To You, Mr Chips Part 6

MERRY CHRISTMAS, MR. CHIPS.

They say that old schoolmasters get into a rut, that it takes a young man to supply new ideas. Perhaps so; and it is true enough that Chips, in his seventieth year, was giving pretty much the same Latin lessons as he had given in his fiftieth or his thirtieth. The use of--umph--the Supine in "u," Richards,' said Chips, from his desk in the fourth-form room, 'seems to have escaped your notice--umph--and that--umph--can only be ascribed to the Supine in You!' Laughter . . . and if some young man could have done it better, let us give him a cheer, for he is probably doing it better, or trying to--at Brookfield now.

But in 1917, that desperate year darkening towards its close, there were no young men at Brookfield. There was a strange gap between boyhood and age, between the noisy challenge of fourth-formers and the weary glances of elderly overworked men; and only Chips, oldest and most overworked of them all, knew how to bridge that gap with something eternally boyish in himself.

Besides, ideas did come to him--once, for instance, as he was sitting at his desk in the Head's study, that more ill.u.s.trious desk to which, after his retirement in 1913, he had been summoned as youths were being summoned elsewhere. (But his own service, he often said, was 'acting' rather than 'active'; and that, with the little 'umph-umph' that had become a mannerism with him, was a joke at the expense of his official status of 'acting-headmaster.') The idea came because a tall air-browned soldier knocked at the study door during the hour devoted to what Chips called his 'acting,' strode colossally over the threadbare carpet, and, with a mixture of extreme shyness and bursting cordiality, stood grinning in front of the desk. 'Hullo, sir. Thought I'd give you a call while I was hereabouts. And I'll bet you don't know who I am!'

And Chips, adjusting his spectacles in a room already dim with November fog, blinked a little, and--after five seconds--answered: 'Oh yes . . . it's--umph--it's Greenaway, isn't it?'

'Well, I guess that's one on me! You've got it right first time, sir! How on earth d'you manage it--Pelmanism or something?'

Chips shook his head with a slow smile.

'No . . . no . . . I just--umph--remember. . . . I just remember. . . .' But he was a little saddened, because he had never taken so long to remember before, and he wondered if it were his eyesight or his memory that was beginning to fail; but perhaps, after all, only his eyes, for he added: 'You were here in--umph--let me see--in nineteen-hundred, eh? Well, how are you, my boy? Umph--you won't mind if--umph--I call you that, will you? . . . Sit down and talk to me. I'm--umph--delighted to see you again. Still--umph--imitating the farmyard?'

'Goodness--you remember that, too? You're a wonder. . . . I've turned Canadian--went out there in nineteen-oh-seven--got my own ranch--found quite a lot of new animals to imitate. . . . Now I'm over with the battalion, and by the freakiest chance we've been sent here to camp. Quite a thriving military centre, Brookfield, just now. I met another fellow the other day who used to be in your fourth form--English fellow named Wallingford.'

'Wallingford . . . there was only one Wallingford. A quiet boy--umph--red hair. . . .'

'That's right--it's still red, what's left of it. He asked me to remember him to you. Too shy to come around. I guess there's quite a few Brookfield men stationed here feel the same. School's a strange place when you've left it a dozen years--makes you feel your age when you don't come across a single face you can remember.'

'Except mine--umph--eh?'

'Sure . . . and you don't look a day older. But I thought I saw in the papers you'd retired--quite a time ago?'

'So I had, my boy. . . .' And then came the little joke about the 'acting service.'

The idea came later, when Greenaway, having stayed to lunch in the School dining-hall, had returned to camp, and when Chips, pleased as he always was by such an encounter, was resting and musing over his afternoon cup of tea. The idea came to him with sudden breathtaking excitement, as a young man may realise that he is in love, or as a poet may think of a lovely line. He would have a party, a Christmas party; there should be no more of that shyness; the men who had once been to Brookfield should meet the boys who were still there; all should meet and mix in the School Hall for an end-of-term party . . . a supper, the best that war-time catering could provide . . . a few songs . . . nonsense for those who liked nonsense, talk and gossip for those who preferred it . . . a few simple toasts, perhaps, and no speeches; nothing formal; everything to make the occasion gay and happy . . . his own party, and his own idea of a party.

It grew bright in his eyes as he thought of it, the details a.s.sembled into a rich unity; and by the time he went back to his rooms at Mrs. Wickett's, across the road from the School, it was like good news that he could no longer keep to himself. 'Mrs. Wickett,' he said, when she came in with his evening meal, 'I've had an idea. . . .'

She was rather less enthusiastic than he had hoped. 'Mind ye don't tire yeself, that's all,' she commented. 'There'll be a lot of work arranging a thing of that sort, and if you was to ask me, sir, you're a bit past the age for giving parties!'

'Past it, Mrs. Wickett? Why--umph--I've only just reached it!'

And the smile he gave her faded, as it so often did, into the private smile of reminiscence; he was thinking that he was really the right age because, as a young man, he would have been far too scared and worried to tackle such an enterprise at all. How he had fidgeted, in those days, over whether he ought to put on a white tie or a black tie for some function, whether he ought to shake hands with Mr. So-and-so, whether he would say the right thing in his speech . . . but now, thank heaven, he didn't care, and one of the lovely joys of growing old was to add to this list of trivial things one didn't care about, so that one had more time to care for the things that were not trivial.

'I shall count on you--umph--to help me, Mrs. Wickett. . . . Some of your famous meat-and-potato pies--umph--eh?'

'With war-time flour and strict rations of meat!' answered Mrs. Wickett in pitying scorn. But there were ways and means, and Chips knew that neither wars nor governments would be allowed to frustrate Mrs. Wickett in her search for them. She was that sort of an ally.

The next morning the idea was still so strong in him that he dropped a hint to his favourite fourth-form and within an hour the rumour was all over the School--'Old Chips is going to give a party!'--'Have you heard the latest--Chips is having a party on the last day of term--a Christmas party'--'Everybody's invited . . . and also some old boys from the camps.' This last was added, if at all, as an afterthought; for schoolboys are not really interested in old boys, except on speech days or unless they happen to be brothers. Their lack of interest is part of their lack of worry over the future, which is a natural thing--and in 1917 a good thing, too. For then at Brookfield there were boys who were to die within a year; and they were quite happy, playing rugger and conjugating verbs and reading the War news, only half aware that the last concerned them any more than the second, or as much as the first.

So the idea of the party was launched upon a boisterously welcoming world, and in that welcome Chips found more than compensation for extra work; he found a secret sunshine that warmed and comforted him during those sad November days. Indeed, he tremendously enjoyed the planning and discussion and settlement of all the difficult details--the writing of personal invitations, the wheedling of tradesmen into promising precious food, the building up of the whole evening's programme into what, on paper and in antic.i.p.ation, was already a huge success. And fourth-formers found it enticingly easy, as the term-end drew near, to switch over from conversation about such dull matters as Caesar's Gallic War and the use of the Supine in 'u.' Ut omnes conjurarent. . . . Oh, I say, sir, that reminds me, do you think we could have any conjuring at the party? I know a few tricks, sir.'

'Tricks, eh, Wilmer? And evidently--umph--one of those tricks is--umph--not to prepare your work! "Conjuro" doesn't mean "conjure." . . .'

'I know, sir, but it reminded me. Do you think I could do a few conjuring tricks?'

'Well, well--umph--'

And then of course the lesson was ruined and everyone began to talk about the party. But no--not ruined. It was the world, the world outside Brookfield, that was nearly in ruins. Beyond the quiet mists of the fen country men in their millions were crouching in frozen mud, starving and thirsting in deserts, drowning in angry seas and swooping to death in mid-air, fretting in hospitals far from home. So that at Brookfield, even at Brookfield, the Supine in 'u' lost ground as a subject of topical discussion; it gave up part of its ancient ghost, and into that place, unbidden but also unforbidden, came Chips's Christmas Party. It was fun to talk about that, to plan more schemes about it, to lure Chips on to chatting, gossiping, telling you things about Brookfield that had happened years before, things you'd never have known about unless Chips had told you them.

'Do you think Jones Tertius could play his mouth-organ at the party, sir? He's awfully good at it.'

'I could fix the electric lights to make a sort of footlights, sir, in front of the piano--don't you think that would be a good idea?'

'My brother's got a farm, sir, he's promised to send us some real b.u.t.ter. . . .'

And as he sat there at his desk, with suggestions and offers pouring in on him faster than he could deal with them all, he felt that history was not only made by guns and conquests, but by every pleasant thing that stays in memory after it has once happened, and that his Party would so stay, would be remembered at Brookfield as long as--say--the strange revisitation of Mr. Amberley, Mr. Amberley who came back from South America and gave every boy ten shillings to spend at the tuck-shop. 'Umph--yes--Mr. Amberley--a good many years ago that was.'

'Oh, do tell us about Mr. Amberley, sir.'

'Well, you see--umph--Mr. Amberley was once a master here--quite a young man--and not, I fear, very good at dealing with your--umph--ruffianly predecessors. (Laughter.) Your father, Marston--umph--will remember Mr. Amberley--umph--because he once--umph-umph--inserted a small snake in the lining of Mr. Amberley's hat. . . . (Laughter.) Quite a harmless variety, of course . . . and so--umph--was Mr. Amberley. . . . (Laughter.) And then after his first term--Mr. Amberley very wisely went to South America, where--umph--he was much more successful in forecasting the future price of--umph--nitrates, I think it was. So that when he came back to see us he was--umph--quite a rich man. . . . Bless me, there's the bell; we don't seem to have done very much--umph--this morning. . . .'

'But about the party, sir--do you think I could fix the electric lights, sir?'

'Well, Richards, if you'll undertake not to blow us all up--'

The day came nearer. Three weeks off. A fortnight off. Then 'Wednesday week.' And on the Thursday the School was to disperse for the Christmas holidays. Brookfield was on rising tiptoe with the pure eagerness of antic.i.p.ation. When you grow older you miss that eagerness; life may be happy, you may have health and wealth and love and success, but the odds are that you never look forward as you once did to a single golden day, you never count the hours to it, you never see some moment ahead beckoning like a G.o.ddess across a fourth dimension. But Brookfield did, and does still; and so, as that autumn term dragged to an end, the tension rose; the Big Hall took on a faintly roguish air with its unusual embellishments of holly and paper festoons; mysterious sounds of practice and rehearsal came from the music-rooms; eager discussions were held in the kitchens between staff and housekeeper and Chips.

Because it was so clearly going to be a grand success. Eleven old boys in the neighbouring military camps had accepted invitations, and four walking cases from local hospitals; fifteen representatives of the Brookfield that Chips remembered, chance-chosen by the hazards of war. And this timely meeting of boys and men, if Chips allowed himself to dream about it, became something epic in his vision, the closer knitting of a fabric stronger, because more lasting than war. He could not have put much of this into words, and would not even if he could; but the feeling was in him, giving joy to every detail. And the details came crowding in. Richards had contrived an elaborate electrical dodge for lighting up the piano. Greenaway would give his celebrated farmyard imitations. And Chips himself told Mrs. Wickett to look over the dinner-suit that he had not worn for years and that smelt of age and camphor.

And then, on a certain Sunday morning in December, an odd thing happened during the School chapel service--in the middle of a sermon about the disputed authorship of one of the books of the Old Testament. Brookfield, plainly, was not interested in the dispute and definitely declined to take sides in it; you could tell that from the rows of faces in the pews. But all at once, quite astonishingly, something happened that interested Brookfield a great deal; Attwood Primus, commonly called Longlegs, suddenly fainted and, after slipping to the floor with a reverberating crash, had to be dragged out by hastily roused prefects. During the last hymn conversation buzzed excitedly, and (to the tune of For All the Saints) it was confidently rumoured that Attwood was dead.

Attwood, however, was not dead (and is not dead yet); but he was in the sick-room with a temperature of a hundred and two, and before lights-out that same Sunday evening five others had joined him. The next day came seventeen more. Chips, very calm in such an emergency, sat late in consultation with Merivale, the School doctor. With the result that on the following morning Brookfield was alive with the most intoxicating rumour that even a school can ever have.

'I say, heard the latest?--we're breaking up tomorrow instead of Thursday week--someone heard Chips talking to Merivale--'

'It's the 'flu--it's in all the army camps and Longlegs got it from his cousin, who's in one of them--good old Longlegs--'

'Special orders from the War Office--so they say--Nurse told me--'

'Chips has sent down to the bank for journey money--'

'I say--ten days' extra hols--what luck!'

And--in an instant--in less than an instant--the party was forgotten. Perhaps the conjurer and the mouth-organist gave it a pa.s.sing thought, perhaps even a thought of wasted planning and unapplauded prowess; but even in them regret was swamped by the overmastering joy of Going Home. Which was only natural. Chips, whose home was Brookfield, knew how natural it was. And so, as he sat at his window in the early morning and watched the taxis curving to and fro through the gateway, he smiled.

He spent Christmas, as he had so often done, in his rooms across the road. There were no visitors, but he was fairly busy. There had been a few details of cancellation to put in order; the promised gifts of food were transferred to hospitals; outside guests were notified that owing to . . . etc. etc., it was much regretted that the party could not be held. But the decorations remained in the Hall, half finished, and Richards's vaunted footlights, in an embryo stage of dangling flex, impeded the progress of anyone who might seek to mount the platform; but no one did. Then the last of the sick-room unfortunates recovered and went home, shaking hands with Chips as the latter doled out money for the train fare. 'Happy Christmas, sir.'

'Thank you, Tunstall--umph--and the same to you, my boy.'

Christmas Eve brought rain in the late afternoon; it had been a cold day with grey scudding clouds. No school bell sounded across the air, and that to Chips gave a curious impression of timelessness, so that when he sat by the fire and read the paper the moments swam easily towards the dinner hour. 'You'll join me, Mrs. Wickett, in--umph--a gla.s.s of wine?' he had said, and she had answered, with familiar reluctance: 'Oh dear, I dunno as I ought, sir; it does go to me head so.'

But she did, of course, and in that little room, with the old-fashioned Victorian furniture and the red-and-blue carpet and the photographs of School groups on the walls, Chips made light of any disappointment that was in him.

'Well, sir, if you was to ask me, I'd say it was proper Providence, it was, for it's my belief the fuss of it all would have knocked you up--that it would, and Doctor Merivale said the same, knowin' what a lively set-to them boys was going to make of it.'

'Were they, Mrs. Wickett? Umph--umph--well, they're all enjoying their own parties now--more than--umph--they'd have enjoyed anything here--umph--that's very certain!'

'Oh no, sir, I don't think that, sir.'

'Mrs. Wickett--umph--no normal healthy-minded boy--umph--ever wants to stay at school a moment longer than he needs--umph--and I'm glad to say that my boys are--umph--almost excessively normal! When is it that they're due back--January 15th--umph--eh?'

'That's right, sir. Term begins on the 15th.'

'Umph--three weeks more.'

After dinner he decided to write some letters, and as he had left an address-book in his school desk he walked across the road through the gusty rain and unlocked his way into the chilly rooms and corridors where his feet guided him unerringly. A strange place, an empty school. Full of ghosts, full of echoes of voices, full of that sad smell of stale ink, varnish, and the carbolic soap that the charwomen used. In every cla.s.sroom a sc.r.a.p of writing on the blackboard, words or figures, some last thing done before the world lost its inhabitants. And on a whitewashed wall in a deserted corridor Chips saw, roughly scrawled in pencil, what looked at first to be some odd mathematical calculation:

17.

16.

15.

14.

13.

12.

11.

10.

9.

Which, of course, at second glance he perfectly understood; nay more, he could imagine the joy of the eager calculator when, after that memorable Sunday, the last eight digits of the progression had been spared him! And possibly that same calculator, at this very moment on Christmas Eve, was giving a rueful thought to the date that lay ahead--January 15th--'only three more weeks!' Boys were like that.

He found his book and relocked the doors; then, back in Mrs. Wickett's house again, he wrote his letters. Like most of his, they were written to old boys of the School, and like most letters to old boys they were now addressed to camps and armies throughout the world. Chips was not a particularly good letter-writer. His jokes came to him only in speech; in letters he was always very simple and direct and (if you thought so) rather dull. Indeed, one of their recipients (a much cleverer man than Chips) had once called them affectionately 'the letter of a schoolmaster by a schoolboy.' Just this sort of thing: 'DEAR BRADLEY,.

'I am very glad to hear you are getting on well after your bad smash. We have had a pretty fair term, on the whole (beat Barnhurst twice at rugger), but an epidemic of 'flu attacked us near the end, interfering with the House matches and one or two other affairs. We broke up ten days early on account of this. Mr. G.o.dley has been called up, despite his age and health, so we are understaffed again. We had an air-raid in October, but no one at the School was hurt. If you get leave and can spare the time, do come and see me here. We begin term on January 15th. . . .'

Chips wrote several of these letters; then he sat by the fire over his evening cup of tea. All that he had not said, and could never say or write, flooded his mind at the thought of a world so full of bloodshed and peril; and then, in answer, came the thought of those boys who might, by happier chance, miss such peril as carelessly and as cheerfully as they had missed his party. And he prayed, seated and silent: G.o.d, bring peace on earth . . . goodwill to men and boys. . . .