"Oh, don't be an ass. Just look at the fellows who don't play games, Rudd and Co. What wrecks they are! Utterly useless. We could do perfectly well without them. Could not we now?"
At this point Betteridge strolled in very leisurely. Authority had made him a dignified person. The days of ragging Trundle seemed very distant. He did not go about with Mansell so much now. He was more often with Carter and Harding.
"Betteridge, come in and sit down," said Tester; "we were arguing on the value of games. Don't you agree with me that it's about time a man like Ferrers made a sensible attack on them?"
"Yes; though I doubt if Ferrers is quite the man to do it. He is such a revolutionary. He would want to smash everything at once. A gradual change is what is needed. I look at it like this. Games are all right in themselves. A man must keep himself physically fit; but games are only a means to an end. The object of all progress is to get a clear, clean-sighted race, intellectual and broadminded. And I think physical fitness is a great help in the production of a clear, clean mind. The very clever man who is weak bodily is so apt to become a decadent; and because he himself can't stand any real exertion, despises those who can. Games are necessary as a means to an end. But Buller and all the rest of the lot think games are the actual end. Look at the way a man with his footer cap is idealised and worshipped. He may be an utter rake; probably is, most likely he has no brains at all. If he ever had them, he soon ceased to use them, and devotes all his energies to athletic success. Why should we worship him? Merely because he can kick a rotten football down a rotten field. It is this worship of athletics that is so wrong."
"Oh, you are talking rot," burst out Gordon angrily; "the English race is the finest in the whole world and has been bred on footer and cricket. I own the Public School system has its faults; but not because of games. It stamps out personality, tries to make types of us all, refuses to allow us to think for ourselves. We have to read and pretend to like what our masters tell us to. No freedom. But games are all right. We all have our own interests. Poetry is my chief one at present. But that doesn't blind me to the fact that games are what count. Where should we be without them? And I damn well hope the House is not going to get into a finicky, affected state of mind, despising them because they are too slack to play them. That's why you hate them, Betteridge, because you are no good at them. My great ambition is to be captain of this House and win the Three Cock. Of course the worship of sport is all right. Our fathers worshipped it, and damned good fellows they were, too. I can't stand you when you talk like this. I am going to find Lovelace; he has got a bit of sense."
The door slammed noisily behind him.
"He is very young," said Betteridge.
"Yes; and full of hopes," murmured Tester. "It is a pity to think he will have to be so soon disillusioned. Very little remains the same for long. Pleasure is very evanescent."
Betteridge looked at him a little curiously.
"I should not have thought you would have found that out," he said.