by Alec Waugh
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 today, 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 judgment and 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 ofyourself 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.
“Goodnight, sir.”
“Goodnight, 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 to see 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 tonight 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 began with the blase 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 today are Public School men; nearly all. . .”
He went on roll
ing 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 . . . in Sinister 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 heard anything 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 OEdipus, 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 the A.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 cap is 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 i
s 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.”
