ne
together, and went off in search of Collins.

Indeed this friendship, coupled with his admiration for Ferrers, was all
that kept Gordon from wild excesses during the dark December days and
the drear opening weeks of the Easter term. During the long morning
hours, when Gordon was supposed to be reading history, more than once
there came over him a wish to plunge himself into the feverish waters of
pleasure, and forget for a while the doubts and disappointments that
overhung everything in his life. At times he would sit in the big
window-seat, when the school was changing class-rooms, and as he saw the
sea of faces of those, some big, some small, who had drifted with the
stream, and had soon forgotten early resolutions and principles in the
conveniently broadminded atmosphere of a certain side of Public School
life, he realised how easily he could slip into that life and be
engulfed. No one would mind; his position would be the same; no one
would think worse of him. Unless, of course, he was caught. Then
probably everyone would turn round upon him; that was the one
unforgivable sin--to be found out. But it was rarely that anyone was
caught; and the descent was so easy. In his excitement he might perhaps
forget a little.

And then, perhaps, Ferrers would come rushing up to his study, aglow
with health and clean, fresh existence. And he would talk of books and
poetry, and life and systems, and Gordon would realise the ugliness of
his own misgivings when set beside the noble idealism of art. Ferrers
was not a preacher; he never lectured anyone. He believed in setting
boys high ideals. "We needs must love the highest when we see it." And
during these months his influence on Gordon was tremendous.

Then, when the long evenings came, with Morcombe sitting in the games
study, his face flushed with the glow of the leaping fire, talking of
Keats and Shelley, himself a poem, Gordon used to wonder how he could
ever have wished to dabble in ugly things, out of his cowardice to face
the truth. Those evenings were, in fact, the brightest of his Fernhurst
days; their happiness was unsubstantial, inexplicable, incomprehensible,
but none the less a real happiness.

They vanished, however; and the day would begin again, with the lonely
hours of morning school, when Gordon realised once more the emptiness
of his position, and how hopelessly he had failed to do any of the
things he had set out to do.

* * *