Chapter 9
He still kept on his rooms with Mrs. Wickett; indeed, he still lived there; but every morning, about half-past ten, he put on his coat and muffler and crossed the road to the School. He felt very fit, and the actual work was not taxing. Just a few forms in Latin and Roman History—the old lessons—even the old pronunciation. The same joke about the Lex Canuleia—there was a new generation that had not heard it, and he was absurdly gratified by the success it achieved. He felt a little like a music-hall favorite returning to the boards after a positively last appearance.
They all said how marvelous it was that he knew every boy’s name and face so quickly. They did not guess how closely he had kept in touch from across the road.
He was a grand success altogether. In some strange way he did, and they all knew and felt it, help things. For the first time in his life he felt necessary—and necessary to something that was nearest his heart. There is no sublimer feeling in the world, and it was his at last.
He made new jokes, too—about the O.T.C. and the food-rationing system and the anti-air-raid blinds that had to be fitted on all the windows. There was a mysterious kind of rissole that began to appear on the School menu on Mondays, and Chips called it abhorrendum—”meat to be abhorred.” The story went round—heard Chips’s latest?
Chatteris fell ill during the winter of ’17, and again, for the second time in his life, Chips became Acting Head of Brookfield. Then in April Chatteris died, and the Governors asked Chips if he would carry on “for the duration.” He said he would, if they would refrain from appointing him officially. From that last honor, within his reach at last, he shrank instinctively, feeling himself in so many ways unequal to it. He said to Rivers: “You see, I’m not a young man and I don’t want people to—um—expect a lot from me. I’m like all these new colonels and majors you see everywhere—just a war-time fluke. A ranker—that’s all I am really.”
1917 to 1918, Chips lived through it all. He sat in the headmaster’s study every morning, handling problems, dealing with plaints and requests. Out of vast experience had emerged a kindly, gentle confidence in himself. To keep a sense of proportion, that was the main thing. So much of the world was losing it; as well keep it where it had, or ought to have, a congenial home.
On Sundays in Chapel it was he who now read out the tragic list, and sometimes it was seen and heard that he was in tears over it. Well, why not, the School said; he was an old man; they might have despised anyone else for the weakness.
One day he got a letter from Switzerland, from friends there; it was heavily censored, but conveyed some news. On the following Sunday, after the names and biographies of old boys, he paused a moment and then added :—“Those few of you who were here before the War will remember Max Staefel, the German master. He was in Germany, visiting his home, when war broke out. He was popular while he was here, and made many friends. Those who knew him will be sorry to hear that he was killed last week, on the Western Front.”
He was a little pale when he sat down afterward, aware that he had done something unusual. He had consulted nobody about it, anyhow; no one else could be blamed. Later, outside the Chapel, he heard an argument:—
“On the Western Front, Chips said. Does that mean he was fighting for the Germans?”
“I suppose it does.”
“Seems funny, then, to read his name out with all the others. After all, he was an enemy.”
“Oh, just one of Chips’s ideas, I expect. The old boy still has ‘em.”
Chips, in his room again, was not displeased by the comment. Yes, he still had ‘em—those ideas of dignity and generosity that were becoming increasingly rare in a frantic world. And he thought: Brookfield will take them, too, from me; but it wouldn’t from anyone else.
Once, asked for his opinion of bayonet practice being carried on near the cricket pavilion, he answered, with that lazy, slightly asthmatic intonation that had been so often and so extravagantly imitated: “It seems—to me—umph—a very vulgar way of killing people.”
The yarn was passed on and joyously appreciated—how Chips had told some big brass hat from the War Office that bayonet fighting was vulgar. Just like Chips. And they found an adjective for him—an adjective just beginning to be used: he was pre-War.
And once, on a night of full moonlight, the air-raid warning was given while Chips was taking his lower fourth in Latin. The guns began almost instantly, and, as there was plenty of shrapnel falling about outside, it seemed to Chips that they might just as well stay where they were, on the ground floor of School House. It was pretty solidly built and made as good a dugout as Brookfield could offer; and as for a direct hit, well, they could not expect to survive that, wherever they were.
So he went on with his Latin, speaking a little louder amid the reverberating crashes of the guns and the shrill whine of anti-aircraft shells. Some of the boys were nervous; few were able to be attentive. He said, gently: “It may possibly seem to you, Robertson—at this particular moment in the world’s history—umph—that the affairs of Caesar in Gaul some two thousand years ago—are—umph—of somewhat secondary importance—and that—umph—the irregular conjugation of the verb tollo is—umph—even less important still. But believe me—umph—my dear Robertson—that is not really the case.” Just then there came a particularly loud explosion—quite near. “You cannot—umph—judge the importance of things—umph—by the noise they make. Oh dear me, no.” A little chuckle. “And these things—umph—that have mattered—for thousands of years—are not going to be—snuffed out—because some stink merchant—in his laboratory—invents a new kind of mischief.” Titters of nervous laughter; for Buffles, the pale, lean, and medically unfit science master, was nicknamed the Stink Merchant. Another explosion—nearer still. “Let us—um—resume our work. If it is fate that we are soon to be—umph—interrupted, let us be found employing ourselves in something—umph—really appropriate. Is there anyone who will volunteer to construe?”
Maynard, chubby, dauntless, clever, and impudent, said: “I will, sir.”
“Very good. Turn to page forty and begin at the bottom line.”
The explosions still continued deafeningly; the whole building shook as if it were being lifted off its foundations. Maynard found the page, which was some way ahead,
and began, shrilly:—
“Genus hoc erat pugnae—this was the kind of fight—quo se Germani exercuerant—in which the Germans busied themselves. Oh, sir, that’s good—that’s really very funny indeed, sir—one of your very best—”
Laughing began, and Chips added: “Well—umph—you can see—now—that these dead languages—umph—can come to life again—sometimes—eh? Eh?”
Afterward they learned that five bombs had fallen in and around Brookfield, the nearest of them just outside the School grounds. Nine persons had been killed.
The story was told, retold, embellished. “The dear old boy never turned a hair. Even found some old tag to illustrate what was going on. Something in Caesar about the way the Germans fought. You wouldn’t think there were things like that in Caesar, would you? And the way Chips laughed . . . you know the way he does laugh . . . the tears all running down his face . . . never seen him laugh so much. . . .”
He was a legend. With his old and tattered gown, his walk that was just beginning to break into a stumble, his mild eyes peering over the steel-rimmed spectacles, and his quaintly humorous sayings, Brookfield would not have had an atom of him different.
November 11, 1918.
News came through in the morning; a whole holiday was decreed for the School, and the kitchen staff were implored to provide as cheerful a spread as wartime rationing permitted. There was much cheering and singing, and a bread fight across the Dining Hall. When Chips entered in the midst of the uproar there was an instant hush, and then wave upon wave of cheering; everyone gazed on him with eager, shining eyes, as on a symbol of victory. He walked to the dais, seeming as if he wished to speak; they made silence for him, but he shook his head after a moment, smiled, and walked away again.
It had been a damp, foggy day, and the walk across the quadrangle to the Dining Hall had given him a chill. The next day he was in bed with bronchitis, and stayed there till after Christmas. But already, on that night of November 11, after his visit to the Dining Hall, he had sent in his resignation to the Board of Governors.
When school reassembled after the holidays he was back at Mrs. Wickett’s. At his own request there were no more farewells or presentations, nothing but a handshake with his successor and the word “acting” crossed out on official stationery. The “duration” was over.
