"Well, thank God, that swine Clarke's gone. He absolutely mucked up the House." Gordon agreed. "If we had a few more men like Meredith now!" Rather a change had come over the boy who a year before had been shocked at the swearing in the bathroom. "When one is in Rome...." BOOK II: THE TANGLED SKEIN "Et je m'en vais Au vent mauvais Qui m'emporte Deca dela Pareil a la Feuille morte." PAUL VERLAINE. CHAPTER I: QUANTUM MUTATUS If Gordon were given the opportunity of living any single year over again, exactly as he had lived it before, he would in all probability have chosen his second year at Fernhurst. He had then put safely out of sight behind him the doubts and anxieties of the junior; he had not yet reached any of the responsibilities of the senior. It was essentially a time of light-hearted laughter, of "rags," of careless happiness. Every day dawned without a trace of trouble imminent; every night closed with a feed in Mansell's big study, while the gramophone strummed out rag-time choruses. And yet these three terms were very critical ones in the development of Gordon's character. Sooner or later everyone must pass through the middle stage Keats speaks of, where "the way of life is uncertain, and the soul is in a ferment." Most boys have at their preparatory schools been so carefully looked after that they have never learnt to think for themselves. They take everything as a matter of course. They believe implicitly what their masters tell them about what is right and wrong. Life is divided up into so many rules. But when the boy reaches his Public School he finds himself in a world where actions are regulated not by conscience, but by caprice. Boys do what they know is wrong; then invent a theory to prove it is right; and finally persuade themselves that black is white. It is pure chance what the Public School system will make of a boy. During the years of his apprenticeship, so to speak, he merely sits quiet, listening and learning; then comes the middle period, the period in which he is gradually changing into manhood. In it all his former experiences are jumbled hopelessly together, his life is in itself a paradox. He does things without thinking. There is no consistency in his actions. Then finally the threads are unravelled, and out of the disorder of conflicting ideas and emotions the tapestry is woven on the wonderful loom of youth.