The Loom of Youth Part 17

"Refuse?" said Forbes. "Those waistcoats are of a most fashionable cut.

It's extremely hard to get that particular brand of cloth; my brother, who is a member of the Bullingdon, told me----"

"I don't want to know anything about your brother, Forbes. Take off those things. The Headmaster would never allow them."

"But, sir," insisted Archie. "He only said that they must be of a quiet colour, and they are of a quiet colour, aren't they, sir?"

In truth they were. There was not a trace of colour visible anywhere.

Trundle gave in. He murmured something about asking the Headmaster, and then put on Archie to con. He never asked the Chief; and there was no need for him to do so. It is not pleasant wearing dust-laden carpets for an hour. Such jests can only be undertaken at rare intervals.

But the culminating point was not reached till the last Thursday of the term. It was boat-race day, and the set unanimously backed Oxford. At ten o'clock the set was due to appear. But when Trundle arrived all he found was Benson, who was in nervous apprehension lest he should have come to the wrong room. If he had, he might lose some marks; and marks were more to him than many boundaries. He smiled happily at Trundle.

"Ah, where are the rest, Benson?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Oh, well, I suppose we must wait, but it is a great nuisance. I wanted to finish the book to-day, it's our last lesson, you know."

The next day was Good Friday.

For ten minutes they sat in silence. It takes a long time to prepare a big rag; the curtain very seldom goes up punctually on the first night; and there had been no dress rehearsal. There was a sound of scuffling from the door in the cloister which led into the School House studies.

Then came the tread of measured feet. The door opened, and the great procession entered.

At the head was Gordon in Ferguson's dressing-gown (a great white confection with pale pink frogs) with a white Colts' cap on his head; he beat time with a small swagger cane. Then came the trumpeters, Crosbie and Forbes, who were producing strange harmonies on two pipes that they had bagged from the armoury. Behind them Mansell walked in corps clothes and a Second Fifteen cap. He was chanting a low dirge. On each side of him marched the choristers, Lovelace and Hunter, in white sheets and enormous psalters that they had borrowed from the chapel. They also sang in a strange outlandish tongue. But the _piece de resistance_ was the banner. It consisted of a long piece of white calico on which was inscribed in red ink: "Up, Up, Oxford. Down with the Cantabs." (Trundle hailed from Emmanuel.) It was fastened at each end to a hockey stick, and Fletcher and Collins bore it in solemnly. In the rear, Briault gave his impressions of a cow being ill. d.y.k.e was the showman.

"I will now present, gentlemen," he began, "my circus of touring artistes, who are raising a fund for the endowment of the Oxford boating club. I must beg you all----"

But Trundle cut short the oration. Seizing a cane, he rushed into the cavalcade of Isis, and smote out full l.u.s.tily. Pandemonium broke forth.

No battle-field was more rich in groans; no revue chorus produced so much noise. It took a quarter of an hour to obtain quiet. But at last a motley crowd sat down to study Francois Coppee.

And then came the _denouement_. It was entirely unexpected and entirely unrehea.r.s.ed. There was a knock outside. The door opened and an amazing apparition appeared on the threshold. Betteridge was in the Sixth. Very enviously the night before he had listened to the preparations and plans of the extra French set; cursing inwardly, he had sat down at ten o'clock to do prose with the Chief. Faintly across the court were borne the sounds of strife. He groaned within him. Suddenly the Chief stood up.

"I find I shall have to leave you for a little. Some parents are coming to interview me. I want you all to return quietly to your studies, and continue the prose there."

Joyfully the Sixth trooped out. Betteridge rushed across the courts to Trundle's cla.s.s-room. For a second he listened outside, then a great idea struck him. There was still half-an-hour left. Madly he tore up to the dormitories. Luckily they were not locked. Five minutes later he appeared before Mr Henry Trundle entirely changed. He had on a very light brown suit, a pair of check spats, a rainbow-coloured waistcoat, a heliotrope bow tie; a bowler was balanced on his head at an angle of forty-five degrees, a camera was slung round his neck, in his hand he had a notebook and pencil.

"Mr Trundle, I believe," he said. "I am the reporter of _The Fernhurst Gazette_. We have received a wire that there has been a great pro-Oxford demonstration in here, and we want to get an account of it in the stop press news before our sister journal, _The Western Evening Transcript_.

Can you give me some notes?"

As he stopped, the set, that had remained spellbound, burst into a hilarious shriek of joy. Everyone heard it; even Claremont woke up and asked what it was. Arthur, the school _custos_, talks of it to this day.

And at this point the Chief comes into the story. He was showing the parents in question round the studies when he heard an uproar proceeding from somewhere near the cloisters. He excused himself from the parents, ran downstairs, and tracked the noise to Trundle's cla.s.s-room. He entered. Never before had he seen disorder on such a generous scale. He looked round.

"Mr Trundle--er--what er--set is this?"

"The extra French set, Headmaster."

The Chief half smiled. He walked out without another word.

Next term there was no extra French set.

The ragging of Trundle, however, was merely regarded relaxation from the serious business of life. In an Easter term football is the only thing that any respectable man will really worry about. And Gordon, judged on these grounds, and his friends with him, would most certainly pa.s.s into the most select society circle. The Thirds this year was a terribly perplexing problem. Simonds had not taken enough trouble with his juniors the term before. This term he was working hard enough, but it was a bit late in the day to begin. On the first Sat.u.r.day of the term a scratch side took sixty-five points off the prospective Thirds side.

"If you play as badly as that on the day you'll lose by forty points,"

growled Simonds, "and you'll d.a.m.ned well deserve a beating, too."

"Curse the man," muttered Lovelace. "Whose b.l.o.o.d.y fault is it but his, I should like to know? He is a disgrace to the House, working for some rotten scholarship when he ought to be training on our juniors. Rotten swine."

"Well, he's pretty well all right this term, at any rate," said Gordon.

"For the Lord's sake don't go grousing about; or we sha'n't keep the score under eighty, let alone ninety. If we lose, we lose; and, my G.o.d, we'll make 'em play for it."

The side certainly tried hard, and Simonds did his best, but all the same, on the day of the match, Buller's were backing their chances of running up a score of over thirty points at three to one.

"The swine!" said Gordon. "Sw.a.n.king it about how they are going to lick us to bits. My word, I would give something to smash them to smithereens. I have taken on a bet with every man in Buller's whom I found offering long odds. I stand to win quite a lot. And I shall win it."

"G.o.d's truth," said Mansell, "do they think there's no guts left in the House at all? They may go ga.s.sing about the number of Colts' badges they have got, but they are not used to our way of playing. We go for the ball, and if a man's in the light we knock him out of it. School House footer is not pretty to look at; but it's the real thing, not a sort of nursery affair. We go in to win."

Just before lunch a typical telegram from Meredith was pinned up on the House board:

"Go it House. And give them ----"

The blank was left to the imagination. The House remembered Meredith and filled it in accordingly.

Nothing is more horrible than the morning before a first House match.

Gordon woke happy and expectant, but by break he had begun to feel a little shivery, and at lunch-time he was done to the world. He ate nothing, answered questions in vague monosyllables, and smiled half nervously at everyone in general. He was suffering from the worst kind of stage fright. And after all, to play in an important match before the whole school is a fairly terrifying experience. As he sat trembling in the pavilion, waiting for the whistle to blow, Gordon would have welcomed any form of death, anything to save him from the ordeal before him. The whistle blew at last. As he walked out from the pavilion in his magenta-and-black jersey, an unspeakable terror gripped him; his knees became very weak; his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, and then something seemed to snap in his brain. He walked on quite cheerfully. He was as a spectator. It seemed that it was not really he, but his ghost that was walking on to the field. Subconsciously he lined up with the rest. The School side in their white jerseys, the Colts with their red dragons, seemed miles away. Collins kicked off. Gordon did not know he was playing. A roar of "House" rose from the touch-line. Involuntarily he joined it, thinking himself a looker-on, then suddenly Livingstone, the Buller's inside three-quarter, caught the ball and ran towards him.

At once Gordon was himself. He forgot the crowd on the touch-line, forgot his nervousness, forgot everything except that he was playing for the House, and somehow or other had to drive the ball over that line. He crashed into Livingstone, and the pair rolled into touch. A cheer rippled down the line. Gordon did not hear it.

_The Fernhurstian_ described this match as "perhaps the finest ever witnessed on the School ground," and the reporter was not far wrong.

Certainly that first mad rush of the House forwards was the most glorious moment in Gordon's football career. It was all so unexpected, so essentially wonderful. On the touch-line Mansell shouted himself hoa.r.s.e. The cries of "House" completely drowned those of "School." For the first quarter of an hour the School pack never got the ball out of their half. It seemed that the House must score. Time after time, the School were forced to touch down. Stewart was brought down just the wrong side of the line. Lovelace performed prodigies of valour. A gloom descended over Buller's. On the Masters' side of the line "the Bull"

fumed and ground his teeth: "Go low, Reice, you stinking little funk.

Get round, forwards, and shove; you are slacking, the lot of you. Buck up, Philson." Up and down he stamped, cursing at his men. Lovelace could hardly refrain from laughing.

"Now, lads," shouted Stewart, "fair or foul; shove the ball over the line!" Like a sledge-hammer Gordon crashed into the scrum. Wilkinson was in his light, but Gordon was seeing red, his feet stamped on Wilkinson, and found the ball. His elbows swung viciously, as he cut his way through the scrum. Then someone caught him by the ankle. He went down hard. A boot caught him on the side of the head. He got up blind with wrath. "Fight! Fight!" he yelled. The House grovel swarmed in; the outhouse pack shivered for a moment, then gave way. Collins and Gordon burst through, the ball at their toes; Wilkinson dashed across and dived for the ball; he clawed it for a second, Gordon's feet smashed it from his hands, and Collins steered it past the back, and kicked it just over the line and fell on top of it.

From the touch-line there burst a roar that must have been heard five miles away. "Well done, laddie!" bawled Mansell. Even Ferguson waved his stick in the air. It was a great moment.

As the School lined up behind their line, "the Bull" strode behind them.

"What are you doing? Put some life into your game. Buck up, all of you; it is a filthy show. Guts!"

Lovelace took the kick. It was far out: the ball hardly rose from the ground. In a state of feverish panic Livingstone dropped out. For a second or two the School pressed. But it was impossible to withstand the wild attack of the House for long. Collins, elated by his success, brought off a magnificent dribble, and was forced into touch only a few yards from the line. Half-time was not far off. And the House struggled fiercely to get over the line once more. Up and down between the goal line and the twenty-five the two scrums fought. It seemed only a matter of time for another try to send the House across with a lead of six points; but there is as much luck in rugger as in any game. The House had heeled perfectly, Foster cut past one man, and pa.s.sed out to Richards. A roar of "House!" went up. A try was imminent, Richards pa.s.sed to Lovelace. But Livingstone was one of those three-quarters who will miss an easy kick one minute and bring off a superb collar the next. As Richards pa.s.sed, he dashed between him and Lovelace, intercepted the pa.s.s, and raced up the field. Collins caught him only a foot away from the line, and from the line out Grienburg, a heavy Buller forward, caught the ball and fell over the line by the flag, just as the whistle was about to blow for half-time. It was very far out, and the kick failed. The sides crossed over 3-3.

Simonds came on during the interval almost incoherent with excitement.

"Splendid, you fellows! Magnificent! Never saw anything like it. Stick to it and you're bound to win. Simply putrid luck that last try ... keep it up!"

On the touch-line there was no doubt as to the final result. "We shall walk away with the Cup," said Mansell, and in a far corner Jones-Evans was laying ten to one on the House in m.u.f.fins. But a bit of good luck is capable of making a side play in a totally different spirit, and the combined Buller's and Claremont's side started off like a whirlwind.

Livingstone kicked off, and the outhouse scrum was on the ball in a minute. For a second the House pack was swept off its feet, and during that second Fitzgerald had dribbled to within ten yards of the line.

Foster made a splendid effort to stay the rush, and flung himself on the very feet of the opposing forwards. But the check was only momentary; the forwards rolled on, and it was only on the very line that Lovelace rushed across, and falling on the ball, held it to him, till the House forwards had time to come round. But the rules lay down that a player, as soon as he has fallen on the ball, must get off it at once. Lovelace realised that if he did so, a try would be inevitable. He hung on like grim death, praying that the referee would not see. Before half the House forwards had formed round, the whistle blew.

"Free kick to the School. You musn't lie on the ball like that, Lovelace." The referee was not blind.