The Loom of Youth

by Alec Waugh

  In a mood of supreme self-confidence he returned to Fernhurst.

  At Waterloo everyone was talking at the top of his voice.

  “Is it true Akerman has left?”

  “Yes; got a commission in the Middlesex.”

  “Good Lord! that’ll mean Gregory captain.”

  “Hunter has left, too, I hear.”

  “Has he?”

  “Caruthers will be captain of the House, then.”

  Broken sentences were wafted like strange music to Gordon’s ears. He felt that the eyes of those who once had been his equals looked at him with a sort of Oriental admiration, in which there lurked traces of fear.

  He found himself addressed with more respect. One or two people came up to congratulate him. The green flag waved. The train moved majestically westward, and his reign had begun. He did not feel the slightest tremor of nervousness. He remembered Hunter saying at the end of last term that it was ticklish work being captain of the House. Was it? To Gordon it seemed no more than the inevitable entrance into a kingdom which was his by right of conquest.

  The Eversham road swept in its broad curve up to the Abbey, black with moving figures. Gordon slowly walked up to the House. It was the privilege of School House prefects to enter by a small gate near the masters’ common room. Haughtily he rang the bell. A wizened old lady opened the door, bowing with a “Hope you ’ad a good ’oliday, sir.” It was the first sensation of power.

  A crowd had collected round the notice-board in the changing-room. Gordon murmured “Thank you,” and two or three Eton collars moved aside to give him room. What a change! All the giants of the former generation had gone. Betteridge had, at the express request of the Chief, come back for one term. But he alone remained. Gordon was fifth in the House; and, good Lord, that amazing ass Rudd was a prefect, and second in the House! He and Gordon had a double dormitory on the lower landing. The number of boys in the House had sunk to sixty-two, rather a desolating thought for House matches.

  The Chief was not in his study. Gordon dropped a health certificate on his table, and gave instructions to one Morgan, a round-faced, ruddy youth, to shove his bag into his dormitory. Then he wandered over to the games study. And so this study was going to be his! He had often sat there with Carter; but he had always felt himself an excrescence. Now it was his own. He pictured the evenings after a hard game of football, sitting in front of the fire; the long mornings when he was supposed to be preparing history for Finnemore, spent in this atmosphere of luxurious calm. He planned his furnishing of the room. In the broad window he would hang two bookshelves for his smaller books. On each side of the fireplace there was also room for bookshelves. Then, standing against the wooden partition that jutted out into the room would be his large oak bookcase for the heavy volumes. He would repaper the room, and a new carpet was a necessity. He went over to the porter’s lodge to give instructions.

  He had already decided to ask Foster to share the study with him. Foster would be captain of cricket next summer. They would get on well together. Foster never quarrelled with anyone; and it would be a suitable combination. He met Foster by the eight-ten train from Exeter, and informed him of the fact.

  When prayers came, and Gordon stood under the mantelpiece behind the arm-chair where the captain of the House sat, and looked down at the row of new boys at the day-room table, it seemed incredible to him that he had ever been like that. And yet it was only three years ago since he had sat there, dazed and frightened.

  Prayers were ended. Gordon sat back, his hands resting on the arms of his big oak chair. The Chief came round, shaking hands.

  “Caruthers, Foster and Davenport, you might come and speak to me for a moment after you have finished your supper.”

  That was not long. No one had ever been known to touch any of the first-night soup; Gordon had often wondered what happened to it. There was much of it, and all wasted.

  The Chief greeted them with his invariable fluttering smile.

  “I suppose you know what I want you for? Kitchener called up his reserves, so I have had to call up mine. None of you would, I think, in the ordinary course of events have become prefects this term. But as it is, I am sure you will all do well; and remember that being a prefect does not merely consist in the privilege of being late for breakfast. Some of you, who may very likely have views of your own on certain subjects, must try and make them conform with mine. We must all try to work together, and I am always ready to give any of you advice if I am able to, and of course—”

  At this moment there came the discordant sounds that proclaimed the arrival of the last train from town. Gordon could imagine some wretched new boy huddled underneath the stairs, ignorant and timid.

  Rudd burst in with a health certificate and outside came the babble of voices. “I must go and see Chief . . . Health certificate . . . Confirmation classes . . . Going to specialise in stinks.”

  It was clear that the Chief was to have a hard time for the next twenty minutes interviewing all these candidates for a satisfactory division of labour.

  “Well, I think that is all just now, thank you.”

  He gave them a nod of dismissal. They filed out into the passage, black with its crowd of clamouring applicants.

  It was not until the next day, however, that Gordon fully realised the change that had come over Fernhurst. Nearly all the bloods had left. Gregory was still there, but he had sent his papers in, and expected to be gazetted in a week or so, and of the Fifteen of the year before he was the only remaining colour. Two members of the Second Fifteen remained: one because he was only seventeen, the other, Akerman’s younger brother, because he was going to be a medical student and was not allowed to take a commission by the War Office.

  The staff also had undergone several changes. Ferrers was practically the only master under thirty. The rest had all taken commissions, and their places were filled by grey-beards and bald-heads, long since past their prime. It was a case of extreme youth face to face with extreme age.

  “There will be some fun this term,” prophesied Archie Fletcher, for whom the immediate future stretched out into a long series of colossal “rags.”

  Rogers was imperially himself. The Corps was, of course, to be allowed considerably more time this term. There were two parades a week, one a company drill on Friday, the other a field day on Wednesday. Besides this, between twelve-thirty and lunch there would be section and platoon drill every day. Rogers imagined that O.T.C. work would shortly become more important and more popular than football; he saw himself taking the position once held by Buller. On the strength of this alluring prospect he bought a new uniform.

  For the first few days life was entertainingly disorganised. The time-table worked out all wrong. Gregory got gazetted; and Akerman, on becoming captain, forgot the numbers of the football grounds, thus causing endless and hilarious confusion. No one quite knew what was happening, but everyone was happily excited, and vaguely garrulous about “how the war has changed things.”

  Gordon found that his new position brought with it certain other honours. In the Corps, for instance, where for three years he had so tempered slackness with insolence as to make him the worst private in the company, he found himself a lance-corporal, in charge of a section. He was elected to the Dolts Literary Society, under the placid autocracy of Claremont, who called them his “stolidi.” But nothing showed more clearly the change wrought by the war than the fact that Gordon was nominated to the Games Committee, before which august body hardly six months ago he had cut such an inglorious figure. It was a strange irony.

  In the School House every prefect was allowed four fags, so as Foster and Gordon were both prefects, the games study had a goodly crowd of menials. For the most part they were simple, insignificant, Eton-collared mortals, who flitted round the room after breakfast with dusters, and at various other times of the day came in to see after the fire. Gordon took little notice of them. Foster had made out a list of the days on which each fag was on duty; one,
Hare, was put in charge, and when anything went wrong, Hare was considered responsible and beaten. After two such castigations the excellence of the fagging was maintained at an unusually high standard.

  The first fortnight of the term was feverish. Corps work was revivified under the stimulus of war; the field days by Babylon Hill provided genuine excitement, in spite of the prolixity of Rogers’s subsequent summary of the day’s work. There were going to be very few football matches; but “uppers” were played with the old keenness, and there was fierce competition for the last places in the scrum. Ferrers wrote a long article to The Country on “The Public Schools and the War,” which bubbled over with enthusiasm.

  Gordon found authority a pleasant thing. There were, of course, bound to be little worries, but they were transient. The new boys caused him a certain amount of trouble. They never would take the trouble to find out if they were posted for House games. The result was that as often as not the House found itself playing with only six forwards. Gordon made a speech to the House on the subject. The very next day Golding, a most wretched-looking specimen, failed to turn up on a House game.

  Gordon gave him a lecture on the insignificance of the new boy and the importance of games.

  “This sort of thing can’t go on,” he said, using the formula that every prefect has used since the day prefects were first made. “If it did, we might find everyone cutting House games and going off to pick-ups! What would happen then?”

  Golding was far too frightened to have any views on the subject.

  “Well, I shall have to beat you.”

  Gordon led the way to the empty space by the cloisters where roll was called.

  “Bend over there!”

  Golding showed a natural reluctance to do anything of the sort.

  “No, right down; and lift up your coat.”

  Gordon gave him a fairly hard stroke. Golding squealed “Oh!” and rose, holding his trousers, and looking round fretfully. Gordon’s heart melted. After all, this was a new kid, and a pretty poor specimen at that.

  The next shot was very gentle.

  The sequel reached Gordon three days later. Golding had gone back down to the day-room. Rudd was taking hall, which was, of course, an excuse for everyone to talk.

  “How many?” asked several voices. “Did he hurt?”

  “Oh, only one and a half,” announced Golding, puffed out with pride. “First hardly hurt me at all, and the second one was quite a misfire.”

  This was rather a surprise to those who remembered Gordon’s driving power. Golding was thought rather a “lad” after all.

  Gordon, however, soon dispelled this illusion. A week later he went down to the House game in which Golding was playing and cursed him roundly all the afternoon with perfect justice. After tea he gave him six for slacking: and all delusions about Golding’s bravery were immediately dispelled.

  “Damned little tick,” said Gordon. “He made such a fuss that I let him off lightly, and then he goes down to the day-room and makes out I am a wreck. Collins, I charge thee, put away compassion! It does not pay with these degenerates.”

  There is nothing more interesting to the artist than watching a thing grow under one’s hand. And Gordon, who had the ambition of the artist in embryo, was thoroughly engrossed in the training of his House sides. A-K Junior was a promising side; it beat Claremont’s by twenty points, and Rogers’s by over fifty.

  Morgan captained the side, and was easily the best man in it, but among the lesser lights there was a great display of energy, much of it misplaced. The worst offender was Bray. To watch him play was to witness a gladiatorial display of frightfulness. His fists flew about like a flail, his legs were everywhere. On the whole he did more damage to his own side than to his opponents. And the amount of energy he wasted every game in hacking the bodies of any who got in his way must have been exhausting. Gordon had to speak to him almost severely once or twice.

  In the game against Rogers’s, Bray nearly got sent off the field. There had been a tight scrum which had more or less collapsed. The whistle blew. Jenks had been persuaded to referee.

  “Now then, form up properly there.”

  When the two scrums assorted themselves, Bray was discovered about yards from the ball, sitting on the head of a wretched, fat, unwashed product of Rogers’s, punching him violently and ejaculating after each punch:

  “Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!”

  Jenks looked very fierce.

  “Now then, you stupid fellows. If you go on like that, I shall have to report you to the Headmaster, and you know what that will mean.”

  Bray looked a little frightened, and for the future devoted his energies to the football and not the footballers, to the distinct advantage of the side.

  But Gordon began to find that the more his interest increased in House games, the less interest he took in uppers and Fifteen puntabouts. He was always wanting to go and see how his House was getting on. As soon as the first keenness wore off he found the interminable “uppers,” totally unrelieved by the excitement of matches, amazingly dull. Indeed, the whole school side was beginning to grow weary. Every Monday and Thursday there was a puntabout. Every Tuesday and Saturday there was the same game—First Fifteen v. Second Fifteen—with one or two masters, such as Christy, who were no longer as young as they had been. The result was invariably the same; the First Fifteen won by forty points, and were cursed by “the Bull” for not winning by sixty. No one could possibly enjoy such monotony. Every week the business became more unpopular.

  “The Bull” stamped up and down with a whistle in his hand.

  “I never saw such slackness. What good do you imagine you men will be in the trenches, if you can’t last out a short game of rugger like this? I don’t know what the school is coming to!”

  The side, which had never been good, got worse daily. As a captain, the younger Akerman was a nonentity. Buller was captain of the side in everything but name.

  “You know, Foster,” said Gordon one Saturday evening after a more than usually dreary performance, “these uppers are getting about the ruddy limit.”

  “Have you taken all this time to find that out?” growled Foster. “I used to like footer once. Last year we had a good time on those Colts games. Of course the old buffalo lost his hair a good deal, but the games were level at any rate. I can see no sort of fun in winning every time by forty points. Why can’t we have pick-up games, so as to get level sides.”

  “I suppose ‘the Bull’ wants to get the side working together.”

  “Perhaps he does; but why, if there are going to be no matches till half-way through November? The Downside match is four weeks off, and till then we have to continue this silly farce twice a week. And, after all, it does not teach us defence in the least. Our three-quarter men have not to do any collaring. If we run up against a side that is any use at attack, we shall be hopelessly dished.”

  “I think we shall be dished anyhow. And I am damned if I care much. Buller has knocked all the keenness out of me, and the rest of the side say the same thing. Do you know, I actually look forward to Corps parade day.”

  “The same with me. I am fed to death with footer.”

  “Still we are having a jolly good time off the field.”

  “Are we?”

  “Oh, yes; we are prefects; we haven’t got to do any work, and it’s interesting coaching the kids.”

  Foster looked dubiously at him. He had no side to coach. He also had to do some work for his Sandhurst exam, next term. But Gordon’s crown was as yet too fresh to feel the tarnishing damp of disappointment.

  * * * * *

  October went by with its red-gold leaves and amber sunlight. November swept in bringing a procession of long evenings and flickering lights. The first boom of the war fever died down. The Fifteen played listlessly, Upper followed Upper. Puntabout followed puntabout. No one cared who was in the side. Foster was left out—and thanked heaven!

  “I am about sick of being cursed o
ff my feet, and told I shall be no good in the trenches because I miss my passes. ‘The Bull’ has gone war-mad.”

  Gordon had to keep in the side; it would not do for the House captain to get a reputation for slackness. His play lacked its old fire and dash, but was still good enough to earn him his place. He knew he was going off; that he was not nearly so good as he had been the year before; the thought worried him. But still A-K Junior was doing very well.

  One Saturday evening there came the sound of thumping feet down the passage, someone banged himself against the door, and a well-known voice was shouting:

  “Hullo, Caruthers, my lad!”

  Gordon swung round to find Mansell, with out-stretched hand, looking magnificent in the top-boots and spurs of the R.F.A.

  “Come in. Sit down. By Jove! this is like old times. I must call up Archie! Archie! . . . Here’s someone to see you.”

  Mansell was just the same as he had been a year ago, a little older, a little stronger, a little more the man of the world. He was full of stories; how his men had nearly mutinied because they thought their separation allowance insufficient; how he had chased deserters half across England; how he had taken the pretty waitress at the cafe to the music hall.

  “It’s life, that’s what it is! I never knew what life was till I went to Bournemouth. Oh, my God, we do have a time! Damned hard work, of course, but we do have a time in the evenings! My lord, I nearly put my foot in it the other night. I saw the devil of a smart girl walking down the street, and I could have sworn I knew her. I went up and said: ‘Coming for a stroll?’ O Lord, you should have seen her turn round. I thought she would fetch a policeman. And we have a jolly good footer side, too. We fairly smashed the S.W.B. last week. Oh, it’s grand. But, still, I suppose you are not having a bad time here. It’s good to see you lads again.”

  On the next day Mansell stood an enormous tea in the games study. Everyone of any importance came. The gramophone played, songs were sung. Never was there seen so much food before. Mansell seemed like a Greek god who had for a moment descended to earth to reveal a glimpse of what Olympus was like.