It is usually during the course of his fourth term that a boy first begins to swear. For swearing is, on the whole, confined to members of the Middle School. It is side for a fag to swear, and an oath, except on rare occasions, is considered beneath the dignity of a blood. He is supposed to dwell in an Olympian fastness beyond the reach of inconvenience, where the need for violent language is infrequently presented. For the second yearer, however, life is full of emotion that demands to be registered forcibly.
I can never quite see why so many people refuse to believe that a schoolboy's conversation is punctuated with 'damns' and 'bloodys.' We employ the idiom of our surroundings. A boy does not swear at home; at school he does. And there is no particular reason why he should not. An oath means little to him. He knows that some indecency is implied. But the meaning of the word is not defined by his use of it. He rarely employs it appropriately. He recommends the most contradictory performances. A powerful expression is needed. He wishes the world to know that he has been moved powerfully either to anger, or to delight. That is all. Any word that would have this effect would suit him, and I remember a dormitory captain insisting that the only expletive to be used in his presence should be 'daggers'; this crasis satisfied every one. The language a boy uses is no index to his character. Swearing and 'talking smut' are very different things.
It is also in his fourth term that a boy who is anything of an athlete begins to discover himself on the football field. He finds himself scoring tries in home games. He is noticed by the bloods as a coming man. He makes friends among his seniors. He is no longer outside the life of the school. The road of ambition lies clear and straight before him. It is marked out in distinct stages. He learnt, of course, during his first term that a house cap may put one hand in his trouser pockets, that a seconds may put both, that a first may walk across the sixth form green in break; but these facts were distant in the imagination like the ritual of a mediæval court: they now become realities. In a year, he reminds himself, he will be in his house fifteen. The year after he should get his house cap. In four years he should be a first. It might, indeed, be maintained that the blood system is at the same time the magnet and the expression of the second yearer's ambition. The blood would not value his performances so highly were he not encouraged by others in the belief that he is of supreme importance. And, at fifteen, one idealises the future. It seems splendid to be a blood, to play for the school against Blackheath, to saunter across the courts with one's hands in one's pockets, one's books stuck under one's arms; to be on terms of friendly intercourse with masters, to be beyond the reach of punishment. And, because the future seems so glorious, the second yearer idealises the dwellers in it. In the same way that in Chelsea the latest poet or draughtsman can disregard the social laws of property and of propriety, in the eyes of the junior the blood can do no wrong. His voice is hushed when a blood passes him in the cloisters. If one should speak to him, he blushes and stammers and feels proud of it for days. The blood naturally endeavours to realise the popular conception of himself. He owes his position to it. For the higher up the school we go, the less important the blood appears, and, when our time comes to sit at the high table, we can hardly believe that we are occupying the same chair that Meredith sat in four years ago. It is absurd. How the house must have come down. To think of that little ass, Barton, being a prefect. How short a time since he was playing in junior house games and getting cursed for funking. And for ourselves—it is only yesterday that we were trembling, a diffident new boy, at the far corner of the day-room table. We cannot but believe our generation to be vastly inferior to those that have preceded it, and we do not think otherwise even when we win the senior cricket cup, although in Meredith's year the house was beaten by an innings in the first round. It is not in our nature to desire, or even value highly, what we possess. The last year is often a disappointment.
No such foreknowledge mars the enjoyment and anticipation of the second yearer. It is indeed hard to imagine a more fortunate combination of circumstances. From an agreeable present he surveys the prospect of a delightful future. The days may pass slowly, or swiftly, as they will—their passage will be a long enchantment.
It is during this period that a boy gets through the majority of his ragging in form. Now the ragging of masters is a very specialised art. The master holds all the cards. He has behind him the marshalled forces of the law. He can cane, he can give lines. He has every implement, physical and moral, for the preservation of order. He ought to be able to keep order. Yet the boy usually wins. Indeed, I often wonder how a master, who has once begun to be ragged, can ever hope to regain order. He is fighting a confident foe. The new boy learns during his first week that 'one can do anything one likes in Musty's.' Musty stands no chance. He enters the form room nervously; he is on the lookout for trouble; he is afraid to turn his back on the class when he is working on the blackboard. For ten minutes there is silence, a suspicious silence, perhaps, but still a silence. Musty tells himself that if any one attempts to break that silence he will make him sorry for it. He will punish the first whisper: that is the only way. And then, suddenly, from the back of the room, comes an ominous sound. It is not a cough: it is not a sneeze: it is a hideous nasal and vocal croak that Musty has learnt to recognise as the prelude to rebellion. He observes that some one is cramming a handkerchief into his mouth, and is choking in the subdued manner of one who is unsuccessfully stifling a laugh.
Musty decides on action. 'Jones, take that handkerchief out of your mouth immediately, and you'll spend the afternoon doing me a hundred lines.' Jones withdraws the handkerchief from his chin, and his face assumes an expression of outraged innocence. 'But, sir——' he begins.
'A hundred and fifty lines,' snaps Musty.
At this point the democracy of the class feels that its independence has been violated. There is a murmur of disapproval. And a tall, cadaverous youth rises from the front desk.
'Please, sir——'
'Silence, Evans.'