by James Hilton
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 to-morrow 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 passing 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 glass 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 classroom a scrap of writing on the black-board, 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 letters of a school-master 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. Godley 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: God, bring peace on earth … goodwill to men and boys. …
“Will ye b
e wantin’ anything more, sir?”
“No thank you, Mrs. Wickett.”
“Happy Christmas to you, sir.”
“And the same—umph—to you, Mrs. Wickett.”
“Thank you, sir. It don’t seem long, sir, since—”
Mrs. Wickett always had to say that it didn’t seem long since last Christmas, or last Good Friday, or last Sports Day, or some other annual occasion. Chips smiled as she did so—a gentle smile, for there was something in his mind that was always tolerant of tradition. We have our ways, and if we are good folk our ways are fondly endured. “Time goes so quickly, sir, you ’ardly know where you are. Only another three weeks and we’ll ’ave the beginning of term again. …”
“Yes—umph—only another three weeks,” answered Chips. And that, of course, was probably what the boys were saying. But Chips, thinking of those lonely classrooms, meant it differently.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1938 James Hilton
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
978-1-4532-4045-8
This edition published in 2011 by Open Road Integrated Media
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