"Gentlemen, I address the Chair. It is preposterous that Mr Turner should have been refused a hearing. We may have lost what would perhaps have thrown new light on the subject. Doubtless he had carefully selected this particular anecdote out of a life, alas, too full of excitement" (a roar greeted this, Christy had beaten Turner that very morning for eating chocolates in German), "with the express view of pointing out the superiority of the classics. Doubtless the rough in question, not knowing the custom in Homeric contests, had failed to propitiate the gods, while he, the narrator, had rushed into Back Lane behind Mother Beehive's charming old-world residence, and having offered a prayer to Mars, waited for his burly antagonist in the darkness, and as the vile man, clearly one of St Paul's 'god haters'" (that time the Sixth were reading the "Romans") "thundered by, he smote him with a stone above the eye, and left him discomfited and, like Œdipus, well nigh blind. Here we see——"
But the meeting never found out what they really saw. Gordon was called to order, and sat down amid a tumult of applause. One or two more speakers brought fresh evidence to bear on the subject; and then there was the division. The moderns won by a huge majority. As the rabble passed into the passage Gordon heard Ferrers say to Christy in his most patronising manner:
"Rather wiped the ground with you, didn't we?... Well, never mind, you stood no earthly.... Days of the classics are over. Still, you fought well.... Third line of defence—ad triarios.... I remember a bit of my classics."
Gordon was borne out on the stream past the matron's room to the end of the passage, and the rest of Ferrers's speech was lost.
From this day the Stoics underwent a complete change. The whole nature of the society was altered. Ferrers was so absolutely different from anything that a master had appeared to be from time immemorial. He was essentially of the new generation, an iconoclast, a follower of Brooke and Gilbert Cannan, heedless of tradition, probing the root of everything. At the end of the term Christy resigned his presidency. He could not keep pace with the whirlwind Ferrers.
"You know, Caruthers," said Tester in second hall, "whatever our personal feelings may be, we have got to allow that this man Ferrers has got something in him."
"Something! Why, I thought him simply glorious. Here he is bursting in on the prude conventionality of Fernhurst full of new ideas, smashing up the things that have been accepted unquestionably for years. By Jove, the rest of the staff must hate him."
"There was a thing by him in the A.M.A. the other day that caused considerable annoyance, I believe. I didn't read the thing myself, but I heard 'the Bull' saying it was disgraceful that a Fernhurst master should be allowed to say such things. I suppose he said something against games."
"Well, damn it all, if he did, he is in the wrong. Games are absolutely necessary. What on earth would the country be like without them?"
"A damned sight better, I should think."