by Alec Waugh
He felt very tired, and was glad when bed-time came. He experienced the same sensations that he had known as a new boy—a physical and mental weariness that longed for the ending of the day.
For a few hours silence hung round the ghostly Abbey; then, tremendous in the east, Gordon’s last whole day at Fernhurst dawned.
As far as the Sixth were concerned, work was over. The rest of the school had to go in for two hours for the rep. exam. The drowsy atmosphere of a hot summer morning overhung everything. The studies were very quiet. Gordon took a deck-chair on to the Sixth Form green and settled down to read Endymion.
But he found it impossible to concentrate his thoughts on anything but the riotous wave of introspection that was flooding his brain. He soon gave up the attempt; and putting down the book, he lay back, his hands behind his head, gazing at the great grey Abbey opposite him, while through his brain ran Gilbert Cannan’s words: “Life is round the corner.” He had failed. He knew he had failed. But where and why? Then, as he began to question himself, suddenly he saw it all clearly. He had failed because he had set out to gain only the things that the world valued. He had sought power, and he had gained it; he had asked for praise, and he had won it; he had fought, and he had conquered. But at the moment of his triumph he had realised the vanity of all such success; when he had come to probe it to the root, he had found it shallow. For all the things that the world valued were shallow and without depth, because the world never looked below the surface. He had found no continuing city; his house was built upon sand.
The truth flashed in on him; he knew now that as long as he was content to take the world’s view of anything, he was bound to meet with disillusionment. He would have to sift everything in the sieve of his own experience. The judgment of others would be of no avail. He would be an iconoclast. The fact that the world said a thing was beautiful or ugly, and had to be treated as such, must mean nothing to him. He would search for himself, he would plumb the depths, if needs be, in search of the true ideal which was lurking somewhere in the dark. Tester had been right. It was useless to look back to the past for guidance. He had a few hours back asked for some fixed standard by which to judge the false from the true. There were no standards except a man’s own experience. Here at Fernhurst he had failed to find anything, because he had sought for the wrong things; he had at once accepted the crowd’s statement for the truth. Now it would be different. In his haste he had said that Fernhurst had taught him nothing. He had been wrong. It had taught him what many took years to learn, and sometimes never learnt at all. It had taught him to rely upon himself. In the future he would take his courage in his hands, and work out his own salvation on the hard hill-road of experience.
The school was just pouring out from the rep. exam. He heard Foster shouting across the courts.
“Caruthers, you slacker, come up to the tuck-shop.”
“Right-o!” he yelled back; and racing across the green jumped the railings, and went laughing up to the tuck-shop.
“I say, Foster, let’s have a big tea this afternoon. We had a supper for the A-K side on Saturday. Let’s have the rest up today.”
Gordon flushed with excitement at what lay before him. He wanted everyone else to laugh with him too. An enormous tea was ordered. Men from the outhouses came down, the tables were drawn up on the V. A green, and the afternoon went by in a whirl of happiness. They rolled out arm in arm for the prize-giving. For the last time Gordon saw the whole staff sitting on “their dais serene.” He looked at the row of faces. There was Rogers puffed out with pride; Christy, pharisee and humbug, superbly satisfied with himself. Finnemore sat in the background, a pale grey shadow, that had been too weak to get to grips with life at all. Trundle nursed his chin, twittering in a haze of indecision. Ferrers was fidgeting about, impatient of delay. He, at any rate, was not being misled by outside things; if he was misled by anything, it was by the impulse of his own feverish temperament. He was the splendid rebel leader of forlorn hopes, the survival of those
“Lonely antagonists of destiny
That went down scornful before many spears.”
There, again, was Macdonald, with the same benign smile that time could not change. As he looked at him, Gordon thought that he at least could not have been deceived, but had too kind, too wide a heart to disillusion the young. And, above all, sat Buller, a second Garibaldi, with a heart of gold, an indomitable energy, a splendid sincerity, the most loyal of Fernhurst’s sons. And as Gordon looked his last at his old foe, he felt that “the Bull” was so essentially big, so strong, so noble of heart, that it hardly mattered what he worshipped. There hung round him no false trapping of the trickster; sincerity was the keynote of his life. Gordon would search in vain, perhaps, for a brighter lodestar. As two vessels that have journeyed a little way together down a river, on taking their different courses at the ocean mouth, signal one another “good luck,” so Gordon from the depth of his heart wished “the Bull” farewell and Godspeed.
At last the form lists were read out. A titter rewarded Gordon’s position of facile ultimus. The cups were distributed. Gordon went up for the batting cups, his own individual one, and the challenge one that went to the House. Foster went up for the Senior cricket; it was a veritable School House triumph. The Chief made his usual goodbye speech, kindly, hopeful, encouraging. The head of the school shouted “Three cheers for the masters!”—the gates swept open, the cloisters were filled with hurrying feet.
The last hours passed all too swiftly. In a far corner of the gallery Gordon sat with Morgan, listening to his last school concert. Opposite the choir in their white shirts, and brushed-back hair, sang the school songs inseparable from the end of the school year. There was the summer song, the “Godspeed to those that go,” the poignant Valete:
“We shall watch you here in our peaceful cloister,
Faring onward, some to renown, to fortune,
Some to failure—none if your hearts are loyal—
None to dishonour.”
To Gordon every word brought back with it a flood of memories. He could see himself, the small boy, reading those verses for the first time before he went to Fernhurst, ignorant of what lay before him. How soon he had changed his fresh innocency! How soon his bright gold had grown dim! Then he saw himself this time last year, listening to those words with an unbounded confidence, certain that he at least would never achieve failure. Visions in the twilight! And what was the dawn to bring?
The Latin Carmen began. The school stood on their seats and howled it out. Then came Auld Lang Syne. They clasped hands, swaying in chorus. The echoes of God Save the King shook the timbered ceiling, someone was shouting “Three cheers for the visitors!”; the school surged towards the door; Gordon found his feet on the small stone stairway. He looked back once at the warm lights; the honour-boards that would never bear his name; the choir still in their places; the visitors putting on their coats and wraps. Then the stream moved on; the picture faded out; and from the courts came the noise of motors crunching on the gravel.
As Gordon walked into the cool air he ran into Ferrers.
“Goodbye, sir.”
“You are off, are you? Well, good luck. Write to me in the hols; I’ll look you up if I’m in town. If not, cheer-o!”
He was gone in a second.
“’So some time token the last of all our evenings
Crowneth memorially the last of all our days. . . ‘”
Gordon murmured to himself as he walked slowly down to the dining hall. . .
The next morning there was the inevitable bustle, the tipping of the servants, the goodbyes, the promises to write at least twice during the holidays, the promises which were never kept.
“Here, Bamford, I say,” shouted Gordon, “take my bag down to the station.”
Bamford looked almost surly at being told to do anything on that last day. “Authority forgets a dying king,” thought Gordon. His power could not have been so great if it began to wane almost before he ha
d gone.
The eight-forty came into the station, snorting and puffing.
Gordon secured a corner seat, and leant out of the window, shaking hands with everyone he could see.
“You’ll be down next term, won’t you?” yelled Morgan, bursting as ever with good will.
“I expect so,” said Gordon.
But in his heart of hearts he knew that he would never come back. He would be afraid lest he should find the glamour with which he had surrounded the grey studies and green walks of Fernhurst merely a mist of sentiment that would fade away. So many things that he had believed in he had found untrue. But he wanted to keep fresh in his mind the memory of Fernhurst as he had last seen it, beautiful and golden in the morning sun.
The train slowly steamed out. Hands were waved, handkerchiefs fluttered. Slowly the Abbey turned from ochre-brown to blue, till it was hidden out of sight.
Gordon sank back into his seat. He was on the threshold of life; and he stepped out into the sunlight with a smile, which, though it might be a little cynical, as if he had been disillusioned, held none the less the quiet confidence of a wayfarer who knew what lay before him, and felt himself well equipped and fortified “for the long littleness of life.”
This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
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Copyright © 1917
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ISBN: 9781448200528
eISBN 9781448201846
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