"Of course. I always like you to do what you are interested in. Let me see. I have a nice little question on her: 'Mary de Medici: was she an unmixed evil?' An interesting subject which raises quite a lot of points. And I have one more question for you. 'Compare Richelieu and Mazarin,' an interesting little psychological study. I think you will enjoy them."
Then Gordon would have recourse to the unfailing authority, Van Hepworth. Sometimes he felt too slack to copy out the questions at all. On such occasions he would simply read Van Hepworth's essay straight out of the old, battered book.
"I hope you won't mind my reading this to you, but I was in rather a hurry and I doubt if you could quite read my handwriting."
Finnemore would listen with the greatest interest.
"Very nice indeed, Caruthers, very sound attitude to adopt. An essay well worth preserving. You will copy it out neatly, won't you?"
"Oh yes, sir."
Gordon wanted to institute a Van Hepworth memorial, and put up a plate to him somewhere. But there were many obstacles to this. The Chief might want to know more about him, and the legend had to be kept secret. In the end he contented himself with having the book bound in full morocco, so that it might be preserved for future generations, for already the cardboard cover had become sadly torn. Where Van Hepworth is now, who knows? This only is certain, that although he has most likely by now lost all clear recollection of Fernhurst and the grey School House studies, yet his name is remembered there to-day, with far greater veneration and respect than was ever paid to him during the days of his school career.
"Let us now praise famous men,
Men of little showing,
For their work continueth,
Deep and long continueth,
Wide and far continueth, far beyond their knowing."
And so Gordon's scholastic career came to an end. He had reached the "far border town." There would be no need to fret himself about form orders any more. "Strong men might go by and pass o'er him"; he had retired from the fray. While others crammed their brains with obscure interpretations of Æschylus, he lay back reading English poetry and English prose, striving to get a clear hold of the forces that went to produce each movement, and incidentally doing himself far more good than he would have done by binding himself down to the classical regime, which trained boys to imitate, and not to strike out on their own. Gordon had already acquired enough of the taste and sense of form which the classics alone can provide, and which are essential to a real culture. But he was lucky in stopping soon enough to prevent himself being forced into a groove, from which he could only judge new movements by the Ciceronian standards, without grasping the fact that technique and form are merely outward coverings of genius, and not genius in themselves.
To the other delights of this delightful term was added the sudden and unexpected success of Gordon's cricket. For the first fortnight Gordon found himself playing on House and Colts games. But as he gathered runs there with ease, he was soon transplanted to the First Eleven nets, which he thenceforward only left for a brief spell, after an attack of chicken-pox. For a member of the School Eleven life has nothing better to offer than a summer term. There were usually two matches a week. The team would get off work at ten o'clock, and just as the school was pouring out in break they would stroll leisurely down to the cricket field. Everything, in fact, was carried out leisurely. A wonderful atmosphere of repose hangs over a cricket field in the morning, when the grass is still sparkling with dew, and there is silence and vast emptiness where usually is the sound of shouting and hurrying feet. There was the long luncheon interval, when the members of the Eleven would wander round the field arm in arm, or lounge on the seats lazy and contented. Gordon loved to sit in the pavilion balcony watching the white forms change across between the overs, the red ball bounce along the grass, the wicket-keeper whip off the bails, the umpire's finger go up. The whole tableau was so unreal, so idealistic. Then the school would come down after lunch with rugs and cushions, and would clamour outside the tuck-shop for ices and ginger beer. Gordon could hardly connect his present existence with the past two years of doubts, uncertainties, wild excitements, hurry, bustle—never a second's peace.