"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. There was Foster, good-looking and attractive, but plausible and insincere. There was Rudd, a scholar who had passed into the Fifth, spectacled, of sallow appearance, and with a strange way of walking. Collins was not so bad, but his mind ran on nothing but football and billiard championships. The rest were nonentities, the set who drift through their six years, making no mark, hurting no one, doing little good. Finally they pass out into the world to swell the rout of civilised barbarians whom it "hurts to think" and who write to the papers, talk a lot about nothing and then die and are forgotten. The Public School system turns out many of these. For it loves mediocrity, it likes to be accepted unquestioningly as was the Old Testament. But times change. The Old Testament and the Public School system are now both of them in the melting-pot of criticism.
For the most part Gordon kept to himself. No one took any notice of him, for he did nothing worthy of notice. He had rather looked forward to his first game of football, for he had been quite a decent half-back at his preparatory school. He might perhaps do something brilliant. But for his first two days he wasn't allowed even to play a game. With the other new boys he shivered in the autumn wind while Meredith, who rather surprisingly seemed quite an ordinary sort of person, instructed them in how to pack down. They were then told to watch the Upper game and see how football should be played. It was here that Gordon first saw Buller, the games master. He was indeed a splendid person. He wore a double-breasted coat, that on anyone else would have looked ridiculous, and even so was strikingly original. He had the strong face of one who had fought every inch of his way. It was a great sight to see "the Bull," as he was called, take a game; he rushed up and down the field cursing and swearing. His voice thundered over the ground. It was the first game after the summer holidays, and everyone felt rather flabby. At half-time the great man burst out: "I have played football for twenty-five years, I coached Oxford teams and Gloucestershire teams, led an English scrum, and for fifteen years I have taught footer here, but never saw I such a display! Shirking, the whole lot of you! Get your shoulders down and shove. Never saw anything like it. Awful!" The Bull said this to every team at least three times every season, but he was every bit as generous with his praise as with his blame when things went well, and he was a great man, a personality. Even a desultory Pick-Up woke into excitement when the shrill, piping voice of a full-back came in with, "'The Bull's' coming." There was only one man in Fernhurst who was not afraid of him, and that was Lovelace, who was indeed afraid of nothing, and who towered over his contemporaries by the splendour of his athletic achievements, and the strength of an all-mastering personality.
On the next day Gordon had to watch another Upper game. This time "the Bull" was more or less quiet. Lovelace was at the top of his form, and Meredith twice cut through brilliantly and scored between the posts. Then life seemed to Buller very good. After the game he rolled up to his house perfectly satisfied, whistling to himself. It was not until the Saturday that Gordon actually played in a game. He was originally performing on the Pick-Up; but after a few minutes he was fetched to fill a gap in a House game. He was shoved into the scrum, was perfectly useless, and spent his whole time trying to escape notice. Only once he got really near the ball. Just before half-time the ball was rolling slowly towards him, the opposing full-back had failed to reach touch. Gordon, steadying himself as at soccer, took a tremendous kick at the ball, which screwed off his foot, and landed in the hands of the outside three-quarter, who easily outpaced the defence and scored.