The Loom of Youth Part 31

"Dear old poseur; he's keen enough on his own house," Gordon answered drowsily from the depths of the hammock, in which he had almost fallen asleep. He felt incapable of thought. For weeks he had looked forward to the match, and now it was so close he felt strangely languorous, tired in brain and body.

Rain fell steadily all night, and though it cleared off about break, the ground was already under water. It was a cold, gusty day.

By lunch the whole House was unbalanced. There was much loud laughter, then sudden silences; an atmosphere of restlessness lay over everyone.

Very slowly the minutes dragged by. Gordon sat silent in a far corner of the pavilion. At last the whistle blew, the magenta and black jerseys trailed out on to the field. A cheer rose from the line.

The next hour pa.s.sed in a whirl of white jerseys, gradually turned black with mud, of magenta forms das.h.i.+ng on to the School forwards, of wild, inarticulate black insects bawling on the touch-line. The pervading impression was mud. Everything was mud; he was mud, the ball was mud.

Lovelace was indistinguishable. His own voice leading the scrum seemed strangely unreal. There was a vague feeling of disquiet when, early in the first half, he found himself standing under the posts, while the Buller's half placed the ball for Whitaker to convert. Nothing tangible; then the disquiet pa.s.sed, the magenta jerseys swept forward, dirty white forms came up and went down before them. Morgan rolled over the line. A kick failed. Half-time came, Hazelton came on, and said a lot of things to him, which he answered unconsciously.

A whistle blew. Once more the magenta jerseys swept everything before them. There seemed no white jerseys at all. Numberless times he watched Lovelace taking the place kick. He thought he heard Mansell shrieking: "Heave it into them! Well done! Now you've got them!" Once he had a sensation of kicking the ball past the halves; he seemed clear, the full-back rushed up and fell in front of him, the ball stopped for a second, then rolled on. He heard someone coming up behind him; the line grew dimly white under his feet; he fell on the ball; there was a roar of cheering. The whistle went in short, sharp blasts. The game was over.

And then he realised that the House had won, that his hopes were satisfied, that the Buller crowd had been routed, that the cup would s.h.i.+mmer on the mantelpiece. A wave of wild exultation came over him. The House poured over the touch-line, yelling and shouting. It was all "a wonder and a wild desire."

Then came the glorious reaction, "the bright glory of after battle wine." The tea in the tuck-shop. They were out of training. Then the perfect laziness of lying full-length in his hammock, talking of the splendid victory. Then came the House tea. It was much like the Roman triumph. The whole House sat in their places ten minutes before six.

Tablecloths were removed; everyone took down heavy books, boots, sticks.

Then when the Abbey struck six, Lovelace led the side into hall, up to the dais, to the Sixth Form table. Everyone shouted, roared, beat the tables. Dust arose. It was very hard to breathe. The Chief came and made a speech. There was more shouting, more shrieking, more beating of tables.

At last hall came with its gift of real rest. Gordon lay in the hammock, Lovelace reposed with his feet on the table. Everyone came in to congratulate them. Hazelton invited them in second hall to supper in the games study; the gramophone played rag-time choruses. Gordon sang all of them. Everyone was gloriously, unutterably happy.

Meredith sent a wire: "Well done, House: now for the Two c.o.c.k."

In the dormitory Hazelton was talking over the match.

"By Jove, when that side is the Three c.o.c.k, we shall win by fifty points. Lord, I do envy you, Caruthers! You will see the day, and be in at the finish. I shall only shout from the touch-line." And he added: "My G.o.d, I shall shout, too."

There was nothing to mar the extreme joyousness of life. The world lay at Gordon's feet. He had only to stoop to pick it up.

CHAPTER V: DUAL PERSONALITY

The Two c.o.c.k was always played a fortnight after the Thirds, and during that fortnight the outhouses had to play off among themselves three preliminary rounds. For them it was a remarkably strenuous time. The two best outhouses sides had, in fact, to play four house matches in twelve days. But it was possible for the School House to take things easily for at least half a week. And these three days out of training meant a lot to Gordon and others, who would have to play not only in the Two c.o.c.k, but most probably in the Three c.o.c.k as well. It prevented staleness; and staleness was the great danger that all outhouse sides had to face.

The week after the Thirds was regarded as a fairly slack time before the strenuous week that culminated in the Two c.o.c.k. There would probably be only one game--on the Sat.u.r.day; and that a short quarter-of-an-hour-each-way affair. It was usually a quite uneventful time. This term, however, an occurrence took place that had a big effect on the growth of Gordon's character.

Finnemore had caught influenza; the Chief had to go for a week to Oxford. The Sixth was at a loose end. Various masters took it in various subjects, or at least were supposed to. Most of the week was spent in the studies, as the master in charge forgot to turn up.

One afternoon, Ferrers was to take them in English. But Ferrers was engaged in writing an article on the "New Public School Boy" for _The Cornhill Magazine_, and wanted to be quiet. He sent the form to their studies to write an essay on a typical Ferrers subject: "Poetry is in the first instance the outpouring of a rebel." It had to be shown up by six o'clock.

Gordon revelled in it. During the long afternoon he poured out his fierce soul. His life was now a strange paradox. Half the time he thought of poetry, wors.h.i.+pping any sort of rebellion against the conventional standards of living. At other times he was like the ordinary Philistine, blindly wors.h.i.+pping games, never seeing that they led nowhere, and were as a blind alley. This afternoon Gordon forgot everything but Swinburne, Byron, Rossetti, and the poets of revolt. He stigmatised Wordsworth as a doddering old man, not knowing that his return to nature was the greatest revolution in English literature. In a text-book he saw Sh.e.l.ley described as a rebel. He got a copy of his works out of the library, but found little there resembling the work of his own favourite. However, he quoted a verse out of _O World, O Life, O Time!_ and decided to search more deeply later on. The bulk of the essay was a glowing eulogy of _The Hymn to Proserpine_ and _Don Juan_. It was very dogmatic, very absurd in parts, but it had the merit of enthusiasm, and, at any rate, showed a genuine appreciation of a certain cla.s.s of literature.

Well satisfied, he made his way across to the Sixth Form room, and found Ferrers gazing at a pile of papers, as Hercules must have gazed at the Augean stables.

"Um," said Ferrers, "who are you?"

"Caruthers, sir. I have brought you the essay you set the Sixth."

"Right; let's have a look at it; hope it is better than the stuff I have just been reading."

"Yes, yes, um--ah," he murmured to himself, as he read on. There was clearly some hankering after style, some searching for an idea. Ferrers dearly wanted to smile at the attack on Wordsworth, and the comparison between Swinburne and Milton (whom Gordon had never read), all in favour of the Pre-Raphaelite. But he knew that it would be a fatal thing to do; it would seem superior; the master must come down to the boy's level. He read on to the end of the wild, sprawling peroration.

"Not bad stuff, Caruthers, not bad at all. Far and away better than anything I have so far struck. I must talk to you again about this; I am glad you love Byron; I do myself; people run him down--fools, that is.

You stick to Byron, he is all right. And don't despise the rest too much. Have a shot at Keats and Sh.e.l.ley. They are not so powerful, but good all the same, very fine stuff.... Try _The Pot of Basil_. Must rush off now. Are you in training? No! Not yet. Right. Come up to tea to-morrow. Good-night."

And thus began a friends.h.i.+p that was the most permanent in Gordon's school career.

Every Friday he used to climb up the hill past Rogers's house, and step out down the white London road to Ferrers's cosy little home. Over a cup of tea he read an essay. Ferrers would lie back listening, and then discuss it with him. He sometimes blamed the actual expression of it, but he never found fault on questions of taste. He let Gordon browse at will in the fields of English literature; he suggested books he thought Gordon would like; he did not try to rush him on. There was heaps of time; he would let Gordon develop on his own lines.

From these evenings Gordon derived a pleasure that he found it hard to explain. He was thankful to get away from the footer talk, the inevitable intrigues, scandals, all in fact that went to form the daily curriculum. The world of ideas was far more attractive. Ferrers, although himself a quarter-mile Blue, looked upon games as a recreation, and upon school life as a mud-heap that had to be washed clean. Poetry, drama, the modern novel, these were what Ferrers loved; and Gordon was glad to find someone who thought like this. He felt uplifted after his talks with Ferrers, he walked back to the House buoyant, as it were on wings. Then as the school gates rose before him, and he heard the sound of a football bouncing in the court, the old routine caught him once more. He plunged into the old life with the same zest. He devised a new scheme for avoiding work, thought out an idea for teaching forwards to heel, laughed, discussed athletics and was well content. He tried to a.n.a.lyse his feelings, but could not. He was now two separate persons. At times he was the dreamer, the lover of art and poetry; at another the politician, the fighter who lived every minute of his life deeply to the full, with one fixed aim before him. Gordon wondered if this apparent paradox in himself was in any way an answer of the enigma that an artist's life so frequently was utterly different from the broad outlines of his work. Browning had talked of a man having "two soul-sides." Had he two soul-sides, one for the world, the other for art--and Ferrers? But then Browning had spoken contemptuously of the "one to face the world with." Surely games were as good as poetry? Or weren't they, after all? He felt an unanswerable doubt, and at such times of introspection he would stop trying to think and merely let himself be carried on in whatever course fortune chose to bear him. And so the Jekyll and Hyde business went on.

CHAPTER VI: THE GAMES COMMITTEE

In the mud and the rain the School House Two c.o.c.k team, coming up early from a puntabout, joined the crowd watching the last stages of the Buller's _v._ Claremont's house match, and cheered Claremont's to the echo. It was a remarkably fine game. When "no side" was called, the score was nine all. Extra time was played, and just before the close, amid great enthusiasm, a limping Claremont's forward fell over the line from the line out. None shouted louder than the School House contingent.

Everyone had grown tired of the Buller's domination. They had been successful too long. For two years they had not lost a single house match. The Thirds had been their first reverse; but even then they had triumphed over all their outhouse opponents. This was the first occasion, since Gordon had been at Fernhurst, that the Buller's colours had been lowered by an outhouse side. It signified the breaking up of their rule. Gordon shouted like the Vengeance following the tumbrils. He roared loudly under "the Bull's" nose, stamped off the field to tea, without a thought of the effect that his demonstration might have had upon "the Bull" himself.

As it happened, to "the Bull" the incident meant a lot.

"What is the reason of it?" he said to Felston that evening. "How have I made these School House men, and especially Caruthers, hate me? They seem to delight in the defeat of my house. Of course, I can understand their wanting their house to beat mine, but why should they worry so much about Claremont's doing so? I can't understand it; and Caruthers will be leading the school scrum in two years. We must not have bad feeling between the houses. Honest rivalry is all right; but there seems so much spite about it all nowadays. It was not so when I was a boy, and it wasn't so three years ago. I don't understand."

A climax was reached in the Two c.o.c.k, a match rendered famous in Fernhurst history by the amazing refereeing of a new master named Princeford, who had come as a stop-gap for one term. The match was played in the mud and slush, and was entirely devoid of incident. The play rolled from one end of the ground to the other. Archie performed prodigies of valour; Gordon did some brilliant things; Collins was quite fierce; but good football was impossible under the circ.u.mstances. Early in the first half, amid tremendous cheering, Lovelace scored a fine try, by the touch-line. There was no doubt about it. The school lined up behind the posts. But Princeford would have none of it. He came up, fussing and important:

"No try, there. Knock on. Scrum!"

A gasp went up from both sides. Was the man blind?

"What is the fool talking about?" thundered Gordon.

Princeford was round in a second: "Who said that?"

Gordon stepped forward.

"Ah, I shall remember you."

The game continued; the outhouses amazed at such luck; the School House sullen and indignant. The play developed into a series of forward rushes resulting in nothing. It was an amazingly dull game to watch. From one of these rushes Gordon got clear; the full-back fell on the ball, Gordon took a huge kick at the ball. One had to kick hard on such a sticky ground. He missed the ball, and caught the back on the side of the head.

"Oh, d.a.m.ned sorry," he said.

It was quite unintentional, as would have been obvious to anyone who knew anything about the game. No one would be fool enough to kick the man, when by kicking the ball he might score a try. But Princeford was on Gordon like a shot. He began to lecture him before all the masters on unsportsmanlike play, and threatened to send him off the field. Gordon glowered at him. It was a combat of temperaments. The game resulted in a draw. No try was scored. It was a dull performance, occasionally relieved by individual brilliance. Everyone was disappointed.

Sullen and silent, the House side trooped up to tea. They had won the match, of that there was no doubt. And they had been done out of their victory.

The limit was reached when, muddy and cold, they found that the new boot-boy had forgotten to heat the boiler, and there was only cold water to wash in.