Goodbye, Mr. Chips: A Novel

by James Hilton

  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 Germant 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 war-time 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.

  XVI

  AND NOW, FIFTEEN YEARS after that, he could look back upon it all with a deep and sumptuous tranquillity. He was not ill, of course—only a little tired at times, and bad with his breathing during the winter months. He would not go abroad—he had once tried it, but had chanced to strike the Riviera during one of its carefully unadvertised cold spells. “I prefer—um—to get my chills—umph—in my own country,” he used to say, after that. He had to take care of himself when there were east winds, but autumn and winter were not really so bad; there were warm fires, and books, and you could look forward to the summer. It was the summer that he liked best, of course; apart from the weather, which suited him, there were the continual visits of old boys. Every weekend some of them motored up to Brookfield and called at his house. Sometimes they tired him, if too many came at once; but he did not really mind; he could always rest and sleep afterward. And he enjoyed their visits—more than anything else in the world that was still to be enjoyed. “Well, Gregson—umph—I remember you—umph—always late for everything—eh—eh? Perhaps you’ll be late in growing old—umph—like me—umph—eh?” And later, when he was alone again and Mrs. Wickett came in to clear away the tea things: “Mrs. Wickett, young Gregson called—umph—you remember him, do you? Tall boy with spectacles. Always late. Umph. Got a job with the—umph—League of Nations—where—I suppose—his—um—dilatoriness—won’t be noticeable—eh?” And sometimes, when the bell rang for call-over, he would go to the window and look across the road and over the School fence and see, in the distance, the thin line of boys filing past the bench. New times, new names … but the old ones still remained … Jefferson, Jennings, Jolyon, Jupp, Kingsley Primus, Kingsley Secundus, Kingsley Tertius, Kingston … where are you all, where have you all gone to? … Mrs. Wickett, bring me a cup of tea just before prep, will you, please?

  The post-War decade swept through with a clatter of change and maladjustments; Chips, as he lived through it, was profoundly disappointed when he looked abroad. The Ruhr, Chanak, Corfu; there was enough to be uneasy about in the world. But near him, at Brookfield, and even, in a wider sense, in England, there was something that charmed his heart because it was old—and had survived. More and more he saw the rest of the world as a vast disarrangement for which England had sacrificed enough—and perhaps too much. But he was satisfied with Brookfield. It was rooted in things that had stood the test of time and change and war. Curious, in this deeper sense, how little it had changed. Boys were a politer race; bullying was nonexistent; there was more swearing and cheating. There was a more genuine friendliness between master and boy—less pomposity on the one side, less unctuousness on the other. One of the new masters, fresh from Oxford, even let the Sixth call him by his Christian name. Chips didn’t hold with that; indeed, he was just a little bit shocked. “He might as well—umph—sign his terminal reports—umph—’yours affectionately’—eh—eh?” he told somebody. During the General Strike of 1926, Brookfield boys loaded motor vans with foodstuffs. When it was over, Chips felt stirred emotionally as he had not been since the War. Something had happened, something whose ultimate significance had yet to be reckoned. But one thing was clear: England had burned her fire in her own grate again. And when, at a Speech Day function that year, an American visitor laid stress on the vast sums that the strike had cost the country, Chips answered: “Yes, but—umph—advertisement—always is costly.”

  “Advertisement?”

  “Well, wasn’t it—umph—advertisement—and very fine advertisement—too? A whole week of it—umph—and not a life lost—not a shot fired! Your country would have—umph—spilt more blood in—umph—raiding a single liquor saloon!”

  Laughter … laughter … wherever he went and whatever he said, there was laughter. He had earned the reputation of being a great jester, and jests were expected of him. Whenever he rose to speak at a meeting, or even when he talked across a table, people prepared their minds and faces for the joke. They listened in a mood to be amused and it was easy to satisfy them. They laughed sometimes before he came to the point. “Old Chips was in
fine form,” they would say, afterward. “Marvelous the way he can always see the funny side of things….”

  After 1929, Chips did not leave Brookfield—even for Old Boys’ dinners in London. He was afraid of chills, and late nights began to tire him too much. He came across to the School, however, on fine days; and he still kept up a wide and continual hospitality in his room. His faculties were all unimpaired, and he had no personal worries of any kind. His income was more than he needed to spend, and his small capital, invested in gilt-edged stocks, did not suffer when the slump set in. He gave a lot of money away—to people who called on him with a hard-luck story, to various School funds, and also to the Brookfield mission. In 1930 he made his will. Except for legacies to the mission and to Mrs. Wickett, he left all he had to found an open scholarship to the school.

  1931….1932….

  “What do you think of Hoover, sir?”

  “Do you think we shall ever go back to gold?”

  “How d’you feel about things in general, Sir? See any break in the clouds?”

  “When’s the tide going to turn, Chips, old boy? You ought to know, with all your experience of things.”

  They all asked him questions, as if he were some kind of prophet and encyclopaedia combined—more even than that, for they liked their answer dished up as a joke. He would say:—

  “Well, Henderson, when I was—umph—a much younger man—there used to be someone who—um—promised people ninepence for fourpence. I don’t know that anybody—umph—ever got it, but—umph—our present rulers seem—um—to have solved the problem how to give—umph—fourpence for nine-pence.”

  Laughter,

  Sometimes, when he was strolling about the School, small boys of the cheekier kind would ask him questions, merely for the fun of getting Chips’s “latest” to retail.

  “Please, sir, what about the Five-Year-Plan?”

  “Sir, do you think Germany wants to fight another war?”

  “Have you been to the new cinema, sir? I went with my people the other day. Quite a grand affair for a small place like Brookfield. They’ve got a Wurlitzer.”

  “And what—umph—on earth—is a Wurlitzer?”

  “It’s an organ, sir—a cinema organ.”

  “Dear me…. I’ve seen the name on the hoardings, but I always—umph—imagined—it must be some kind of—umph—sausage.”

  Laughter…. Oh, there’s a new Chips joke, you fellows, a perfectly lovely one. I was gassing to the old boy about the new cinema, and …

  XVII

  HE SAT IN HIS FRONT parlor at Mrs. Wickett’s on a November afternoon in thirty-three. It was cold and foggy, and he dared not go out. He had not felt too well since Armistice Day; he fancied he might have caught a slight chill during the Chapel service. Merivale had been that morning for his usual fortnightly chat. Everything all right? Feeling hearty? That’s the style—keep indoors this weather—there’s a lot of flu about. Wish I could have your life for a day or two.”

  His life … and what a life it had been! The whole pageant of it swung before him as he sat by the fire that afternoon. The things he had done and seen: Cambridge in the sixties; Great Gable on an August morning; Brookfield at all times and seasons throughout the years. And, for that matter, the things he had not done, and would never do now that he had left them too late—he had never traveled by air, for instance, and he had never been to a talkie-show. So that he was both more and less experienced than the youngest new boy at the School might well be; and that, that paradox of age and youth, was what the world called progress.

  Mrs. Wickett had gone out, visiting relatives in a neighboring village; she had left the tea things ready on the table, with bread and butter and extra cups laid out in case anybody called. On such a day, however, visitors were not very likely; with the fog thickening hourly outside, he would probably be alone.

  But no. About a quarter to four a ring came, and Chips, answering the front door himself (which he oughtn’t to have done), encountered a rather small boy wearing a Brookfield cap and an expression of anxious timidity. “Please, sir,” he began, “does Mr. Chips live here?”

  “Umph—you’d better come inside,” Chips answered. And in his room a moment later he added: “I am—umph—the person you want. Now what can I—umph—do for you?”

  “I was told you wanted me, sir.”

  Chips smiled. An old joke—an old leg-pull, and he, of all people, having made so many old jokes in his time, ought not to complain. And it amused him to cap their joke, as it were, with one of his own; to let them see that he could keep his end up, even yet. So he said, with eyes twinkling: “Quite right, my boy. I wanted you to take tea with me. Will you—umph—sit down by the fire? Umph—I don’t think I have seen your face before. How is that?”

  “I’ve only just come out of the sanatorium, sir—I’ve been there since the beginning of term with measles.”

  “Ah, that accounts for it.”

  Chips began his usual ritualistic blending of tea from the different caddies; luckily there was half a walnut cake with pink icing in the cupboard. He found out that the boy’s name was Linford, that he lived in Shropshire, and that he was the first of his family at Brookfield.

  “You know—umph—Linford—you’ll like Brookfield—when you get used to it. It’s not half such an awful place—as you imagine. You’re a bit afraid of it—um, yes—eh? So was I, my dear boy—at first. But that was—um—a long time ago. Sixty-three years ago—umph—to be precise. When I—um—first went into Big Hall and—um—I saw all those boys—I tell you—I was quite scared. Indeed—umph—I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared in my life. Not even when—umph—the Germans bombed us—during the War. But—umph—it didn’t last long—the scared feeling, I mean. I soon made myself—um—at home.”

  “Were there a lot of other new boys that term, sir?” asked Linford shyly.

  “Eh? But—God bless my soul—I wasn’t a boy at all—I was a man—a young man of twenty-two! And the next time you see a young man—a new master—taking his first prep in Big Hall—umph—just think—what it feels like!”

  “But if you were twenty-two then, sir—”

  “Yes? Eh?”

  “You must be—very old—now, sir.”

  Chips laughed quietly and steadily to himself. It was a good joke.

  “Well—umph—I’m certainly—umph—no chicken.”

  He laughed quietly to himself for a long time.

  Then he talked of other matters, of Shropshire, of schools and school life in general, of the news in that day’s papers. “You’re growing up into—umph—a very cross sort of world, Linford. Maybe it will have got over some of its—umph—crossness—by the time you’re ready for it. Let’s hope so—umph—at any rate…. Well …” And with a glance at the clock he delivered himself of his old familiar formula. “I’m sorry—umph—sorry—you can’t stay …”

  At the front door he shook hands.

  “Good-bye, my boy.”

  And the answer came, in a shrill treble: “Good-bye, Mr. Chips….”

  Chips sat by the fire again, with those words echoing along the corridors of his mind. “Good-bye, Mr. Chips….” An old leg-pull, to make new boys think that his name was really Chips; the joke was almost traditional. He did not mind. “Good-bye, Mr. Chips….” He remembered that on the eve of his wedding day Kathie had used that same phrase, mocking him gently for the seriousness he had had in those days. He thought: Nobody would call me serious to-day, that’s very certain….

  Suddenly the tears began to roll down his cheeks—an old man’s failing; silly, perhaps, but he couldn’t help it. He felt very tired; talking to Linford like that had quite exhausted him. But he was glad he had met Linford. Nice boy. Would do well.

  Over the fog-laden air came the bell for call-over, tremulous and muffled. Chips looked at the window, graying into twilight; it was time to light up. But as soon as he began to move he felt that he couldn’t; he was too tired; and, anyhow, it didn�
�t matter. He leaned back in his chair. No chicken—eh, well—that was true enough. And it had been amusing about Linford. A neat score off the jokers who had sent the boy over. Good-bye, Mr. Chips … odd, though, that he should have said it just like that….

  XVIII

  WHEN HE AWOKE, FOR he seemed to have been asleep, he found himself in bed; and Merivale was there, stooping over him and smiling. “Well, you old ruffian—feeling all right? That was a fine shock you gave us!”

  Chips murmured, after a pause, and in a voice that surprised him by its weakness: “Why—um—what—what has happened?”

  “Merely that you threw a faint. Mrs. Wickett came in and found you—lucky she did. You’re all right now. Take it easy. Sleep again if you feel inclined”

  He was glad someone had suggested such a good idea. He felt so weak that he wasn’t even puzzled by the details of the business—how they had got him upstairs, what Mrs. Wickett had said, and so on. But then, suddenly, at the other side of the bed, he saw Mrs. Wickett. She was smiling. He thought: God bless my soul, what’s she doing up here? And then, in the shadows behind Merivale, he saw Cartwright, the new Head (he thought of him as “new,” even though he had been at Brookfield since 1919), and old Buffles, commonly called “Roddy.” Funny, the way they were all here. He felt: Anyhow, I can’t be bothered to wonder why about anything. I’m going to go to sleep.

  But it wasn’t sleep, and it wasn’t quite wakefulness, either; it was a sort of in-between state, full of dreams and faces and voices. Old scenes and old scraps of tunes: a Mozart trio that Kathie had once played in—cheers and laughter and the sound of guns—and, over it all, Brookfield bells, Brookfield bells. “So you see, if Miss Plebs wanted Mr. Patrician to marry her … yes, you can, you liar….” Joke … Meat to be abhorred…. Joke … That you, Max? Yes, come in. What’s the news from Fatherland? … O mihi praeteritos … Ralston said I was slack and inefficient—but they couldn’t manage without me…. Obile heres ago fortibus es in aro … Can you translate that, any of you? … It’s a joke….