughter. Jeffries was always in a row; and he always exaggerated its importance.

  “Don’t laugh. It’s no damned joke. I’ve got bunked.”

  Silence suddenly fell on the group.

  “But. . . what the hell have you been doing?”

  “Chief’s found out all about me and Fitzroy, and I’ve got to go!”

  “But I never thought there was really anything in that,” said Gordon. “I thought—”

  “Oh, well, there was. I know I’m an awful swine and all that—Oh, it’s pretty damnable; and the Three Cock, too! I believe I should have got my House cap! . . . I wasn’t so dusty today—and I heard Armour say, as he came off the field—Damn, what the bloody hell does it matter what Armour said? It’s over now. I just got across for a minute to see you men . . . I said I wanted a book . . . Lord, I can’t believe it. . .”

  When he stopped speaking there was again a dead silence. None of the three had been brought face to face with such a tragedy before. Never, Gordon thought, had the Greek idea of Nemesis seemed so strong.

  Hunter broke the silence.

  “What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know. I shall go home, and then, I suppose, I shall have to go to France or German; or perhaps some crammer. I don’t know or care . . . it’s bound to be pretty rotten . . .”

  He half smiled.

  “My God, and it’s damned unfair,” Mansell said suddenly. “There are jolly few of us here any better than you, and look at the bloods, every one of them as fast as the devil, and you have to go just because—Oh, it’s damned unfair.”

  Then Jeffries’ wild anger, the anger that had made him so brilliant an athlete, burst out: “Unfair? Yes, that’s the right word; it is unfair. Who made me what I am but Fernhurst? Two years ago I came here as innocent as Caruthers there; never knew anything. Fernhurst taught me everything; Fernhurst made me worship games, and think that they alone mattered, and everything else could go to the deuce. I heard men say about bloods whose lives were an open scandal, ‘Oh, it’s all right, they can play football.’ I thought it was all right too. Fernhurst made me think it was. And now Fernhurst, that has made me what I am, turns round and says, ‘You are not fit to be a member of this great school!’ and I have to go. Oh, it’s fair, isn’t it?”

  He dropped exhausted into a chair. After a pause he went on:

  “Oh, well, it’s no use grousing. I suppose if one hits length balls on the middle stump over square leg’s head one must run the risk of being bowled; and I didn’t believe in sticking in and doing nothing. ‘Get on or get out,’ and, well, I’ve got out.” He laughed rather hysterically.

  Again silence.

  Slowly Jeffries got up.

  “Well, goodbye, you men.” He shook hands. As he opened the do
or he paused for a second, laughed to himself: “Oh, it’s funny, bloody funny,” he murmured. “Not fit for Fernhurst. . . Bloody funny.” He laughed again, bitterly. The door closed slowly.

  Jeffries’ footsteps could be heard on the stairs. They grew fainter; the door leading to the Chief’s side of the House slammed. Down the study passage a gramophone struck up Florrie was a Flapper.

  In Study 34 there was an awful stillness.

  That evening on the way down to supper Gordon overheard Armour say to Meredith:

  “What a fool that man Jeffries is, getting bunked, and mucking up the grovel. Damned ass, the man is.”

  Meredith agreed.

  Gordon didn’t care very much just now about the result of a House match. He had lost a friend. Armour had lost a cog in a machine.

  * * * * *

  As was expected, the Three Cock proved a terribly one-sided game. The House played pluckily, and for the first half kept the score down to eight points; but during the last twenty minutes it was quite impossible to keep out the strong outhouse combination. The side became demoralised, and went absolutely to pieces. Armour did not give a single House cap.

  After the Three Cock there was a period of four weeks during which the best athletes trained for the sports, while the rest of the school played hockey. It was generally considered a sort of holiday after the stress of house matches. Usually it served its purpose well, but for the welfare of the House this year it was utterly disastrous. The whole house was in a highly strung, discontented state; it had nothing to work for; it had only failures to look back upon. The result was a general opposition to authority. For a week or so there was a continuous row going on in the studies. Window-frames were broken; chairs were smashed; nearly every day one or other member of the House was hauled before the Chief, for trouble of some sort. But things did not reach a real head till one night in hall, just before Palm Sunday. There was a lecture for the Sixth Form; Armour was taking hall; and the only prefect in the studies was Sandham, who had a headache and had got leave off the lecture. It did not take long for the good news to spread round the studies that only “the Cockroach” was about.

  The first sign of trouble was a continual sound of opening doors. Archie was rushing round, stirring up strife; then there came a sound of many voices from the entrance of the studies, where were the fire hose and the gas meter. Suddenly the gas was turned out throughout the whole building, and pandemonium broke out.

  It would be impossible to describe the tumult made by a whole house that was inspired by only one idea: the desire to make a noise. The voice of Sandham rose in a high-pitched wail over and again above the uproar; but it was pitch dark, he could see none of the offenders. Then all at once there was peace again, the lights went up, and everyone was quietly working in his study. It had been admirably worked out. Archie was “some” organiser.

  For the time being the matter ended; but in a day or two rumours of the rebellion had reached Clarke. Strong steps had to be taken; and Clarke was not the man to shirk his duty.

  That evening after prayers he got up and addressed the House.

  “I have been told that two nights ago, when I was absent, there was a most unseemly uproar in the studies. I am not going into details; you all know quite well what I mean. I want anyone who assisted in the disturbance to stand up.”

  There was not a move. The idea that the Public School boy’s code of honour forces him to own up at once is entirely erroneous. Boys only own up when they are bound to be found out; they are not quixotic.

  “Well, then, as no one has spoken, I shall have to take forcible measures. Everyone above IV. A (for the Lower School did their preparation in the day-room) will do me a hundred lines every day till the end of the term. Thank you.”

  That night there was loud cursing. Clarke had hardly a supporter, the other prefects, with the exception of Ferguson, who did not count for much in the way of things, agreed with Meredith, who said:

  “If the Cockroach can’t keep order, how can Clarke expect there should be absolute quiet? It’s the Chief’s fault for making such prefects. Damned silly, I call it.”

  The term did not end without a further row. There had been from time immemorial a system by which corps clothes were common property. Everyone flung them in the middle of the room on Tuesday after parade; the matron sorted them out after a fashion; but most people on the next Tuesday afternoon found themselves with two tunics and no trousers, or two hats and only one puttee. But no one cared. The person who had two tunics flung one in the middle of the floor, and then went in search of some spare trousers. Everyone was clothed somehow in the end. There was always enough clothes to go round. There was bound to be at least ten people who had got leave off. It was a convenient socialism.

  But one day FitzMorris turned up on parade in a pair of footer shorts, a straw hat, and a First Eleven blazer. He was a bit of a nut, and finding his clothes gone, went on strangely garbed, merely out of curiosity to see what would happen. A good deal did happen.

  As soon as the corps was dismissed there was a clothes inspection. And the garments of FitzMorris were found distributed on various bodies. Clarke again addressed the House. Anyone in future discovered wearing anyone else’s clothes would be severely dealt with. But the House was not to be outdone. Every single name was erased from every single piece of clothing: identification was impossible. FitzMorris turned up at the next parade with one puttee missing, and a tunic that could not meet across his chest. There was another inspection, but this time it revealed nothing. Everyone swore that he was wearing his own clothes; there was nothing to prove that he was not. For the time Clarke was discomfited.

  FitzMorris set out on his Easter holidays contented with himself and the world, in the firm belief that he had thoroughly squashed that blighter Clarke. The head of the House returned to his lonely home on the moors, very thoughtful—the next term would be his last.

  On the first Sunday of the summer term the Chief preached a sermon the effect of which Gordon never forgot. He was speaking on the subject of memory and remorse. “It may be in a few months,” he said, “it may be not for three or four years; but at any rate before very long, you will each one of you have to stand on the threshold of life, and looking back you will have to decide whether you have made the best of your Fernhurst days. For a few moments I ask you to imagine that it is your last day at school. How will it feel if you have to look back and think only of shattered hopes, of bright unfulfilled promises? Your last day is bound to be one of infinite pathos. But to the pathos of human sorrow there is no need to add the pathos of failure. Oh, I know you are many of you saving to yourselves: ‘There is heaps of time. We’ll enjoy ourselves while we have the chance. It is not for so very long!’ No, you are right there: it is not for so very long; it is only a few hours before you will have to weigh in the balance the good and the bad you have done during your Fernhurst days. For some of you it will be in a few weeks; but for the youngest of you it cannot be more than a very few years. Let me beg each of you . . .” The sermon followed on traditional lines.

  Almost subconsciously Gordon rose with the others to sing: Lord, behold us with Thy Blessing. . . What would it feel like to him if this were his last Sunday, and he had to own that his school career were a failure? He sat quite quiet in his study thinking for a long time afterwards. He had a study alone this term.

  In the big study that it has ever been the privilege of the head of the House to own, Clarke also sat very silent. He was nerving himself for a great struggle.

  * * * * *

  To the average individual the summer term is anything but the heaven it is usually imagined to be. The footer man hates it; the fag has to field all day on a house game and always goes in last; there is early school; in some houses there are no hot baths. On the first day the studies are loud with murmurs of:

  “Oh! this rotten summer term.”

  “No spare time and cricket.”

  “Awful!”