* *

The state of affairs was summed up by Archie Fletcher in the last week
of the Christmas term.

"This place is simply ghastly, all the best fellows have gone," he said.
"Next term we shall have Rudd head of the House. All the young masters
have gone, and we are left with fossils, fretting because they are too
old to fight, and making our lives unbearable because we are too young.
As soon as I am old enough I mean to go and fight; but I can't stick the
way these masters croak away about the trenches all day long. If you
play badly at rugger you are asked what use you will be in a regiment.
If your French prose is full of howlers, you are told that slackers
aren't wanted in the trenches. Damn it all, we know that all these
O.F.'s who are now fighting in France slacked at work and cribbed; and
they weren't all in the Fifteen. And splendid men they are, too.
Fernhurst isn't what it was. Last term we had a top-hole set of chaps,
and I loved Fernhurst, but I am not going to stick here now. I am going
back home till I am eighteen. Then I'll go and fight. This is no place
for me."

It was the requiem of all "the old dreams"; and Gordon knew it for his
own as well.

During the Christmas holidays Gordon tried to forget as far as possible
Fernhurst, and all that Fernhurst stood for. More and more he found
himself turning for consolation to the poets; but now it was to
different poets that he turned. The battle-cry of Byron, the rebel flag
of Swinburne lost their hold over him. He himself was so entangled in
strife that he wanted soothing companions. In the poetry of Ernest
Dowson he read something of his own failure to realise the things he had
hoped for. _Endymion_, rolling like a stream through valleys and wooden
plains, carried him outside the hoarse babble of voices; _Comus_ lulled
him into a temporary security with its abundance of perfect imagery. He
discovered The Poetry Bookshop in Devonshire Street and went there for
the evening readings. There was a perfect serenity in the small room at
the top of the wooden stairs, with the dark blue curtains, the intent
faces, the dim, shaded lights, the low voice reading. He wished that
thus, in some monastic retreat, he might spend his whole life in a world
of dreams and illusions. But he realised that the hold of life was too
strong on him. At the same time he loved and hated the blare of
trumpets, the stretching plain, the spears glimmering in the sun. He had
sought