The Loom of Youth | Page 9

of you will perhaps never rise above playing on House
games, or get higher than the Upper Fifth. But if you can manage to set
an example of keenness you will have proved yourselves worthy of the
School House, which is beyond doubt the House at Fernhurst. That's
all I have got to say."
That scene was in many ways the most vivid in Gordon's career. From
that moment he felt that he was no longer an individual, but a member

of a great community. And afterwards when old boys would run down
Clarke, and say how he had stirred up faction and rebellion, Gordon
kept silent; he knew that whatever mistakes the head of the House
might have made, he had the welfare of the House at heart and loved it
with a blind, unreasoning love that was completely misunderstood.
It is inevitable that a new boy's first few days should be largely taken
up in making mistakes, and though it is easy to laugh about them
afterwards, at the time they are very real miseries. At Fernhurst, things
are not made easy for the new boy. Gordon found himself placed in the
Upper Fourth, under Fleming, a benevolent despot who was a master
of sarcasm and was so delighted at making a brilliant attack on some
stammering idiot that he quite forgot to punish him. "Young man,
young man," he would say, "people who forget their books are a
confounded nuisance, and I don't want confounded nuisances with me."
Gordon got on with him very well on the whole, as he had a sense of
humour and always laughed at his master's jokes. But he only did Latin
and English in the Fourth room, for the whole school was split up into
sets, regardless of forms, for sharing such less arduous labours as
science, maths, French and Greek. So that Gordon found himself
suddenly appointed to Mr Williams' Greek set No. V. with no idea of
where to go. After much wandering, he eventually found the Sixth Form
room. He entered; someone outside had told him to go in there. A long
row of giants in stick-up collars confronted him. The Chief sat on a
chair reading a lecture on the Maccabees. All eyes seemed turned on
him.
"Please, sir," he quavered out in trembling tones, "is this Mr Williams'
Greek set, middle school No. V?"
There was a roar of laughter. Gordon fled. After about five more
minutes' ineffectual searching he ran into a certain Robertson in the
cloisters. Now Robertson played back for the Fifteen.
"I say, are you one of the new boys for Williams' set?"
"Yes."

"Well, look here, he's setting us a paper, and I don't know much about
it, and I rather want to delay matters. So look here, hide yourself for a
few minutes. I am just going to find Meredith and have a chat."
For ten minutes Gordon wandered disconsolately about the courts.
When at last Robertson returned with his protégé the hour was well
advanced, and there would be no need for Robertson to have to waste
his preparation doing an imposition.
On another occasion one of the elder members of his form told him to
go to "Bogus" for French. Now "Bogus" was short for the Bogus officer,
and was the unkind appellation of one Rogers. Tall, ascetic and
superior, with the air of a great philosopher, he had, like Richard
Feverel's uncle, Adrian Harley, "attained that felicitous point of
wisdom from which one sees all mankind to be fools." He was one of
the happy few who are really content; for in the corps as Officer
Commanding he could indulge continuously in his favourite pastime of
hearing his own voice, and as a clerk in orders the pulpit presented
admirable opportunities for long talks that brooked no interruptions. In
the common room his prolix anecdotes were not encouraged. But in the
pulpit there was no gainsaying him. His dual personality embodied the
spirit of "the Church Militant," a situation the humour of which the
School did not fail to grasp. But of all this Gordon, of course, knew
nothing. After a long search for this eminent divine, in perfect
innocence he went up to a master he saw crossing the courts.
"Please, sir, can you tell me where Mr Bogus' class-room is?" He did
not understand till weeks afterwards why the master took such a long
time to answer, and seemed so hard put to it not to laugh.
The story provided amusement in the common room for many days.
Rogers was not popular.
It was in this atmosphere of utter loneliness and inability to do
anything right that Gordon's first week passed. Of the other new boys
none of them seemed to him very much in his line.