April, 1954.
Alec Waugh
BOOK I: WARP AND WOOF
"While I lived I sought no wings,
Schemed no heaven, planned no hell;
But, content with little things,
Made an earth and it was well."
Richard Middleton.
CHAPTER I: GROPING
There comes some time an end to all things, to the good and to the bad. And at last Gordon Caruthers' first day at school, which had so combined excitement and depression as to make it unforgettable, ended also. Seldom had he felt such a supreme happiness as when he stepped out at Fernhurst station, and between his father and mother walked up the broad, white road that led past the Eversham Hotel to the great grey Abbey, that watches as a sentinel over the dreamy Wessex town. There are few schools in England more surrounded with the glamour of mediæval days than Fernhurst. Founded in the eighth century by a Saxon saint, it was the abode of monks till the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Then after a short interregnum Edward VI endowed it and restored the old curriculum. The buildings are unchanged. It is true that there have sprung up new class-rooms round the court, and that opposite the cloisters a huge yellow block of buildings has been erected which provides workshops and laboratories, but the Abbey and the School House studies stand as they stood seven hundred years ago. To a boy of any imagination, such a place could not but waken a wonderful sense of the beautiful. And Gordon gazing from the school gateway across to the grey ivy-clad studies was taken for a few moments clean outside himself. The next few hours only served to deepen this wonder and admiration. For Fernhurst is prodigal of associations. The School House dining-hall is a magnificent oak-panelled room, where generations of men have cut their names; and above the ledge on which repose the silver challenge cups the house has won, is a large statue of King Edward VI looking down on the row of tables. When he first entered the hall, Gordon pitied those in other houses immensely. It seemed to him that though in "the outhouses"—as they were called at Fernhurst—the eugenic machinery might be more up to date, and the method of lighting and heating far more satisfactory, yet it could not be the same there as in the School House; and he never quite freed himself of the illusion that, if the truth were known, every outhouse boy rather regretted that he had not chosen otherwise. For indeed the bloods of other houses are very often found sitting over the fire in the School House games study.