To Gordon this match seemed the ideal rounding off of his career. There had been no anti-climax, with him the best had come at the end. He would not have to look back and compare his last term unfavourably with the glories of yester year. He had done what he set out to do, he would step rose-garlanded out of the lighted room, in the flush of his success. It was exactly as he had wished. Perfectly satisfied, he lay back in his chair, with his feet on the table, too tired to do anything, merely thinking.

There was a knock at the door.

"Come in."

Rudd came in nervously with a House list in his hand.

"The Chief wants a list of the trains people are going home by."

"Eight-forty to Waterloo."

"Thanks."

Rudd walked towards the door, but as he put his hand on the knob he turned round.

"Well," he began falteringly, "I suppose you are jolly proud of yourself now, aren't you?"

"What the hell do you mean?"

"You know quite well. You have done damned well according to your own point of view. You have aimed at getting the supreme power, and you have got it all right." Rudd had lost his nervousness now, he was shifting his feet a little, but the sentences flowed easily. "I am a weak head, I know, and you have managed to smash me quite easily. It wasn't very hard, although you pretend you are the devil of a fellow."

"What on earth are you driving at?"

"Oh, not much; only I want to show you how much you have done for the House. You are big, and you're strong, and all that; you've broken up any authority I ever had, and you've taken it yourself. And, of course, as long as you are here, it's all very well. But what about when you have left? You are too self-centred to see anybody else's point of view. AprÈs moi le deluge; that's your philosophy. As long as you yourself prosper, you don't care a damn what happens to anyone else, and you have prospered right enough. You'll have left a name behind you, all right."

"I don't want to have to kick you out, Rudd," said Gordon.

"I don't care what you say; I'm going to finish what I have got to say. You'll probably not understand, you are too short-sighted. But what sort of future have you left the House? Order was kept all right when you were here; you are strong. But when you have left, who is going to take your place? Foster could have, but he's leaving. Davenport's leaving too, so's Collins. The new prefects will be weak. At the best they would have had a hard time. But probably the prefectorial dignity would have been sufficient, if you hadn't smashed it up. You say 'personality' must rule, but there is not so much personality flying about. We weak men have got to shelter ourselves behind the strength of a system, and you have smashed that. No one is going to obey me next term. They know I am incapable; but they wouldn't have found it out but for you. That's what you've done this term. You yourself have succeeded, but your success has meant the ruin of the House for at least a year, that's what you have done. And I expect you are jolly proud of yourself, too. You only care for yourself."

Rudd finished exhausted, and stood there gasping. Gordon looked straight at him for a second or so, then picked up a book and began to read; Rudd shifted from foot to foot for a minute and then moved out quickly.

What an ass the man was, thought Gordon. The beaten man always tries to make the victor's defeat seem less. It is all he has to do. Damn it all, a man has to look after himself in this world; everyone was struggling to get to the top, and the weak had to be knocked out of the way.

Then Foster came in aglow with excitement, and the two went up to the tuck-shop and ate numerous ices, and made a great row, and knocked over many chairs, and threw sugar about. Rudd was clean forgotten, as they rolled back triumphantly, just as the roll bell was ringing. Work was over. Gordon wandered round the studies, talking to everyone; in second hall they had a celebration supper for the whole side. They had two huge pies, a ham, countless Éclairs; they sang songs, laughed and told anecdotes. They finished with the school Carmen, and drank to the House's future success. Laughing and singing, they at last made for the dormitories.

But when the lights went out, and silence descended on the dormitory, Gordon began to think of his conversation with Rudd; and, as he thought, there came over him again the fierce longing to get to the heart of things and to see life as it was, shorn of its coverings. Looking at his career from the spectator's point of view, even Christy would have to own that it had been eminently successful. He had been captain of the House; no one had blamed him that the House had failed to win their matches; no one can make bricks without straw; what did matter was that he had always stood up for the House's rights, he had never given way to "the Bull," he had been strong. This last term he had been head of the House in all but name; he had won the batting cup; and he had finished by playing a big part in the biggest triumph that the House had achieved for several years. In all outward aspects he had been a great success.

But Gordon had had enough of outward aspects. He wanted to get to the root of things, to get on terms of equality with life; he was tired of seeing everything through flickering glass. What had he actually done?

And when he began to sum up his achievements, he was forced to own that most of them were athletic triumphs, and athletics meant little to him. He had long ceased to worship them. Because a man could make a big score in a House match, it did not mean that he was in any way fit for the battle of life; and what else had he done? He had carried on guerrilla warfare with "the Bull." It had never come to a real head; so little does. Most things are left unaccomplished in the end; and what had he gained by this contest, and what had been the use of it? "The Bull" was one of the few really fine masters in the school. He was a man, and towered above the puny pettiness of Rogers; he was the "noblest Roman of them all," yet Gordon had spent a whole year fighting against a man whom he at heart admired. It was, of course, the inevitable clash of two egotisms; but that did not alter the facts. He had been wasting himself fighting against a fine man, when there were so many rotten traditions and useless customs that ought to be attacked; but he had let them alone. The only abuse he had attacked was the worship of sport, and he began to wonder whether it had been worth it. Might it not have been better to have let the school go on believing in its gods a little longer? He had broken down a false god, but had he given the School anything to worship in its stead? Better a false god than no god at all.

Rudd had been right. He had smashed through a garden of dandelions. He had rooted up flowers and weeds indiscriminately. He had done nothing wonderful; and he had left desolation behind him. Nothing would grow for some time in the plot he had ruined. And yet he was "a great success," the world said.

"Only the superficial do not judge by appearances," Wilde had said, mocking at society; and he had been right. Life was a sham, a mass of muddled evolutions; the world was too slack to find out the truth, or perhaps it was afraid to discover it. For the truth was not pleasant. Gordon did not know what it was; all he saw was that life was built of shams, that no one worshipped anything but the god of things that seem. He lay supine, cursing at the darkness.

The next morning he woke with the same feeling of depression; he looked round his dormitory. There were seven of them, all perfectly happy and contented. And why? Merely because they looked at the surface, because they did not take the trouble to find out what was true and what was false. They were happy in their ignorance, and he, too, could be happy if he just took things as they were. His last few weeks had been so full of joy, because he had not taken the trouble to think. Thought was the cause of unhappiness. And yet he had to think. He hated half measures. For a certain space he had to live on earth, and he wanted to discover what life really was. What lay beyond the grave he did not know, "sufficient for the day were the day's evil things." But he felt that he must try and plumb the depth or shallowness of the day's interests. He could not bear the idea of a contentment purchased by cowardice.

Yet he had learn from Tester that the soul is man's most sacred possession, and must not be shown to the crowd; that he must always mask his true emotions, except in the company of those who could understand them.

So he went down to breakfast telling Collins the latest joke from The London Mail. On his way back to the studies he ran into a fag.

"Caruthers, Chief wants to see you in his study."

Gordon found the Chief waiting for him.

"You are not busy, I hope, are you, Caruthers?"

"Oh no, sir."

"Well, at any rate, I shall keep you only for a minute. I just wanted to speak to you for a second before you left. Everything is such a rush on the last day. I suppose you have found that authority brings a good many difficulties with it, and I have heard that you have had a row or two. But I think you have done very well on the whole. I did not say very much about it at the time, but about two years ago I had very grave doubts about how you were going to turn out; I must say that I was very nervous about making you a prefect. But, still, I think your last year has really developed your character, and you certainly have had the wisdom and luck, shall we say, like the host at the wedding, to keep your best till last."

The Chief smiled the smile that was peculiarly his own, and peculiarly winning. "I must not keep you any longer. But I did want to take this opportunity of telling you that I have been pleased with you this term, though perhaps my praise sounds weak beside the applause you got after your innings. At any rate, I wish you the very best of luck."

With mixed feelings Gordon left the study. He valued the Chief's opinion amazingly, but he could not help knowing that he did not deserve it. He felt as though he had deceived the Chief. If only the Chief knew how he had plunged along in his own way, an egotist, an iconoclast! And then suddenly there came over him the shock of discovery, that everything in life was so distorted and hidden by superficial coverings, that even the wisest failed to discern between the true and the false.

He was able to see himself as he was, to realise the littleness of his own performances. Yet the Chief who, if anyone "saw life steadily, and saw it whole," who was always more ready to judge an action by the intention than by the result—the Chief himself had not really seen how far his achievements were below his possibilities. And if the Chief was at times deceived by the superficial, how was he, a self-willed, blundering boy, ever likely to be able to come to a true understanding?

He shrugged. There still remained a few hours in which to enjoy the fruits of a success which, if it meant little to him, conveyed a good deal to the world outside. And power is very sweet.

He tried to fling himself into the light-hearted atmosphere of rejoicing in which the whole House was revelling, but he found it impossible. His laughter was forced; yet his friends noticed no change in him; he was to them just as he had always been.

Even Morcombe, who was to him more than other friends, had failed to understand.

"It must be rather decent to be leaving in the way you are," he said, as they were sitting in the games study before evening chapel. "I doubt if you stopped on if you would ever quite equal the appropriateness of that last innings."

"Yes," said Gordon, with a conscious irony, "it's certainly dramatic."

What use was it to try and show him what he was thinking? He had learnt that it is better to leave illusions untouched.

Often in the past he had tried to imagine what a last chapel service must be like. The subject has been done to death by the novelist. In every school story he had read, the hero had always felt the same emotions: contentment with work well done, sorrow at leaving a well-loved place. He had wondered whether he would want to cry; and if so, whether he would be able to stop it. He had looked inquiringly in the faces of those who were leaving and had never read anything very new. Some were enigmas; some looked glad in a way that they were going to begin a life so full of possibilities. Some vaguely realised that they had reached the height of their success at nineteen.

But now that his time had come, his thoughts were very different from what he had imagined. He felt the sorrow that is inevitable to anyone who is putting a stage of his life clean out of sight behind him; but for all that he had come to the conclusion that he was not really sad at leaving. Fernhurst was for him too full of ghosts; so many dreams were buried there. His feelings were mixed. He felt himself that he had failed, but he knew that he was hailed a success. He half wished that in the light of experience he could go through his four years again; but if he did, he saw that in outward show, at any rate, he could never eclipse the glory that was his for the moment. He remembered that sermon over three years back in which the Chief had asked each boy to imagine himself passing his last hours at school. "How will it feel," the Chief had said, "if you have to look back and think only of shattered hopes and bright unfulfilled promises?... To the pathos of human sorrow there is no need to add the pathos of failure." What was he to think?—he whose career had so curiously mingled failure and success.

The service slowly drew to its end. The final hymn was shouted by small boys, happy at the thought of seven weeks' holiday. The organ boomed out God Save the King; there was a moment's silence. Then the school poured out into the cloisters. Gordon hardly realised his last service was over. He had been so long a spectator of these partings that he could not grasp the fact that he was himself a participator in them.

He felt very tired, and was glad when bed-time came. He experienced the same sensations that he had known as a new boy—a physical and mental weariness that longed for the ending of the day.

For a few hours silence hung round the ghostly Abbey; then, tremendous in the east, Gordon's last whole day at Fernhurst dawned.

As far as the Sixth were concerned, work was over. The rest of the school had to go in for two hours for the rep. exam. The drowsy atmosphere of a hot summer morning overhung everything. The studies were very quiet. Gordon took a deck-chair on to the Sixth Form green and settled down to read Endymion.

But he found it impossible to concentrate his thoughts on anything but the riotous wave of introspection that was flooding his brain. He soon gave up the attempt; and putting down the book, he lay back, his hands behind his head, gazing at the great grey Abbey opposite him, while through his brain ran Gilbert Cannan's words: "Life is round the corner." He had failed. He knew he had failed. But where and why? Then, as he began to question himself, suddenly he saw it all clearly. He had failed because he had set out to gain only the things that the world valued. He had sought power, and he had gained it; he had asked for praise, and he had won it; he had fought, and he had conquered. But at the moment of his triumph he had realised the vanity of all such success; when he had come to probe it to the root, he had found it shallow. For all the things that the world valued were shallow and without depth, because the world never looked below the surface. He had found no continuing city; his house was built upon sand.

The truth flashed in on him; he knew now that as long as he was content to take the world's view of anything, he was bound to meet with disillusionment. He would have to sift everything in the sieve of his own experience. The judgment of others would be of no avail. He would be an iconoclast. The fact that the world said a thing was beautiful or ugly, and had to be treated as such, must mean nothing to him. He would search for himself, he would plumb the depths, if needs be, in search of the true ideal which was lurking somewhere in the dark. Tester had been right. It was useless to look back to the past for guidance. He had a few hours back asked for some fixed standard by which to judge the false from the true. There were no standards except a man's own experience. Here at Fernhurst he had failed to find anything, because he had sought for the wrong things; he had at once accepted the crowd's statement for the truth. Now it would be different. In his haste he had said that Fernhurst had taught him nothing. He had been wrong. It had taught him what many took years to learn, and sometimes never learnt at all. It had taught him to rely upon himself. In the future he would take his courage in his hands, and work out his own salvation on the hard hill-road of experience.

The school was just pouring out from the rep. exam. He heard Foster shouting across the courts.

"Caruthers, you slacker, come up to the tuck-shop."

"Right-o!" he yelled back; and racing across the green jumped the railings, and went laughing up to the tuck-shop.

"I say, Foster, let's have a big tea this afternoon. We had a supper for the A-K side on Saturday. Let's have the rest up to-day."

Gordon flushed with excitement at what lay before him. He wanted everyone else to laugh with him too. An enormous tea was ordered. Men from the outhouses came down, the tables were drawn up on the V. A green, and the afternoon went by in a whirl of happiness. They rolled out arm in arm for the prize-giving. For the last time Gordon saw the whole staff sitting on "their dais serene." He looked at the row of faces. There was Rogers puffed out with pride; Christy, pharisee and humbug, superbly satisfied with himself. Finnemore sat in the background, a pale grey shadow, that had been too weak to get to grips with life at all. Trundle nursed his chin, twittering in a haze of indecision. Ferrers was fidgeting about, impatient of delay. He, at any rate, was not being misled by outside things; if he was misled by anything, it was by the impulse of his own feverish temperament. He was the splendid rebel leader of forlorn hopes, the survival of those

There, again, was Macdonald, with the same benign smile that time could not change. As he looked at him, Gordon thought that he at least could not have been deceived, but had too kind, too wide a heart to disillusion the young. And, above all, sat Buller, a second Garibaldi, with a heart of gold, an indomitable energy, a splendid sincerity, the most loyal of Fernhurst's sons. And as Gordon looked his last at his old foe, he felt that "the Bull" was so essentially big, so strong, so noble of heart, that it hardly mattered what he worshipped. There hung round him no false trapping of the trickster; sincerity was the keynote of his life. Gordon would search in vain, perhaps, for a brighter lodestar. As two vessels that have journeyed a little way together down a river, on taking their different courses at the ocean mouth, signal one another "good luck," so Gordon from the depth of his heart wished "the Bull" farewell and Godspeed.

At last the form lists were read out. A titter rewarded Gordon's position of facile ultimus. The cups were distributed. Gordon went up for the batting cups, his own individual one, and the challenge one that went to the House. Foster went up for the Senior cricket; it was a veritable School House triumph. The Chief made his usual good-bye speech, kindly, hopeful, encouraging. The head of the school shouted "Three cheers for the masters!"—the gates swept open, the cloisters were filled with hurrying feet.

The last hours passed all too swiftly. In a far corner of the gallery Gordon sat with Morgan, listening to his last school concert. Opposite the choir in their white shirts, and brushed-back hair, sang the school songs inseparable from the end of the school year. There was the summer song, the "Godspeed to those that go," the poignant Valete:

To Gordon every word brought back with it a flood of memories. He could see himself, the small boy, reading those verses for the first time before he went to Fernhurst, ignorant of what lay before him. How soon he had changed his fresh innocency! How soon his bright gold had grown dim! Then he saw himself this time last year, listening to those words with an unbounded confidence, certain that he at least would never achieve failure. Visions in the twilight! And what was the dawn to bring?

The Latin Carmen began. The school stood on their seats and howled it out. Then came Auld Lang Syne. They clasped hands, swaying in chorus. The echoes of God Save the King shook the timbered ceiling, someone was shouting "Three cheers for the visitors!"; the school surged towards the door; Gordon found his feet on the small stone stairway. He looked back once at the warm lights; the honour-boards that would never bear his name; the choir still in their places; the visitors putting on their coats and wraps. Then the stream moved on; the picture faded out; and from the courts came the noise of motors crunching on the gravel.

As Gordon walked into the cool air he ran into Ferrers.

"Good-bye, sir."

"You are off, are you? Well, good luck. Write to me in the hols; I'll look you up if I'm in town. If not, cheer-o!"

He was gone in a second.

Gordon murmured to himself as he walked slowly down to the dining hall....

The next morning there was the inevitable bustle, the tipping of the servants, the good-byes, the promises to write at least twice during the holidays, the promises which were never kept.

"Here, Bamford, I say," shouted Gordon, "take my bag down to the station."

Bamford looked almost surly at being told to do anything on that last day. "Authority forgets a dying king," thought Gordon. His power could not have been so great if it began to wane almost before he had gone.

The eight-forty came into the station, snorting and puffing.

Gordon secured a corner seat, and leant out of the window, shaking hands with everyone he could see.

"You'll be down next term, won't you?" yelled Morgan, bursting as ever with good will.

"I expect so," said Gordon.

But in his heart of hearts he knew that he would never come back. He would be afraid lest he should find the glamour with which he had surrounded the grey studies and green walks of Fernhurst merely a mist of sentiment that would fade away. So many things that he had believed in he had found untrue. But he wanted to keep fresh in his mind the memory of Fernhurst as he had last seen it, beautiful and golden in the morning sun.

The train slowly steamed out. Hands were waved, handkerchiefs fluttered. Slowly the Abbey turned from ochre-brown to blue, till it was hidden out of sight.

Gordon sank back into his seat. He was on the threshold of life; and he stepped out into the sunlight with a smile, which, though it might be a little cynical, as if he had been disillusioned, held none the less the quiet confidence of a wayfarer who knew what lay before him, and felt himself well equipped and fortified "for the long littleness of life."