by James Hilton
Menvers: Well, I took a chance.
C.P.C.: You mean a risk?
Menvers: A risk, if you prefer the word.
C.P.C.: And what you risked was other people’s money?
Menvers: They gave it to me to risk.
C.P.C.: Why do you suppose they did that?
Menvers: Because they were greedy for the big profits that can only be obtained by taking risks, and they didn’t know how to take risks themselves …
C.P.C.: I see. That is your opinion?
Menvers: Yes.
C.P.C.: You admit, then, that your policy has always been to take risks?
Menvers: Yes, always.
Chips smiled a little at that. But two hours later he did not smile when, after the verdict of “Guilty on all counts,” the Judge began: “Charles Menvers, you have been found guilty of a crime which deeply stains the honour of the City of London as well as brings ruin into the lives of thousands of innocent persons who trusted you. … A man of intelligence, educated at a school whose traditions you might better have absorbed, you deliberately chose to employ your gifts for the exploitation rather than for the enrichment of society. … It is my sad duty to sentence you to imprisonment for twelve years. …”
Chips paled at the words, was startled by them, could hardly believe them for a moment. And then (such was his respect for English law and its implacable impartiality) he told himself, as he shuffled out of the court: Well, I suppose it must have been something pretty serious, or they wouldn’t have come down on him so hard. …
He had asked for permission to see Menvers during the trial, but it had not been granted; in lieu of that, he intended to offer what help he could to Mrs. Menvers, and with this object planned to intercept her as she left the court. It had not occurred to him that some scores of journalists would have the same idea, plus a greater knack in carrying it out. He did, how ever, contrive a meeting at her house that evening. He introduced himself and she seemed relieved to talk to him. “Twelve years!” she kept repeating. “Twelve years!”
He stayed with her for an hour, and between them, during that time, there grew a warm and gentle friendliness. “Charles was a good man,” she told him, simply; and he answered: “Yes—umph—I know he was, the young rascal!”
“Young?” she echoed, and then again came the terror: “Twelve years! Oh, my God, what will he be like in twelve years?”
And Chips, touching her arm with a movement rather than a contact of sympathy, murmured: “My dear, I am eighty-one,” which might have seemed irrelevant, yet was somehow the most comforting thing he could think of.
Later she said: “He’s worried about the boy. We were to have sent him to Brookfield next term. Of course that’s impossible now … the disgrace … everybody knowing who he is … that was the only thing Charles really worried about. …”
“Tell him not to worry,” said Chips.
The next day, from Brookfield, he wrote to the prisoner in Pentonville Gaol:
“MY DEAR MENVERS, I understand that you always take risks—even on behalf of others. Take another risk, then, and send your boy to Brookfield as you had intended. …”
Young Menvers arrived on the first September day of the following school term, by which time his father had already served a month of the sentence. The boy was a nice-looking youngster, with more than a touch of the same eager charm that had lured thousands of profit-seekers to their doom.
On those first nights of term, despite his age and the fact that he was no longer on the official staff of the school, Chips would often take prep, in substitution for some other master who had not yet arrived. He rather enjoyed being asked to do so; and the boys were equally satisfied. It relieved the misery of term beginning to see old Chips sitting there at the desk on the platform, goggling over his spectacles, introducing new boys, and sometimes making jokes about them. Of course there was no real work done on such an evening, and it was an understood thing that one could rag the old man very gently and that he rather liked it.
But that evening there was an especial sensation—young Menvers. “I say, d’you see the fellow at the end of the third row—new boy—his name’s Menvers—his father’s in prison !” “No? Really?” “Yes—doing twelve years for fraud—didn’t you read about it in the papers?” “Gosh, I wonder what it feels like to have your old man in quod!” “Mine said it served him right—we lost a packet through him. …” And so on.
And suddenly Chips, following his age-old custom, rose from his chair, his hand trembling a little as it held the typewritten sheet.
“We have—umph—quite a number of newcomers this term. … Umph—umph. … Astley … your uncle was here, Astley—umph—he exhibited—umph—a curious reluctance to acquire even the rudiments of a classical education … umph—umph. … Brooks Secundus. … These Brooks seem—umph—to have adopted the—umph—Tennysonian attribute of—umph—going on for ever. … Dunster … an unfortunate name, Dunster … but perhaps you will claim benefit of the ‘lucus a non lucendo’ theory … umph—umph … eh?”
Laughter … laughter … the usual laughter at the usual jokes. … And then, in its due alphabetical order:
“Menvers. …”
Chips said:
“Menvers … umph … your father was here … umph … I well remember him … umph … I hope you will be more careful than he has been—umph—lately … (laughter). He was always a crazy fellow … and once he did the craziest thing that ever was known at Brookfield … climbed to the roof of the hall to rescue a kitten … the kitten—umph—had more sense—didn’t need rescuing—so this—umph—crazy fellow—umph—in sheer petulance, I suppose—climbed to the top of the belfry—umph—and tied up the weathervane with a Brookfield tie. … When you go out, take a look at the belfry and think what it meant—umph—crazy fellow, your father, Menvers—umph—umph—I hope you won’t take after him. …”
Laughter.
And afterwards, alone in his sitting-room across the road from the school, Chips wrote again to the prisoner in Pentonville:
“ My DEAR MENVERS, I took a risk too, and it was well taken. …”
5. MR. CHIPS MEETS A SINNER
WHEN CHIPS WENT ON his annual climbing holidays he never told people he was a schoolmaster and always hoped that there was nothing in his manner or behaviour that would betray him. This was not because he was ashamed of his profession (far from it); it was just a certain shyness about his own personal affairs plus a disinclination to exchange “shop” talk with other schoolmasters who might more openly reveal themselves. For when Chips was on holiday he didn’t want to talk about his job—he didn’t even want to think about it. Examination papers, class lists, terminal reports—all could dissolve into the thin air of the mountains, leaving not a wrack behind.
But he could never quite lose his interest in boys. And when, one September morning in 1917 in the English mountain-town of Keswick, he saw an eager-faced freckled youngster of about eleven or twelve swinging astride a hotel- balcony reading a book, he couldn’t help intervening: “I’d be careful of that rail, if I were you.’ It doesn’t look too safe.”
The boy looked up, got up, looked down at the rail, then shook it. As if to prove Chips’s point, it obligingly collapsed and set them both laughing. “So there you are,” said Chips. “A minute more and you’d have been over the edge.”
“Don’t tell father, that’s all,” answered the boy. “I’d never hear the end of it. I once cut my head open doing the same thing. See here?” And he tilted his head as he pointed to an inch-long scar above his right temple.
“What’s the book?” Chips asked, thinking it better not to admire such an obviously valued trophy.
The boy then showed the book—an anthology of poems, open at Macaulay’s ballad about the coming of the Spanish Armada. “See,” cried the boy, with gathering enthusiasm, “it says—‘The red glare on Skiddaw roused the burglars of Carlisle.’ Where’s Carlisle?”
“Burghers, not
burglars. Carlisle’s a town about thirty miles away.”
“And that’s Skiddaw, isn’t it I?” The boy pointed to the green and lovely mountain that rose up at the back of the hotel.
“Yes, that’s it.”
“And who were the burglars—burghers?”
“Oh, they were just citizens of the town. When they saw the bonfires on top of Skiddaw they knew it as the signal that the Spanish Armada had been sighted.”
“Oh, you know the poem, then?”
Considering that Chips had read it to his class at Brookfield for thirty years or more, he was justified in the slight smile that played over his face as he answered: “Yes, I know it.”
“You like poetry?”
“Yes. Do you?”
“Yes. … I wish you’d come in the hotel and meet my father. We’re staying here, you know. I want to climb Skiddaw, but he says it’s too much for him at his age, and he won’t let me go by myself because he says I’d break my neck over a precipice.”
“You probably would,” said Chips, “if there were any precipices. But there aren’t—on Skiddaw. It’s a very safe mountain.”
“Oh, do come along and tell him that. …”
So Chips, almost before he realised what was happening, found himself piloted inside the breakfast-room and presented to Mr. Richard Renshaw, a squat, pasty-faced, pompous-mannered heavyweight of fifty or thereabouts. One glance at him was enough to explain his reluctance to climb Skiddaw, and one moment of his conversation was enough to suggest that the boy’s love of poetry would awake no answering sympathy in the father. “I’m a plain man,” began Mr. Renshaw, expounding himself with great vigour in a strong Lancashire accent. “Just an ordinary plain business man—I don’t claim to be anything else. I’m here because my doctor said I needed a rest-cure—and there’s no rest-cure to me in pushing myself up the side of a mountain. So David must just stay down with me and make the best of it. Especially as it’s due to him—very largely—that I need the rest-cure.”
He glanced at the boy severely, but the latter made no comment and showed no embarrassment. Presently David moved away and left the two men together. “That boy’s a terror,” continued Mr. Renshaw, pointing after him.
“ He’s not mine, understand—he’s my second wife’s by an earlier marriage. My lad’s quite different—fine young chap of twenty-five—accountant in Birmingham—settled down very nicely, he has. But David … well, it’s my belief there’s bad blood in him somewhere.”
Chips went on listening—there was nothing else to do.
“Been sacked from two schools already … a proper good-for-nothing, if you ask me.”
Chips hadn’t asked him, but now he did ask, with the beginnings of interest: “What was he sacked for?”
“Well, from the first school it was for breaking into the matron’s bedroom in the middle of the night and scaring her out of her wits … and the second school sacked him for an outrageous piece of hooliganism in the school chapel during Sunday service. Isn’t that enough?”
“Quite enough,” agreed Chips. “But what’s the position now? What are you going to do with him?”
“I’m damned if I know. What can anybody do with him? If schoolmasters themselves … but it’s my belief they don’t try. I’ve not a lot of faith in schoolmasters.”
“Neither have I—sometimes,” said Chips.
During the days that followed Chips would have had more and better chances to get to know David if Mr. Renshaw himself had been less obtrusive. He seemed a lonely, unhappy sort of man, and, having found in Chips a tolerant listener, he made the most of his opportunities. Chips could hardly get rid of the fellow at the hotel, and was heartily glad that he was no mountaineer. It was not that there was anything especially unpleasant about him—merely that he was a loud-voiced nuisance, and the more Chips saw and talked with him the more he felt that David, with or without bad blood, could not have found life very harmonious with such a stepfather. Chips wondered why such an ill-assorted pair chose to take their holidays together. The answer came in Renshaw’s own words. “Y’see, Chipping, there’s nowhere else for him to go. The rest of the family wouldn’t take him as a gift—and you can’t blame ’em. So he has to stay with me whether he likes it or not. I’m here for my health and he’s here for his sins.
Chips smiled. “I only hope my own sins will never take me to a worse place.”
“Oh, Keswick’s all right, I know. Quite a nice spot for a holiday. But the boy isn’t satisfied with a stroll in the afternoon—he’s restless all the time—restless as a monkey. Only the other day one of the waiters caught him in the hotel kitchen tasting all the food out of the pans … of course I had to give the fellow a tip to say nothing about it. The boy’s incorrigible, I tell you. Hasn’t even the sense to see what’s to his own advantage. He knows that his whole future depends on what I decide to do with him during the next few days.”
“Oh?”
“ Well, y’see, I promised that if he was a good boy I’d overlook his disgraceful behaviour at school and put him under a private tutor for a couple of years—then after that, if he still behaved well, my son in Birmingham—the accountant, y’know—might take him into his office. … Wonderful chance, that, for a boy who’s had to leave school under a cloud. … You’d think it would make him turn over a new leaf, wouldn’t you? But it doesn’t … he doesn’t seem to care.”
Which was true enough. David’s efforts to impress his stepfather with any appearance of remorse or future good intentions were, Chips could see, so vagrant as to be almost imperceptible. Once Chips gave the boy a lead to discuss the matter by saying, during a casual conversation in the hotel-lobby: “By the way, your father says there’s a chance of your becoming an accountant … It’s a good profession, if you like it.”
“I wouldn’t like it,” answered David, with decision.
“What do you want to be, then?”
“An explorer.”
Chips smiled. “That’s not a very easy thing to be, nowadays.”
“I once explored some caves in Scotland. It was easy enough. It was father who made all the fuss about it.”
“Oh?”
“Just because the tide came up and I had to sit on a ledge all night and wait for it to go down again. But I didn’t find any gems.”
“Any gems? What do you mean?”
“Well, it said in the poem, you know—‘Full many a gem of purest ray serene the dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear’ … But I didn’t find any.”
Towards mid-September, as the beginning of term at Brookfield approached, Chips began to feel the familiar willingness to be back at work. His strenuous month of walking and climbing had made him feel immensely fit for his years; even Renshaw’s conversations couldn’t spoil such a holiday, despite their tendency to become less restrained and more repetitive. They dealt largely with the trials and tribulations of family and business life; Renshaw had not been a happy man, nor—quite evidently—had he possessed the knack of making others happy. It seemed that he had lost a great deal of money owing to the War. He couldn’t forget it, and Chips, for whom money meant little and for whom the War (then in its third year) was a continuing nightmare, was scarcely interested to hear in great detail how certain properties of his in Germany had been confiscated. “There never was anything like it,” said Renshaw, mournfully philosophising. “And I’d put so much into them. That’s what the War does.”
Chips could have told him of other and perhaps worse things that the War did, but he refrained. .
“And it’s nearly as bad over here, Chipping, the way the export trade’s going to pieces,” Renshaw continued. “I’m in cotton, and I know.” And he added, putting the direct question: “What are you in?”
“I’m in clover,” answered Chips, almost to himself.
Renshaw looked puzzled. “What’s that? … Oh, I see—I suppose you mean you sold out in time and can sit back on the profits ? … Lucky fellow—I wish I had.”
“Yes, I think I’ve been pretty lucky,” agreed Chips, leading the conversation gently astray.
There came the last evening. Both Chips and the Renshaws were to leave the following morning—in different directions, Chips was not sorry to realise. As a kindly gesture towards someone whom he did not definitely dislike (though he was aware that they had little in common), he agreed to visit Renshaw’s room after dinner for a final drink and chat. He did this dutifully, listening in patience to the man’s renewed plaints against the state of trade and affairs in general; about ten o’clock he thought he could decently take his leave. “I don’t suppose we’ll meet in the morning,” he said. “I’d like to have said good-bye to David, but I suppose he’s in bed by now.”
“Not he,” answered Renshaw. “I packed him off to the pictures to keep him out of the way while we had our talk. There’s Chaplin on or something. … He can’t get into much mischief in a cinema. Ought to be back any minute now.”
“Well, say good-bye to him for me,” said Chips, shaking hands.
But about midnight he was awakened by a tapping at his room door. Renshaw, in night- shirt and dressing-gown, stood outside. “I say, Chipping … sorry to wake you up … but David hasn’t come back yet. What do you suppose I ought to do about it? Call the police?”