The House:An Anti-Climax

Never, in its varied and not always unqualifiedly successful career, had the school been in a state of such utter disorganization and prostration, as in the Easter term, 1917. In France & Flanders, our thinly guarded, inadequately munitioned lines, were quite incapable of successfully resisting the menaced German “push,” every paper brought news of further mis-management and ill-success, every post news of some friend or relation who had been killed. At school, the houses had mostly been taken over, in the absence of their younger housemasters, by well meaning but incompetent elderly assistant masters; the prefects were young, and knowing that in a few weeks, at the most a few months, they would be “called up” to go to possible death, almost certain mutilation, cared little for school or house affairs. All over the country nerves were strained to the breaking point. This must be borne in mind when reading a story which at any other period would have been utterly impossible.
Every house, of course, claims to be the best, and in all probability has hypnotized itself into believing so, but there is one House that is more exclusive, more arrogantly self-confident, more self-contained, than any other. The House has many exclusive points of etiquette that the out-houses look on with contempt or resentment. They have largely their own slang, a great many of their own customs, and above all an unshakable contempt for the corps and all its machinations. Every flight of Inspection-day oratory leaves them the same, and even when all over the country militarism was all powerful, when soldiers drilled on the Christ Church quads at Oxford, they kept up their contempt with unmitigated bitterness. And then came Ross. A prefect, an excellent all round athlete, with a high place in the Classical sixth, he had remained quite a nonentity until he returned at the beginning of the Easter term to find himself head of the House, now demoralized and bereft of all its earlier dignity.
He had to take the entire management of the House into his own hands, and very soon he made himself felt. He stopped people getting “orders” for confectionery from their temporary housemaster, he stopped people getting leaves off Clubs & Parades without consulting the matron at all, he generally raised the house to something like its former standard and on the whole people liked it, for fundamentally men rather like being kept in order if it is done in the right way.
For the first three weeks all went well—too well really. Then came the Monday afternoon parade in which the corps started organizing for the House Platoons Shield. Ross delivered a violent little speech and, as in most of his speeches, he said rather more than he meant to. “Stand easy and pay attention. The display that you have given so far has been perfectly monstrous. I’ve never seen such marching in my life before—might be a whole lot of boy scouts. I can tell you, that if you think that because this House has been disgustingly slack in the past, you are going to be disgustingly slack now, you are quite wrong for once in your lives. You’re going to sweat for this—sweat your guts out—and I’m going to make you! Got that?” and he called the platoon up.
The House looked on him with undisguised amazement and disgust and slowly meandered through the platoon drill with their customary negligence.
Next Tuesday’s uniform parade saw the House with tarnished buttons, mud caked boots, and fouled rifles as usual. Next day saw the whole platoon doing “defaulters.”
And so it went on, and gradually the House began to give way to his personality and even attained a certain sullen efficiency when suddenly a few days after the House Trials, an occurrence happened which altered the whole complexion of affairs.
One afternoon Ross was sitting in the house captain’s room reading, when Stewart burst in, in running change, rather dirty, obviously just returned from a run.
Stewart was captain of Running and certain, people said, to be, at any rate, in the first three in the Five Mile—very possibly a winner.
He sat down on the window seat and began idly fingering the congealing mud on his knees. Then he looked up. “Ross,” he said in the drawl always affected by prefects & house captains in the House, “I suppose you know that you are playing hell with the House, with your corps-mania?” Ross said nothing but pushed his book onto the table after carefully marking the place. After a pause Stewart went on.
“The House hasn’t got either the time or inclination to do your beastly corps, and clubs properly. We’ve no chance for the Footer, I know, but we’ve got a damned good chance for the Five Mile Jerry; and we aren’t going to throw it away to play soldiers.”
Still Ross said nothing; only the corners of his mouth moved.
“Well to give you an example. I told young Merrivale that I wanted him for a training run today and he said that he had to clean his bayonet to show to you before hall, because it was rusty yesterday. I said I would make it all right with you, of course, but I can’t train a team decently if your beastly bayonets are going to get in the way every minute.”
Then Ross spoke. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but Merrivale’s bayonet has got to be clean before he goes for any run.”
Stewart was genuinely astounded. “D’you mean to say you put your ruddy platoon shield before the Five Mile Jerry?” he demanded.
“You put it rather crudely” drawled Ross, “but that is what, I suppose, it comes to eventually.”
Then Stewart lost his temper. “There’s one thing you’re forgetting” he said, “and that’s that I’m not going to try and train a team with you getting in my light all the time. I’m a house-captain and needn’t run if I don’t want to. If you don’t chuck your corps-mania I shan’t run in the five-mile.”
Stewart of course meant this as a threat that could not be argued against, the idea that he would be taken at his word was unthinkable, as indeed in a cooler moment it would have been to Ross. But now he was out to score. “Then I suppose Caven will have to run after all—he’s first spare man isn’t he?”
They had both made a decision which they knew quite well would be disastrous but now neither could withdraw. Stewart, who had a great sense for the dramatic, went straight to the house board and crossed himself off the head of the list in a breathless silence.
The news spread round the House and then round the school with Oriental speed. The out-houses were openly exultant, the House sullen. Why, they asked, should they lose a cup, just because the bloods quarrelled. They split up into factions and argued incessantly. Ross had missed the House trials in the last two years & no one knew his capabilities as a runner, but he immediately began to train rigorously, and people soon saw that he meant to win the house the cup without Stewart, who watching with the appreciation of the connoisseur, saw that he was a very fine runner. The house settled down to watch the five mile as the settling of the feud.
Stewart, very repentant, came down in a great coat to watch the finish. The House did not win.
Personality and will can do as much as the Pelmen advertisements say, but they cannot force the pace up the Cow-Top and then lead a quarter mile sprint to Combs. A huddled heap after the Valley dyke was all that was left of Ross’s training.
A week later came the house Platoons competition and muffled up and very white Ross came down from the San to watch. He was bitterly conscious of his failure and wondering how he would be able to endure another term of the cold superiority of Stewart and the glowering animosity of the whole House.
But suddenly he saw that the House Platoon were drilling as they had never drilled before or—thank God!—have since. Public opinion is the most unaccountable thing in the world and with his failure had suddenly come a popularity that he would never have enjoyed before had he been triumphant. The House, in their own great way were showing him their change of opinion. Their equipment was clean, and under Stewart as platoon commander they were drilling with an enthusiasm which went far to counteract the effect of the lethargy of their previous efforts.
It would make a splendid ending if the House could be allowed to win the Shield, but this is a story of school life and anyone who knows the House will know that that is out of the question. Suffice it to say, however, that they were third, and that as Ross went down the grass slope to Chapel that evening, arm in arm with Stewart it seemed almost as if he had forgiven the House rather than that they had forgiven him. And after all that is greatness.