The Loom of Youth

by Alec Waugh

  Breakfast is always rather a scramble, and nowhere more so than at a Public School. The usual Fernhurst breakfast lasted about ten minutes. Hardly anyone spoke, only the ring of forks on plates was heard and an occasional shout of “Tea” from the Sixth Form table. They alone could shout at meals, the others had to catch the servant’s eye. Today, however, there was a good deal of conversation. Those who had come by the last train had not seen all their friends the night before. There was much shaking of hands. In the middle a loud voice from the head of the Sixth Form table shouted out: “Silence! I want to see all new boys in my study at nine o’clock.” It was Clarke, the head of the House, who spoke. He was tall, with pince-nez, one of those brilliant scholars who are too brilliant to get scholarships. He was a fanatic in many ways, a militarist essentially, a firebrand always. There was bound to be trouble during his reign. He could never let anything alone. He was a great fighter.

  Gordon looked up with immense awe. Clarke looked so powerful, so tremendous; even Lovelace himself was not much greater. He wondered vaguely what would be said to them.

  And indeed Clarke was even more imposing in his own study. The back of the room sloped down into a low alcove in which hung strange Egyptian curtains. The walls were decorated with a few Pre-Raphaelite photogravures. Behind the door was a pile of cases. Clarke sat with his back to the window.

  “Now you are all quite new to school life,” he began, “entirely ignorant of its perils and dangers, and you are now making the only beginning you can ever make. You start with clean, fresh reputations. I don’t know how long you will remain so, but you must remember that you are members of the finest house in Fernhurst. Last year we had the two finest athletes, Wincheston and Lovelace, who played cricket for Leicestershire, and is now captain of the House. We had also the two finest scholars, Scott and Pembroke, both of whom won scholarships. Now we can’t all be county cricketers, we can’t all win scholarships, but we can all work to one end with an unfailing energy. You will find prefects here who will beat you if you play the ass. Well, I don’t mind ragging much and it is no disgrace to be caned for that. But it is a disgrace to be beaten for slacking either at games or work. It shows that you are an unworthy member of the House. Now I want all of you to try. Some of you will perhaps never rise above playing on House games, or get higher than the Upper Fifth. But if you can manage to set an example of keenness you will have proved yourselves worthy of the School House, which is beyond doubt the House at Fernhurst. That’s all I have got to say.”

  That scene was in many ways the most vivid in Gordon’s career. From that moment he felt that he was no longer an individual, but a member of a great community. And afterwards when old boys would run down Clarke, and say how he had stirred up faction and rebellion, Gordon kept silent; he knew that whatever mistakes the head of the House might have made, he had the welfare of the House at heart and loved it with a blind, unreasoning love that was completely misunderstood.

  It is inevitable that a new boy’s first few days should be largely taken up in making mistakes, and though it is easy to laugh about them afterwards, at the time they are very real miseries. At Fernhurst, things are not made easy for the new boy. Gordon found himself placed in the Upper Fourth, under Fleming, a benevolent despot who was a master of sarcasm and was so delighted at making a brilliant attack on some stammering idiot that he quite forgot to punish him. “Young man, young man,” he would say, “people who forget their books are a confounded nuisance, and I don’t want confounded nuisances with me.” Gordon got on with him very well on the whole, as he had a sense of humour and always laughed at his master’s jokes. But he only did Latin and English in the Fourth room, for the whole school was split up into sets, regardless of forms, for sharing such less arduous labours as science, maths, French and Greek. So that Gordon found himself suddenly appointed to Mr Williams’ Greek set No. V. with no idea of where to go. After much wandering, he eventually found the Sixth Form room. He entered; someone outside had told him to go in there. A long row of giants in stick-up collars confronted him. The Chief sat on a chair reading a lecture on the Maccabees. All eyes seemed turned on him.

  “Please, sir,” he quavered out in trembling tones, “is this Mr Williams’ Greek set, middle school No. V?”

  There was a roar of laughter. Gordon fled. After about five more minutes’ ineffectual searching he ran into a certain Robertson in the cloisters. Now Robertson played back for the Fifteen.

  “I say, are you one of the new boys for Williams’ set?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, look here, he’s setting us a paper, and I don’t know much about it, and I rather want to delay matters. So look here, hide yourself for a few minutes. I am just going to find Meredith and have a chat.”

  For ten minutes Gordon wandered disconsolately about the courts. When at last Robertson returned with his protege the hour was well advanced, and there would be no need for Robertson to have to waste his preparation doing an imposition.

  On another occasion one of the elder members of his form told him to go to “Bogus” for French. Now “Bogus” was short for the Bogus officer, and was the unkind appellation of one Rogers. Tall, ascetic and superior, with the air of a great philosopher, he had, like Richard Feverel’s uncle, Adrian Harley, “attained that felicitous point of wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools.” He was one of the happy few who are really content; for in the corps as Officer Commanding he could indulge continuously in his favourite pastime of hearing his own voice, and as a clerk in orders the pulpit presented admirable opportunities for long talks that brooked no interruptions. In the common room his prolix anecdotes were not encouraged. But in the pulpit there was no gainsaying him. His dual personality embodied the spirit of “the Church Militant,” a situation the humour of which the School did not fail to grasp. But of all this Gordon, of course, knew nothing. After a long search for this eminent divine, in perfect innocence he went up to a master he saw crossing the courts.

  “Please, sir, can you tell me where Mr Bogus’ class-room is?” He did not understand till weeks afterwards why the master took such a long time to answer, and seemed so hard put to it not to laugh.

  The story provided amusement in the common room for many days. Rogers was not popular.

  It was in this atmosphere of utter loneliness and inability to do anything right that Gordon’s first week passed. Of the other new boys none of them seemed to him very much in his line. There was Foster, good-looking and attractive, but plausible and insincere. There was Rudd, a scholar who had passed into the Fifth, spectacled, of sallow appearance, and with a strange way of walking. Collins was not so bad, but his mind ran on nothing but football and billiard championships. The rest were nonentities, the set who drift through their six years, making no mark, hurting no one, doing little good. Finally they pass out into the world to swell the rout of civilised barbarians whom it “hurts to think” and who write to the papers, talk a lot about nothing and then die and are forgotten. The Public School system turns out many of these. For it loves mediocrity, it likes to be accepted unquestioningly as was the Old Testament. But times change. The Old Testament and the Public School system are now both of them in the melting-pot of criticism.

  For the most part Gordon kept to himself. No one took any notice of him, for he did nothing worthy of notice. He had rather looked forward to his first game of football, for he had been quite a decent half-back at his preparatory school. He might perhaps do something brilliant. But for his first two days he wasn’t allowed even to play a game. With the other new boys he shivered in the autumn wind while Meredith, who rather surprisingly seemed quite an ordinary sort of person, instructed them in how to pack down. They were then told to watch the Upper game and see how football should be played. It was here that Gordon first saw Buller, the games master. He was indeed a splendid person. He wore a double-breasted coat, that on anyone else would have looked ridiculous, and even so was strikingly original. He had the strong fac
e of one who had fought every inch of his way. It was a great sight to see “the Bull,” as he was called, take a game; he rushed up and down the field cursing and swearing. His voice thundered over the ground. It was the first game after the summer holidays, and everyone felt rather flabby. At half-time the great man burst out: “I have played football for twenty-five years, I coached Oxford teams and Gloucestershire teams, led an English scrum, and for fifteen years I have taught footer here, but never saw I such a display! Shirking, the whole lot of you! Get your shoulders down and shove. Never saw anything like it. Awful!” The Bull said this to every team at least three times every season, but he was every bit as generous with his praise as with his blame when things went well, and he was a great man, a personality. Even a desultory Pick-Up woke into excitement when the shrill, piping voice of a full-back came in with, “‘The Bull’s’ coming.” There was only one man in Fernhurst who was not afraid of him, and that was Lovelace, who was indeed afraid of nothing, and who towered over his contemporaries by the splendour of his athletic achievements, and the strength of an all-mastering personality.

  On the next day Gordon had to watch another Upper game. This time “the Bull” was more or less quiet. Lovelace was at the top of his form, and Meredith twice cut through brilliantly and scored between the posts. Then life seemed to Buller very good. After the game he rolled up to his house perfectly satisfied, whistling to himself. It was not until the Saturday that Gordon actually played in a game. He was originally performing on the Pick-Up; but after a few minutes he was fetched to fill a gap in a House game. He was shoved into the scrum, was perfectly useless, and spent his whole time trying to escape notice. Only once he got really near the ball. Just before half-time the ball was rolling slowly towards him, the opposing full-back had failed to reach touch. Gordon, steadying himself as at soccer, took a tremendous kick at the ball, which screwed off his foot, and landed in the hands of the outside three-quarter, who easily outpaced the defence and scored.

  “You bloody little fool,” said someone. “For God’s sake, no soccer tricks here.”

  Gordon did not attempt to repeat the performance. He was supremely wretched, and merely longed for the day to end. No one understood him, or even wanted to. His home became a very heaven to him during these days.

  But sooner or later pain grows into a custom. The agonies of Prometheus and Ixion must after a little while have ceased to cause anything more than boredom. As soon as the mind is accustomed to what is before it, there is an end of grief. It is the series of unexpected blows that hurts. And so, Gordon after his first week found that life was not so hard after all. He knew where his various class-rooms were: his time-table was complete; he had slipped into the routine, and found that there was a good deal of merriment for anyone with a sense of humour.

  Fleming was a constant source of amusement. One day Mansell, a member of the School House Fifteen, had forgotten his book. The usual penalty for forgetting a book was a hundred lines. Mansell had been posted on the Lower ground. If he did well, he might be tried for the Second Fifteen. The book must be got at all costs.

  “Please, sir, may I go and get a handkerchief?”

  “Yes, young man, and hurry up about it.”

  After five minutes Mansell returns, blowing his nose vigorously in his silk handkerchief of many colours, for Mansell is by way of being a nut. The book is under his coat. He sits down.

  Fleming fixes him with a stony glare—a long pause.

  “Mansell, take that book from under your coat.”

  Reluctantly the miscreant does so. The dream of a Second’s cap vanishes.

  “Conjurer!”

  The roar of laughter was sufficient to make Fleming forget all about impositions. But Mansell did not perform very well on the Lower ground, and Gordon overheard Lovelace remarking to Meredith that Mansell was really rather a come-down for a School House cap.

  But, whatever his football performances, Mansell was a continual source of laughter. He and Gordon were in the same Greek set and studied under Mr Claremont, a dry humorist, who had adopted schoolmastering for want of something better to do, had apparently regretted it afterwards, and developed into a cynic.

  Mansell was easily the most popular man and the worst scholar in the set, in which there were nineteen in all. Each week Claremont read out the order. Gordon was usually about halfway up. Mansell fluctuated; one week he “bagged” the translation Clarke was using for scholarship work. He was second that week. But Clarke discovered the theft. There was a fall. Many names were read in the weekly order, but Mansell’s was not of them. At last Claremont reached him.

  “Greek Prose, Mansell 19th; Greek Translation, Mansell 19th; Combined Order, Mansell 19th.” A roar of laughter. “Well, Mansell, I don’t think that a titter from your companions is a sufficient reward for a week’s bad work.”

  The immediate result of this was that Mansell, realising that without some assistance, printed or otherwise, his chances of a good report were small, got leave from Clarke to fetch Gordon from the day-room to his study in hall to prepare the work together. Gordon at once thought himself a tremendous blood. There were advantages, after all, in being moderately clever.

  About this time another incident helped to bring Gordon a little more before the public eye. There had been a match in the afternoon v. Milton A. Lovelace, as happens to all athletes at times, had an off day. He missed an easy drop, fumbled two passes, and when the School were leading by one point just before time, failed to collar his man, and Milton A won by two points. “The Bull” raged furiously. Lovelace took hall that night. He sat at the top of the table in the day-room and gazed about, seeking someone on whom to vent his wrath. There was a dead silence. Gordon was writing hard at a Latin prose. He looked up for a second while thinking of a word.

  “Caruthers, are you working?” Lovelace snapped out.

  “Yes.”

  “You liar, you were looking out of the window, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “I’ll teach you to tell lies to me. Come and see me at nine o’clock.”

  Very miserably Gordon continued his work. After about a quarter of an hour:

  “Caruthers, will you take six, or a hundred lines?”

  Gordon thought it was not the thing to take lines:

  “Six.”

  “Will you have it now or afterwards?”

  “Now.”

  “Hunter, go and get a cane from my study.”

  Trembling with fear, Gordon heard Hunter’s feet ring down the stone passage, saw him running across to the studies by the old wall. There was silence again; then the sound of feet; Hunter returned.

  “Come out here, Caruthers.”

  It hurt tremendously; he went back wishing he had taken the hundred lines. But the others thought it amazingly brave of him. Lovelace minor, handsome, debonair, a swashbuckler in the teeth of authority, came up afterwards and said:

  “Damned plucky of you. My brother’s a bit of an ass at times.”

  It was not really plucky, it was merely the fear of doing the wrong thing. But the House thought that, after all, there might be something in at least one of those wretched new kids. One or two people looked at him almost with interest that night in hall.

  That was Gordon’s first step. Afterwards things were not so hard. Mansell began to think him rather a sport, as well as an indispensable aid to classical studies, and Mansell counted for something. Meredith smiled at him one day . . . A public School was not such a bad hole after all. And his cup of happiness seemed almost running over when one afternoon after a game of rugger he overheard Lovelace minor say to Hunter:

  “That kid Caruthers wasn’t half bad.”

  For he saw that the sure way to popularity lay in success on the field; and because it was the weak as the strong point of his character that he longed with a wild longing for power and popularity, it was already his ambition to be some day captain of the House, and to lead his side to glorious victories.


  Chapter III

  The New Philosophy