The Loom of Youth

by Alec Waugh

  He looked so kind, so sympathetic, this old man, that Gordon felt bound to pour out his feelings to him.

  “You know, sir,” he said, “I have awfully wanted to talk to a Roman Catholic whom I thought would understand me, and especially one like yourself, who has willingly abandoned all his own ambitions. There is something very fine in the complete surrender of your Church. In ours there is so much room for difference of opinion, so much toleration of various doctrines. There seems so little certainty. In Rome there seems no doubt at all.”

  “Yes, the Catholic Faith is a very beautiful creed,” said the old man; “we are misjudged; we are called narrow-minded and bigoted. They say we want to make everyone conform to one type, and that we bind them with chains. But, my son, it is not with chains that the Holy Church binds her children. It is with loving arms thrown round them. The Church loves her children far too much to wish them to leave her even for a minute. She wants them entirely, hers and hers alone. Perhaps you will say that is selfish; but I do not think so. It is the great far-seeing love that sees what is best for its own. Love is nearly always right. But if you wish to keep your own views, to worship God in your own way, well, there are other creeds. Protestantism, it seems to me, lets out its followers, as it were, on strings and lets them wander about a little, laugh and pluck flowers, in the certainty that at the last she can draw her own to her. Well, that is one way of serving God, and in the Kingdom of God there is no right or wrong way, provided the service be sincere. There are many roads to heaven. Our road is one of an infinite love that draws everything to itself. There are other ways; but that is ours.”

  “But supposing there was a person,” said Gordon, “who really wanted to surrender himself to that perfect love, but who found the call of the world too strong. You know, sir, I should give anything to be as you, safe and secure. But I know I should break away; the world would call me again. I should return, but when I give myself, I want to give myself wholly, unconditionally. I want there to be no doubt; and I want to come today.”

  “I will tell you a story,” said the monk. “I was a boy here years ago, and there was one boy, brilliant at games and work, whom I admired very much, and by the time I had myself reached a high position he came back to us as a monk. I used to live in a little village, just behind that hill, and I used to ask him down to supper sometimes. And I remember one day my father said to him: ‘You know, I envy you a lot.’

  “‘Why?’ he asked.

  ‘”Well,’ said my father, ‘as far as this world is concerned you are well provided for. You live in beautiful surroundings, comfortable and happy. And for the next world, as far as we know, no one could be more certain of happiness than you.’

  “The young monk looked at my father rather curiously, and said:

  ‘“Perhaps so; but when I look round at your happy little family and your home interests, I think we have given up a good deal.’

  “And only a year later that young man ran away with a girl in the village, and he was excommunicated from the Church. And yet I expect that the whole time he really loved our life best; only the call of worldly things was too strong; and he was too weak.”

  “Then what will be the end of me?” asked Gordon.

  “Wait, my son. I waited a long time before I knew for certain that God’s way was best, and that the things men worshipped were vain. Those are the most fortunate, perhaps, who can see the truth at once, and go out into the world spreading the truth by the influence of a blameless life. But we are not all so strong as that. It takes a long time for us to be quite certain; and even then we have to come and shut ourselves away from the world. We are too weak. But we have our place. And in the end you, too, I expect, will so probe the happiness and grief of the world and find them of little value, and when you have, you will find the Holy Church waiting for you. It does not matter when or how you come; only you must bring yourself wholly. It is not so very much we ask of you. And we give with so infinite a prodigality.”

  “Yes,” said Gordon, “I suppose there will be rest at last.”

  That evening as he sat discussing the cricket match with Morgan the captain of the school came in and gave him his “Firsts.” Morgan was profuse with congratulations. Everyone seemed pleased. It was the hour he had long pictured in his imagination—the hour when he should get his coveted “Firsts.” He himself had wanted them so badly; but somehow or other they did not mean very much just now.

  Chapter V

  The Things that Seem

  But the heart of youth is essentially fickle; and Gordon’s lambent spirit, which had for some time almost ceased to strive for anything, suddenly swept round to the other extreme, and was filled with the desire to reassert itself at all costs. Suddenly, almost without realising it, Gordon was fired with the wish to finish his school career strongly, not to give way before adversity, but to end as he had begun. He would be the Ulysses of Tennyson, not of Plato. “Though much is taken, much abides . . . ’tis not too late to seek a newer world.” . . . Like a tiger he looked round, growling for his prey, and his opportunity was not slow in coming.

  Ferrers was sitting in his study one afternoon, talking very despondently about the general atmosphere at Fernhurst.

  “It is not what I had hoped for,” he said; “in fact, it is quite the reverse. The young masters are gone, the bloods are gone. The new leaders are not sure of their feet, and these old pedants have taken their chance of getting back their old power. And the whole school is discontented, fed up; no keenness anywhere. The masters tell them: ‘If you aren’t good at games you’ll be useless in the trenches.’ Wretched boys begin to believe them. They think they are wrong, when really they are just beginning to see the light. They are beginning to look at games as they are. There’s no glory attached to them now—no true victories—glamour is all removed. They see games as they are, see the things they have been worshipping all these years. But the masters tell them games are right, they are wrong; it is their duty to do as others did before them. Oh, I wish we could smash those cracked red spectacles through which every Public School boy is forced to look at life.”

  “But can’t we, sir?”

  “It would be no good; they wouldn’t believe you. I am getting sick. For years I have been shouting out, and trying to prove to them what’s wrong. They won’t believe. They are blind, and it is the masters’ fault, curse them. There they sit, talking and doing nothing. I begin to worship that man, I forget his name, who said: ‘Those who can, do—those who can’t, teach.’ It sums up our modern education. It is all hypocrisy and show.”

  “But, sir,” said Gordon, “we can’t do much, but let’s do what we can. Now, when the glamour has fallen off athleticism, let’s show the school what wretched things they have been serving so long. If we can in any way put a check on this nonsense now, if in Fernhurst only, we shall be doing something. After the war we shall have a fine Fifteen winning matches, and the school will feel its feet. We must stop it now—now, when there is no glamour, when the school is tired of endless ‘uppers,’ and sick of the whole business. Now’s the time.”

  “Yes; but how? This sort of thing doesn’t happen in a night.”

  “I know; but we can sow the seeds now. The Stoics is the thing. We can have a debate on the ‘Value of Athletics,’ and, heavens! I bet the whole House will vote against them. The House is sick of it all. We’ll carry the motion. We’ll get the best men to speak. We’ll give sound arguments. Then we’ll have formed a precedent. It will appear in the school magazine that the Stoics, the representative society of Fernhurst thought, has decided that the blind worship of games is harmful. It will make the school think. It’s a start, sir, it’s a start.”

  “You are right, Caruthers, you are right. We’ll flutter the Philistine dovecots.”

  Gordon had not the slightest doubt about the success of the scheme. He himself was at the very summit of his power. He had been making scores for the Eleven out of all proportion to his skill; he was almost ce
rtain for the batting cup. His influence was not to be discounted. He could get the House to vote as he wanted; he was sure of it. He told Davenport of the scheme, and he also was enthusiastic.

  “By Jove! that’s excellent. It’s about time the school realised that caps and pots are not the alpha and omega of our existence.”

  The air was full of the din of onset.

  Nearly the whole House attended the meeting, and the outhouses rolled up in good numbers, more out of curiosity than anything else. They thought the whole thing rather silly. There had been a debate more than two years back on “whether games should be compulsory” Only six had voted against compulsion. “The Bull” remembered this, and came to the debate, strong in his faith in the past. He wanted to see this upstart Ferrers squashed.

  Ferrers himself opened the discussion with typical exuberance.

  “How much longer,” he finished, “are we going to waste our time, our energy, our force on kicking a football? We have no strength for anything else. And all the time, while Germany has been plotting against us, piling up armaments, we have been cheering on Chelsea and West Ham United. Look at the result. We were not prepared, we are only just getting ready now. And why? Because we had wasted our time on trivial things, instead of things that mattered; and unless we turn away from all this truck, trash and cant about athleticism, England is not going to stand for anything worth having.”

  He sat down amid tempestuous applause. The audience were really excited. They had gradually grown sick of games during the last two terms, and now apparently they had the best authority for doing so. Everyone likes being congratulated.

  The opposition suffered in having Burgess to support them. We have heard of him before. Years had not altered him much. He was the same conceited, self-righteous puppet as of old. People got tired of listening to him. There was a sound of shuffling, a window began to bang with unnecessary noise. He sat down to an apathetic recognition.

  Davenport then made a very biting speech against games.

  “The Bull” was surprised to see him speaking on Ferrer’s side. He was in the Second Fifteen, and a very useful outside.

  “Whatever we may have done before the war,” he cried, “and we did many foolish things, it is quite obvious that now this worship of sport must cease. Let us hope it is not revived. We are sent here to be educated—that is, to have our minds trained; instead of that, we have our bodies developed, our minds starved. We play footer in the afternoon, we have gym. at all hours of the day, and other experiments in voluntary compulsion, such as puntabouts after breakfast. The result is we work at our play, and play at our work . . .” He elaborated the scheme in an amusing way. There was a lot of laughter. “The Bull” looked fierce. Rudd, who had for a “rag” insisted on speaking for the opposition, discoursed on the value of “mens sana in corpore sano.” Everyone shrieked with laughter.

  He finished up thus:

  “Well, look at me. I am the hardest-working fellow in the school.” A roar of laughter went up. Rudd had nearly been deprived of his position of school prefect for doing so little work. “I am also a fine athlete. Today I clean bowled two people on the pick-up, and hit a splendid four over short-slip’s head. I am what I am because of our excellent system of work and play. Look at me, I say, and vote for athleticism.”

  Buffoonery is often more powerful than the truest oratory.

  The motion was put before the House.

  A lot of people spoke. All in favour of the motion. It was great fun watching “the Bull’s” face grow gradually darker. Morgan said that only fools and Philistines cared for games. They were amusing to pass an afternoon with, and because one had to have exercise, but that was all.

  Gordon waited till near the end, then he got up.

  “I must first congratulate everyone on the broadminded view they have taken of this important question; and I think it is an infallible proof that the days of athletic domination are ended. For, after all, is it any wonder that clear-thinking men like A.C. Benson pull our system to pieces, when we have to own that for the last twenty years at least the only thing Public School boys have cared about is games? And with such a belief they go out into life, to find the important posts seized by men who have really worked. No one works at a Public School. People who do are despised. If they happen to be good at games as well, they are tolerated. It is a condemnation of the whole system. And, after all, what are games? Merely a form of exercise; we have got to keep our bodies healthy, because, as Mr Rudd so wisely put it, a healthy mind means a healthy body. Games were invented because people wanted to enjoy their exercise. We all enjoy games. I love cricket; but that does not make me worship it. I like eating; but I don’t make a god of a chocolate eclair. We can like a thing without bowing down to it, and that’s how we have got to treat games. Some fool said ‘the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton’; and a fool he was, too. Games don’t win battles, but brains do, and brains aren’t trained on the footer field. It is time we realised that; and I think from the way the speaking has gone tonight, the school is beginning to understand. Now is the chance to show that you think so. There are no good athletes in the school today, the Eleven’s rotten and the Fifteen is worse. Men like Lovelace major were almost worth worshipping, because they were men; they made athletics appear grand, because they were such glorious creatures themselves; but there are none of that sort here now. We can see games as they really are without any false mist of sentiment, and we can see that for years we have been worshipping something utterly wrong.”

  Gordon’s speech really made an impression. After all, he was a blood, one of the best all-round athletes in the school, and if he thought like that, there must be something in what so many people were saying.

  The question was put to the vote, and was carried by an enormous majority.

  “The Bull” looked for a moment at the crowd of faces that had spurned the things he admired, looked as one who saw nothing, turned on his heel and strode out of the room.

  “Well, we won! Glorious!” said Ferrers.

  “Yes,” said Gordon, “’we have lit this day a candle that, by the grace of God, shall never be put out’!”

  He went down to hall, flushed with triumph. After all, there were some compensations for everything; but he could not remove the feeling that out of all the change and turmoil of his Fernhurst career he had retained nothing tangible. He had written his name upon water; he had as yet found nothing that would accompany him to the end of his journey. He knew that his friendship for Morcombe would lead to nothing: very few school friendships last more than a year or so after one or other has left. He thought of Byron’s line: “And friendships were formed too romantic to last.” It was too true, he had yet to find his real ideal. He was about to begin the serious battle of life. He was standing on the threshold. The night was black before him; he had no beacon fire to lead him. He dimly perceived that beauty was the goal to which he was striving. But he had only a vague comprehension of its meaning. He had no philosophy. Doubtless in the end the Roman Church, the mother of wanderers, would take him to her breast. But that was a long way off yet, and he wished to bring himself to the final surrender, strong and clean-hearted, not a vessel broken on the back-wash of existence. And yet he had no true guide for the years that stretched before him. This last episode of the debate seemed to bring it home to him more clearly. His life had so far been composed of isolated triumphs and isolated defeats, which had not yet so combined one with another as to form a bedrock of experience which would serve as a standard for future judgments. He had made merry, careless of what the next day would bring. He had fought with “the Bull”; and in the struggle he had achieved some things, and failed to achieve more. He had at one time prayed for the long contention to cease; at another he had laughed in the face of his enemy, flushed with the joy of battle. Gazing back on his past, he seemed to stand as a spectator, watching a person who was himself and yet not himself, going through a life of many varied expe
riences, now plunging in the mud, now soaring to the heights. But the incidents only affected him in a dull, subconscious manner. He had learnt nothing from them. His school days would soon be over, and yet he felt as though he were beginning life all over again. He had found nothing that could stand the wear of time and chance.

  But still there remained a few more weeks of Fernhurst; whatever happened, he swore that he would finish as befitted a king. “Samson would quit himself like Samson.” There would be time enough for doubts and introspection when it was all over, when for the last time the familiar eight-forty swept him out of Fernhurst’s life for ever. At present it was his to leave behind him a name that would survive a little while, “nor all glut the devouring grave.” It should be remembered of him that during his day of power he had never once given way, had stood his ground, had never known the poignancy of the “second-best.”

  Until now Gordon had never really quarrelled with anyone in his own house. All his encounters had been with outhouse men or “the Bull”: he might have helped to make the House feel independent of the school, but he had always aimed at the unity of the House’s aim. It was a pity that his last contest should have been with the head of his own house.

  Rudd was a bad head; there could be no doubt about that. His dormitory made him apple-pie beds, and soaked his candle in water, so that it would not light. The day-room ragged him mercilessly. Gordon had never minded. In comparison with Rudd’s weakness his own strength shone the more. It made him so essentially the big power in the House. But things reached a limit shortly after half term, when Rudd tried to drag him in to help him in his troubles, and shelter behind the rest of the prefects.

  It all arose from a most “footling” source. Rudd was taking hall, and the usual music hall performance was in full swing. Bray had asked to borrow some ink, and having once gained a pretext for walking about, was dancing up and down the floor singing What would the Seaside be without the Ladies? Everyone was, of course, talking. Now a certain Stockbrew, imagining himself a poet, immortalised the occasion with the following stirring lyric:—