by Alec Waugh
Betteridge smiled, and picking up a Browning from the table sank into an easy-chair to read.
Tester remained looking into the fire. What a fool he had been to give himself away just then. It was his great object never to let anyone see into his soul. He had once shown Caruthers what he was, because he could not bear to see a person of ability wasting himself for want of high ideals. He had tried to show him that there was something above the commonplace routine of life. And in a way he had succeeded. Caruthers often came in in the evenings to discuss poetry with him, and those were some of the happiest moments of his life. He was not sorry that he had poured out his heart to him. Of course Caruthers was still young, was still under the influence of environment. But in time he was sure to realise that athletics were not the aim of life, but only a tavern on the wayside, where we may rest for a little, or which we may pass by, just as our fancy takes us. If Caruthers saw this at last, he would then have done at least something not altogether vain.
For, after all, what a useless life his had been. The road he had travelled seemed white with the skeletons of broken hopes. In the glowing coals he saw the pageant of his past unroll itself. He had never been quite the normal person. His father was a minor poet, and for as long as he could remember his house had been full of literary people. Arthur Symons and George Moore had often discussed the relations between art and life across his fireplace. Yeats had told him stories of strange Irish myths; Thomas Hardy had read to him once or twice. He had spent his whole life with men who thought for themselves, who had despised the conventions of their day, and he himself had ceased to believe in anything except what personal experience taught him. He had resolved to find out things for himself. And what, after all, had he discovered? Little except the vanity of mortal things. In his friendship with Staple ton he had for a term or so found a temporary peace, but it had not been for long. As soon as he achieved anything it seemed to collapse before him. He had at times sought to forget his failures in blind fits of passion, but when the fire was burnt out the old world was the old world yet! In books alone he found a lasting comfort. The school looked on him as “quite a decent chap, awfully fast, of course, doesn’t care a damn what he does, just lives to enjoy himself and have a damned good time.” He smiled at the irony of it all. If they only knew! But they could never know. He had made a mistake in saying so much to Betteridge; he must not do it again. He must go on probing everything to discover where, if anywhere, was that complete peace, that perfect beauty that he had set out to find. In the meantime the destiny of his life would unfold itself. He would follow where his inclinations led him.
The evening bell broke into his reverie.
He stretched himself.
“Come on, Betteridge. Let us have a rag tonight.”
“Oh, I don’t think I will, I am rather sleepy.” Betteridge was aware of his position. To Tester being a prefect signified very little.
That night Carter’s dormitory was submitted to a most fearful raid. Water flowed everywhere. Two sheets were ripped and a jug broken. Rudd’s bed was upset on the floor with Rudd underneath.
“By Jove, Caruthers,” said Lovelace, from Harding’s well-behaved dormitory, “that man Tester is some lad.”
And Gordon thought, as he saw him laying about him full lustily with a pillow, that all his talk about games must be merely a damned affectation. He was really like any ordinary fellow.
When peace was at last restored, and he had led home his victorious forces, Tester laughed quietly to himself, as he watched the moonlight falling across a huge pool of water. He had played his part pretty well.
* * * * *
For the rest of the term life flowed easily with Gordon. There were no further rows with “the Bull”; in fact their row seemed, for a time at any rate, to have brought them closer together. Both seemed anxious to be friends with one another, and on the football field Gordon’s play gave really very little cause for complaint. For this term his football reached his highest level. In following seasons he played good games on occasions, but he never equalled the standard he set himself in the Colts. It was one of Gordon’s chief characteristics that he usually did well while others failed, and this term the Colts for some reason or other never properly got together. The side kept on being altered. For a week after the row Lovelace was kept out of the side; but it was soon obvious that his presence was absolutely necessary.
“What did I say,” said Gordon. “You see, ‘the Bull’s’ madness doesn’t last for long. He got a bit fed up with you, Lovelace, so he made himself imagine your football was bad. He can always make himself think what he likes.”
“Yes; but it is rather a nuisance,” Mansell remarked, “when you realise it is always House men who have to do the Jekyll and Hyde business.”
“Good Lord! Mansell, you are becoming literary,” laughed Gordon. “How did you hear of Jekyll and Hyde?”
“Claremont has been reading the thing on Sunday mornings; not so bad for a fool like Stevenson. It rather reminded me of The Doctor’s Double, by Nat Gould; only, of course, it is not half so good.”
“No, that is a fact,” said Lovelace. “Nat Gould is the finest author alive. I read some stuff in a paper the other day about books being true to life. Well, you could not get anything more true than The Double Event;, and race-horsing is the most important thing in life, too. I sent up the other day for six of his books; they ought to be here tomorrow.”
“Well, for God’s sake, don’t bring them in here,” said Gordon, “there is enough mess as it is with The Sportsmans of the last month trailing all over the place.”
“Oh, have some sense, man; you don’t know what literature is.”
Gordon subsided. All his new theories of art collapsed very easily before the honest Philistinism of Lovelace and Mansell; for he was not quite sure of his own views himself. He loved poetry, because it seemed to express his own emotions so adequately. Byron’s “Tempest-anger, Tempest-mirth” was as balm to his rebellious soul. Rebellion was, in fact, at this time almost a religion with him. Only a few days back he had discovered Byron’s sweeping confession of faith, “I have simplified my politics into an utter detestation of all existing governments,” and he found it a most self-satisfying doctrine. That was what his own life should be. He would fight against these masters with their old-fashioned and puritanic notions; he would be the preacher of the new ideas. It was all very crude, very impossible, but at the back of this torrid violence lay an honest desire to better conditions, tempered, it must be owned, with an ambition to fill the middle of the stage himself. In his imagination he became a second Byron. He saw, or thought he saw, the mistakes of the system under which he lived; and—without pausing to consider its merits—wished to sweep away the whole foundation into the sea, and to build upon some illusory basis a new heaven and new earth. He had yet to read the essay in which Matthew Arnold says that “Byron shattered, inevitably shattered himself against the black rock of British Philistinism.” He was at present full of hope. The Poetry of Revolt coloured his imagination to such a degree that he saw himself standing alone and triumphant amid the wreck of the world he had overthrown. He was always protesting that Swinburne’s finest line was in the Hymn to Proserpine:
“I neither kneel nor adore them, but standing look to the end.”
It raises a wonderful picture to a young imagination: Swinburne standing on a mountain, looking across the valley of years in which man fights feverishly for little things, in which nations rise to empire for a short while, in which constitutions totter and fall, looking to where, far away behind the mountains, flickered the faint white streamers of the dawn. Oh, he was very young; very conceited too, no doubt; but is there anyone who, having lived longer, having seen many bright dreams go down, having been disillusioned, and having realised that he is but a particle in an immense machine, would not change places with Gordon, and see life once more roseflushed with impossible loyalties?
* * * * *
In its pa
ssage school life seems very long; in retrospect it appears but a few hours. There is such a sameness about everything. A few incidents here and there stand out clear, but, as a whole, day gives place to day without differing much from those that have gone before it. We do not realise this till we can look back on them from a distance; but it is none the less true.
In the Sixth Gordon’s scholastic career took the way of all other fugitive things. It had once given promise of leading somewhere, of resulting in something, but it wanted more than ordinary perseverance to overcome the atmosphere of the deep-rooted objection to work that overhung all the proceedings in the Sixth Form room. And that perseverance Gordon lamentably lacked.
The Lower Sixth was mainly under the supervision of Mr Finnemore; and it was a daily wonder to Gordon why a person so obviously unfitted should have been entrusted with so heavy a responsibility. Finally he came to the conclusion that the last headmaster had thought that the Sixth Form would probably make less fun and take fewer liberties with him than any other form, and that when the present Chief had come he had not had the heart to remove a school institution. Mr Finnemore was an oldish man, getting on for sixty, and his hair was white. He had a long moustache, his clothes carried the odour of stale tobacco, his legs seemed hung on to his body by hooks that every day appeared less likely to maintain the weight attached to them. His face wore a self-depreciatory smile. He was most mercilessly “ragged.”
The day when he took exams in big school will never be forgotten. Gordon was then in V.A. The Sixth, the Army class and the Upper Fifth were all supposed to be preparing for some future paper. All three forms had, of course, nothing to do. The Chief was in London.
At four-fifteen Finnemore was observed to be moving in his strange way across the courts. With an almost suspicious quietness the oak desks were filled.
“What are you doing today, Lane?” Finnemore asked the head of the school.
“I believe, sir, we are supposed to be preparing something.”
“Ah, excellent; excellent, a very good opportunity for putting in some good, hard work. Excellent! Excellent!”
For about three minutes there was peace. Then Ferguson lethargically arose. He strolled up the steps to the dais, and leaning against the organ loft began to speak:
“Gentlemen, as not only the Sixth Form, but also the Army class and Upper Fifth, are gathered here this afternoon with no very ostensible reason for work, I suggest that we should hold, on a small scale, a Bacchic festival. This will, of course, be not only entertaining but also instructive. ‘Life consists in knowing where to stop, and going a little further,’ once said H.H. Monro. Let us follow his advice—and that of the Greeks. First, let us shove the desks against the wall and make ready for the dance.”
It had all been prepared beforehand. In a few minutes several hundred books had been dropped, several ink-pots lay smashed on the floor. There was a noise of furious thunder, and at last all the desks somehow got shoved against the wall.
Finnemore was “magnificently unprepared.” He lay back nervously in his chair, fingering his moustache.
“This must now cease,” he said.
“No, really, sir” protested Ferguson; “everything is all right. Mr Carter, will you oblige us by playing the piano. I myself will conduct.”
The floor of the big school is made of exquisitely polished oak, and is one of the glories of Fernhurst. It was admirably suited for the dance which within five minutes was in progress. It was a noble affair. Finnemore sat back in his chair powerless, impotent; Carter hammered out false notes on a long-suffering piano. Ferguson beat time at the top of the dais, with a pen gently waving between his fingers, as gracefully as the pier rots of Aubrey Beardsley play with feathers. Down below heavy feet pretended to dance to an impossible tune. Someone began a song, others followed suit, and before long the austere sanctity of the room was violated by the flat melodies of Hitchy-Koo. It was indeed an act of vandalism. But the rioters had forgotten that they were distinctly audible from without. In the Chief’s absence they had thought a row out of the question.
Unfortunately, however, “the Bull’s” class-room was only a few yards off. When first he heard the strains of revelling borne upwards he thought it must be the choir practising for the Christmas concert. But it did not take long for him to appreciate that such a supposition was out of the question. The noise was deafening. He could hardly hear himself talk; investigation must be made. He got up and walked out into the courts, made his way to the big school, and opening the door revealed the scene that has just been described. For a second or so he stood speechless. He felt much as Moses might have felt, if he had seen a tribe of Gentiles invading the Holy of Holies. Then his voice rang out:
“What is the meaning of this unseemly disturbance?”
A sudden silence fell over the revellers, as in Poe’s story of the red death when the stranger entered the room.
Buller looked around.
“My form, the Army class, will follow me.”
Disconsolately his form found their books and moved out of the room, fully aware that they would shortly have to pay full price for their pleasure. Over the remainder there fell a chill feeling of uncertainty. A few spasmodic efforts were made to carry on, but the light-heartedness was gone. The laughter was forced. Finally noise subsided into whispering, and whispering into silence and the scratching of pens.
There loomed before the Sixth Form visions of a very unpleasant interview with the Chief, and their expectations were not disappointed. The whole form had to stay back on the last day and write out a Georgic. Only the Fifth got off scot-free. Macdonald was told to deal with them, but he saw the humour of the affair too strongly to do anything but laugh.
“These Cambridge men—can’t keep order. No good at all. Can’t think why the Chief took him.” And then, after a pause; “I wish I had been there!”
The result of this was that for the future Finnemore was treated with a little more respect. The Sixth decided that dances did not pay, and so contented themselves with less noisy but little less aggravating amusements. For instance, Finnemore’s hatred of Browning was a byword; so one day the entire form decided to learn The host Leader for repetition. For a while Finnemore bore it patiently, but when a burly chemistry specialist walked up to within two feet of him and began to bawl so loudly that his actual words were distinguishable in the School House studies, the master covered his face with his hands and murmured: “Oh, heaven spare me this infliction!”
On another occasion Betteridge walked quietly up to him, handed him a Shelley, and without any warning suddenly shrieked out:
“He hath outsoared the shadow of our night.”
Finnemore looked at him sadly: “My dear Betteridge, so early in the morning!”
By many little things his life was made wretched for him. But yet he would not have chosen any other profession. He had once started life with very high hopes, but had discovered that the world is not in sympathy with men of ideas who do not prophesy smooth things. And so at an early age he found himself disappointed in all his personal aims. It seemed that he had to harbour only the simplest wish to find it denied. And then he realised that for the loss of youth there can be no compensation, and that in youth alone happiness could be found. And so he had decided to spend his life in company with high hopes and smiling faces. There were times when an immense sadness came over him, when he thought that disillusionment was waiting for so many of them and that there were few who would “carry their looks or their truth to the grave.” But on the whole he was as happy as his temperament could allow him, and Gordon, although in a sense he was the very antithesis of all that he admired most, found himself strangely in sympathy with his new master. One day the subject for an essay was “Conventionality,” and Gordon unpacked his torrid soul in a wild abuse of all existing governments. After he had written it, he got rather nervous about its reception, but it was returned marked a-, and Finnemore had written at the bottom: “We all think li
ke this when we are young; and, after all, it is good to be young.”
Gordon felt that he had found someone who understood him.
Finnemore lived in two rooms over the masters’ common room, which had from time immemorial been the possession of the Sixth Form tutor, and in the evenings when Gordon used to have his prose corrected Finnemore would often ask him to stay behind and have some coffee. Then the two would talk about poetry and art and life till the broken bell rang out its cracked imperious summons. Finnemore had once published a small book of verses, a copy of which he gave to Gordon. They had in them all the frail pathos of a wasted career; most of them were songs of spurned affection, and inside was the quotation: ”Scribere jussit amor“
“When I look at that book,” said Finnemore to Gordon, “I can’t associate myself with the author, I seem to have quite outgrown him. And as I recall the verses I say to myself, ‘Poor fellow, life was hard to you,’ and I wonder if he really was myself.”
With him Gordon saw life from a different angle. He presented the spectacle of failure, and it rather sobered Gordon’s wild enthusiasm, at times, to feel himself so close to anything so bitterly poignant. But the hour of youth’s domination, even if it be but an hour, is too full of excitement and confidence to be overclouded by doubts for very long. Usually Gordon saw in him a pathetic shadow whom he patronised. He did not realise that it was what he himself might become.
Through the long tedious hours in the shadowy class-room Gordon dreamed of wonderful successes, and let others pass him by in the rush for promotion. He began to think that prizes and form lists were not worth worrying about; he said a classical education had such a narrowing effect on character. We can always produce arguments to back up an inclination if we want to. And in Finnemore there was no force to stir anyone to do what they did not want.
Only once a day was Gordon at all industrious, and that was when the Chief took the Lower and Upper Sixth Form combined in Horace and Thucydides.
