Volume I Part 41 (1/2)
Chapter XI: _Action and Reaction_
Almost before the confusion of a new term had subsided, Michael put his name down to play football again, and it was something in the nature of an occasion when in the first sweltering Middle-side game he scored six tries. Already his contemporaries had forgotten that he was once a fleet and promising three-quarter, so that his resurrection was regarded as an authentic apparition, startling in its unexpectedness. Michael was the only person not much surprized when he was invited by Abercrombie to play as subst.i.tute for one of the Seniors absent from a Big-side trial.
Yet even Michael was surprized when in the opening match between Cla.s.sics and Moderns he read his name on the notice-board as sixteenth man; and when, through the continued illness of the first choice, he actually found himself walking on to the field between the black lines of spectators, he was greatly content. Yet the finest thrill of all came when in the line-out he found himself on the left wing with Alan, with Alan not very unlike the old Alan even now in the coveted Tyrian vest of the Cla.s.sical First Fifteen.
Into that game Michael poured all he felt of savage detestation for everything that the Modern side stood for. Not an opponent was collared that did not in his falling agony take on the likeness of Percy Garrod; not a Modern half-back was hurled into touch who was not in Michael's imagination insolent with d.a.m.nably destructive theories of life. It was exhilarating, it was superb, it was ineffable, the joy of seeing Alan hand off a Modern bounder and swing the ball out low to him crouching vigilant upon the left. It was intoxicating, it was divine to catch the ball, and with zigzag leap and plunge to tear wildly on towards the Modern goal, to hear the Cla.s.sical lower boys shriek their high-voiced thrilling exhortations, to hear the maledictions of the enemy ricochetting from a force of speed that spun its own stability. Back went the ball to Alan, shouting with flushed face on his right, just as one of the Modern three-quarters, with iron grip round Michael's faltering knees, fetched him cras.h.i.+ng down.
”Good pa.s.s,” cried the delighted Cla.s.sical boys, and ”Well run, sir, well run, sir!” they roared as Alan whizzed the ball along to the dapper, the elusive, the incomparable Terry. ”Go in, yourself,” they prayed, as Terry like a chamois bounded straight at the despairing full-back, then with a gasp that triumphed over the vibrant hush, checked himself, and in one peerless spring breasted the shoulders of the back to come thudding down upon the turf with a glorious try.
Now the game swayed desperately, and with Alan ever beside him Michael lived through every heroic fight of man. They were at Thermopylae, stemming the Persian charges with hack and thrust and sweeping cut; they were at Platea with Aristides and Pausanias, vowing death rather than subjugation; the body of Terry beneath a weight of Modern forwards, crying, ”Let me up, you stinkers!” was fought for as long ago beneath the walls of Troy the battle raged about the body of Patroclus. And when the game was over, when the Moderns had been defeated for the first time in four resentful years of scientific domination, when the Cla.s.sical Fifteen proudly strode from the field, immortal in muddied Tyrian, it was easy enough to walk across the gravel arm-in-arm with Alan and, while still the noise of the contest and the cries of the onlookers echoed in their ears, it was easy to span the icy floes of two drifting years in one moment of careless, artless intercourse.
”You'll get your Second Fifteen colours,” said Alan confidently.
”Not this year,” Michael thought.
”You'll get your Third Fifteen cap for a snip.”
”Yes, I ought to get that,” Michael agreed.
”Well, that's d.a.m.ned good, considering you haven't played for two years,” Alan vowed.
And as he spoke Michael wondered if Alan had ever wished for his company in the many stressful games from which he had been absent.
Michael now became one of that group of happy immortals in the entrance-hall, whose att.i.tudes of n.o.ble ease graced the hot-water pipes below the 'board' on which the news of the school fluctuated daily. This society, to which nothing gave admission but a profound sense of one's own right to enter it, varied from time to time only in details. As a whole composition it was immutable, as permanent, as decorative and as appropriate as the frieze of the Parthenon. From twenty minutes past nine until twenty-seven minutes past nine, from twenty-five minutes past eleven until twenty-eight minutes past eleven, from ten minutes to three until two minutes to three the heroes of the school met in a large familiarity whose Olympian laughter awed the fearful small boy that flitted uneasily past and chilled the slouching senior that rashly paused to examine the notices in a.s.sertion of an unearned right. Even masters entering through the swinging doors seemed glad to pa.s.s beyond the range of the heroes' patronizing contemplation.
Michael found a pedestal here, and soon idealized the heedless stupidity of these immortals into a Lacedemonian rigour which seemed to him very fine. He accepted their unimaginative standards, their coa.r.s.eness, their brutality as virtues, and in them he saw the consummation of all that England should cherish. He successfully destroyed a legend that he was clever, and though at first he found it difficult to combat the suspicion of aesthetic proclivities and religious eccentricity, even of poetic ambitions which overshadowed his first welcome, he was at last able to get these condoned as a blemish upon an otherwise diverting personality with a tongue nimble enough to make heroes guffaw. Moreover, he was a friend of Alan, who with his slim disdain and perfectly stoic bearing was irreproachable, and since Michael frankly admired his new friends, and since he imparted just enough fantasy to their stolid fellows.h.i.+p to lend it a faint distinction, he was very soon allowed to preserve a flavour of oddity, and became in time arbiter of whatever elegance they could claim. Michael on his side was most anxious to conform to every prejudice of the Olympians, esteeming their stolidity far above his own natural demeanour, envious too of their profoundly ordinary point of view and their commonplace expression of it.
Upon this a.s.sembly descended the news of war with the Transvaal, and for three months at least Michael shared in the febrile elation and arrogance and complacent outlook of the average Englishman. The Olympians recalled from early schooldays the forms of heroes who were even now gazetted to regiments on their way to the front, and who but a little while ago had lounged against these very hot-water pipes.
Sandhurst and Woolwich candidates lamented their ill-luck in being born too young, and consoled themselves with proclaiming that after all the war was so easy that scarcely were they missing anything at all. Then came the first low rumble of defeat, the first tremulous breath of doubt.
Word went round that meetings were being held to stop the war, and wrathfully the heroes mounted a London Road Car omnibus, s.n.a.t.c.hed the Union Jack from its socket, and surged into Hammersmith Town Hall to yell and hoot at the farouche Irishmen and dirty Socialists who were mouthing their hatred of the war and exulting in the unlucky capture of two regiments. The School Cadet Corps could not accept the ma.s.s of recruits that demanded to be enrolled. Drums were bought by subscription, and in the armoury down under the School tattoo and rataplan voiced the martial spirit of St. James'.
One day Alan brought back the news that his Uncle Kenneth was ordered to the front, that he would sail from Southampton in a few days. Leave was granted Alan to go and say good-bye, and in the patriotic fervour that now burned even in the hearts of schoolmasters, Michael was accorded leave to accompany him.
They travelled down to Southampton on a wet, windy November day, proud to think as they sat opposite one another in the gloomy railway-carriage that in some way since this summons they were both more intimately connected with the war.
In a dreary Southampton hotel they met Mrs. Ross, and Michael thought that she was very beautiful and very brave waiting in the chilly fly-blown dining-room of the hotel. Three years of marriage scarcely seemed to have altered his dear Miss Carthew; yet there was a dignity, a carven stillness that Michael had never a.s.sociated with the figure of his governess, or perhaps it was that now he was older, more capable of appreciating the n.o.ble lines of this woman.
It gave Michael a sentimental pang to watch Mrs. Ross presiding over their lunch as she had in the past presided over so many lunches. They spoke hardly at all of Captain Ross's departure, but they talked of Nancy, and how well she was doing as secretary to Lord Perham, of Mrs.
Carthew, still among the roses and plums of Cobble Place, and of a hundred jolly bygone events. Mrs. Ross was greatly interested to hear of Stella, and greatly amused by Michael's arrangement of her future.
Then Captain Ross came in, and after a few jokes, which fell very flat in the bleak dining-room--perhaps because the two boys were in awe of this soldier going away to the wars, or perhaps because they knew that there was indeed nothing to joke about--said:
”The regiment comes in by the 2.45. We shall embark at once. What's the time now?”
Everyone, even the mournful waiter, stared up at the wall. It was two o'clock.
”Half an hour before I need go down to the station,” said Captain Ross, and then he began to whistle very quietly. The wind was getting more boisterous, and the rain rattled on the windows as if, without, a menacing hand flung gravel for a signal.
”Can you two boys amuse yourselves for a little while?” asked Captain Ross.