Part 22 (1/2)
”Good Gawd,” said Tester, ”what a bounder.”
”Maybe, but he's the sort of man to wake up the school,” said Betteridge.
”Isn't it rather like applying a stomach-pump to a man who is only fit for a small dose of Eno's Fruit Salt?”
”_Nous verrons._”
And in the bustle of a new term Ferrers was forgotten.
Gordon was in the Sixth, and its privileges were indeed sweet. He felt very proud as he sat in the same room with Harding, a double-first, and head of the House, and with Hazelton, the captain of the House. Though it was an ordeal to go on to ”con” before them, it was very magnificent to roll down to the football field just before the game began without attending roll.
”I say, Caruthers,” Lovelace would yell across the changing-room, ”do buck up; it's nearly twenty-five to three, and roll is at a quarter to.”
”I don't go to roll,” came the lordly answer.
And he felt the eyes of admiring juniors fixed on him. It was sheer joy, too, to wear the blue ribbon of the Sixth Form and to carry a walking-stick; to stroll into shops that were to the rest of the school out of bounds; to go to the armoury and the gym. after tea without a pa.s.s. But it was in hall that the new position meant most.
While the rest of the house had to stay in their studies and make some pretence of work, he would wander indolently down the pa.s.sage and pay calls. When he paused outside a study he heard the invariable sound of a novel flying into the waste-paper basket, of a paper being shoved under the table, or a cake being relegated to the window-seat. Then he came in.
A curse always greeted him.
”Oh, d.a.m.n you, Caruthers, I thought it was a prefect. Foster, hoist out that cake; we were just having a meal.”
He now had the freedom of studies that had before been to him as holy places. Where once Clarke had dealt out justice with a heavy hand, Tester and he sat before the fire discussing books and life. In the games study, where once he trembled before the rage of Lovelace major, he sat with Carter in hall preparing Thucydides. Steps would sound down the pa.s.sage, a knock on the door.
”Come in,” bawled Carter.
”Please, Carter, may I speak to Smith?” a nervous voice would say. No one could talk without leave from a prefect during hall.
”Yes; and shut the outer door,” Carter answered, without looking round.
The prefectorial dignity seemed in a way to descend on Gordon; just then life was very good. But there were times when he would feel an uncontrollable impatience with the regime under which he lived. One of these was on the second Sunday of term. It was Rogers' turn to preach, and, as always, Gordon prepared himself for a twenty minutes' sleep till the outburst of egoistic rhetoric was spent. But this time, about half-way through, a few phrases floated through his mist of dreams and caught his attention. Rogers was talking about the impending confirmation service. With one hand on the lectern and the other brandis.h.i.+ng his pince-nez, as was his custom when he intended to be more than usually impressive, he began the really vital part of the sermon.
”In the holidays there appeared as, I am sorry to say, I expect some of you saw, a book pretending to deal with life at one of our largest Public Schools. I say, pretending, because the book contains hardly a word of truth. The writer says that the boys are callous about religious questions and discuss matters which only grown-up people should mention in the privacy of their own studies, and still more serious, the purport of the book was to attack not only the boys but even the masters who so n.o.bly endeavour to inculcate living ideas of purity and Christianity. I am only too well aware when I look round this chapel to-night--this chapel made sacred by so many memories--that nearly every word of that accusation is false. Yet perhaps there are times--in our mirth, shall we say?--when we are engaged in sport, or genial merriment, when we are inclined to treat sacred matters not with quite that reverence that we ought. Perhaps----”
Rogers prosed on, epithet followed epithet, egotism and arrogance vied with one another for predominance. The school lolled back in the oak seats and dreamt of house matches, rags, impositions, impending rows. At last the Chief gave out the final hymn. Into the cloisters the school poured out, hustling, shouting, a stream of shadows. Contentedly Rogers went back to his house, ate a large meal, and addressed a little homily to the confirmation candidates in his house on the virtues of sincerity.
”What a pitiable state of mind old 'Bogus' must be in,” sighed Tester, when the scurry of feet along the pa.s.sage had died down kind of quiet, and he and Gordon were sitting in front of a typically huge School House fire.
”I don't think I should call it a mind at all,” muttered Gordon, who was furious about the whole affair. ”The man's an utter fool. When he is told the truth he won't believe it, but stands there in the pulpit rambling on, airing his rotten opinions. Good G.o.d, and that's the sort of man who is supposed to be moulding the coming generation. Oh, it's sickening.”
”Well, my good boy, what more can you expect? The really brilliant men don't take up schoolmastering; it is the worst paid profession there is.
Look at it, a man with a double-first at Oxford comes down to a place like Fernhurst and sweats his guts out day and night for two hundred pounds a year. Of course, the big men try for better things. Rogers is just the sort of fool who would be a schoolmaster. He has got no brain, no intellect, he loves jawing, and nothing could be more suitable for him than the Third Form, the pulpit, and a commission in the O.T.C. But perhaps he may have a few merits. I have not found any yet.”
”Nor I. But, you know, some good men take up schoolmastering.”
”Oh, of course they do. There is the Chief, for instance, a brilliant scholar and _the_ authority on Coleridge. But he is an exception; and besides, he did not stop an a.s.sistant master long; he got a headmasters.h.i.+p pretty soon. Chief is a splendid fellow. But I am talking of the average man. Just look at our staff: a more fatuous set of fools I never struck. All in a groove, all wors.h.i.+pping the same rotten tin G.o.ds. I am always repeating myself, but I can't help it. d.a.m.n them all, I say, they've mucked up my life pretty well; not one of them has tried to help me. They sit round the common room fire and gas. Betteridge swears Ferrers is a wonderful man; personally, I think he is an unmitigated nuisance. But at any rate, he is the only man who ever thinks for himself. Oh, what fools they all are.”
For the rest of the evening Gordon and Tester cursed and swore at everyone and everything, and on the whole felt better for having got it off their chests. At any rate, next day Gordon was plotting a rag on an enormous scale with Archie Fletcher; and in a House game a.s.sisted in the severe routing of Rogers' house by seventy-eight points to nil. It takes a good deal to upset a boy of fifteen for very long. And the long evenings were a supreme happiness.
It must be owned that during hall Lovelace was rather unsociable. It was not that he studied Greek or Latin; he had a healthy contempt for scholastic triumphs; horse-racing was the real interest of his life.
”This is my work,” he used to scoff, brandis.h.i.+ng _The Sportsman_ in Gordon's face. ”I am not going to be a cla.s.sic scholar, and I sha'n't discover any new element, or such stuff as that. I am going on the turf.