by James Hilton
“Well, I have—umph—some reason—to believe so.”
“You were educated there yourself?” Chips answered, with a slow chuckle. “Yes … umph … I rather imagine I have picked up a little knowledge there during—umph—the past half century or so. …”
By such exchanges of question and answer Chips and Hollywood’s ace filmstar came to know each other and each to marvel at the strange world that the other inhabited. It was on Chips’s advice that Renny tore some of the labels off his luggage and wrapped up his Fifth Avenue hat-box in brown paper and did a few other simple things to frustrate the publicity he was apparently fleeing from. And at the Royal Hotel (still taking Chips’s advice) he registered as plain Mr. Read, of London, and was careful to ask for “tomatoes,” not “tomaitoes,” and to refrain from asking for ice-water at all. A few days later he rang up Chips on the telephone, said he was feeling a little bored and suggested a further meeting. Chips asked him to tea at his rooms opposite the School, and afterwards showed him over the School buildings. Renny was horrified at the primitiveness of the School bathrooms, and was still more horrified when Chips told him they had just been modernised. But he was pleased and relieved when Chips told him that there had not been a single case of kidnapping at Brookfield for the past three hundred years. “Before that—umph—I cannot definitely say,” added Chips. “There were very disturbed times—we had a headmaster hanged during the sixteenth century for preaching the wrong kind of sermon—yes—umph—we have had disturbed times, Mr. Renny.”
“You talk about them, sir, as if they were only yesterday.”
“So they were,” replied Chips, “in the history of England. And Brookfield is a part of that.”
“And you’re a part of Brookfield, I guess?”
“I should like to think so,” answered Chips, pouring himself tea.
The two men met again, several times. One afternoon they lazed in deck-chairs on the deserted School playing-fields; another day Chips took Renny to the local parish church, showed him the points of historic interest in it, and introduced him to the verger and the vicar as a visiting American. Renny seemed surprised that neither recognised him, and uttered a word of warning afterwards, “You know, Mr. Chipping, you’re taking a big chance showing me round like that.”
“No,” replied Chips. “I think not. There are—umph—quite a number of people in England who—umph—have never heard of you, Mr. Renny. The vicar here, for instance, is much more familiar with the personalities of Rome during the age of Diocletian—he has written several books on the subject … while our verger is so passionately devoted to the cultivation of roses that—umph—I doubt if he ever goes to the cinema at all. … So I think you may feel quite safe in Brookfield—nobody will annoy or molest you.”
But after another few days had passed and there had been other meetings, a dark suspicion began to enter Chips’s mind. Renny looked much better for his rest-cure; idle days in sunshine and fresh air had soothed the tired nerves of an idol whose pedestal too often revealed him as merely a target. All the same, there was this dark suspicion—a suspicion that suggested itself more markedly whenever the two men walked about the streets of Brookfield. Just this—that though Renny was doubtless sincere in wanting to get away from crowds of autograph-hunting admirers, he did not altogether relish the ease with which in Brookfield he was doing so. There were moments when, perhaps, the success of his incognito peeved him just a trifle. It would have been truly awful if a mob of girls had torn the clothes off his back (they had done this several times in America), but when they didn’t, then … well, there were moments when Renny’s attitude might almost have been diagnosed as: Why the hell don’t they try to, anyway …?
All of which came to a head in the sudden appearance of McElvie on the scene. This wiry little Scots-American arrived in Brookfield like a human tornado, expressed himself delighted with the improvement in Renny’s health, demanded to meet the old gentleman with whom he had been spending so much time, wrung Chips’s hand effusively, and opined (gazing across the road at the School buildings) that it certainly looked “a swell joint.”
“And see,” he added, taking Renny and Chips by the arm and drawing them affectionately together, “I’ve got a swell idea, too. … I’ll work up a lot of phooey in the papers about your disappearance. … ‘Where is Randolph Renny?’—‘Has anybody seen him?’—‘He’s hiding somewhere—where is it?’—you know the sort of thing. … and then, when all the excitement’s just boiling over, we’ll discover you here … spending a vacation with the old professor. …”
“I’m not a professor …” protested Chips feebly.
“Aw, it’s the same thing … and you knew Irving, too … and Forbes-Robertson. … Sarah Bernhardt … the immortal Dewser …”
“I didn’t know them,” protested Chips, still feebly. “I only saw them act.”
“Aw, what does that matter? … after all, you saw ’em and you’re old enough to have known the whole bunch of ’em … they gave you tips about acting—and you took in what they said—and now you pass it all on to Renny here. … Oh, boy, what an idea—handing on the great tradition—Randolph Renny vacations secretly with Dewser’s oldest friend—you were room-mates, maybe, you and Dewser——”
“Hardly,” answered Chips. “It was—umph—before the days of co-education. …”
“ Oh, a woman?” replied McElvie, seizing the point with an alertness Chips could not but recognise and admire. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Chipping—no offence meant, I’m sure. … But you got the idea, haven’t you?—why it’s stupendous—it’s unique—I don’t believe it’s ever been thought of before—Oh, boy, it’ll be the greatest scoop in the history of movie-publicity. …”
Which was why, that same evening, Chips gave Miss Lydia Jones the news that Randolph Renny was staying in Brookfield at the Royal Hotel. He decided that if there were to be a scoop at all (whatever a scoop was), Brookfield, as represented by the Brookfield Gazette and by its social reporter, should have it. And thus it came about that Miss Jones began her column of gossip ambiguously, ungrammatically, yet in substance correctly with the words: “Coming out of the Royal Hotel the other day, who should I espy but Randolph Renny. …”
It only remains to add that the following term Renny’s son began his career at Brookfield School, and, during a preliminary interview with Chips, remarked: “Of course you know who my father is, don’t you, sir?”
“I do, my boy,” Chips answered. “But—umph—you need have no fear—on that account. We all know—but at Brookfield—umph—we do not care. …”
7. 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 illustrious 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—with 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 breath-taking 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 assembled 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 y don’t tire yerself, 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 anticipation, 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 butter. …”
And as he sat the
re 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 anticipation. 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 goddess 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.