Chapter 6 mr.chips

CHAPTER 6
There had followed then a time of such happiness that Chips, remembering it long afterwards, hardly believed it could ever have happened before or since in the world. For his marriage was a triumphant success, Katherine conquered Brookfield as she had conquered Chips; she was immensely popular with boys and masters alike. Even the wives of the masters, tempted at first to be jealous of someone so young and lovely, could not long resist her charms.
But most remarkable of all was the change she made in Chips. Till his marriage he had been a dry and rather neutral sort of person; liked and thought well of by Brookfield in General, but not of the stuff that makes for great popularity or that stirs great affection. He had been at Brookfield for over a quarter of a century, long enough to have established himself as a decent fellow and a hard worker; but just too long for anyone to believe him capable of ever being much more. He had, in fact, already begun to sink into that creeping dry rot of pedagogy that is the worst and ultimate pitfall for the profession; giving the same lessons year after yeah had formed a groove into which the other 1 affairs of his life adjusted themselves with insidious ease. He worked well; he was conscientious; he was a fixture that gave service, satisfaction, confidence, everything except inspiration.
And then came this astonishing girl-wife whom nobody had expected— least of all Chips himself. She made him, to all appearances, a new man; though most of the newness was really a warming to life of things that were old, imprisoned, and unguessed. His eyes gained sparkle; his mind, which was adequately if not brilliantly equipped, began to move more adventurously. The one thing he had always had, a sense of humour, blossomed into a sudden richness to which his years lent maturity. He began to feel a greater strength; his discipline improved to a point at which it could become, in a sense, less rigid; he became more popular. When he had first come to Brookfield he had aimed to be loved, honoured and obeyed - but obeyed, at any rate. Obedience he had secured, and honour had been granted him; but only now came love, the sudden love of boys for a man who was kind without being soft, who understood them well enough, but not too much, and whose private happiness linked him with their own. He began to make little jokes, the sort that school boys like -mnemonics and puns that raised laughs and at the same time imprinted something in the mind. There was one that never failed to please though it was only a sample of many others. Whenever his Roman History- forms came to deal with the Lex Canuleia, the law that permitted patricians to marry plebeians, Chips used to add:'"So that, you see, if Miss Plebs wanted Mr. Patrician to marry her, and he said he couldn't, she probably replied: 'Oh, yes, you can. you liar!" Roars of laughter
And Kathie broadened, his views and opinions, also, giving him an outlook far beyond the roofs and turrets of Brookfield, so that he saw his country as something deep and gracious, to which Brookfield was but one of many feeding streams. She had a cleverer brain than his, and he could not confute her ideas even if and when he disagreed with them; he remained, for instance, a Conservative in politics, despite all her radical socialist talk. But even where he did not accept, he absorbed; her young idealism worked upon his maturity to produce an amalgam- very gentle and wise.
Sometimes she persuacfecf him completely. Brookfteld, farexafftple, ran a mission in East London, to which boys and parents rontributed generously with money but rarely with personal contact. It was (Catherine who suggested that a team from the mission should come up to Brookfield and play one of the School's elevens at Soccer. The idea was so revolutionary that from anyone but Katherine it could not have survived its first frosty reception. To introduce a group of slum boys to the serene environment of better class youngsters seemed •at first a wanton stirring of all kinds of things that had better be left untouched. The whole staff was against it, and the School, if its opinion could have been taken, was probably against it too. Everyone was certain that the East End lads would be hooligans, or else that they would be made to feel uncomfortable; anyhow, there would be "incidents," and everyone would be confused and upset. Yet Katherine persisted.
"Chips." s^c said, "they're wrong, you know, and I'm right. I'm lookingahead to uV- tuture, they and you are looking back to the past.'1 England isn'talways going to be divided into officers and other ranks. And those popular boysare just as important to England as Brookfield is. You've got to have them here,Chips. You can't satisfy your conscience by writing a cheque for a few guineasand keeping them at arm's length. Besides,-they're proud of Brookfield - just asyou are. Years hence, may be, boys of that sort will be coming here - a few ofthen], at any rate. Why not? Why ever not? Chips, dear, remember this iseighteen ninety seven - not sixty seven, when you were up at Cambridge. Yougot your ideas well stuck in those days, and good ideas they were too, a lot ofthem. But a few-just a few, Chips - want unsticking "
Rather to her surprise he gave way and suddenly became a keen advocate of the proposal, and the volte-face was so complete that the authorities were taken unaware and found themselves consenting to the dangerous experiment. The boys from Poplar arrived at Brookfield one Saturday afternoon, played Soccer with the School's second team, were honourably defeated by seven goals to five, and later had high tea with the School team in the Dining Hall. They then met the Head and were shown over the School, and-Chips saw them off at the railway station in the evening. Everything hau passed without the slightest hitch of any kind, and k was clear that the visitors were taking away with them' as fine an impression as they bad left behind.
They took back with them also the memory of a charming woman who had met them and talked to them; for once, years later, during the War, a private stationed at a big military camp near Brookfield called on Chips and said he had been one of that first visiting team. Chips gave him tea and chatted \vith him, till at length, shaking hands, the man said: "And" ow's the missus, sir? I remember 'er very well."
"Do you?" Chips answered eagerly. "Do you remember her?"

"Rather. I should think anyone would."
And Chips replied: "They don't, you know. At least, not here. Boys come and go, new faces all the time, memories don't last, even masters don't stay for ever. Since last year - when old Gribble retired - he's - um the School butler - - there hasn't been anyone here who ever saw my wife. She died, you know, less than a year after your visit. In ninety-eight."
"I'm real sorry to 'ear that, sir. There's two or three o' my pals, anyhow, who remember 'er clear as anything, though we did only see 'er that wurst. Yes, we remember 'er all right."
"I'm very glad.... That was a grand day we all had - and a fine game, too."
"One o' the best days that I ever 'ad in me life. Wish it was then and not nah, straight, I do. I'm off to Frawnce to-morrer."
A month or so later Chips heard that he had been killed at Pssschendaele.

Chapter 5 mr.chips

Chapter 5
When Chips, dreaming through the hours at Mrs. Wickett's, recollect those days, he used to look down at his feet and wonder which one of it wa_s tr had performed so single a service. That, the.frivial.cause of so many mom'eftto happenings, w,as the one thing of which details eVaded him. But he re-saw t yglorious hump of the Gable (he had never visited the. Lake District since), a the mouse grey depths of Wastwater under th&'Sfcrees; he could re-smell t washed air after heavyjain, and re-follow t)je ribbon of the pass across to i Head. So clearly it, that time of

She had no parents and was married from the house of an aunt in Ealing.. On the night before the wedding, when Chips left the house to *eturn to his hotel, she said,
This is an occasion, youknow - this last farewell of ours, I feelrather like a new boy beginning his firstterm with you. Not scared, mind you - butjust, for once, in a thoroughly respectfulmood. Shall I call you 'sir* - or would 'Mr.Chips' be the right thing? 'Mr. Chips,' Ithink. Good-bye, then - Good-bye, Mr,Chips "
(A hansom clop-dopping in the roadway; green pale gas lamps flickering on a wet pavement; newsboys shouting something about South Africa; Sherlock Holmes in Baker Street)
"Good-bye, Mr. Chips "

Chapter 4 (2) mr.chips

Her name was Katherine Bridges; she v-as twenty-five - young enough to be Chips's daughter. She had blue, flashing eyes and freckled cheeks and smooth straw-coloured hair. She, too, was staving at a farm, on holiday with a girl friend, and as she considered herself responsible for Chips's accident, she used to bicycle along the side of the lake to the house in which the quiet, middle-aged, serious-looking man. lay resting, That was how she thought of him at first. And he, because she rode a bicycle and was unafraid to visit a man alone in a farm-house sitting-room, wondered vaguely what the world was coming to. His sprain put hirti at her mercy, and it was soon revealed to him. how much he might need that mercy. She was a governess out of a job, with a little money saved up; she read and admired Ibsen; she believed that women ought to be admitted to the Universities; she even thought they ought to have a vote. In politics she was a radical, with leanings towards the views of people like Bernard Shaw and William Morris. All her ideas and opinions she poured out to Chips during those summer afternoons at Wasdale Head; and he, because he was not very articulate, did not at first think it worthwhile to contradict them. Her friend went away, but she stayed; what could you do with such a person? Chips thought. He used to hobble with sticks along a footpath leading to the tiny church; there was a stone slab on the wall, and it was comfortable to sit down, facing the sunlight and the green-brown majesty of the Gable, and listening to the chatter of - well yes, Chips had to admit it - a very beautiful girl.
He had never met anyone like her. He had always thought that the modern type this "new woman" business, would repel him; and here she was, making him positively look forward to the glimpse of her safety bicycle careering along the lakeside road. And she, too, had never met anyone like him. She had always thought that middle-aged men .who read "The Times modernity were terrible bores; yet here he was, claiming
interest and attention for more than youths of her own age. She liked him, initially, because he was so hard to get to know, because he had gentle.and quiet manners, because his opinions dated from those utterly impossible seventies and eighties and even earlier-vet were, for all that, so thoroughly honest; and because-because his eyes were brown and he looked charming when he smiled. "Of course, I shall call you Chips, too," she said, when she learned that was his nickname at school.
Within a week they were head over heels in love; before Chips could wulk without a stick, they considered themselves engaged; and they were married in London a week before the beginning of the autumn term.

Mr.chips chapter 4

CHAPTER 4
There came to him, stirred by the warmth of the fire and the gentle aroma of tea, a thousand tangled recollections of old times. Spring - the Spring of 1896. He was forty-eight-an age at which a permanence of habits begins to be predictable. He had just been appointed housemaster; with this and his classical forms, he had made for himself a warm and busy corner of life. During the summer vacation he went up to the Lake District with Rowden, a colleague. They walked and climbed for a week, until Rowden had to leave suddenly on some family business, Chips stayed on al^ne at Wasdale Head, where he boarded in a small farmhouse. One day, climbing on Great Gable, he noticed a girl waving excitedly from a dangerous looking ledge. Thinking she was in difficulties he hastened towards her^ but in doing so slipped himself and wrenched his ankle. As it turned out, she was not in difficulties at all, but was merely signaling to a friend farther down the mountain; she v-^& an expert climber, better even than Chips, who was pretty good. Thus he found himself the rescued instead of the rescuer; and neither role was one for which he had much relish. For he did not, he would have said, care for women; he never felt at hume or at ease with them; and that monstrous creature, beginning to be talked about, the New Woman of the, nineties, filled him with horror. He was a quiet, conventional person, and the world, viewed from the haven of Brookfield, seemed to him full of distasteful innovations; there was a fellow named Bernard Shaw who had the strangest and most reprehensible opinions; there was Ibsen, too, with his disturbing plays; and there was this new craze for bicycling which was being taken up by women equally with men. Chips did not hold with all this modern newness and freedom. He had a vague notion, if he ever formulated it, that nice women were weak, timid, and delicate, and that nice men treated them with a polite but rather distant chivalry. He had not, therefore, expected to find a
woman on Great Gable; but having encountered one who seemed to need masculine help, it was even more terrifying that she should turn the tables by-helping him. For she did..She and her friend had to. He could scarcely walk, and it was a hard job getting him down the steep track to Wasdale.

CHAPTER 2
Across the road behind a rampart of ancient elms lay Brookfield, russet under its autumn mantle of creeper. A group of eighteenth century building centred upon a quadrangle, and there were acres of playing-fields beyond. Then came the small dependent village and the open fen country. Brookfield, as Wetherby had said, was an old foundation; established in reign of Elizabeth, as
a grammar school, it might, with better luck, have become as famous as Harrow.
«
Its luck, however, had been not so good; the school went .up antj. down, dwindling almost to non-existence at one time, becoming almost illustrious at another. It was during one of these later periods, in the reign of the first George, that the main structure had been rebuilt and large additions made. Later, after the Napoleonic Wars' and until mid-Victorian days, the school declined again, both in numbers and repute. Wetherby, who came in 1840, restored its fortunes ? omewhat; but its subsequent history- never raised it to from>rank status. It was, rtheless, a good school of the second rank. Several notable families :>upported it; it supplied fair samples of the history-making men of the age -judges, members of Parliament, colonial administrators, a few peers and
recognize that the odds were heavily against his befng able to better himself by moving elsewhere; but about that time also, the possibility of staying, where he was, began to fill a comfortable niche in his mind. At forty, he was rooted, settled, and quite happy. At fifty he was the doyen of the staff. At sixty-, under a new and youthful Head, he was Brookfield; the guest of honour at Old Brookfieldian dinners, the court of appeal in all matters affecting Brookfield history and traditions. And in 1913, when he turned sixty-five, he retired, was presented with a cheque and a writing desk and a clock, and went across the road to live at Mrs. Wickett's. A decent career, decently closed; three cheers for old Chips, they all shouted, at that uproarious end-of-term dinner.
Three cheers, indeed; but there was more to come, an unguessed
epilogue, an encore played to a tragic audience.

Mr.Chips Chapter 3

CHAPTERS 3
It was a small but very comfortable and sunny room that Mrs. Wickett let to him. The house itself was ugly and pretentious; but that didn't matter; it was conven .ant, that was the main thing. For he liked, if the weather were mild enough to stroll across to the playing-fields'in an afternoon and watch the games, lie liked to smile and exchange a few words with the boys when they touched their caps to him. He made a special point nf getting to know all the new boys and having them to tea with him during iheir first term. He always ordered a walnut-cake with pink icing from Reddaway*s, in the village, and during the winter term there were crumpets, too - a little pile of them in front of the fire, soaked in butter so that the bottom one lay in a little shallow pool. His guests found it fun to watch him make tea - mixing careful spoonfuls from different caddies. And he would ask the new boys where they lived, and if they had family connections at Brookfield. He kept watch to see that their plates were never empty, and punctually at five after the session had lasted an hour, he would glance at the clock and say: "Well-umph - it's been very delightful-
umph- meeting you like this-I'm sorry-umph-you can't stay " And he.would
smile and shake hands with them in the porch, leaving them to race across the road to the school with their comments. "Decent old boy, Chips. Gives you a jolly good tea, anyhow, and you do know when he wants you to push off....."
And Chips also would be making his comments to Mrs. Wickett when she entered his room to clear away the remains of the party. "A most-umph-intereiiing time, Mrs. Wickett. Young Branksome tells me-umph-that his uncle was Major Collingwood-the Collingwood we had here in-umph-nought-two, I think it was. Dear me, I remember Collingwood very well. I once thrashed him-urnoh-for climbing on to the gymnasium roof-to get a ball out of the gutter. Might have-umph-broken his neck, the young fool. Do you remember him, Mrs. Wickett? He must have been in your time."
Mrs. Wickett, before she saved money, had been in charge of the linen-room at the school.
"Yes, I knew'im, sir. Cheeky's was to me, generally. But we never'ad no bad words between us. Just cheeky like. 'E never meant no harm. That kind never does, sir. Wasri't.it 'im that got the medal, sir?"
"Yes, a D.S.O."
"Will you be wanting anything else, sir?"
"Nothing more now-umph-till chapter-time. He was killed in Egypt, Ithink Yes-umph-you can bring my supper about then."
"Very good, sir."

everything and anything he wanted. His room was furnished simply and with school-masterly taste; a few bookshelves and sporting trophies; a mantel pirn crowded with fixture-cards and si^i^d photographs of boys and men; a worn Turkey carpet; big easy-chairs; pictures on the wall, of the Acropolis and the Forum. Nearly everything had c^me out of his old house-master's room in School House. The books were chiefly classical, for that had been his subject; there was, however, a seasoning of history and belles-lettres. There was also a bottom shelf piled up with'cheap editions of detective nmvk. Chips enjoyed these. Sometimes he took down Virgil or Xenophnu and read for-a few moments, but he was soon back again with Doctor Thorndyke or Inspector French. He was not, despite his long years of assiduous teaching, a very profound classical scholar; indeed, he thought of'Latin and Greek far rnore as dead languagas from which English gentlemen ought to know a few' quotations than as living tbrtgdes that had ever been spoken by living people. He liked those short leading articles in "The Times" that introduced a few tags that he recognized; to be among the swindling number of people who understood such things was to him a kind of secret and valued free'masonry; it represented, he felt, one of the chief benefits to be derived from a classical education.
So there he lived, at Mrs. Wickett's, with his quiet enjoyments of reading and talking and remembering; an old man, white-haired and only a little bald^ still fairly active for his years, drinking tea, receiving callers, busying himself with corrections for the next editions of the/Brookfieldian Directory, writing his occasional letters in thin, spidery, but veryde^uSle script. He had new masters to tea, as well as new boys. There were two of them that autumn term, and as they were leaving after their visit, one of them commented: "Quite a character, the old boy, isn't he? All that fuss about mixing the tea - a typical bachelor, if ever there was one."
Which was oudly incorrect; because Chips was not a bachelor at all. He had married; though it was so long ago that none of the staff at BrookfieW could remember his wife

Well, no, perhaps not, sir."
"Never mind; you're full young; it's largely a matter of experience. You have another chance here. Take up a firm attitude from the beginning, that's the secret of it."
Perhaps it was. He remembered that first tremendous ordeal of taking prep., a September sunset more than half a century ago; Big Hall full of lusty barbarians ready to pounce on him as their legitimate prey. His youth, fresh-complexioned, high-collared, and side-whiskered (odd fashions people followed in those days), at the mercy of five hundred unprincipled ruffians to whom the baiting of new masters was a fine art, an exciting sport, and something of a tradition. Decent little beggars individually, -but as a mob, just pitiless and implacable. The sudden hush as he took his place at the desk on the dais; the scowl he assumed to cover his inward nervousness: the tall clock ticking behind him and the smells of ink and varnish; the last blood-red rays slanting in slabs through the stained-glass windows. Someone dropped a desk lid - quickly, he must take even one by surprise; he must show that there was no nonsense about him. "You there in the fifth row - you with the red hair - what's your name?"