The Loom of Youth

by Alec Waugh

  The match began directly after lunch. There would be very likely some difficulty in finishing the game that day. Collins and Foster went in first. Gordon had asked to be kept back till later. The start was dull. Foster was taking no risks, and Collins seemed unable to time the ball at all, which was luckily always off the wicket. Ten went up after quarter of an hour’s play.

  And then Foster, reaching out to play forward, slipped on the wet grass and was stumped. Three balls later Bradford was caught and bowled. It was Gordon’s turn to go in. Nearly everything depended on him. If he failed, the whole side would probably collapse. The tail had done miracles in the first innings; but it could not be expected to do the same again.

  Gordon took guard nervously. He resolved to play himself in carefully, but he never could resist the temptation to have a “go.” The first ball was well up, just outside the off stump. Gordon stepped across and let fly. He had forgotten how slow the pitch was. The ball hung; he was much too soon; the ball sailed straight up into the air! Point and cover-point both ran for it. “Crampin!” yelled out Whitaker. Neither heard; they crashed into one another; the ball fell with a dull thud. The House gave a gasp of relief.

  It was a costly mistake. For when once he got his eye in, Gordon was very hard to get out. And, moreover, he was one of the few people who could get runs quickly on a really wet wicket, for the simple reason that nearly all his shots went into the air; and so he did not find the sodden ground making off drives which should have resulted in fours only realise singles.

  That afternoon Gordon found the bowling perfectly simple. At the other end wickets fell slowly, but he himself was scoring fast. A hard shot over cover-point sent up his individual fifty, and two overs later he drove a length ball on the off stump past mid on to the boundary, and the hundred went up amid cheers.

  “It is a mystery to me,” said Foster, “how that man Caruthers ever gets a run at all; he has no defence, and hits straight across everything.”

  “Don’t let’s worry about that,” said Collins; “sufficient be it that he is hitting these Buller’s swine all over the place. Oh, good shot!”

  A half-volley had landed first bounce among the masters sitting under the wall. The umpire signalled six.

  One hundred and fifty went up.

  And then Gordon mistimed a slow yorker, and was clean bowled for eighty-five.

  He was received with a storm of clapping; the House lined up cheering as he ran in between the ropes.

  “Gratters! Well done!” shouted Foster. “That’s a damned fine knock to finish your Fernhurst cricket days with! Well done!”

  Everyone came up and congratulated him. It was a proud moment, in some ways the proudest of his whole career.

  A few minutes later another burst of clapping signalled the end of the innings. The side had made one hundred and eighty-six. Buller’s were left with two hundred and twenty-three to win. Anything might happen. Just before five Foster led the House on to the field.

  The next hour and a half was fraught with delirious happiness and excitement. Foster bowled magnificently, Bradford managed to keep a length; the whole side fielded splendidly. Wicket after wicket fell. Victory became a certainty. Gloom descended over the Buller’s side. Round the pavilion infants with magenta hat ribbons yelled themselves hoarse. It was one of those occasions in which eternity seems compressed into an hour. Half-past six came. No one went up to tea, everyone was waiting for the end. At last it came. Whitaker, who alone had been able to withstand the School House attack, over-reached himself, Gordon gathered the ball quickly, the bails flew off. The umpire’s hand rose. A wild shriek rose from the crowd. Gordon’s last game at Fernhurst was over; his last triumph had come; at last “Samson had quit himself like Samson.” Through the lines of shrieking juniors the team passed into the pavilion. Gordon began to collect his things, to pack up his bag. He gave it to a fag to carry up.

  Collins and Foster and Gordon walked up from the field arm in arm.

  “Well, if we stopped on here for a hundred years,” said Foster, “we shouldn’t find a better hour to leave.”

  “Yes, the end has made up for any disappointments on the way. It will be a long time before we have as wonderful a time again,” Gordon said, as he passed in the sunset, for the last time, through the gate of the cricket-field which had been, for him, the place of so many happy hours.

  Chapter VI

  The Tapestry Completed

  To Gordon this match seemed the ideal rounding off of his career. There had been no anti-climax, with him the best had come at the end. He would not have to look back and compare his last term unfavourably with the glories of yester year. He had done what he set out to do, he would step rose-garlanded out of the lighted room, in the flush of his success. It was exactly as he had wished. Perfectly satisfied, he lay back in his chair, with his feet on the table, too tired to do anything, merely thinking.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Come in.”

  Rudd came in nervously with a House list in his hand.

  “The Chief wants a list of the trains people are going home by.”

  “Eight-forty to Waterloo.”

  “Thanks.”

  Rudd walked towards the door, but as he put his hand on the knob he turned round.

  “Well,” he began falteringly, “I suppose you are jolly proud of yourself now, aren’t you?”

  “What the hell do you mean?”

  “You know quite well. You have done damned well according to your own point of view. You have aimed at getting the supreme power, and you have got it all right.” Rudd had lost his nervousness now, he was shifting his feet a little, but the sentences flowed easily. “I am a weak head, I know, and you have managed to smash me quite easily. It wasn’t very hard, although you pretend you are the devil of a fellow.”

  “What on earth are you driving at?”

  “Oh, not much; only I want to show you how much you have done for the House. You are big, and you’re strong, and all that; you’ve broken up any authority I ever had, and you’ve taken it yourself. And, of course, as long as you are here, it’s all very well. But what about when you have left? You are too self-centred to see anybody else’s point of view. Apres moi le deluge; that’s your philosophy. As long as you yourself prosper, you don’t care a damn what happens to anyone else, and you have prospered right enough. You’ll have left a name behind you, all right.”

  “I don’t want to have to kick you out, Rudd,” said Gordon.

  “I don’t care what you say; I’m going to finish what I have got to say. You’ll probably not understand, you are too short-sighted. But what sort of future have you left the House? Order was kept all right when you were here; you are strong. But when you have left, who is going to take your place? Foster could have, but he’s leaving. Davenport’s leaving too, so’s Collins. The new prefects will be weak. At the best they would have had a hard time. But probably the prefectorial dignity would have been sufficient, if you hadn’t smashed it up. You say ‘personality’ must rule, but there is not so much personality flying about. We weak men have got to shelter ourselves behind the strength of a system, and you have smashed that. No one is going to obey me next term. They know I am incapable; but they wouldn’t have found it out but for you. That’s what you’ve done this term. You yourself have succeeded, but your success has meant the ruin of the House for at least a year, that’s what you have done. And I expect you are jolly proud of yourself, too. You only care for yourself.”

  Rudd finished exhausted, and stood there gasping. Gordon looked straight at him for a second or so, then picked up a book and began to read; Rudd shifted from foot to foot for a minute and then moved out quickly.

  What an ass the man was, thought Gordon. The beaten man always tries to make the victor’s defeat seem less. It is all he has to do. Damn it all, a man has to look after himself in this world; everyone was struggling to get to the top, and the weak had to be knocked out of the way.

 
Then Foster came in aglow with excitement, and the two went up to the tuck-shop and ate numerous ices, and made a great row, and knocked over many chairs, and threw sugar about. Rudd was clean forgotten, as they rolled back triumphantly, just as the roll bell was ringing. Work was over. Gordon wandered round the studies, talking to everyone; in second hall they had a celebration supper for the whole side. They had two huge pies, a ham, coundess eclairs; they sang songs, laughed and told anecdotes. They finished with the school Carmen, and drank to the House’s future success. Laughing and singing, they at last made for the dormitories.

  But when the lights went out, and silence descended on the dormitory, Gordon began to think of his conversation with Rudd; and, as he thought, there came over him again the fierce longing to get to the heart of things and to see life as it was, shorn of its coverings. Looking at his career from the spectator’s point of view, even Christy would have to own that it had been eminently successful. He had been captain of the House; no one had blamed him that the House had failed to win their matches; no one can make bricks without straw; what did matter was that he had always stood up for the House’s rights, he had never given way to “the Bull,” he had been strong. This last term he had been head of the House in all but name; he had won the batting cup; and he had finished by playing a big part in the biggest triumph that the House had achieved for several years. In all outward aspects he had been a great success.

  But Gordon had had enough of outward aspects. He wanted to get to the root of things, to get on terms of equality with life; he was tired of seeing everything through flickering glass. What had he actually done?

  And when he began to sum up his achievements, he was forced to own that most of them were athletic triumphs, and athletics meant little to him. He had long ceased to worship them. Because a man could make a big score in a House match, it did not mean that he was in any way fit for the battle of life; and what else had he done? He had carried on guerrilla warfare with “the Bull.” It had never come to a real head; so little does. Most things are left unaccomplished in the end; and what had he gained by this contest, and what had been the use of it? “The Bull” was one of the few really fine masters in the school. He was a man, and towered above the puny pettiness of Rogers; he was the “noblest Roman of them all,” yet Gordon had spent a whole year fighting against a man whom he at heart admired. It was, of course, the inevitable clash of two egotisms; but that did not alter the facts. He had been wasting himself fighting against a fine man, when there were so many rotten traditions and useless customs that ought to be attacked; but he had let them alone. The only abuse he had attacked was the worship of sport, and he began to wonder whether it had been worth it. Might it not have been better to have let the school go on believing in its gods a little longer? He had broken down a false god, but had he given the School anything to worship in its stead? Better a false god than no god at all.

  Rudd had been right. He had smashed through a garden of dandelions. He had rooted up flowers and weeds indiscriminately. He had done nothing wonderful; and he had left desolation behind him. Nothing would grow for some time in the plot he had ruined. And yet he was “a great success,” the world said.

  “Only the superficial do not judge by appearances,” Wilde had said, mocking at society; and he had been right. Life was a sham, a mass of muddled evolutions; the world was too slack to find out the truth, or perhaps it was afraid to discover it. For the truth was not pleasant. Gordon did not know what it was; all he saw was that life was built of shams, that no one worshipped anything but the god of things that seem. He lay supine, cursing at the darkness.

  The next morning he woke with the same feeling of depression; he looked round his dormitory. There were seven of them, all perfectly happy and contented. And why? Merely because they looked at the surface, because they did not take the trouble to find out what was true and what was false. They were happy in their ignorance, and he, too, could be happy if he just took things as they were. His last few weeks had been so full of joy, because he had not taken the trouble to think. Thought was the cause of unhappiness. And yet he had to think. He hated half measures. For a certain space he had to live on earth, and he wanted to discover what life really was. What lay beyond the grave he did not know, “sufficient for the day were the day’s evil things.” But he felt that he must try and plumb the depth or shallowness of the day’s interests. He could not bear the idea of a contentment purchased by cowardice.

  Yet he had learn from Tester that the soul is man’s most sacred possession, and must not be shown to the crowd; that he must always mask his true emotions, except in the company of those who could understand them.

  So he went down to breakfast telling Collins the latest joke from The London Mail. On his way back to the studies he ran into a fag.

  “Caruthers, Chief wants to see you in his study.”

  Gordon found the Chief waiting for him.

  “You are not busy, I hope, are you, Caruthers?”

  “Oh no, sir.”

  “Well, at any rate, I shall keep you only for a minute. I just wanted to speak to you for a second before you left. Everything is such a rush on the last day. I suppose you have found that authority brings a good many difficulties with it, and I have heard that you have had a row or two. But I think you have done very well on the whole. I did not say very much about it at the time, but about two years ago I had very grave doubts about how you were going to turn out; I must say that I was very nervous about making you a prefect. But, still, I think your last year has really developed your character, and you certainly have had the wisdom and luck, shall we say, like the host at the wedding, to keep your best till last.”

  The Chief smiled the smile that was peculiarly his own, and peculiarly winning. “I must not keep you any longer. But I did want to take this opportunity of telling you that I have been pleased with you this term, though perhaps my praise sounds weak beside the applause you got after your innings. At any rate, I wish you the very best of luck.”

  With mixed feelings Gordon left the study. He valued the Chief’s opinion amazingly, but he could not help knowing that he did not deserve it. He felt as though he had deceived the Chief. If only the Chief knew how he had plunged along in his own way, an egotist, an iconoclast! And then suddenly there came over him the shock of discovery, that everything in life was so distorted and hidden by superficial coverings, that even the wisest failed to discern between the true and the false.

  He was able to see himself as he was, to realise the littleness of his own performances. Yet the Chief who, if anyone “saw life steadily, and saw it whole,” who was always more ready to judge an action by the intention than by the result—the Chief himself had not really seen how far his achievements were below his possibilities. And if the Chief was at times deceived by the superficial, how was he, a self-willed, blundering boy, ever likely to be able to come to a true understanding?

  He shrugged. There still remained a few hours in which to enjoy the fruits of a success which, if it meant little to him, conveyed a good deal to the world outside. And power is very sweet.

  He tried to fling himself into the light-hearted atmosphere of rejoicing in which the whole House was revelling, but he found it impossible. His laughter was forced; yet his friends noticed no change in him; he was to them just as he had always been.

  Even Morcombe, who was to him more than other friends, had failed to understand.

  “It must be rather decent to be leaving in the way you are,” he said, as they were sitting in the games study before evening chapel. “I doubt if you stopped on if you would ever quite equal the appropriateness of that last innings.”

  “Yes,” said Gordon, with a conscious irony, “it’s certainly dramatic.”

  What use was it to try and show him what he was thinking? He had learnt that it is better to leave illusions untouched.

  Often in the past he had tried to imagine what a last chapel service must be like. The subject has been done to death
by the novelist. In every school story he had read, the hero had always felt the same emotions: contentment with work well done, sorrow at leaving a well-loved place. He had wondered whether he would want to cry; and if so, whether he would be able to stop it. He had looked inquiringly in the faces of those who were leaving and had never read anything very new. Some were enigmas; some looked glad in a way that they were going to begin a life so full of possibilities. Some vaguely realised that they had reached the height of their success at nineteen.

  But now that his time had come, his thoughts were very different from what he had imagined. He felt the sorrow that is inevitable to anyone who is putting a stage of his life clean out of sight behind him; but for all that he had come to the conclusion that he was not really sad at leaving. Fernhurst was for him too full of ghosts; so many dreams were buried there. His feelings were mixed. He felt himself that he had failed, but he knew that he was hailed a success. He half wished that in the light of experience he could go through his four years again; but if he did, he saw that in outward show, at any rate, he could never eclipse the glory that was his for the moment. He remembered that sermon over three years back in which the Chief had asked each boy to imagine himself passing his last hours at school. “How will it feel,” the Chief had said, “if you have to look back and think only of shattered hopes and bright unfulfilled promises? . . . To the pathos of human sorrow there is no need to add the pathos of failure.” What was he to think?—he whose career had so curiously mingled failure and success.

  The service slowly drew to its end. The final hymn was shouted by small boys, happy at the thought of seven weeks’ holiday. The organ boomed out God Save the King, there was a moment’s silence. Then the school poured out into the cloisters. Gordon hardly realised his last service was over. He had been so long a spectator of these partings that he could not grasp the fact that he was himself a participator in them.