The Lanchester tradition

“I always wonder, Bent,” said Mr. Rankin, as the two men met in Colonus on their way to the ground where the Cock-house match was about to begin—“I always wonder why you, who pour such scorn on athleticism, never by any chance miss a house match.”

“There are many things in this world to wonder at,” replied Mr. Bent; “for instance, why the sea is boiling hot and why Radicals are the most inveterate Tories in private life. But, as a matter of fact, it is not the football that attracts me on these occasions so much as the psychology of the competing housemasters.”

“Translate with brief notes,” said his companion.

“To an observer of human nature,” Mr. Bent explained, “nothing is so illuminating as the behaviour of a housemaster when his house is playing a match. Chowdler, of course, is elemental, and offers few points of interest; he has the naked simplicity of the savage or the sportsman—blatant in victory, ungenerous in defeat. But Trimble is more complex, and, therefore, more worthy of study. If I join him, he will affect an air of complete detachment and ask me for my views on Welsh Disestablishment or Woman Suffrage; but he will interrupt himself at intervals to murmur ‘Fools! asses! idiots! they deserve to be beaten!’ Of course they will be beaten?”

“Don’t be too sure of that!” said Mr. Rankin. “Two of Chowdler’s best men are crocked, and Trimble’s have come on a lot lately.”

“Chowdler being beaten,” said Mr. Bent, “is a much more amusing spectacle than Chowdler winning. But I don’t regard it as possible. He always keeps a reserve force—a kind of territorial army—of lean and hungry veterans with Christian names, who have grown old in the service of their country. I am credibly informed, that his senior fag, whom I see on the field, is a widower and maintains a family of four at Brighton. They all belong to the class which Chowdler designates as ‘poor old’ or ‘good old’; and against this combination of age, godliness, and thrift, no ordinary house eleven stands a chance.”

“Don’t talk rot,” said Mr. Rankin, “I back Trimble’s. They’ll take a lot of beating to-day.”

The whole school and most of the masters were out to watch the game. Mr. Tipham was conspicuous in his post-impressionist scarf, shouting ostentatiously for Trimble’s. Mr. Grady hovered uneasily on the outskirts, with the hunted look on his face; perhaps the noise reminded him of his more uproarious classes. Mrs. Chowdler and Mrs. Trimble were seated in a reserved enclosure, exchanging feline amenities. Their better halves wandered about on opposite sides of the ground—Mr. Chowdler on the touch-line, Mr. Trimble a little in the rear of the spectators, in a state of internal agitation which would have made sitting impossible. For the game was of a most thrilling description. In the first half Trimble’s did most of the attacking and crossed over with a lead of one goal to nothing.

“Oh, it’s all right!” said Mr. Trimble with assumed nonchalance to Mr. Bent, who had just congratulated him on the results so far obtained. “We shall go to pieces sure enough in the second half! my fellows have a perfect genius for collapsing. The asses! If they hadn’t bungled all their chances we might have been three up.”

It looked as if Mr. Trimble’s gloomy prophecy were going to be fulfilled; for the game had hardly been restarted when a foolish misunderstanding among the Trimbleite backs enabled Chowdler’s to equalise; and, before their opponents had recovered from the shock and consequent demoralisation, le Willow sent in a lucky shot which put his side ahead. A yell of triumph went up from the Chowdlerites and their supporters, and Mr. Chowdler himself, in spite of a heavy fur coat, leapt into the air on the touch-line and beat his gloved hands one against the other.

“Well played, Harry!” he roared. “Well played all! Good lads! Stick to it, stick to it!”

“Given away with a pound of tea!” said Mr. Trimble with a short mirthless laugh. “That settles the game; and I must say that we thoroughly deserve to lose. Did you ever see such football!”

Mr. Trimble, though he was one of the best housemasters at Chiltern, was a man of rather insignificant appearance. The youngest Miss Gussy had once said of him that he always looked as if he were wearing somebody else’s cast-off clothes. On this particular afternoon he had on an ulster of antique design and faded yellow colour, which contrasted unfavourably with the smart coat of his rival and seemed to brand him as of inferior rank.

“The moral effect of that last goal,” said Mr. Bent, whose sympathies were with the ulster, “may be disastrous; but the game is not over yet. I must confess that I am beginning to be horribly excited. I have not got your philosophic detachment, Trimble; and the sight of Chowdler on the touch-line, clapping his great woollen gloves together, always arouses most unchristian feelings in me. I want to see him, not merely beaten, but crushed, disgraced, annihilated. Well played! Oh, well played!”

For the Trimbleites, stung by disaster, had roused themselves to superhuman efforts and were once more attacking fiercely. There was a confused mêlée in front of Chowdler’s goal. Suddenly the referee blew his whistle, and when the players separated it was seen that a Chowdlerite was lying disabled on the ground.

“Did you see that?” cried Mr. Chowdler, rushing up to Mr. Black, whom he spied in his neighbourhood.

Mr. Black was a cautious man and shy of committing himself to excitable colleagues, so he replied:

“I was just looking the other way, so I didn’t see what happened; but I fear somebody is injured.”

“It is one of the most deliberate and foulest bits of play,” said Mr. Chowdler in a voice for all to hear, “that I have ever witnessed. Shameful, shameful! From this moment I take no further interest in the game. Good God!” he added suddenly, throwing up his hands in a gesture of despair, “it’s le Willow!” And he hurried off to assist the victim.

Le Willow had sprained an ankle and had to be helped off the field. When he had been removed and the players had resumed their places, it became evident that the referee had awarded a free kick. “All very well!” muttered Mr. Chowdler to Mr. Rankin, as he hurried back to his post on the touch-line, “but what’s the use of a free kick when it has cost you your best man!”

It was indeed a poor consolation—merely a black mark against an unscrupulous foe who cared nothing for black marks. But imagine Mr. Chowdler’s horror, indignation, and dismay, when he suddenly realised that the free kick had been awarded, not for, but against his house.

“Monstrous!” he cried aloud, as if appealing to the silent gods. “Monstrous! I saw the foul, I saw it myself. A perfectly monstrous decision!”

But, monstrous or not, such was the decision and there was no appeal from it. There was a moment of intense silence, and then a moan went up from the Trimbleites and a roar of triumph from the Chowdlerites as the shot which should have equalised, passed just over, instead of under, the bar. For the next twenty minutes the Chowdlerite goal was literally bombarded. Excitement, it is true, made the shooting rather erratic; but, time after time, it looked as if the citadel must fall. And it would have fallen, but for Cheeny. When le Willow received his mortal wound, Cheeny had stepped into his place as leader; and he was everywhere. It is the right thing in the Chiltern game for the leader to be everywhere; that is one of the features that has made of the Chiltern game the great moral training that it is. So Cheeny did his best to be ubiquitous, and played such a game as had not been played in Colonus within the memory of that generation—falling, rising, charging and being charged, stopping rushes, intercepting passes and spoiling shots. And, after each unsuccessful attack on the Chowdlerite goal, Mr. Trimble said calmly, “That settles it! Silly asses! They deserve to be beaten!”

As for Mr. Chowdler, the perspiration stood on his brow and there was a note of almost despairing appeal in his familiar rallying cry, “Good lads! Good lads all! Stick to it, stick to it!” But slowly, at the back of his mind, a purpose was shaping itself—a resolve that, if the impossible did happen and Cheeny kept the goal intact, then Cheeny should be his Prefect. For a lad with such nerve and courage had proved himself fit to govern, even though he were rather low in the school.

Meanwhile, as the minutes slipped away, the excitement grew and grew, and there was one continuous roar of Chowdlers! Jowlers! Trimbulls! in all keys and every degree of hoarseness. People leapt into the air, slapped each other on the back, threw their caps on the ground and trampled on them, and performed all manner of strange and inconsequent antics. Ten—eight—six—four minutes more! And then, just at the end, amid howls of delight from their supporters, the defence, with Cheeny at their head, broke away; and, when the whistle blew, the ball was in mid-field and Chowdler’s were left victorious by two goals to one.

Mr. Chowdler was swept away by a wave of intense, almost religious, emotion. Foul play, monstrous decisions, past and present wrongs were all forgotten for the moment. If the headmaster had come up and grasped him by the hand, he would have fallen upon the headmaster’s neck—he would have fallen upon anybody’s neck. Never since the relief of Ladysmith, where his own son was beleaguered, had he experienced such a sense of thankfulness, joy, and exultation. Perhaps it was an unconscious association of ideas which made him say to Mr. Tipham as he passed him:

“Thank God! We have kept the flag flying!”

“Where?” asked Mr. Tipham icily.

But already Mr. Chowdler was far away. He had caught sight of Mr. Trimble’s retreating figure, and was hurrying after him with the chivalrous intention of pouring balm into smarting wounds. Mr. Trimble was, indeed, making off as fast as he could, in the hope of avoiding an application of this particular balm, which he had sampled on previous occasions and which had always disagreed with him. His nerves were tingling, and he was conscious of a feeling of suppressed irritation which, he knew, would give him a broken night and spoil life for several days. Suddenly, a heavy woollen glove descended on to his shoulder and a manly voice panted in his ear:

“Condolences, poor old boy, condolences! My turn to-day, yours, perhaps, to-morrow!”

“Hullo!” said Mr. Trimble, turning round and shuddering slightly under the caress. “Is that you, Chowdler? I was looking for you; congratulations.”

“Ta,” said Mr. Chowdler, without removing his hand. “Ta. We were a bit too good for you, but you put up a tip-top fight. I’m afraid your lot are a bit done up; it always tells hardest on the beaten side. I expect my own lads have had very nearly as much as they wanted. But what a game!”

It is much easier to congratulate a successful rival warmly than to receive his condolences gratefully; and Mr. Trimble’s vexation pierced through his reply.

“It was indeed,” he replied; “the worst exhibition I’ve ever seen in a Cock-house match! On to-day’s form any ordinarily respectable side ought to have whopped you, but my lot were simply beneath contempt: they didn’t deserve to win. Plenty of spirit, of course: one expects that; but the very worst football I’ve ever seen in Colonus.”

Mr. Chowdler withdrew his hand and the balm with it. As he said afterwards to his wife, poor old Trimble never could take a beating.

To Mr. Chowdler the victory did not mean merely that his boys, by superior luck or skill, had scored one goal more than the boys of another house. It meant, somehow, that the Lanchester tradition had been vindicated; that all that was best and noblest in the place, all that made the past glorious and the present fruitful, had, in the face of tremendous odds, asserted itself in a supreme and convincing manner. He was glad that his house had taken the field with two of their best players away, glad that le Willow had sprained his ankle and that the referee had been flagrantly unfair. All things had worked together for good, and misfortunes which looked like irretrievable disasters had only served to enhance the moral sublimity of the victory. “God’s in his Heaven, all’s right with the world.”

Something of all this Mr. Chowdler certainly said to his house in the speech that he made to them at prayers that evening; and when, on the following day, little Simpkin looked up at him with a wistful smile and said, “Sir, don’t you think that the Lanchester tradition comes out at football?” he felt that the boys had the root of the matter in them, too. And he related the story to all his colleagues in turn—and to some of them twice.