The Loom of Youth

by Alec Waugh

“Yes; but, confound it all,” said Gordon, “are we going to be dictated to by these outhouse potentates? The Stoics is more a School House society than anything else; and, what’s more, it is going to remain so. These outhouse men can come or go if they want to. It does not matter to us. Let us read this play with a School House cast, carry the thing through somehow, and show these fools like Christy what we think of them. Now is our chance of proving our independence.”

  “Won’t there be a hell of a row, though?” said Betteridge reluctantly.

  “What if there is, man?” said Gordon. “We can’t help that. Somehow or other that play is going to be read. Let this evening be a symbol of the House’s attitude. These houses have flung down the glove. They beat our forwards when we win matches, and they try and stop our meetings. Damn it, we’ll pick up the glove!”

  “Yes,” shouted Gordon, “and fling it in their snivelling faces.”

  Betteridge drew up a huge notice of the meeting after hall and posted it on the school board. It ran as follows:

  In spite of the fact that many of the usual readers will be prevented from attending the Second Meeting of the Stoics this term, the Society will read, at seven-thirty, in the School House Reading Room,

  THE YOUNGER GENERATION

  BY STANLEY HOUGHTON

  Cast. . .

  (Signed) C.P. BETTERIDGE.

  That evening was historic. Every member of the School House attended the meeting, the members of the day-room as well as those from the studies. The reading-room was packed. It was a record meeting. The reading was erratic. Parts were forced at the eleventh hour on reluctant and totally unsuitable persons. But somehow or other they got through it in the end; and that was all that mattered.

  But still it was not without a little nervousness that the conspirators awaited developments. Christy saw the notice and fumed. Ferrers heard of it and laughed. Rogers rushed to the Chief palpitating with rage.

  After lunch the Chief sent for Betteridge, and asked for a copy of The Younger Generation. There was an air of nervous anticipation pervading the studies. Just before tea the Chief sent for Betteridge again.

  “A very interesting play. Very modern, of course, but extremely clever. Thank you so much for lending it me. I wish I had been at the reading. A record attendance, I hear. Well, ask me to come next time you get as good a play as that.”

  There was no reference to the outhouse boycott. The Chief was very tactful, and, moreover, he had enjoyed reading the play immensely. Besides, it would not have done any good if he had made a fuss, especially when he was entirely in sympathy with Betteridge.

  In The Fernhurst School Magazine, which was edited by Betteridge, there appeared the following paragraph:—

  “On Saturday, 5th March, before a record and appreciative audience, the Stoics read The Younger Generation, by Stanley Houghton. There was no one who failed to realise the extraordinary insight into the life of the day that made such a work possible. The enthusiasm and applause were highly significant, as showing what a keen interest the school is taking in all questions of social and domestic life. There were rather fewer representatives from the outhouses than usual, but this was as well, as there would have been little room for them.”

  The victory of Christy was not so very complete after all.

  With this successful demonstration Gordon’s excitement in House politics abated.

  Chapter VIII

  The Dawning of Many Dreams

  The Three Cock came and went, bringing with it House caps for Lovelace, Collins and Fletcher, but it caused little stir. Everyone had foreseen the result, and without Hazelton (ill with mumps) the House stood little chance of keeping the score under fifty. Hostilities were declared closed for the time being. The four weeks of training for the sports came on, and Gordon’s Sixth Form privileges were restored. For a short time the hold of athleticism was weakened, and as it weakened, the hold of literature became more firm.

  “House Caps” were always allowed a fairly slack time after the Three Cock, and Gordon made the best of his. While the last traces of winter were disappearing, and the evenings began to draw out into long, lingering sunsets, he voyaged on into the unknown waters of poetry. Keats and Shelley, names which had once meant nothing to him, now became his living prophets. He felt his own life coloured by their interpretations. During the days of his quest for power, when the scent of battle had led him on, he had found inspiration only in those whose moods coincided with his own. But now that the contest was over and strife was merged into a temporary lull, there came a check in the fiery search for achievements. He found pleasure in the gentler but far more beautiful melodies of Keats. Byron and Swinburne had beaten so loudly on their drums, and blown so forcibly on the clarion that his ears had been deafened. But in the peaceful afterglow of satisfied desire he asked for soft and quiet music.

  During this time he saw a great deal of Ferrers. Together they discussed all the questions that to them seemed most vital. The Public School system came in for a great deal of abuse.

  “A lot wants altering,” Ferrers said. “Boys come here fresh from preparatory schools. If they are clever and get into higher forms, they are put among bigger boys, and they get their outlook coloured by them. They get wrong impressions shoved into their heads, cease to think at all, lose all sense of honesty and morality. Then the school that has made them like this finds out what they are, and sends them away.”

  “By Jove, that’s just what Jeffries said.”

  “Jeffries—who is Jeffries? I don’t know him.”

  “He was a splendid fellow; but, like most other people, he followed the crowd, then got caught and had to go.”

  “That is it; always the same. Usually the least bad are sacked, too; never heard of a real rake getting sent away; the rakes are far too clever. Cleverness is what counts, counts all through life. A man is expelled only because he is not clever enough to avoid being caught, and then the school thinks it’s saving the others by sending him away. And it does no good. The big wrong ’un stays on, only the weak one goes. Human nature is a thing that has got to be dealt with carefully, not in the half-hearted way it is here.”

  Ferrers wrote a great deal about Public Schools to the various London papers. He was fast winning a name in the educational world. But he was always being asked to modify his statements. He raved against the weakness of the authorities.

  “They don’t want to know the truth,” he said, “they are afraid to hear it. ‘Tell us lies,’ that’s what they say. ‘Lull us into a false security. A big bust-up is coming soon, but keep it off till after we are gone.’ They know their house is built on sand, running out into the river. They want to barricade their own tiny houses for a little. I want to go and search for the big firm land, but they are too comfortable on their cushions and fine linen to dare to move. Oh, prophesy smooth things!”

  Gordon listened intently to it all. Ferrers was his ideal. Often they would talk of books: of the modern novel; of Compton Mackenzie, in whom idealism and realism were one; of Rupert Brooke, the coming poet, who was to make men believe in the beauties of this earth, instead of hankering after an immaterial hereafter; of the Elizabethan drama, of Marlowe, Beaumont, Webster. They were very wonderful, those hours. Gordon felt that he had at last, after wandering far, come to his continuing city. Glancing back over his last two years, he used to laugh and say:

  “I don’t regret them; I was happy; and the only thing to regret is unhappiness. But I have outgrown them; they did not last. They were what Stephen Phillips would number among the ‘over-beautiful, quick fading things.’ They were good days, though. But I am happier now. I can see the future spreading out before me. Next winter Hunter will be captain, but I shall be second in the team and lead the forwards. It will be a year of preparation. Then will come my year of captaincy. All the things I wanted seem falling into my hands. “Life is sweet, brother,’ life is sweet!”

  And, looking back, it seemed as if in the wild orgy of Pack Monday
Fair he had finally burnt the old garments and put on the new. That day had been the funeral pyre of his old life; and, like Sardanapalus, it had died of its own free will. A glorious end; no anti-climax. But the future was still more glorious. When he watched the morning sun flicker white on the broad Eversham road from the station to the Abbey, the leaves breaking on the lindens, the dim lights waking in the chapel on Sunday, he saw how far he had outgrown his old self. Now he had begun to perceive what life’s aim should be—the search for beauty. Tester had been right when he said that beauty was the only thing worth having, the one ideal time could not tarnish. And yet Tester was not satisfied. The hold of the world was too strong on him. He could see where others were going wrong, but he himself was all astray, at times morbidly wretched, at others hilarious with excitement. It was merely a question of temperament. Gordon saw stretching before him the fulfilment of his hopes. There was no niche for failure. His destiny would unroll smoothly like a great machine; he was at peace, in sympathy with a world of beautiful ideas and dreams. At times he would feel an unreasoning anger with the Public School system, but his rage soon cooled down. After all, it had left him at the last unscathed, and was in the future to bring many gifts. Others might be broken on the wheel; but he was still sufficiently an egoist, sufficiently self-centred to be indifferent to them. He had come through, with luck perhaps, but still he had come through. That was all that mattered. He had not read Matthew Arnold’s Rugby Chapel. If he had, he might have recognised himself in the pilgrim who had saved only himself, while the world was full of others, like the Chief, who were “bringing their sheep in their hand.” But probably even if he had read the poem at that time, he would have been too happy, too self-contented, too successful to realise its poignant truth. And it would not have been surprising. Youth is always intolerant and self-centred. It is only when we grow old, and see so “little done of all we so gaily set out to do,” that we suddenly appreciate that, even if we have ourselves failed, yet if we can by our experience help someone else to succeed, our life will not be utterly vain. Altruism is the philosophy of middle age.

  On a few, but very few, occasions Gordon was temporarily roused out of his secure atmosphere. One of these was on the last day of term, when a letter appeared in The Fernhurst School Magazine suggesting that the Three Cock should be changed into a Two Cock, since the School House had for the last few years proved itself so incapable of holding out against the strong outhouse combination of three houses against one. Much of what the writer said was true. The House numbered only about seventy, while each outhouse contained some forty boys, with perhaps six day boys attached to each. The House did not take in day boys, so that the House was always playing against a selection from double its number. A Two Cock would be far fairer. Nevertheless the House was furious.

  “Confounded old ass,” said Mansell. “I believe Claremont wrote it. Let him wait till next year and he will see his beastly blue shirts rolled in the mud.”

  “But it is such infernal swank,” said Gordon. “We smashed them in the Thirds; to all intents and purposes we routed them in the Two Cock; the only thing the outhouses won was the Three Cock; and they are so bucked about that that they want to clinch a victory, get up and shout: ‘Look at us, what devils of fine fellows we are! You can’t touch us. Better take charity.’ Unutterable conceit! Why, we won four times running about seven years ago. I have a good mind to go to Claremont and give it him straight. Betteridge, you absurd ass, why did you print this thing?”

  “Well, you see, there were a few rather risky things in the paper, and I thought if I cut it out he might hack about the rest of the rag. And, besides, it will be an awful score when we win next year, as we are absolutely certain to. Can’t you imagine the account: ‘Last year some rather foolhardy persons doubted the ability of the School House to deal with a combined side of the best three outhouses, and they were rash enough to express their doubts in print. But this year, under the able captaincy of G.F. Hunter, with the forwards admirably led by G.R. Caruthers, the House gained a thoroughly deserved victory by fifteen points to three.’ We shall crow then, my lads, sha’n’t we?”

  “Yes, it will be all right then,” said Mansell. “My lord, I wish I was going to be here to play in it. My governor is a fool to make me leave and go to France.”

  Mansell was leaving at the end of the term.

  “Well, all the same, it’s a vile insult to the House,” said Gordon. “Whether he meant it or not, it’s an insult.”

  But his annoyance passed quickly. He was far too certain of the future to worry much about what anyone said. He was sure the House would win in the end. It was only a question of time. And when the prize-giving came, his anger gave way to pride. His place in form gave him little satisfaction, for he was easily bottom of the Sixth; but after the books had been given there came the turn of the House cups. Amid enormous cheers Lovelace went up for the Thirds cup; amid still louder cheers he and the outhouse captain stepped up together to receive the Two Cock cup. Then at tea Hazelton walked into hall carrying the two trophies to place on the mantelpiece, and the House burst forth in a roar of cheering. It was all sheer joy; and beyond the present glory shone the dawn of great triumphs to come. The House was just entering on its career of success. The day of Buller’s was at an end. There only remained to them the remnants of their earlier glory. Where they had stood the House was about to stand. And in that hour of triumph Gordon himself would be the protagonist.

  The short Easter holidays passed happily. Over the fresh grass of Hampstead Heath Gordon wandered alone on those April mornings, when the trees were breaking into a green splendour, when the long waters of the Welsh Harp lay out in the morning sun like a sheet of gold. Looking across from the firs he saw the spire of Harrow church cutting the red sky, and the long stretch of country in between rolling out into a panorama of loveliness. On the road to Parliament Hill he passed the spot where Shelley found a starving woman dying in the snow, and took her to Leigh Hunt’s house to give her warmth. Near John Masefield’s house was the garden where Keats had written his immortal Ode to a Nightingale. Hampstead was prodigal of associations, and they stirred the boy’s imagination like a trumpet call.

  Then followed the long summer term, with its drowsy afternoons, its white flannels, its long evening shadows creeping across the courts, its ices, its innumerable lemonades; everything conspired to make Gordon supremely happy. Scholastically he had at last achieved his great wish of specialising in history; a fine-sounding programme which actually implied that he would not need to do another stroke of work during his Fernhurst career. Specialising in history was an elastic activity, and might mean a few hours a week in which to read up political economy. It might mean what Prothero made it mean—seven hours in school a week, and the remainder pretending to read history in his study.

  The grey and lifeless Finnemore superintended the history, and, like everything else he superintended, it was scandalously neglected. Outhouse people occasionally did a little work; School House men never. Gordon began by taking quite modest privileges. He knew he had heaps of time to enlarge his advantages. He started by doing one prose and one “con” a week, instead of two proses and two “cons” like the rest of the form. He also gave up one Latin construe book and one Greek book. That meant about two hours a day to idle in his study. But he found it quite easy to turn that two into three, and he was well aware that by Christmas his daily hours of indolence would have reached. Prothero at the present moment was only going into school for divinity and French, and as often as not he told his French master that he was so much occupied with history that he could not come to French at all. Nominally he went into school seven hours a week, actually he very rarely went in more than three.

  The method of teaching history at Fernhurst had been the same from time immemorial. Gordon was told to buy Modern Europe, by Lodge, price seven shillings and sixpence. He did not, however, put his father to this expense. History specialists in the School House ha
d for years used the same book. It had once belonged to a fabulous Van Hepworth, who had gained a History exhibition at Selwyn somewhere in the nineties.

  No one knew anything of this Van Hepworth. His name was on the school boards, but he had never been seen or heard of since he had left Fernhurst for the romantic atmosphere of Cambridge. But he had left behind him a name that will be remembered in the School House as long as history is taught by Finnemore. For on his last day, in a fit of gratitude, he had left to future historians the legacy of his history notebook. It contained all that Finnemore knew!

  Every week Finnemore set three questions to his specialists—to be done with books. He had a stock of these questions, and Van Hepworth had written exhaustive essays on every one of them. All that was needed was to consult the oracle, and then copy out what he had written. Sometimes, by way of a change, Finnemore would think of a new subject. But Gordon would say:

  “Oh, sir, I have been reading about Mary de Medici, and am very much interested in her. I wondered if I could do a question on her.”

  “Of course. I always like you to do what you are interested in. Let me see. I have a nice little question on her: ‘Mary de Medici: was she an unmixed evil?’ An interesting subject which raises quite a lot of points. And I have one more question for you. ‘Compare Richelieu and Mazarin,’ an interesting little psychological study. I think you will enjoy them.”

  Then Gordon would have recourse to the unfailing authority, Van Hepworth. Sometimes he felt too slack to copy out the questions at all. On such occasions he would simply read Van Hepworth’s essay straight out of the old, battered book.

  “I hope you won’t mind my reading this to you, but I was in rather a hurry and I doubt if you could quite read my handwriting.”

  Finnemore would listen with the greatest interest.

  “Very nice indeed, Caruthers, very sound attitude to adopt. An essay well worth preserving. You will copy it out neatly, won’t you?”