THE LANCHESTER TRADITION

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

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‘FOR THIS I HAD BORNE HIM.’

THE LANCHESTER TRADITION.

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THE LANCHESTER
TRADITION

BY G. F. BRADBY
AUTHOR OF ‘DICK,’ ‘WHEN EVERY TREE WAS GREEN,’
‘THE AWAKENING OF BITTLESHAM,’ ETC.

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1919

[All rights reserved]

PREFACE

This is a school story; but Chiltern School has yet to be founded and the masters and boys who figure in the following pages have never existed outside the author’s brain. It is necessary to say so much, partly because most stories of this kind have admittedly dealt with particular schools, and partly because many readers have very little idea of the workings of the imaginative faculty. At all events, when a professional man ventures to write fiction, they insist on seeing history or caricature, and proceed to affix labels; for there is a general assumption that professional men, and schoolmasters in particular, are necessarily devoid of imagination.

Once more then, Chiltern is not a real school and its masters are not real masters. But, though not real, they are not impossible—at least, so the author believes. For men, like boys, are unconsciously moulded by their environment and tend to conform to types; and, given a school like Chiltern, there would probably be masters like the Chiltern masters.

G. F. B.

June, 1913.

CONTENTS

THE
LANCHESTER TRADITION

CHAPTER I
THE ELECTION

Chiltern School lies just outside the sleepy little town of the same name. Its motto is “Providendo nec timendo,” and its colours—a happy combination of cerise, orange, and green—are a familiar sight in all parts of the Empire. But the school itself, though second to none in the opinion of Chilternians, who should be the best judges, is not seen so often by the general public as its colours, because it can only be reached by a branch line and the time-table is a difficulty. It owes its inaccessibility to the foresight of its governors who, at the time when railways were invented, succeeded in keeping the main line at a distance; so when the present chairman comes down for Speech-day he generally travels in a motor-car.

Its stone walls are grey with age or green with creepers. Later generations have relieved the monotony by adding blocks of buildings in variegated brick, and nowhere can the genius of Sir George Honeymead, the famous mid-Victorian architect, be studied to greater advantage. But of recent years taste has swung back in favour of uniformity, and whenever a famous Old Chilternian dies—and there are many famous Old Chilternians—an attempt is made to perpetuate his memory by converting the brick into stone. The sick-house, the gymnasium, the workshops, and the lodge have already been transformed; and it is generally understood that, when a certain aged statesman is taken to his rest, the Great Hall will undergo a similar change—unless, indeed, a new chemical laboratory is considered to have prior claims.

The school owes its existence to the generosity of one John Buss, a local farrier, who migrated to London in the early years of the seventeenth century, prospered in his business, and bequeathed a school and a hospital to his native place. Antiquarians have been at pains to prove that what John Buss really did was to endow an ancient but struggling institution that had existed on the same site ever since Benedictine days, and that the history of Chiltern stretches back into the dark ages before even William of Wykeham was born. But the long gap between the suppression of the monasteries and the seventeenth century is hard to bridge satisfactorily, and John Buss is still regarded, officially, as the creator of the famous school. The property which he bequeathed in East London has of late years greatly deteriorated in value, and, when the prior claims of the hospital have been met, the school only nets £92 3s. 11d. per annum out of the endowments. The Liberal papers, however, have not yet discovered this fact, and, when politics are dull, they demand that the revenues of Chiltern shall be restored to the nation and a University for working men built and endowed with the same. This contention helps to keep the memory of John Buss green outside the walls of Chiltern, and there are some who see in him a pioneer of Democracy and a prophet of the University Extension movement. Be that as it may, Chiltern at the present moment is rich because rich men are content to pay large fees in order that their sons may have the privilege of being educated, exclusively, with the sons of other rich men. The junior masters are of opinion that these large fees should be made still larger, and the salaries of the junior masters raised in proportion; but the senior masters scout this proposal as mercenary. The senior masters at Chiltern are popularly supposed to be better paid than the senior masters at any other school. Whether this is so or not, it is impossible to say for certain; for the senior masters at Chiltern only talk of their salaries to the surveyor of taxes, and, even then, they do so reluctantly.

The town of Chiltern lives to a great extent upon the school, and the authorised tradesmen, who enjoy a practical monopoly, have a lively faith in the value of the goods supplied by them to “the young gentlemen”; which faith is convincingly reflected in the prices they charge. In the unauthorised trades, that is to say amongst tobacconists and dealers in motor-cycles, air-guns, and translations of the Classics, competition tends to keep prices down. Nevertheless, these illicit traders are always supposed to have done remarkably well in the palmy days of Dr. Gussy.

Notwithstanding this bond of union, there is a traditional feeling of hostility on the part of the town towards the school. This is due, in part, to the fact that the school people are supposed to look down upon the town people, but, still more, to a widely prevalent belief that, somehow or other, the school has defrauded the town of the farrier’s benefactions. As this belief is entirely without foundation, it is likely to be lasting.

The country round Chiltern is pretty if not exciting. There is a round hill (called by the masters “Soracte,” and by the natives “the Sow’s Back”) at a convenient distance from the school, which commands a view over four counties and enables such of the staff as are inclined to obesity to retain a semblance of their youthful shape. In spring the landscape is white with cherry and pear blossom, and in autumn the apples make a cheerful show. There are quiet lanes, peaceful farms, and irritable farmers, who make unreasonable complaints when “the young gentlemen” break down their hedges, tread down their young wheat, or pillage their orchards.

The climate is of the kind that is commonly called salubrious; for anæmic boys it is generally considered bracing, but it is also recommended as temperate for those who are afflicted with delicate chests. Like all schools in England, public or private, Chiltern stands on gravel, and the drains are of the most approved and up-to-date pattern. Both the gravel and the up-to-dateness of the drains are vouched for by the school porter. The school-rooms are for the most part dark, but of great historic interest, and possessed of an indefinable charm. This charm, and the sense of continuity with a remote past, are generally regarded as an adequate substitute for ventilation. Indeed, many of the senior masters at Chiltern are strongly opposed to ventilation in any form, and prefer their air with a “bouquet.”

The playing fields, locally known as Colonus, are amongst the noblest in England, and are said to have been the scene of a sanguinary battle between the Danes and the Saxons. The School Antiquarian Society occasionally indulges in feverish bouts of digging, in the hope of unearthing bones or some other memorial of the fray; but, hitherto, they have failed to discover anything but stones and the bowl of a clay pipe. A stream, which flows at the far end of the grounds, provides the school with a unique swimming-bath (vide prospectus). Under Dr. Gussy’s thoughtful régime the banks of this stream were planted thickly with rhododendrons and other flowering shrubs, which afford a reasonably secure retreat, on Sundays, for such of the scholars as wish to enjoy a quiet pipe without the fatigue of pedestrian exercise. But etiquette requires that boys who have not yet reached their fourth Term shall smoke elsewhere.

In spite, however, of its ancient school-rooms, noble grounds, and salubrious climate, Chiltern would probably never have become one of the public schools of England if it had not been for Dr. Lanchester. When Abraham Lanchester became headmaster, at the end of the eighteenth century, he found the place little more than a county grammar school; he left it an institution of National, almost Imperial, importance.

Chiltern has lived ever since on the memory of Dr. Lanchester. It is natural, therefore, that he should be worshipped as the second and greater founder of the community. John Buss is honoured for his picturesque figure and his priceless gift of antiquity, but Lanchester is the presiding deity. His statue stands in the centre of the great quadrangle, his portrait looks down from the walls of the Great Hall; the library, the workshops, and other lesser buildings, or additions to buildings, are called after his name; and every foreign preacher in the School Chapel, whether he is pleading for peace or war, for Christian unity or Church defence, for social service or Imperial expansion, closes his peroration with an appeal to the memory of Abraham Lanchester. The Lanchester tradition permeates the place like an atmosphere, invisible but stimulating. It is difficult to analyse, for, like all great truths, it states itself in different terms to different minds and has a special message for each. To the general public it stands for the Classics and faith in the educational value of Latin verse. To the masters it means a firm belief in the efficacy of the methods, or absence of method, to which they have become attached through long habit. To the Old Chilternians it embodies the social ideas and customs with which they grew up; and to the boys themselves, if it means anything more than a name, it represents a certain immutability and fixity of things, an as-it-was-in-the-beginning-is-now-and-ever-shall-be attitude towards life that appeals to their best conservative instincts. Any change in the hour of a lesson or the colour of a ribbon is regarded as an outrage on the Lanchester tradition, and is popularly supposed to make the dead hero turn in his grave.

In connection with the school tradition it should, perhaps, be mentioned that there is a life of the great man by a friend and contemporary, and that there is nothing in it to suggest that Dr. Lanchester was so acutely sensitive to change. He seems, indeed, to have impressed his biographer as a restless spirit, with new and rather daring ideas about education. Bound in the school colours and stamped with the school crest, this volume is frequently given as a prize, and figures on many a Chiltern bookshelf. But it is seldom read, except by Germans and Nonconformist ministers; for it is ponderously written, and Chiltern is more concerned with the memory than with the life of its great headmaster. In fact, the tradition is an oral rather than a written tradition, and it is perpetually renewed. Chiltern claims to receive a continuous stream of inspiration from its second founder; and the current of the stream runs strongly against change.

But a moment came in the history of the school, when the Lanchester tradition and all that it stands for was threatened with a violent overhauling, if not a complete extinction. After a reign of four-and-twenty years, to all outward appearance peaceful and prosperous, Dr. Gussy suddenly discovered that he had had enough of it and accepted a vacant Deanery. And then the Governing Body, or Council as it is properly called, in one of those fits of absent-mindedness to which governing bodies are liable, elected as his successor a comparatively young man of unorthodox views and no practical experience.

The election was one of the seven wonders of the scholastic world. There had been more than a score of candidates for the vacant post, including a successful curate and an unsuccessful army coach; but it was known that only two of them were in the running, Henry Guthridge and the Rev. Ignatius Lawrence. Mr. Guthridge was a layman and an Old Chilternian; he had served an apprenticeship of five years as assistant master at the school, and had since filled the post of Hilbert Professor and Lecturer at Oxford. Dr. Lawrence, a clergyman of advanced Anglican views, hailed from Cambridge, and had won a certain reputation as headmaster of St. Cuthbert’s, in the north of England. Mr. Guthridge was the official candidate of the staff, and it was believed that he would carry the day, in spite of the Bishop, who was known to be strongly opposed to the appointment of a layman. As for the Rev. Septimus Flaggon, whose name, to everybody’s surprise, was added as a third to the select list, nobody treated his claims seriously. Fellow of an obscure college, tutor to a foreign prince, and subsequently president of some educational institution in Wales, his youth and inexperience ruled him out of serious consideration. It transpired, moreover, that he owed his place among the select to some powerful influence in the background. Some said that he was being run by a member of the Royal family; others suspected the Prime Minister; others, again, the Russian Ambassador. But all agreed that he was, where he was, honoris causa and as a matter of form. The choice obviously lay between Guthridge and Lawrence, with the odds in favour of Guthridge, in spite of his laymanship.

However, when the Council met at Grandborough, the county town, to come to a decision, it was found that the Bishop had canvassed strongly and that lay and clerical forces were exactly evenly divided. The Chairman of the Council, a man of moderate views, disliked clerical domination but was also averse from the appointment of an Old Chilternian; so he declined to give a casting vote in favour of either candidate. Neither side would budge an inch, and the contention grew sharp between them. Twice Mr. Guthridge and Dr. Lawrence were called separately from the dingy room in which, together with Mr. Flaggon, they were awaiting their fate, and submitted to a lengthy cross-examination, in the hope that one or other of them would say something to turn the evenly balanced scales. But neither succeeded in detaching the necessary vote.

At length the Chairman, who had a train to catch and a dinner depending on the train, looked at his watch and hinted at an alternative solution. Had the Council sufficiently considered the claims of the third candidate, a man of great promise with very influential backing?

Compromise is an essential feature of the English character, and long hours of enervating discussion, in a stuffy room on a July afternoon, are favourable to its rapid growth. The Council was exhausted, and Mr. Flaggon had some striking testimonials. His orders were a sop to the Bishop, and his reputed unorthodoxy appealed to the lay party. So, at the eleventh hour, Mr. Flaggon was called into the Council Chamber. His appearance was satisfactory, and his answers to a few questions that were put to him by the Chairman and the Bishop gave no offence. He seemed a providential way out of an impossible situation, and withdrew, at the end of the interview, amidst encouraging smiles. Five minutes later, to the chagrin of his rivals and his own surprise, he was invited once more into the Council Chamber and informed that he was headmaster elect of Chiltern. After which the Chairman left hurriedly to catch his train.

At Chiltern the triumph of Guthridge was awaited with quiet confidence. Nobody, except Dr. Gussy, believed that the Council would dare to disregard the explicit wishes of the masters and the personal claims of the only Old Chilternian who was standing—the one man, in fact, who was qualified to carry on, intact, the great Lanchester tradition. So, when the astonishing news came through that Flaggon, and not Guthridge, was the man, it was received at first with blank incredulity, followed immediately afterwards by a burst of passionate resentment. Who was Flaggon, what was Flaggon, who had ever heard or dreamed of Flaggon? The masters were seen talking and gesticulating in excited groups in the great quadrangle.

“It’s an insult,” cried Mr. Pounderly, shaking his clenched fist, “a deliberate insult, aimed at the whole staff. I say a deliberate insult!”

“On the contrary,” said Mr. Bent the cynic (every staff possesses a cynic), “it’s merely another instance of the ironic humour for which the Council is famous.” Mr. Cox, the Nestor of Chiltern, shook his head sadly from side to side with a far-away look in his eyes; Mr. Black, the senior mathematician, was for petitioning the Council, at once, to revoke its decision; and when Mr. Chase, the moderate man (every staff possesses at least one moderate who reads the Spectator), expressed a timid hope that the newcomer would be given a fair chance, he was within an ace of being lynched. Even the school porter, a man of solemn demeanour and grave reticence, expressed the opinion that the choice was “hominous.”

As for Dr. Gussy, who, without committing himself publicly, had worked hard for Dr. Lawrence in private, he was completely prostrated by the blow. Scarcely could he bring himself to make the official announcement to the school in the Great Hall; and, when he did so, it was with the voice and gestures of the Roman prætor announcing after Thrasymene, “We have lost a great battle.” For several days he affected to regard himself as superseded, set aside, and sulked like Achilles in his tent.

CHAPTER II
MR. FLAGGON PAYS A VISIT

The election of Mr. Flaggon was followed immediately by the resignation of Mr. Cox. Mr. Cox was in the habit of resigning whenever his proposals were voted down or his advice neglected. Dr. Gussy had, at various times, received twelve such communications from him and, on each occasion, had found no difficulty in persuading Mr. Cox to reconsider his decision. There is every reason to suppose that Mr. Cox expected a similar issue to his thirteenth act of protest. But he had chosen his time badly. Dr. Gussy merely said, “I no longer count,” and forwarded the letter to the headmaster elect. And the headmaster elect, unfamiliar with Mr. Cox’s idiosyncrasies and much impressed by his age, which was seventy-five, accepted the resignation in a courteous and gracious spirit.

Mr. Cox had so long regarded himself as an integral and necessary part of Chiltern and the Lanchester tradition that he was mortified to find how calmly his departure was taken. His colleagues, indeed, were most sympathetic, and said that his going would be a terrible break with the past, and that they would miss him increasingly. But they added that they thought he had acted very wisely in choosing this particular moment to leave them; and this was not the sort of consolation that Mr. Cox expected or desired. It is said that he still regards himself as the first and most notable victim of the new régime, and speaks contemptuously of “poor old Gussy, who couldn’t play a winning hand even when he held all the trumps.” How exactly the hand should have been played is not clear; but the implication is that Mr. Cox’s resignation was the ace of trumps, and that, rightly used, it would have brought the Council to its senses and prevented untold calamities.

But, if Mr. Cox’s resignation was taken calmly, Mr. Flaggon’s appointment continued to stir Chiltern to its lowest depths. Articles were disinterred from the back numbers of magazines, educational or otherwise, in which Mr. Flaggon had spoken slightingly of the public schools and public school methods; and the press was deplorable. The Liberal dailies hailed the appointment as the beginning of a new era and the death-blow to an antiquated tradition. Even a leading Conservative journal, which should have known better, described the election as a daring but interesting experiment, and proceeded to sketch an ideal curriculum, for the benefit of the new headmaster, in which Greek was abolished and its place taken by compulsory military drill. The Council blushed uneasily at finding itself suddenly in the van of progress, and began to say harsh things about its Chairman; and its Chairman was only partially comforted by an assurance from the distinguished person behind the scenes that they had chosen the best man in, “a man who will think before he acts and who will go far.” For to the Chairman the ideal headmaster was rather a man who would mark time decorously than an explorer of untrodden ways.

To the masters the suggestion that Chiltern needed reforming—“turning inside out,” they called it—was, to say the least, unpalatable. As practical men they despised the theorist; and, of all forms of theorist, the one that they most disliked was the educational enthusiast—the innovator, the impostor. Mr. Pounderly went about with a scared face and mysterious air, whispering “lamentable, lamentable” to his colleagues; and Mr. Woburn, the scientist, who affected metaphors and frequently mixed them, declared that, though the Classics were undoubtedly overdone at Chiltern, he hated the idea of a man who would always be trying experiments and pulling them up by the roots to see how they were shaping.

The idea of petitioning the Council against the appointment had been abandoned, partly on the advice of the moderates, but chiefly for lack of support from the juniors. For, on second thoughts, the juniors discovered that they did not want the new headmaster to be a nominee and creature of the veterans. The senior masters at Chiltern were famous for their longevity and for the tenacious way in which they clung to the posts of vantage; and, if change meant only a gradual shifting of the senior masters, there was something to be said in favour of change. But it was clearly understood that, if Mr. Flaggon attempted to drive his staff along new and unfamiliar ways, he would find them a most awkward and intractable team to handle.

Amid the babel of tongues there was one man who maintained what was, for him, an attitude of unusual reserve. This was Mr. Chowdler, the strong man of Chiltern. Mr. Chowdler owed his reputation for strength, not to any breadth of view or depth of sympathetic insight, but to a sublime unconsciousness of his own limitations. Narrow but concentrated, with an aggressive will and a brusque intolerance of all who differed from him, he was a fighter who loved fighting for its own sake and who triumphed through the sheer exhaustion of his enemies; and a Term in which he did not engage in at least one mortal combat was to him a blank Term. A tall man, with broad shoulders, round head, thin sandy hair, and full lips, he caught the eye in whatever company he might be, and his resonant voice arrested attention. At golfing centres, in the holidays, he was not always a very popular figure. But his confident manner impressed parents, and his was considered the house at Chiltern. People often wondered why he had never stood for headmasterships or sought a wider scope for the exercise of power. In reality he had never felt the need. He had so completely identified himself with Chiltern that it never even occurred to him to leave it; and his had for many years been the master mind that shaped the destinies of the school.

In saying this we are not forgetting the existence of Dr. Gussy. But Dr. Gussy, though he had been the titular chief for nearly a quarter of a century, had long ceased to be the ruling spirit. In vulgar phrase, he had allowed Mr. Chowdler to “run him,” and it was generally supposed to be weariness of bondage rather than of power which had induced him to resign before the completion of his twenty-fifth year of office. In appearance he was a complete contrast to his formidable lieutenant. Small and rather fragile, with silver-white hair and a refined, delicately moulded face that suggested Dresden china, he was the type of the old-fashioned scholar. Though there was nothing commanding in his personality it was none the less distinguished, and the thinness of a high-pitched, and sometimes almost squeaky, voice was atoned for by the perfection of his articulation. In his younger days he had taken a prominent place among the champions of the Oxford Movement, and, if he had not become a headmaster, he might have been notorious as a theologian; indeed, his commentary on the Epistle of St. Clement is admitted by all to be a remarkable work. Fathers of Chiltern boys loved to hear him read the lessons, and mothers frequently remarked, “What a lovely face!” But he was by nature too refined and sensitive to cope successfully with the robust methods of Mr. Chowdler, and, after struggling fitfully for some years, he had purchased comparative peace by an irritable submission. Mrs. Chowdler, an obtuse little woman who worshipped her husband and imagined that everybody at Chiltern shared her admiration, used to say that “Harry” was the headmaster’s better self. She had herself always been ready and willing to be a sister to Mrs. Gussy; but after a long series of pointed rebuffs she had abandoned the attempt, and the relations between the two families were official rather than cordial.

It was not likely that Mr. Chowdler would approve of the new appointment; indeed, he seldom approved of any arrangement that was not of his own making. But his attitude was one of amused banter rather than of fierce hostility, and he spoke with a good-natured smile of the “Empty Flaggon.” “Wait and see” was his advice. “You will find that the place and its traditions are too strong for the empty one. He may froth and he may fume, but he can’t hurt us. We are strong enough to assimilate a whole cellarful of Flaggons.”

These and similar remarks made it clear to the initiated that Mr. Chowdler proposed to run the new headmaster, as he had run his predecessor.

In the middle of July Mr. Flaggon paid his first visit to Chiltern. The position of a headmaster elect is a delicate one, and he wisely declined to be introduced formally to the school. If omens count for anything, the circumstances of this visit were inauspicious; for it coincided with a period of four-and-twenty hours of continuous rain. Mr. Flaggon carried away a general impression of gloom and dripping umbrellas; but one incident, trivial in itself, left a permanent record on his memory. During one of the brief pauses in the downpour, he was walking with Dr. Gussy across Colonus towards the Lanchester workshops, and, on the way, met three of the bigger boys who were sauntering slowly in the opposite direction. There was something about their gait and manner which, if not exactly insolent, at least suggested a complete absence of anything like awe in the presence of their headmaster. They gave a perfunctory salute; and, before they passed out of earshot, a voice, which made no attempt to lower itself, remarked:

“Is that the new Gus?”

“Looks like it,” replied a second voice, in the same devil-take-me-if-I-care tone, “unless it’s his shuvver.”

Mr. Flaggon, who with the principles of a democrat combined all the instincts of a despot, lifted his eyebrows in surprise and his fingers tightened unconsciously round the handle of his umbrella. But Dr. Gussy appeared to be quite unconcerned and made no comment.

Under the depressing climatic conditions the hours passed rather slowly. Dr. Gussy was courtesy itself, but he found it impossible to be cordial or communicative to a man who was the last person he would have chosen as his successor; and Mr. Flaggon felt it a relief when Mrs. Gussy carried him off to inspect the house and talk fixtures. Dr. Gussy had wisely left all the business arrangements in the hands of his wife, a capable woman with all the capable woman’s contempt for the supposed ignorance of a young man and a bachelor; and it soon became evident that Mrs. Gussy intended to take full advantage of her superior knowledge. With a happy mixture of adroitness and authority she forced upon the incoming tenant the oldest carpets and the least successful bits of furniture; and, with equal skill, she secured a tacit permission to carry off some of the more desirable fixtures.

“We are taking the tiles with us to the Deanery,” she would say, pointing to a fireplace; “but, of course, we shall leave you the linoleum and that very useful deal cupboard. They were both made for the room.”

Mr. Flaggon had no desire to haggle, but he had the Northerner’s dislike of being done; and, before the round was over, he found himself in revolt. Mrs. Gussy described him afterwards as “close”; and Mr. Flaggon, in relating his experiences to his mother, said that if Mrs. Gussy had been a little less autocratic, she would have made an excellent saleswoman. The youngest Miss Gussy, a girl of seventeen and the only other member of the family who was at home, did not put in an appearance. She could not bring herself to shake hands with the supplanter of her father, the “horrid man” who was going to live in their house and enjoy their garden. If Mr. Flaggon had been an angel from Heaven, she would have hated him with equal fervour. So she withdrew for the day to the Pounderlys’ and contented herself with a glimpse of “the man” from a window; which glimpse confirmed her in her worst forebodings. Mrs. Chowdler, who had a talent for saying the wrong thing, remarked that it would be “a very happy coincidence” if Mr. Flaggon and Miss Gussy took a fancy to each other, as it would give a continuity to life at Chiltern and make the impending change “so much less felt.” With the object of promoting such a match she spoke warmly to the youngest Miss Gussy of the new headmaster’s personal appearance, and was dismayed at the violent outburst which her eulogy provoked.

In the evening, after dinner, Mr. Chowdler called by arrangement and carried off his new chief, nominally to introduce him over a quiet pipe to a few colleagues, but really to take his measure and begin the training of which he was supposed to be in need.

Mr. Flaggon did not smoke, neither did he drink; but he was placed in the easiest of the study chairs, next to the fireplace, and the colleagues lit their pipes and arranged themselves in a semicircle round the empty grate. There is always something singularly dispiriting about an empty grate on a wet summer evening, and a semicircular formation round it emphasises its forlornness. The colleagues were conscious of a feeling of constraint. After all that they had been saying and thinking about him in the past week, they were shy of being over-cordial to their new chief, and some of them felt a little as if they were taking part in a conspiracy, engineered by Chowdler, to exploit the inexperience of the new man.

Mr. Flaggon, for his part, did not possess the easy manner and command of small talk which put strangers at their ease. Though anxious to be friendly, he was by nature reticent, one of those who, in new surroundings, are more disposed to receive impressions than to create them. So, after a little desultory talk about the golf links, and several ineffective openings that led into blind alleys, the conversation suddenly expired, and the colleagues found themselves gazing desperately at three iron bars and some unhealthy-looking green and yellow paper behind them.

This was the psychological moment for Mr. Chowdler. Hitherto he had been busy pouring out whisky-and-sodas and struggling with a refractory pipe; but he now sat down opposite the guest of the evening and opened the main attack.

“I suppose,” he began, “that you have been hearing a good deal to-day about our great headmaster Dr. Lanchester. Have you ever studied his life?”

“I have indeed,” replied Mr. Flaggon; “in fact, it was one of the first books that excited my interest in public school education. It might, no doubt, have been better written; but it is, in its way, I think, one of the most suggestive books in the English language.”

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear you say that!” cried Mr. Chowdler. “I’m so glad to hear you say that; because you know, we cling very, very faithfully here to our past and our great Conservative tradition.”

“Aren’t you forgetting,” said Mr. Flaggon quickly, “that Dr. Lanchester was always considered a Radical?”

Mr. Chowdler had forgotten; all Chiltern was in the habit of forgetting this unpleasant fact. But he would not own to any lapse of memory, and his voice took on a note of challenge as he replied:

“Oh, a name doesn’t frighten me; there’s nothing in a name; names are only the coinage of the foolish. Lanchester was a man of very Conservative instincts. He was not one of those who love change for change’s sake. He was a restorer, not a destroyer.”

“It must be difficult to be the one without the other,” remarked Mr. Flaggon quietly; “and I have always heard that Dr. Lanchester was both.”

Antipathies are often physical as well as moral, and the two men suddenly became conscious of a kind of physical distaste for one another. In Chowdler’s fleshy limbs, broad shoulders, bullet head, and aggressive manner, Mr. Flaggon saw for the moment the personification of that narrow but confident prejudice which blocks progress and strangles reform; while Mr. Chowdler realised acutely that “the man Flaggon” would easily get on his nerves. There was an awkward pause which Mr. Beadle filled by remarking:

“You must have found it very interesting work tutoring a foreign prince.”

But Mr. Chowdler, though momentarily disconcerted, was not to be diverted from his main purpose; and, before Mr. Flaggon could frame a reply, he interposed again with:

“Talking of princes reminds me of something that happened to me a little while ago.”

Mr. Chowdler had a large stock of anecdotes with which his colleagues were painfully familiar, for he was never afraid of repeating himself. In theory Mr. Chowdler scorned sentimentality and even sentiment, but in practice his stories were nearly all of the sentimental order and related how small boys had looked up at him wistfully, or old boys had grasped his hand with manly tears in their eyes. And both wistful small boys and manly old boys had nearly always contrived to say something illuminating about the Lanchester tradition.

When once Mr. Chowdler was started, he passed from one story to another without a halt. Mr. Flaggon was conscious that the anecdotes were being related not to him but at him. However, he smiled when a smile seemed to be expected, and looked impressed where it was obviously the right thing to look impressed. But, when his host concluded the fifteenth story with the remark, “And I think it’s such a splendid idea that the old traditions are being planted, with the old flag, far away over the water, in Saskatchewan,” he could not help saying:

“Don’t you think it would be better, perhaps, if the Colonies were allowed to create their own traditions and their own ideals? If there is to be development, there must be new forms; and I always hope that the colonies will have something new to teach us some day.”

Mr. Chowdler did not agree, and he said so in words which produced another awkward pause; and Mr. Beadle once more came to the rescue by remarking:

“I suppose that they are very keen about education in Wales?” Which showed that Mr. Beadle had been making a study of the new headmaster’s previous history.

When the marble clock on the mantelpiece pointed to eleven, Mr. Flaggon rose to go. A day with Dr. Gussy, and an evening spent in the company of Mr. Chowdler, had induced an unusual feeling of weariness. He and his host shook hands at parting with every outward appearance of friendliness; but, as he walked home under the dripping trees to the Prætorium, as Dr. Gussy’s house was called, he was conscious that, amongst the many problems that he would have to face at Chiltern, Mr. Chowdler would almost certainly be one of the most difficult.

CHAPTER III
EXIT DR. GUSSY

The last fortnight of the Term was largely devoted to saying good-bye to Dr. Gussy. It was traditional at Chiltern for a headmaster to be received with curses and dismissed with blessings; and an unwritten law required that, as his last Term drew to a close, words of ill-omen should become few and fewer. During the last fortnight, even Mr. Chowdler gave up speaking of “silly old Fussy” and substituted “poor old Gussy,” or, more rarely, “dear old Gussy.”

Dr. Gussy had never identified himself very closely with the life of the school, nor allowed himself to become absorbed in its daily happenings; his youngest daughter probably knew far more about the inner life of Chiltern than he did, and could address by their nicknames boys of whom her father had some difficulty in recalling the surname. Outside interests had taken him frequently from Chiltern, and the branch line (like all branch lines) made it easier to leave Chiltern than to get back to it. He had often missed important matches, his place had frequently been empty at Sunday chapels, and he had been known to confuse the identity of important people. A current story, of which there were many variations, made him address the senior fag of Mr. Cox’s house as the junior master on the staff. But his rule was mild and his nature unsuspicious; so he had always enjoyed a fair measure of popularity, and, during his last fortnight, he was positively worshipped.

Dr. Gussy himself was quite unconscious of any sins of omission. He was fond of boasting that Chiltern was a school that “ran itself”; and, as a proof of its good discipline and high moral tone, he would say, proudly, “For the last seven years I haven’t had to expel a single boy—not a single boy.”

This record greatly impressed anxious parents, and had attracted to the school several sons of the titled plutocracy, whose sensitive natures required considerate and tactful handling rather than the rough and ready methods in vogue elsewhere. Dr. Gussy was proud of the distinguished names that figured on his school lists, and never had Chiltern been more popular or more prosperous than during the last seven years of his reign.

Needless to say, the Doctor received an incredible number of presents. It was like a second wedding. Each division of the school gave its separate gift, and, at the earnest request of Mrs. Gussy, who valued spontaneity above all things, the boys were left to make their own choice without prompting from their elders. The Lower School gave a Tantalus, big enough to blast the reputation of the most saintly Dean; the Removes, a telescope of immense power, because, in Dr. Gussy’s sermons, there were frequent allusions to the stars; the Fifths, an invalid’s chair of elaborate mechanical cunning, and the Prefects a complete set of engravings of Chiltern from its earliest days, of which Dr. Gussy already had duplicates in a portifollo. Only the Old Boys, instead of giving anything to Dr. Gussy personally, presented his picture to the library (none might hang in the Great Hall save Dr. Lanchester only), and, by a happy thought, entrusted the painting of it to an Old Chilternian whom Nature had intended for a caricaturist, but who had elected to win fame as a portrait-painter.

And to each division separately Dr. Gussy made one of the felicitous little speeches for which he was famous. To the Lower School he said that, whenever he saw that splendid Tantalus on his sideboard, for he should give it the place of honour on his sideboard (those who knew Mrs. Gussy best thought otherwise), he should remember the kind thought of the givers and be with them again in the spirit. (Cheers, but no laughter, the Lower School being in too solemn a mood to anticipate a jest.) To the Removes he said that he would now be able, from his peaceful Deanery, to watch the Removes, through his telescope, studying their lessons with the zeal and enthusiasm for which they had always been famous. (Laughter and applause.) To the Fifths he said that, whenever he reclined in that luxurious chair—and he hoped that he would have time and leisure at last to recline, occasionally, in an easy-chair (suppressed amusement)—he should always think of the happy, strenuous days which he had lived amongst them and for them; for they had always been, and always would be, very near to his heart. (Emotion, and a murmur at the back of “Good old Gussy.”) To the Prefects he said that, whenever he looked at those beautiful and interesting prints—and he should look at them daily, for they would be hanging on his walls (cheers)—he would see the dear old place repeopled again with the faces that he had now before him, and take courage in the thought of the simple, manly, unostentatious, but whole-hearted devotion to duty which had always been characteristic of the Prefects at Chiltern, and which had given its high moral tone to the school that they loved so well. (Prolonged sensation.)

But it is unnecessary to quote further. It is enough to say that there was a general atmosphere of mutual good-will and esteem, in which impositions were daily remitted (except by Mr. Black, who lacked imagination), and everybody felt that he was an integral part of a great institution, bound by ties of personal devotion to the headmaster, and doing yeoman’s work.

One of the most successful functions of this epoch was the farewell dinner, given by the junior masters in Common Room to their chief. Though the masters at Chiltern lived in lodgings or in private houses of their own, it was part of the Lanchester tradition that the bachelors amongst them should dine together once a week in Common Room. A spinster lady, distantly connected with the school, had bequeathed funds for this purpose; and, though the cooking was not recherché nor the conversation of much general interest, the weekly dinner was valued as a picturesque ceremony in keeping with the atmosphere of the place, and was hedged in with a rigorous etiquette. Thus, when any member of the community succumbed to matrimony, he was expelled with a quaint and time-honoured ritual. Some awkwardness had arisen when Mr. Flyte, after being formally “inhibited” from “bread, beef, and trencher,” was thrown over by his fiancée at the eleventh hour; for the inhibition had always been regarded as final and irrevocable, and there was no precedent to serve as a guide. Mr. Flyte, however, solved the difficulty with great tact, by never applying for readmission as a bachelor and allowing himself to be reckoned, for dining purposes, as an honorary widower.

But, though the etiquette was formal and the Common Room dinner sacred to bachelors, it was decided, unanimously, that a point might be stretched in favour of a departing chief. Dr. Gussy was invited, and Dr. Gussy accepted.

The preparations were on an unusual scale and were in the hands of Mr. Rankin, who was good at that kind of thing and proud of his savoir faire. An ice-pudding was ordered from Smith’s, the school confectioner; the library attendant and the under ground-man, who waited, were put into dress clothes for the occasion; and Mr. Grady’s sister kindly arranged the flowers. Mr. Chase, the senior member and president, provided a special brand of champagne from his private cellars, and there were three savouries and no less than six liqueurs. Dr. Gussy was placed at the head of the table, with Mr. Chase on his right and the newest appointment to the school on his left. Dr. Gussy was but little known personally to the younger members of his staff, and his conduct had not always escaped criticism; for, when he had been suffering much at the hands of Mr. Chowdler, he was in the habit, to use a vulgar phrase, of “taking it out of” the juniors whom he did not fear. But, on this occasion, he was not only courteous but anecdotal and intimate. For the first time, Dr. Gussy and his junior masters discovered each other; and the discovery only added to the pain of separation. The party broke up at a late hour and everybody went home murmuring “dear old Gussy”; except, of course, dear old Gussy himself, who had been plied generously with the ice-pudding and the six liqueurs, and who, after a restless night, woke up next morning with something of a liver.

On the last night but two of Term there was another and a more questionable display of feeling. At the witching hour of eleven P.M. a considerable portion of the school (estimates of the exact numbers varied) picturesquely clad in bed-clothes and pyjamas, and armed with sackbuts, psalteries, dulcimers and all kinds of music, appeared suddenly on the headmaster’s front lawn and proceeded to serenade their chief with a topical song, of which the chorus ran as follows:

“Young sir, do not answer at random,

No boy should be seen on a tandem.”

Oh, whatever we think of the Badger or Mink,[1]

De Gussibus non disputandum.

A remnant of sanity kept the headmaster from appearing in person, but his wife and the youngest Miss Gussy, who were not insensible to such attentions, showed themselves at the open windows of the drawing-room and were acclaimed uproariously—especially the youngest Miss Gussy.

It was felt, however, amongst the staff, that things were going a little farther than was wise. Loyalty is all very well, but loyalty should be tempered by discretion; and the housemasters came in for some criticism on account of their supposed connivance. Even Mr. Plummer, the most confirmed of optimists, had misgivings, and observed next day in Common Room:

“It really does look as if some of the housemasters had been a little slack; unless, of course, the whole thing has been very much exaggerated.”

“It has, as you say,” replied Mr. Bent, “been very much exaggerated. There were, in reality, no boys, no music, no song, no Miss Gussy. The whole thing was a phantasm of the living, an allegory, an unsubstantial pageant that fades and leaves not a wrack behind. I know it for a fact.”

“What do you mean?” asked Mr. Plummer.

“I have questioned each of the housemasters separately,” replied Mr. Bent, “and each has assured me, in tones of the deepest conviction, that his own Prefects can be trusted absolutely, and that it is, moreover, physically and structurally impossible for any boy to leave that particular house after dark without the knowledge of his housemaster. Each has further informed me that, if only the other housemasters would take the same simple and common-sense precautions, such scenes as the one we are deploring to-day would be impossible. Now, what do you say to that, Plummer? You are surely not such a cynic as to doubt the word of a housemaster?”

Mr. Chowdler treated the matter in a more serious spirit. He had watched the unexpected apotheosis of Dr. Gussy without enthusiasm—“sentiment run mad” he called it—and the official countenance given to the serenade by Mrs. and Miss Gussy filled him with indignation. He felt that it was high time for somebody to speak to the “silly old man.” When duty called, Mr. Chowdler was not the man to shirk an unpleasant task, and his sense of duty was sharpened by a strong personal dislike of Mrs. and the youngest Miss Gussy. He therefore appeared in the headmaster’s study after lunch, wearing the particular expression which Dr. Gussy had learned to associate with some of the unpleasanter moments of his own life.

Now, Dr. Gussy had been as much surprised as anybody at the sudden blaze of popularity of which he had been the centre; but, being naïve and not addicted to self-analysis, he had thoroughly enjoyed it. Moreover, the days of his bondage were almost accomplished, and he no longer felt afraid of any man. So he did what he had not done for many a long day, namely, snapped his fingers in Mr. Chowdler’s face, and even told him not to be an old woman—at least, so Mrs. Gussy told her friends, and a Dean’s wife must be supposed to speak the truth.

Mr. Chowdler gave a somewhat different version of the encounter, in which the honours were made to rest with himself rather than with his chief. But even he could not conceal the fact that he had received a diplomatic rebuff. He relieved his feelings by calling together his house Prefects and giving them one of his straight manly talks. “Things,” he said, “are shaky—you would probably call them ‘dicky’; but I shall call them shaky—and with anxious times ahead of us next Term, we can’t afford to be playing ducks and drakes with our best traditions; and, what with weakness at the top and giddy heads at the bottom, that’s just what some folks are beginning to do. You know what I am referring to—that ridiculous scene last night. I know what you think about it. You and I understand each other, and we know where the blame lies. We needn’t dot the i’s, but there are certain houses, not a hundred miles from here, which would be better for a taste of our friend Archie’s strong arm.” Here “our friend Archie,” who was head of the eleven, fidgeted uncomfortably. “Now, I want you to remember,” continued Mr. Chowdler impressively, “that your influence ought not to end with the house. I want you to talk sense to giddy heads and to strengthen feeble knees. I want you to set your candles on a hill where the whole school can see them. I want you, when everybody else is failing, to be the pillars and the props of our grand old Lanchester tradition.”

The Prefects in Mr. Chowdler’s house were genuinely afraid of Mr. Chowdler, though they had long learnt how to manage him. They now looked portentously solemn, confessed that they had heard rumours of the impending “rag” beforehand, but had not taken them seriously, and admitted that Mr. Cox’s house was not as good as it had once been. But they were much too tactful and considerate to let out that, as holders of the cricket trophy, they had themselves headed the procession in a body.

The upshot of it all was that people were just a little anxious as to what might happen at the school concert on the last night of Term. Even Dr. Gussy confessed privately that he would be glad when the concert was over. For a great many Old Chilternians were expected for the occasion, and, when Old Boys get together and become excited, they are sometimes—not rowdy, of course, but, perhaps, a little boisterous; and then the school catches the excitement and loses its sense of proportion. Still, the boys at Chiltern were all gentlemen; and, if you treat gentlemen as gentlemen, they may be trusted to behave as gentlemen. Everybody at Chiltern believed that, except, perhaps, Mr. Bent, who was a cynic and believed nothing, and Mr. Grady, the science master, whose face always had a hunted expression and who sometimes came out of school with mice in his pockets and his hair full of flour.

However, in spite of forebodings, the concert was not much more noisy than concerts usually were at Chiltern. Dr. Gussy was cheered to the echo, and, though he had taken his official farewell of the school only half an hour before, he was obliged to come on to the platform and make another speech. Mrs. Gussy smiled her acknowledgments from her place, and the youngest Miss Gussy was in tears. As for the school song, it went with a roar that nearly lifted the roof off the Great Hall. The song of Chiltern is not essentially different from other school songs. Without ever lapsing into poetry, it maintains, throughout, a fair rhythm and a high level of imbecility. Its opening verse has served as a model to many imitations:

John Buss was a farrier bold,

And he turned his sweat into drops of gold;

He fought hard battles, and when he died

He left a school for his country’s pride,

The best of schools, that has won renown

From Chiltern chimes to the frontier town.

Chorus: John Buss, John of Us,

Played good cricket and made no fuss.

To realise the full possibilities of the song, you must go to Chiltern and hear it sung: especially the chorus, where, after the trebles have piped “John Buss,” the whole school joins in with “John of Us.” The effect is electrical and intensely moving.

When the concert was over, the Old Chilternians played a game of football in Colonus by moonlight, and afterwards paraded the town, arm in arm, singing school songs. There were more than a hundred of them, and they sang in different keys; so that the townspeople did not have a very tranquil night.

And in the second week of the holidays, when everybody had gone away and the whole place was in confusion, Mr. Flaggon came down unexpectedly and insisted on making a more detailed inspection of the school than had been possible during his first visit; much to the annoyance of the porter, whose mind was not as clear on that day as he could have wished, though his face was more solemn than ever. Amongst the buildings visited was Mr. Cox’s old house, which was undergoing extensive repairs for its new proprietor, Mr. Chase; and there, on certain walls, Mr. Flaggon found writing which, though he did not fully understand it, made him glad that he had accepted Mr. Cox’s resignation.

CHAPTER IV
THE FIRST SKIRMISH

Mr. Flaggon had come to Chiltern with a determination to do great things for education. He himself had had a hard struggle to win to knowledge, and the phases of the struggle had left their mark deeply imprinted on his character. Born with a thirst for knowledge, he had had to force his way, step by step, to the fountain head; and the narrow circumstances of a Cumberland vicarage had strewn the path with difficulties. Old and musty books spelled out by candlelight in his father’s study, then a scholarship at a decaying provincial grammar school, and finally a classical exhibition at a small Oxford College—such had been the stages by which he had made his way up the stream. And, when he reviewed the past, he could not but remember how brackish and unsatisfying the water had often been in the channels where he had been compelled to seek it. If his thirst had been less insatiable, his own experiences might well have cured him of the desire to drink.

To a childhood spent among the Cumbrian Fells he owed a robust constitution and a toughness of fibre that defied fatigue; perhaps, too, a certain gravity and reticence which seem to come naturally to those who are bred among mountains. Rather below middle height, with a clear-cut face and an intellectual forehead, his most striking feature was his eyes—fearless, grey, receptive eyes, which looked out upon the world with a quiet but penetrating interest. A friend, who knew him intimately, described them as seeing, rather than speaking, eyes.

Of public schools he knew nothing from the inside, and he had few opportunities of studying public school men at his own small college. In such as he came across he had noted a certain self-sufficiency and polite lack of interest in things intellectual, which he put down to the narrowness of their training. The circumstances of his own upbringing had thrown him almost entirely among boys and men who had to make their own way in the world, and who were desperately intent on turning even half a talent to profitable use. Their aims might be low and their ambitions sordid, but there was no trifling with opportunity, no deliberate rejection of golden chances. He had had no practical experience of that large and wealthy class of people who have been well off for two generations and whose children are born with an assured future—the people, in fact, who send their boys to the richer public schools; and he had yet to learn how paralysing to the intellectual life an assured future may be. In a word, he did not yet understand the psychology of the horse who refuses to drink when taken to the water; and, noticing that public school men were, as a class, unintellectual, he assumed that their minds had been starved, and that their teachers set no store by intellect.

The idea of standing for a headmastership had first been suggested to him by an acquaintance whom chance had thrown in his way. After securing his Fellowship, Mr. Flaggon had accepted a post as tutor to a foreign prince, partly because the work was light and he needed a holiday, and partly because the tutorship was a travelling one and he was eager to see something of the world. Ten days of continuous rain and snow on the Riffel Alp had thrown him much into the society of the great man behind the scenes to whom allusion has already been made. The great man was both an enthusiast for education and a firm believer in ability; he even had the hardihood to maintain that ability is of greater value than experience, and experiment more fruitful of results than the accepted method of playing for safety. Being a shrewd judge of men, he soon discerned, beneath the tutor’s quiet and unsensational exterior, signs of exceptional power; and he did not lose sight of him. The Welsh appointment was largely his doing, and, when the headmastership of Chiltern fell vacant, it was he who wrote and suggested that Mr. Flaggon should stand.

Mr. Flaggon himself had hardly regarded his candidature even as a forlorn hope. It was intended rather as a ballon d’essai, a notice to the scholastic world that he considered himself a possible headmaster, and an opportunity of gauging how that world would regard his claims. Chiltern, as we have seen, had no hesitation in branding his pretensions as presumptuous; and Mr. Flaggon was quite aware that the success of his audacious move, which had come as a surprise to himself, had been more than a disappointment to his future colleagues.

But he was not dismayed by the difficulty of the task that lay before him. His whole life had been spent in overcoming difficulties, and he had the quiet confidence of a man who is sure of his own temper and accustomed to succeed. As has been stated before, he brought with him to his new work a great zeal for the cause of education; but he had no cut-and-dried theories of reform, no patent nostrum of his own. He knew what education ought to be, what it had been to himself—an individual renaissance, a quickening of the highest faculties of mind and spirit; and he knew that that was precisely what public school education was not. He was determined to study the problem on the spot and to proceed tentatively. The machinery, as he saw it, was antiquated, the bill of fare obsolete, the valley full of dry bones. But the dry bones were only waiting for a revivifying spirit to become clothed with flesh and to start into life again. In his mind’s eye he saw the boys as hungry sheep who looked up and were not fed. He had not yet become acquainted with that particular breed of sheep that is born without an appetite.

But ever since his first flying visit to the school, Mr. Flaggon had begun to realise that there were other problems behind the educational one which would claim the attention of a headmaster. He had always taken on trust the virtues that are considered inherent in the public school system—loyalty, discipline, gentlemanly behaviour, and a subordination of the individual will to the interests of the community. In his undergraduate days he had often experienced an absurd sensation of being considered morally, as well as socially, inferior to the more fortunate alumni of the great public schools. Old Boys had talked to him with flashing eyes and genuine conviction of the exceptional merits of their own schools, and of the enhanced value which they gave to life; and he had believed them. And what he believed of other schools he had been taught to believe as pre-eminently true of Chiltern. Chiltern was the only institution of its kind about which nobody had as yet written a schoolboy story; but it ranked amongst the aristocracy of public schools, and, in the eyes of Chilternians, even higher. And it had special characteristics of its own. Somebody had said that Chiltern turned out gentlemen rather than scholars; and somebody else, probably an Old Chilternian, had added that you could always tell a Chiltern boy from the way he behaved in a drawing-room. Wealthy manufacturers sent their sons to Chiltern to acquire the easy manners and social polish which seemed natural to the place; and to be an Old Chilternian was an “open sesame” to any club that was not primarily intellectual.

Mr. Flaggon had expected, therefore, to find a somewhat low level of mental attainments but a high standard of good breeding. But, ever since his first visit, his mind had been haunted by the picture of three vapid youths strolling past their headmaster with insolent unconcern and the blasé voices saying:

“Is that the new Gus?”

“Looks like it—unless it’s his shuvver.”

And then there was the writing on certain walls in Mr. Cox’s house.

This unfavourable impression was confirmed as he watched the boys in Chapel on the first Sunday of the Term. There was an air of insolence and swagger about the way in which the bigger boys strolled in last and lounged, instead of kneeling, during the prayers. Signs of intelligence were frequent between block and block; and, even among the smaller boys, there was often a kind of self-consciousness and pose, which, though he could not quite analyse the cause, affected Mr. Flaggon unpleasantly. He had often heard of the impressiveness of a school-chapel service. There was certainly nothing impressive about the service at Chiltern on the first Sunday of the Term, except, perhaps, the singing of the hymns—and that was much more noisy than reverent.

Mr. Flaggon belonged to no definite party in the Church. A dislike of labels and definitions, coupled with a strong desire to make the Church inclusive rather than exclusive, had won him the easy hatred of the dogmatists and the reputation of being unorthodox. His own religious views had been deeply coloured by the life and example of his father, a man of great but unrecognised power, who had cheerfully sacrificed all personal ambition to work in an obscure Cumbrian parish. At one period of his youth, his father’s attitude to life and cheerful acceptance of a lot so far below his merits, had puzzled him; and he had allowed himself to wonder whether such complete self-abnegation was commendable or even right. But the extraordinary manifestations of grief which that father’s death provoked in the whole neighbourhood had taught him to judge the value of work by a different standard, and to realise that the things of the spirit can never be adequately measured in terms of the flesh. Henceforward, the life of duty, and faith in the individual conscience, which had been the secret of the father’s influence, became the ideals of the son, and, if he was attracted into the field of education, it was largely because, to him, education in its truest sense meant a lifting of the veil from the spirit. But as he mounted the Chiltern pulpit to deliver his first sermon from the text “The letter killeth, but the spirit maketh alive,” he felt conscious, instinctively and with something of a chill, that the note he was going to sound was not a note that would find an echo in the hearts of his congregation. Here were no hungry sheep looking up to be fed, but indifference, inertia, and an unknown something that was probably worse than either and possibly the cause of both.

Mr. Flaggon was an interesting and a distinguished preacher; his worst enemies admitted that. He had the gift of saying what he meant, the happy phrase, and the inevitable word. But, if his manner could not but create a favourable impression, his matter caused serious alarm amongst the staff, and there was much shaking of heads afterwards in the great quadrangle under the shadow of Dr. Lanchester’s statue.

“It’s not so much the sermon,” said Mr. Pounderly in his most confidential tones; “it’s the text that frightens me. There were some points in the sermon, but the text was full of innuendo.”

“Surely,” exclaimed Mr. Bent, “you are not going to hang a dog for his collar?”

“Pardon me!” said Mr. Pounderly, “I hang no man. But, unless my judgment is strangely at fault, that text, considering the time and the place, spells upheaval.”

“And the manner!” chimed in Mr. Beadle, “the assured, precocious manner! The air of confidence and authority! I agree with Pounderly that we are marked down for slaughter; it is the death-knell of the Classics!”

And the two men walked off together shaking their heads.

Mr. Chowdler did not content himself with shaking his head afterwards in the great quadrangle. He shook it frequently and emphatically during the sermon, in order that everybody might know that he was in complete disagreement with the preacher. And on him fell the unpleasant duty, as he phrased it, of making a reply and restating the Lanchester position, on the third Sunday of the Term.

For, needless to say, Mr. Chowdler was in orders. No mere laymen could have combined such a capacity for quarrelling with so profound a conviction of his own reasonableness and humility. In Mr. Chowdler’s hands religion became a weapon to smite with. For choice, he smote lies, cant, humbug, and Bible critics; but, occasionally, quite innocent and respectable things found themselves floored by Mr. Chowdler’s massive fist and trampled under his double-welted heel. For, when Mr. Chowdler mounted the pulpit, necessity was laid upon him to smite something or somebody. There were men, like Mr. Plummer, who doubted whether there would be much scope in Heaven for Mr. Chowdler’s type of religion; but, if they did not regard it as the highest form of Christianity, they had to admit that it was manly, and therefore good for the boys.

But, on this third Sunday of the Term, Mr. Chowdler was no ordinary smiter; he was the incarnation of the Lanchester spirit repelling a German invasion. And his text, “Hold fast to that which is good,” was not delivered like an ordinary text; it was fired like a six-inch shell full at the stall in which the headmaster was sitting. Mr. Bent said, afterwards, that he fully expected to see Chowdler follow up the discharge of the text by leaving the cover of the pulpit and attacking with the bayonet. However, the preacher spoke daggers but used none. Change? Yes, change was necessary, growth was necessary; but not change in essentials and axioms, not change in the foundations. Hold fast to the foundations, hold fast to that which is good! There was a tendency in a restless, riotous age to imagine that, because a thing lasted, because it was old and venerable, it was therefore obsolete. A fool’s mistake! Why, granite lasts, gold lasts. Hold fast to the granite, hold fast to the gold, hold fast to that which is good. Again, there was a tendency in an age of feverish and futile activity to assail whatever is venerable, whatever has withstood the destructiveness of man and the storms of time. You tear up the mighty oak, and replace it by what? Tares? Yes, too often by tares, or at best by some finnikin exotic treelet, such as you may see in gaudy Eastern pots in decadent drawing-rooms. Once more, hold fast to the mighty oak, hold fast to that which is good! Fortunately, and God be praised for it, they had in that place a great example by which to guide their endeavours—Abraham Lanchester, their great headmaster, restorer not destroyer, whose clear, sane intellect and genius, conservative in the best and noblest meaning of the word, had left them an imperishable birthright and a priceless heritage. Hold fast to a priceless heritage, hold fast to a great tradition, hold fast to that which is good! And so on for five-and-twenty minutes.

Mr. Flaggon was conscious that he was being preached at, and he knew that the boys knew it; for they kept turning round continually to see how he was taking it. Mrs. Chowdler, who watched him narrowly, maintained that he had been profoundly impressed and “looked as if a new light had suddenly dawned on him”; but the general opinion among the boys was that he hadn’t “turned a hair” and that it was impossible to be sure whether he had really understood what “Old Jowler” was driving at.

It is reasonable to suppose that the sermon gave Mr. Flaggon food for reflection; he certainly sat for some time afterwards in his study, looking into the fire and apparently thinking. But, whatever his thoughts may have been, he kept them to himself and said nothing.

Mr. Chowdler’s effort was much appreciated on the staff, even by some who were more prone to criticise than to praise. Mr. Pounderly pronounced it statesmanlike, and Mr. Black went so far as to say that it was inspired. Mr. Bent’s was the only voice that called it “bosh,” and he received a grave and well-deserved rebuke from Mr. Plummer for his lack of reverence. It was confidently assumed by many that Mr. Chowdler’s serious note of warning, voicing, as it did, the general feeling of the staff, would give Mr. Flaggon pause and force him to recognise facts. But their optimism was of short duration; for, within a few days, a notice asking every master to send in a copy of his weekly routine, made it clear to the most sanguine that the era of change and experiment had begun.

CHAPTER V
MR. TIPHAM

It must be admitted that Mr. Flaggon was not uniformly lucky in his early experiments. This was notably the case in his first appointment to the staff. It has been already stated that he knew nothing of public schools from the inside, and, in selecting a successor to Mr. Cox, he may have been too exclusively influenced by the claims of intellect and have taken too little account of other necessary qualifications. Anyhow, he thought that the intellectual side of the staff needed reinforcing, and having a choice between a double first and a double blue, he appointed the double first.

Mr. Tipham brought with him from Cleopas College, Cambridge, two more or less fixed ideas; first, that art consists in depicting disagreeable things in a disagreeable way, and, secondly, that life in the twentieth century is governed by two conflicting forces—convention, which is always wrong, and Nature, which is always right. This theory had carried him not only safely but brilliantly through his university career. He had secured a first in both parts of the Tripos; he had played a prominent part in the life of his own college and been quoted outside it; he had worn strange clothes, founded a literary society in which thought was made to perform queer antics in shackles of its own imposing, and he had invented a new savoury. His slightly tilted nose and full cheeks gave him an air of confidence which unfriendly critics described as conceit, while the long brown hair, drawn back over the temples and plastered down with fragrant oils, the orange tie and loose green jacket, proclaimed that he was one of those for whom art is not merely a hobby but an integral part of life. One glance at his face would have informed any ordinarily shrewd observer that, in approaching new problems and unfamiliar ground, Mr. Tipham would not suffer from diffidence. The late Victorians might have called him untidy and even unwashed; but at no period in English history would he have been branded as modest.

It was inevitable that Mr. Tipham should fall foul of the Lanchester tradition. He would have fallen foul of any tradition. But he chose to defy it in most unnecessary and offensive ways. He smoked as he walked down to school from his lodgings, he refused even a perfunctory homage to the claims of age and seniority, and the scarf that he wore almost permanently round his throat (for Mr. Tipham was an indoor man and sensitive to cold and damp) was a combination of colours—the colours of the Brainstorm Club—that shocked the moral sense of Chiltern by its unblushing æstheticism. Mr. Chowdler took a violent dislike to him at their first meeting, and missed no opportunity of trying to put him down by heavy sarcasm. But Mr. Tipham was an unsatisfactory butt; and when attacked he had a way of raising his eyebrows and inquiring “How so?” in a bored and superior tone, which goaded Mr. Chowdler to frenzy.

It was, indeed, soon evident that, if the serious purpose of Mr. Tipham’s life was to teach the boys, his recreation consisted in shocking the masters. To all the things that they held sacred, the very things that ought to have impressed him most, he applied the same disparaging term, “mid-Victorian” or “bourgeois.” Even the weekly dinner in Common Room, with its quaint ceremonial and unique endowment, did not escape the damning epithet. Before a fortnight had elapsed, everybody went about saying that that fellow Tipham was impossible.

Mr. Plummer, whose ideal (never, alas! to be realised in this world) was a united staff, and who was also the last man to abandon any sinner as irreclaimable, made a final and unsuccessful effort to bring about a better understanding. He gave a bachelor dinner-party, to which he invited a few of his own friends and the erring Mr. Tipham: for Mr. Plummer had a touching belief that, if you can only bring mutually antagonistic people together over a glass of wine, they will learn to know and like each other.

Mr. Plummer occupied comfortable rooms in an old Georgian house that fronted the High Street. Bit by bit, and with a rare tact that spared natural susceptibilities, he had weeded out the furniture and pictures of his landlady and replaced them with his own. His taste was eclectic and eminently characteristic of pedagogic culture, and the inevitable photographs of the Hermes of Olympia and the Acropolis found a place of honour amongst the equally inevitable Arundels. His rooms were considered the best rooms in Chiltern, and he was not infrequently consulted by his colleagues on questions of art.

Mr. Tipham, for whose benefit Messrs. Bent, Rankin, Grady, and Chase had been brought together in the Georgian house, began the evening badly by arriving ten minutes late and in clothes which protested with unnecessary vehemence against the narrowness of convention. At Chiltern it was the custom, even at bachelor parties, for the guests to wear dress clothes; but Mr. Tipham scorned custom. A flannel shirt of that neutral tint which suggests either dirt or extreme age, a Norfolk jacket which might well have belonged to a tramp, and a pair of grey flannel trousers which the same tramp might conceivably have rejected, completed his festive attire, the only note of colour being provided by the bright orange tie which flamed beneath an unshaven chin. As Mr. Rankin said afterwards, he suggested a man who has snatched up some clothes hurriedly to run to the bathroom, rather than a guest at a dinner-party.

But Mr. Tipham was quite unconscious of the sudden drop in the temperature which followed his entry. He shot a rapid and critical glance round the room, and, walking straight up to a small pastel drawing of a youth’s head that hung on one of the walls, he tapped the glass lightly with his forefinger and inquired:

“Where did you get that?”

“That?” replied Mr. Plummer; “oh, I picked that up at Chartres for a few francs; but I don’t know that I care very much for it.”

“It’s the best thing in the room,” said Mr. Tipham quietly; “looks as if it might possibly be an early Creusot.”

Nobody but Mr. Tipham had ever beard of Creusot; so the remark was not taken up, and the party moved into the dining-room in depressed silence. At dinner it soon became apparent that Mr. Tipham was out to give instruction on other matters than art. The conversation had drifted, as conversation often did at Chiltern, on to the subject of boys. Mr. Grady had complained of their carelessness in handling chemicals, which resulted in frequent explosions, and their incapacity for anything like patient or systematic research; and Mr. Chase had pointed out the superiority of the Classics in this respect, in that they compelled a boy to think and left no room for experiment. “You’re both right and both wrong,” said Mr. Tipham with easy assurance. “Chemistry can be made very interesting and the Classics very dull, and vice versâ. The truth is that, if you want to keep boys interested, you must make things lively. I always chip in for part of the time with something quite off the lesson. To-day I gave them a little lecture on Green Chartreuse.”

Mr. Plummer, who had long been struggling with a desire to snub tempered by a sense of his duties as a host, now cleared his throat and said, not without an effort:

“I suppose you had a good deal of experience before you came here?”

“No,” replied Mr. Tipham tartly; “but I happen to have been a boy myself.”

And again the temperature fell by several degrees.

Mr. Bent had so far held himself in reserve, profoundly annoyed yet watching with a certain cynical enjoyment the growing irritation of his colleagues and their inability to clothe it in appropriate words. But when, shortly afterwards, Mr. Tipham laid it down as an axiom that “Dorian Grey” was the greatest work of art that the human intellect has ever produced, he saw his opportunity and began in his best ironic vein.

“Its refreshing to hear you say that; so few people ever venture, nowadays, to express old-fashioned opinions; and the Victorians seldom get justice done to them by the rising generation. I don’t know that I agree with you on this particular point, but I am delighted to claim you as a Victorian.”

If there was one thing which Mr. Tipham disliked more than another it was to be identified in any way with the Victorians; so he raised his eyebrows and said coldly, “How so?”

If Mr. Bent had been wise he would have left well alone; as it was, he went on to embroider the theme a little recklessly. “If one wants to be in the swim nowadays,” he said, “one has to go into ecstasies over de Barsac or Roger Filkison. You read Roger Filkison, of course?”

Mr. Tipham admitted, with some reluctance, that he did not.

“Oh, he’s the man, you know,” continued Mr. Bent, “who writes the testimonials for the liver and kidney pills—the neo-realism they call it; very clever and morbid. I don’t like it myself, but I know several Cambridge men who think it the most poignant literature since Verlaine.”

As Messrs. Rankin and Grady were both Cambridge men, the pleasantry fell flat, and there was an awkward silence, till Mr. Tipham, lifting his eyebrows again, said in his most condescending manner:

“Ought one to be amused?”

And, though Mr. Bent tried to look unconcerned, everybody realised that he had been rapped rather smartly over the knuckles. After this unfortunate incident there was a general feeling of constraint, which lasted through the rest of dinner. But when Mr. Chase had withdrawn to read prayers to his house, and cigars had been lit in the sitting-room, Mr. Tipham unbent once more and became enthusiastic over the merits of the post-impressionists—the dazzling designs of Van Googlen, the superb greens of le Beaupère, and the masterly way in which Grummer painted flesh with one stroke of a glue-brush.

“I don’t count him amongst the greatest masters,” said Mr. Bent, who had recovered his equanimity, “because he can’t paint pimples.”

“Perhaps,” replied Mr. Tipham loftily, “you have never seen his ‘Lepers bathing.’”

“No, I haven’t,” said Mr. Bent warmly, “and I can’t say that I want to.”

“But, in that case,” remarked Mr. Tipham, “you are hardly in a position to judge, are you?”

Soon after ten, Messrs. Bent, Rankin, and Grady rose to go. Their host escorted them to the door with rather a wan look, for Mr. Tipham, instead of following their example, had just lit a fresh cigarette and dropped into the easy-chair vacated by Mr. Bent.

“Conceited idiot!” said Mr. Bent, when the three men were in the street.

“He has a lot to learn about boys,” added Mr. Grady, with a shake of his head.

“Wants a good scrubbing with soap and water, inside and out,” growled Mr. Rankin. “But,” he added, afterwards, privately to Mr. Grady, “old Bent didn’t get much change out of him.”

As for Mr. Tipham, he continued to smoke cigarettes and instruct his host in the first principles of art till well after midnight.

Among the boys Mr. Tipham was generally regarded as a freak, and his nickname, “The Super-tramp,” could hardly be regarded as flattering. But he had his disciples. Mind at Chiltern was held in little esteem, and, where it existed, uncongenial surroundings were apt to turn it sour. There were generally a few boys in the highest forms (for the most part boys of inferior physique and precocious interests) who were always in a state of latent revolt against a system which left them out of account. They repaid contempt with scorn, and the scorn was all the bitterer because it seldom dared to express itself in words and had to ferment inwardly.

To such boys Mr. Tipham appealed as a breath from a wider world and a champion of intellectual liberty. At the little dinners in his lodgings, at which a wine, which had the alluring title of a petit vin blanc, was followed by liqueurs, tongues were unloosed, and thought, if it was not always particularly clear, was at least delightfully audacious; and the crudest speculation passed for philosophy. Acting on a suggestion from their master, three of the disciples determined to found a school magazine in which Truth should at last find a voice. It must be admitted that the first and only number of “Veritas” which saw the light, though not deficient in schoolboy humour, was unnecessarily personal and occasionally lacking in good taste. It contained obvious allusions to the headmaster, Mr. Grady, and many other members of the staff; but the most regrettable item of all was an imaginary interview, in which, under the transparent pseudonym of “Howler,” Mr. Chowdler was held up to ridicule and contempt.

“Veritas” achieved a sensational but all too brief success. It sold like hot potatoes; but, within six hours of its publication, Mr. Chowdler appeared in the headmaster’s study with thunder on his brow and a copy of the offensive journal in his hand. The venture had been anonymous; but the secret, like most school secrets, had been badly kept, and both the names of the editors and the complicity of Mr. Tipham were matters of common knowledge. Mr. Chowdler demanded that the editors should be made to apologise publicly before the whole school. As for what happened to Mr. Tipham, he did not care, for Mr. Tipham was beneath contempt; but the obvious course was probably the right one. In pressing his demand Mr. Chowdler was careful to explain that he was actuated by no desire for personal revenge; he was thinking only of discipline. At all costs discipline and the decencies of life must be preserved.

Mr. Flaggon was much annoyed by the whole occurrence. He had himself suggested to Mr. Tipham, when appointing him, the idea of stimulating the boys to literary activity; but, needless to say, he had not intended the literary activity to take the form of a lampoon on Mr. Chowdler. However, he deprecated extreme measures and endeavoured to soothe the victim’s ruffled feelings. The unsold copies of “Veritas” were confiscated, and its further publication suppressed. Mr. Tipham, to borrow an expressive French phrase, “had his head washed,” and the editors offered a full but private apology to Mr. Chowdler. But Mr. Chowdler was not satisfied. He maintained that “the empty one” had behaved weakly to the boys and disloyally to himself. “A paltry revenge,” he said, “for my sermon.” Opinion on the staff was divided. Mr. Chase and the moderates thought that, on the whole, justice had been done. Mr. Pounderly and the irreconcilables considered that “poor Chowdler” had been sacrificed. Nearly everybody was agreed that the headmaster was largely to blame; for he and he alone was responsible for appointing a man like Tipham—“the Flaggonette,” as he was facetiously called. Mrs. Chowdler was quite bewildered.

“I cannot understand,” she said, “how anyone can be so wicked and spiteful as to write such things about Harry, for everybody knows that my husband has gone out of his way to be kind and helpful to Mr. Tipham, as indeed he always does to all the new masters. And surely the headmaster must see that, by not supporting Harry and properly punishing the offenders, he will weaken his own position and make himself very unpopular; for the boys worship Harry.”

CHAPTER VI
THE CLOVEN HOOF

As Mr. Flaggon passed, one October afternoon, through the green door at the end of his garden, which led into Colonus, the air was full of voices that rose alternately to a frenzied shriek or dropped to a kind of monotonous chant. For the first round of house-matches was in progress and reputations were being lost and won.

Chiltern prided itself on being different from other schools, and Chiltern had a game of football peculiar to itself. It was a more manly game than any other code, and developed higher moral qualities in those who played it. As Mr. Chowdler said, no shirker, no humbug, could hope to win laurels at the Chiltern game.

When Mr. Chowdler’s house was competing for laurels, Mr. Chowdler himself walked excitedly up and down the touch-line with a flushed face and protruding eyes, shouting, in a voice that dominated all others, instructions to his boys, such as, “Pass, Percy, pass! Feet, feet, Gerald! Shoot, Basil, shoot, can’t you! Stick to it! Good lads all! Well played, Harry! Well played, sir!” For Mr. Chowdler always spoke to, and of, his boys by their Christian names. As a sort of tribal god, inspiring his children to deeds of valour, Mr. Chowdler was invaluable; but as a coach he had his limitations. For he had been brought up on the Rugby game and was never accepted as an authority on Chiltern football. Consequently his instructions were invariably ignored by the players. But he continued to shout them in perfect good faith, and they were regarded as an inevitable, if irrelevant, feature of the game.

Mr. Chowdler was in a good temper, for his house was winning easily, and Mr. Chowdler liked to win easily. An enthusiast for all forms of manly sport, he belonged to that particular brand of good sportsmen who find it easier to be chivalrous to a vanquished foe than fair to a victorious one. Accordingly, on the comparatively rare occasions on which his house was beaten, Mr. Chowdler always suspected the referee of partiality and his opponents of rough play; and, being an outspoken man, he did not keep his suspicions to himself. His own boys, less sensitive perhaps on the point of honour than their housemaster, sometimes regretted these outbursts, which did not add to the popularity of the house.

But on the present occasion all was going well and Mr. Chowdler’s temper was unruffled. The Chaseites (late Coxites) were only serving as a “sullen ground” to show off the “bright metal” of their adversaries. So when he caught sight of Mr. Flaggon approaching, he left his post of observation on the touch-line and went to meet him.

He was, indeed, feeling unusually well-disposed towards the new headmaster, for there had been a momentary rapprochement between the two men. Two days before, Mr. Chowdler had detected a boy in his Form cribbing—an offence about which he felt very strongly—and, acting on his advice, Mr. Flaggon had flogged the culprit; thus reverting to an old tradition which in the last seven years of Dr. Gussy’s reign had become obsolete. With a clear lead of two goals his “lads” could safely be left to their own devices for a few minutes, and it would be good for the new man to see the Chiltern game played in the true Chiltern spirit and interpreted by one who was able to explain its ethical value. For, after all, there might be possibilities in the “empty one,” and, rightly handled, he seemed not incapable of being taught.

Mr. Chase apparently thought so too. He was watching the defeat of his house with gloomy stoicism from the opposite side of the ground—a chivalrous Chowdler was always a little overwhelming—and, catching sight of the two men in earnest conversation, he nudged Mr. Bent, who was standing beside him, and whispered:

“See that? Chowdler’s taking him in hand; same as poor old Gussy. Shouldn’t wonder if some of our friends haven’t been frightened with false fire after all.”

“H’m,” replied Mr. Bent. “Appearances are often deceptive. Wait and see. Flaggon’s a dark horse, and there’ll be surprises yet.”

And the first of the surprises came about a week later at a housemasters’ meeting. The meeting had been convened, nominally, for the purpose of discussing the scale of tradesmen’s charges, which Mr. Flaggon thought excessive; but, at the close of it, he said in the most matter-of-fact way:

“As we are here, I should like to say a few words on another subject. I intend, in the more or less near future, to introduce certain changes into our curriculum with a view to making our teaching more effective. I don’t know exactly yet what form those changes will take; but I have two things in my mind. In the first place, I find that our standard of scholarship is surprisingly low. I notice that last year we did not get a single scholarship of any importance at either university.”

“We have always discouraged pot-hunting here,” interrupted Mr. Pounderly. “We have aimed at knowledge—not prizes.”

“I know,” said Mr. Flaggon; “but it is the level of knowledge that I find so low here; much lower, for example, than it is in several other schools at which I have examined. And, in the second place, I am convinced that the average boy here (I am not speaking of the scholar) is not getting quite the kind of education which is best suited to his requirements.”

Mr. Flaggon paused, and if a pin had fallen it would have been distinctly audible, so tense was the silence. The challenge had been thrown down, but everybody waited for a moment to feel the edge of his weapon before rushing into the fray.

“I intend to do nothing rashly,” continued Mr. Flaggon. “I wish the whole subject to be discussed thoroughly before we decide on anything final, so that every point of view may find its expression. And for that reason I think it would be interesting, and perhaps helpful, if we could obtain the views of at least some of our parents on the subject.”

There was a gasp; and Mr. Beadle, the authority on Plautus, rapped out:

“The parents have already expressed their views by sending their sons to Chiltern.”

“Not exactly,” said the headmaster. “It all depends on what alternatives they had.”

“Surely,” pleaded Mr. Pounderly, “surely, to call in the parents would be like calling in the patient to advise the specialist.”

“I don’t think so,” said Mr. Flaggon. “The truer analogy would be to say that we are like the specialist who consults the patient’s relatives about the patient’s symptoms. And the relatives are often able to give very helpful information to the specialist.”

“Do I understand you to propose,” said Mr. Chowdler in a voice of concentrated irony, “that we should call in their uncles and cousins and aunts and make a regular symposium of it?”

Mr. Flaggon winced, but he kept his temper.

“I don’t think,” he said, “that in this case there would be any practical advantage in going beyond the parents. What I wanted to say was, that I shall be very grateful if housemasters will let me have the names and addresses of any representative parents who are likely to be interested in such a proposal. I thought perhaps that we might arrange to meet them, quite informally, some time in November or at the beginning of December.”

“What exactly do you mean by a representative parent?” asked Mr. Flyte, with the air of a man who is putting a poser.

“I must really leave that to the discretion of housemasters,” replied Mr. Flaggon, with a smile.

News of the impending parents’ committee ran through the staff like fire through gorse, and soon all Chiltern was ablaze. Some called it the thin edge of the wedge; others, the cloven hoof. The Liberals (for there were a few Liberals even at Chiltern) said that Flaggon was setting up a second Chamber to override the decisions of Masters’ Meetings; the Conservatives, that he was appealing to Demos. All agreed that the innovation was a blow to the prestige of the masters and an infringement of their ancient rights. Even Mr. Plummer felt and spoke strongly, and he imparted his fears to Mr. Bent, as they were taking the hill walk, commonly known as the “Ushers’ Grind,” one sunny autumn afternoon.

The friendship of Mr. Bent and Mr. Plummer was founded on a complete dissimilarity of tastes. It is true that they shared a dislike of golf and motors, but in all other respects they were in hearty disagreement. Mr. Plummer’s faith in man goaded Mr. Bent almost into violence, and Mr. Bent’s distrust of human nature in general, and middle-class human nature in particular, filled Mr. Plummer with righteous indignation. At the end of every walk the nerves of each were raw and tingling; but they never failed to walk together twice or even thrice in the course of every week. The particular form of quarrelling in which they indulged had grown upon them like a drug habit, and neither could do without it for long.

A stranger who knew them by reputation but not by sight would inevitably have mistaken each for the other. Mr. Plummer, tall and thin, with a hooked nose, hollow cheeks, and sallow complexion, looked the embodiment of pessimism; while Mr. Bent, short, stout, with round eyes and a florid face, ought to have been a born optimist. Mr. Rankin used to say that Providence had designed the character of the one for the person of the other, that a malicious fairy had negotiated an exchange, and that they sought each others company because, apart, they were both conscious of being incomplete.

But on this occasion, as we have said, Mr. Plummer was inclined to be pessimistic.

“I don’t like this idea,” he said, “of calling in an outside opinion. If the parents once get it into their heads that they are able to dictate, there will be an end of systematic teaching.”

“My good Plummer,” replied Mr. Bent, “there cannot possibly be an end, because there has never been a beginning. Systematic teaching indeed! Why, a boy told me the other day that he had been doing the same French book ever since he came to the school two years ago; and it is notorious that Cox set one and the same Latin prose every Term to his Form, and never looked it over.”

“I was not thinking of organisation,” said Mr. Plummer, “I was speaking of principles; and I repeat, if the parents are allowed to dictate the lines on which education is to proceed, there will be an end of systematic teaching.”

“They will not dictate,” said Mr. Bent; “they have no manuscript to dictate from. Their theories on education are purely negative—I say, steady up the hill! The only thing they insist on is that their offspring should not be taught to think or know. Thought and knowledge are dangerous to the existing social order and must be smothered young, like the Princes in the Tower. Provided that they are smothered, the parents don’t care a rap what sort of pillow is used.”

“Thought,” said Mr. Plummer, “hardly exists outside the middle classes.”

“Knowledge,” retorted Mr. Bent, “only begins where middle-classdom ends. The art of being middle class consists in shutting yourself up in a detached house and only recognising the people who come in at the front door. Knowledge leads to the back door and the streets, and is therefore fatal to the art; and knowledge is the goal of education.”

“If parents didn’t believe in education,” said Mr. Plummer, “they wouldn’t send their boys here.”

“The English middle classes,” said Mr. Bent, “never have believed in education. The Scotch did once, till they discovered the superior merits of football; but the English never. And they send their sons here to be inoculated against it—I say, do go a bit slower. For choice they put them with Chowdler, who returns them, in a few years, finished specimens of Philistinism, with orthodox views on Bible criticism and the off-theory, and a complete lack of interest in anything that really matters.”

“I don’t at all agree with you,” said Mr. Plummer; “but, if the parents are such hopeless idiots as you describe them, why do you want to consult them?”

“I don’t,” replied Mr. Bent. “But, if they are such angels of light as you imagine them, why do you object to asking for their advice?”

“You are paradoxical,” snapped Mr. Plummer.

“And you are illogical,” panted Mr. Bent.

CHAPTER VII
THE AFFAIR OF LE WILLOW

While Mr. Chowdler was lamenting that discipline was going to the dogs, the boys were beginning to complain that liberty was being destroyed. Some of them went so far as to maintain that Chiltern was becoming a regular preparatory school. For not only were motor-bicycles forbidden (they had always been that), but it was becoming positively dangerous to ride them. Moreover, detection entailed consequences. In the palmy days of Dr. Gussy it had been the ambition of every boy, caught in a misdemeanour, to be reported to the headmaster; and the appeal from summary justice to Cæsar had been one of the most cherished privileges of Chiltern whilst Dr. Gussy was Cæsar. For Dr. Gussy believed in talking—earnest, practical, confidential talking. As the boys said, “Gus treated you like a gentleman”; whereas Flaggon—there was no pleasure, nothing morally bracing, about an interview with Flaggon.

And other offences besides motor-biking were being detected with alarming frequency. Masters, who had hitherto been regarded as quite inoffensive, seemed to take a pleasure in appearing where they were least expected. The truth is that, having less belief in Dr. Gussy’s talks than Dr. Gussy himself, they had got into the habit of purposely avoiding knowledge which they knew would lead to no result; but, finding that Mr. Flaggon was prepared to act as well as talk, they resumed their normal activities.

No inconsiderable factor in the growing absence of security was the disappearance of “Whisky Toddler,” the college porter. When he paid his surprise visit to Chiltern in the holidays, Mr. Flaggon had been conscious of a subtle aroma about the place, which ceased suddenly when he took leave of the porter; and the suddenness of the change had set him wondering whether the extreme solemnity of Mr. Todd was due solely to wisdom or was partly induced by alcohol. The wonder did not diminish on closer acquaintance, and an unexpected visit to the Lodge, one evening, settled all doubts. Mr. Todd was found in a state of hilarious incoherence. It was, of course, an accident—a toothache, and an old-fashioned remedy, recommended by a friend, which had produced unforeseen results in one unused to spirituous liquors. Mr. Todd refused with quiet dignity to purchase the chance of reinstatement by taking the pledge and spending a month in a home for inebriates. He preferred to retire, at once, on a quarter’s salary and a small pension.

The boys, of course, had always known that “Whisky Toddler” drank like a fish; but opinion on the staff was acutely divided. There is no question that has so many sides to it as drink, nor one about which it is so hard to arrive at any convincing conclusion. The very fact that Mr. Todd’s nose was red and his eyes were watery was, to some, a proof of his innocence. For people are sure to say that a man with a red nose and watery eyes drinks; whereas anyone may have a red nose and weak eyes without drinking, and it is horribly unfair that a man should be treated as a moral leper because of some physical infirmity. There were many, therefore, besides Mr. Plummer who believed, and still believe, that poor Todd was “hardly treated”; and poor Todd said nothing to discourage their belief.

His place was taken by a man of unprepossessing manners and abrupt activity—Pigeon was his name. There was a certain mystery about his past. Some said that he had once been a spy in the pay of the Russian police; others, that he had been a proctor’s bulldog at Oxford; others, that he had been a Scotland Yard detective. At all events, there could be no doubt that it was as a detective that he was brought by the “New Gus” to Chiltern. A porter is assumed to possess tact; but Pigeon had none—no gift of shutting his eyes on occasions when eyes are better shut. And so it came to pass that he discovered Mr. Chowdler’s Prætor smoking among the rhododendrons in Colonus, and reported him to the headmaster.

At Chiltern the captain of every house was called its “Prætor” and wielded vast authority. In a post for which character was the prime consideration, position in the school was only of secondary importance. Hence it happened that, though le Willow had with difficulty fought his way into the senior Fifth, he was Prætor of Mr. Chowdler’s house. But, though not distinguished intellectually, he was captain designate of the eleven for the succeeding year, a very fair change bowler, and a bat with a most taking style. He enjoyed the entire confidence of his housemaster and the respect of his fellows. It was regrettable, therefore, from every point of view, that he should have been smoking behind the rhododendrons in Colonus; and still more regrettable that, having been smoking, he should have been discovered.

Enough has been said already of Mr. Chowdler to make it clear that he was adamantine on the question of discipline. But it was a matter of common observation amongst his colleagues that his attitude towards offences underwent a considerable change when the offender was one of his own boys. This is a species of infirmity to which parents and housemasters are peculiarly liable. In Mr. Chowdler’s case it took the form of a conviction that, though “his lads” might be technically in the wrong, they were morally quite sound; and he always held that punishment ought to take account of the character of the offender. He was really pained by le Willow’s “thoughtlessness”; but there were extenuating circumstances. The boy was encouraged to smoke at home, and he had one of those muddled old heads that find it so difficult to draw the distinction between home and school; especially when the home is a good one. The poor old fellow had admitted to him (Chowdler), with a shake of his poor old head and a look in his poor old eyes which was really pathetic, that he knew he was a “blighted ass.” He was, in fact, just the kind of boy for whom justice should be tempered with mercy.

All this, and more, Mr. Chowdler said to the headmaster on behalf of his Prætor, and he was profoundly shocked when Mr. Flaggon, after listening attentively to the counsel for the defence, announced that he was going to deprive le Willow of his Prætorship and Prefectship, not merely temporarily, but for the term of his natural life. “I fail to see where the mercy comes in,” growled Mr. Chowdler.

“Perhaps in my not flogging him into the bargain,” replied Mr. Flaggon. “But, really, I don’t consider this a case for mercy. The boy is in a position of trust. Five days ago I called the Prefects together and spoke to them about their duties, especially the duty of setting a good example: and I mentioned smoking by name. All the circumstances aggravate the offence. I have no right to be merciful.”

“But probably he didn’t understand,” pleaded Mr. Chowdler. “You don’t know what a business it is to drive any idea into that poor, thick old head of his. The boy’s as honest as the daylight, but terribly obtuse.”

“If he can’t understand a plain speech and a plain duty,” replied Mr. Flaggon, “he is certainly not fit to exercise power.”

“You can’t prevent a boy with such athletic gifts and such a sunny nature from exercising power by any official ukase,” said Mr. Chowdler, with increasing warmth. “If you destroy his self-respect by a punishment which he feels to be unjust, you take away from him all motives for doing right; you drive him into evil courses.”

“I intend my Prefects to govern,” replied Mr. Flaggon; “and you can never get men or boys to act responsibly unless you visit grave breaches of duty on them heavily. I am sorry for le Willow, if he is all that you describe him; but I cannot alter my decision.”

“You admit then,” snapped out Mr. Chowdler, “that you are sacrificing the boy to an abstract theory.”

“I admit nothing of the kind,” said Mr. Flaggon.

A good many of the masters, who did not share Mr. Chowdler’s enthusiasm for le Willow, approved of the headmaster’s action; and, though they did not say so publicly, were not sorry to see Mr. Chowdler’s straying sheep treated for once in a way like other people’s straying sheep. But Mr. Chowdler himself made no attempt to conceal his displeasure either from masters or boys.

“I don’t call that kind of thing discipline,” he said; “I call it panic. A strong man doesn’t hit about wildly without caring where the blow falls. With all his faults, dear old Gussy was never unjust. Le Willow’s too good an old fellow at bottom to be soured for long or lose his sunny nature. But that’s how criminals are made.”

Mr. Chowdler’s views received a striking corroboration, at least in his own eyes, when, three weeks later, le Willow was caught cribbing. It is true that Mr. Bent, his Form master, had suspected him for the greater part of two terms; but, as Mr. Plummer said, suspicion proves nothing. In the midst of his grief Mr. Chowdler was almost triumphant.

“What did I tell you?” he exclaimed. “You can see now for yourselves. That’s how boys are driven into evil courses.”

But the headmaster, instead of recognising the folly of his ways and apologising to Mr. Chowdler and his ex-prætor, decided that, after this second offence, the boy could not remain in the school and must leave at the end of the Term.

Dismiss the captain of next year’s eleven, a bat with the most taking style that had been seen at Chiltern since the days of Goring who played for England, and a very fair change bowler into the bargain! All Chiltern was aghast, and even Mr. Chase, who usually had something to say on behalf of the headmaster, admitted that it was an act of doubtful wisdom.

To Mr. Chowdler it was not merely an act of doubtful wisdom, it was a travesty of justice, an outrage, a scandal—in fact almost any strong word that you can think of. When a man thinks as strongly as Mr. Chowdler thought about some gross miscarriage of justice, it is impossible for him to keep his feelings to himself; he would rather be guilty of indiscretion than of a criminal silence; and soon boys, masters, and the parents and relatives of the victim, were in full possession of Mr. Chowdler’s opinions on the subject.

Le Willow was well connected; in fact, as Mrs. Chowdler put it, he had a grandfather; and the grandfather wrote a letter to the chairman of the Council which caused that gentleman much concern. He wanted to know why the dickens they had appointed to Chiltern a headmaster who didn’t know the ABC of his profession. Expel from school a promising lad for a boyish offence of which they had all been guilty, probably, in their day! The thing was absurd. Boys and masters alike were in a state of mutiny; and he called upon the chairman to intervene.

The chairman was perplexed; for the grandfather was no ordinary grandfather but a man with a commanding name and a great social position. After some hesitation he wrote to the headmaster, disclaiming any idea of interfering, but asking for information. He wished, he said, to be in a position to contradict certain reports, unfounded no doubt, which were being circulated in the London clubs and which might damage the school.

Thus appealed to, Mr. Flaggon wrote a detailed account of the affair and of the principles which had guided his own action. He added that the tone and discipline of Chiltern were very different from what he had been led to expect, and that le Willow, besides being somewhat old for his place in the school, was not a desirable asset.

The chairman shook his head dubiously over this communication and murmured something about “new brooms” and “excess of zeal”; but he informed the grandfather with much tact that, though the Council felt great sympathy with him, they were unable to interfere in a matter that directly concerned the discipline of the school, and that any appeal for mercy must be made to the headmaster in person. As for le Willow, he was sure that the boy had a brilliant future in front of him, and he wished him every success.

And there the matter ended, except that the le Willow parents cursed Mr. Flaggon by all the le Willow gods and threatened to bring an action; which threat they were wise enough not to carry into effect. Also that Lord Chalvey withdrew his son who was entered for Mr. Chowdler’s house in the following Term. This was a contingency which Mr. Chowdler had not foreseen when he started on his campaign, and it did not help to reconcile him to the headmaster.

And, while the chairman was actually penning his reply to the duke, one wet November afternoon, Mr. Plummer and Mr. Bent were once more pacing the “Ushers’ Grind” in mackintoshes. A steady drizzle had damped their fighting spirit, and taunts that usually kindled flames had only produced a perfunctory fizzle. At last Mr. Plummer said:

“I’m afraid the boys haven’t a great respect for Flaggon.”

“I shouldn’t take Chowdler too seriously,” said Mr. Bent.

“I didn’t say Chowdler,” replied his companion; “I said the boys.”

“I know you did,” said Mr. Bent. “And I said Chowdler, because I bet that he has been telling you his story of the week—we have all heard it—to wit, how little Simpkin looked up at him with a wistful smile and said, ‘Sir, do you think the new headmaster understands anything about boys?’”

“Suppose he did!” said Mr. Plummer defiantly. “What then?”

“Only,” replied Mr. Bent, “that it isn’t a very likely thing for a boy to say, on his own. I know little Simpkin; he’s in my Form. All Chowdler’s pets are in my Form. A nasty, greasy, oily little beast. He tried ‘the wistful’ on with me once, but never again.”

“The fact that you think him oily and greasy,” retorted Mr. Plummer, “is no proof that he didn’t say it.”

“I never said it was,” cried Mr. Bent, raising his voice, “and I don’t doubt that little Simpkin did say it and will say it again till he gets another cue. What does amaze me is that, with all his experience, Chowdler has never learned that boys encourage us in our illusions by quoting at us our own pet ideas and phrases. It isn’t conscious hypocrisy—merely an instinct of self-preservation, or an amiable desire to please. They approach us, as we should approach some beast of uncertain temper, with the sounds that experience has shown to be most soothing.”

“So you have said before,” snorted Mr. Plummer. “But, anyhow, you admit that Chowdler has experience; and Flaggon has none.”

“Pooh! experience indeed!” cried Mr. Bent contemptuously. “What’s experience? A snare and a delusion, unless you can bring an unbiassed mind to bear on it; which schoolmasters never can. The man who looks at this view, for the first time, with the naked eye, sees far more of it than the man who looks at it for the hundredth time through smoked glasses. Experience is the smoke on the glasses; it’s the curse of our profession. We are all much more efficient when we’re young than we ever are afterwards. Give me the young and inexperienced man.”

“Tipham, for example,” said Mr. Plummer drily.

“Oh, Tipham’s an exception,” replied Mr. Bent airily. “Tipham never was young. He was born with a greased head, grey flannel trousers, and a terror of being thought sane. But I can tell you, Chowdler was ten times more efficient as a master fifteen years ago, when you and I first came to the school, than he is now. We all become progressively greater idiots as we grow ripe in experience.”

“Bosh!” said Mr. Plummer.

CHAPTER VIII
THE PARENTS’ COMMITTEE

On the last day of November the much-talked-of Parents’ Committee met. Mr. Flaggon’s attention had been so fully occupied by other and more pressing affairs that he had not had time to prepare for the event as carefully as he could have wished. Indeed, the purely educational problem had lately taken a less prominent place in his mind. But some dozen parents had shown themselves sufficiently interested in the proposal to promise their personal support; and, of these, seven actually put in an appearance on the appointed day. They included Lady Bellingham, a recognised authority on Women’s Education, and Sir Philip Whaley, senior partner in a great commercial house, director of several flourishing companies, and a person of considerable importance in the city. A successful stockbroker, who happened to be visiting his boy at Chiltern on the day, was pressed, reluctantly, into the service at the eleventh hour and made the numbers even. The meeting was held in the library, a handsome room that opened out of the Great Hall, and was intended to be quite informal. The masters had all been invited to attend, but, as attendance was optional, a great many of them marked their disapproval by staying away. A sense of duty, however, brought Mr. Plummer and about a dozen others to this new kind of Parliament, and Mr. Bent was present, as he expressed it, for the sheer fun of the thing.

The headmaster stated in a few words the object of the gathering, and Lady Bellingham opened the debate. Lady Bellingham was the star of the occasion, and she had come provided with a typewritten paper which she proceeded to read with evident gusto. It was rather a lengthy paper, and before it was over Sir Philip Whaley and the stockbroker were seen to yawn surreptitiously. The gist of it was that children should be brought up among beautiful things in order that what is beautiful in them may be fostered and developed. Nature is always beautiful, and in educating the young we must trust more to Nature and less to artificial restrictions. We must not interfere with a beneficent purpose, and Nature’s purposes are always beneficent. “Nursed on the great bosom of Nature” beautiful children will grow up into beautiful men and women.

When Lady Bellingham had finished, Mr. Bent, assuming his most impressive and deferential manner, asked if he might put a question.

“Certainly,” replied Lady Bellingham affably.

“I do not press,” said Mr. Bent, “for any definition of what you call ‘beautiful things,’ because that might introduce the personal element. But, when you urge that we should impose no restrictions on Nature, I foresee difficulties. Measles, for example, are a form of Nature, and of course you would not wish us to impose no restrictions on measles.”

“Of course not,” said Lady Bellingham, with amused pity.

“Then might I ask,” said Mr. Bent, “what exactly we are to understand by Nature?”

“Nature,” replied Lady Bellingham, “is impossible to define. It is too vast, too varied. But, roughly speaking, whatever is beautiful is natural, and whatever is ugly is unnatural.”

“I see,” said Mr. Bent.

Then Sir Philip Whaley, who had long been chafing under an enforced silence, took up his parable and spoke. Sir Philip possessed, in an unusual degree, the charm of English oratory—the gift, that is, of emphasising and repeating the obvious and connecting his rounded phrases with ornamental “ums” and “ers.”

“You must look at education,” he began, “from what I venture to call the business point of view. You schoolmasters are too inclined, if you will forgive me for saying so, to ignore, to leave out of account, the—um—er—the business point of view. But, if you are going to think Imperially, if, that is, you are going to think in terms of Empire, in terms, I say, of Empire, you cannot leave the business point of view out of account—um—er—you must take it into your calculations. For, behind the Imperial problem, lies the business problem. We city men are familiar with this truth; it is a matter of common knowledge amongst us; but it is one of the things that you schoolmasters, if you will pardon me for saying so, are inclined to leave out of account.”

“You are forgetting Nature,” interrupted Lady Bellingham.

“Pardon me, madam,” replied Sir Philip, “I am not forgetting Nature, but I am looking at it from the practical point of view—from what I have ventured to call the business point of view. Let me give you a concrete instance of what I mean.” Here Sir Philip dropped his voice to a confidential tone. “When I have a post in my office to fill—I am speaking, mind you, of a post with prospects attached to it, a real chance for a young fellow—um—er—well, what kind of a man do I want to fill it? A scholar? No. A man who can read Homer and write Latin verses? No. I am saying nothing against Homer as Homer, mark you, but I am considering the thing from the practical point of view. What I want is a man who has learned shorthand and can write commercial French—um—er—and I don’t find him—that’s the point—I don’t find him in the public schools or the universities; as often as not I am obliged in the end to bring in a foreigner—a German. That’s where the Germans are ahead of us. Well, there you have it in a nutshell. The public schools of England are not seriously training their boys to take their proper place in the business life of the Empire; and the Germans are. That,” he concluded, bringing his fist down on the table in front of him, “that is what I mean by saying that you ought to look at education from the business point of view. I hope I have made myself clear.”

Sir Philip wiped his brow and looked around with a complacent smile. The headmaster, whose face while the city oracle was speaking had been a study, made no comment; but Mr. Bent leaned forward with knitted brows and began:

“I have been much interested in what Sir Philip Whaley has been telling us, but I am not sure whether I interpret him correctly. Do I understand him to say that he wishes shorthand and commercial French to form a necessary part of the school curriculum?”

“I do,” said Sir Philip, “most certainly I do.”

“I realise,” continued Mr. Bent, “that for anybody who is aspiring to a post in Sir Philip Whaley’s office, shorthand and commercial French are a necessary branch of culture. But what about the boys who are going in for the learned or other professions—the Church, for example? Might not commercial French be, to a future bishop, what Homer is to Sir Philip himself, an ornamental but irrelevant accomplishment? And we must not ignore the bishops.”

“You must specialise,” said Sir Philip grandly. “You must be prepared to fit every boy with the special knowledge that he—um—er—will require in the profession of his choice. You schoolmasters, if you will forgive me for saying so, do not sufficiently realise the importance of specialising.”

“The difficulty of specialising beyond a certain point,” said Mr. Flaggon, “lies in the additional expense: and public school education is costly enough already. Our problem is to find a common basis of education for all.”

Sir Philip was not accustomed to have his judgment disputed, and he met the objection by repeating his previous remarks with amplifications. When he had finished for the second time, a Mrs. Sparrow, who had been making chirruping little noises to herself all the while, seized the opportunity to say that, for want of somebody better, she had come to represent the mothers’ point of view; and what mothers cared most about were just the little things that men so often didn’t notice. She was sure that the food was all that could be wished for or desired, and she wasn’t for a moment complaining about that. But she did think that the boys weren’t given enough time to eat it in. She was horrified at the way her own boy had learned to gobble his food in the holidays, and all doctors were agreed about the importance of eating slowly and biting properly. That was one thing. And, then, she did think that, for a big school, the sick-house was rather a dreary place—such bare unfurnished rooms and floors. When her boy was ill last Easter Term and she came down to see him, she went away feeling quite depressed. Of course everybody was most kind, and she knew that the school doctor was a very clever man; but she did think that the sick-house might be made a little more cheerful. That was the mothers’ point of view, and she hoped that Mr. Flaggon would not mind her putting it; for, after all a mother did know more about her own children than anybody else did.

Mr. Flaggon said that he was always delighted to hear what the mothers had to say, and he would give due weight to Mrs. Sparrow’s suggestions; but he thought that they were perhaps straying a little beyond the scope of the meeting, and he invited the other parents to give their view on the main subject under discussion, namely, education.

The other parents, thus appealed to, explained that they had come to listen and not to talk; but the stockbroker, who had from the first exhibited symptoms of acute boredom, remarked that, as he was there, he might as well say what he knew that most people thought, though apparently they were afraid to say so. “If you ask me,” he said, leaning back in his chair and thrusting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, “if you ask me, I don’t think it matters a rap what you teach ’em. When I was at school, I never did a stroke of work—had a jolly good time, and I can’t say that I’m sorry for it. And I’m worth now” (here Mr. Flaggon winced visibly)—“well, it doesn’t matter what I’m worth; but I know that I could buy up half the swots—that’s what we used to call them in my days—half the swots who worked ’emselves silly over their Latin and Greek and all that sort of gibberish. And when I sent my youngster here, I said to him: ‘You may work if you like; you can please yourself about that, and it’s a point you’ll have to settle with your masters; but, if you want to please your dad, remember that I’d a da—jolly sight sooner see you head of your eleven than head of the school.’ That’s what I said; and I don’t believe, Mr. Headmaster, that you’ve got a finer little sportsman in your school than my youngster.”

Long before the discussion was over Mr. Flaggon realised that it had been a mistake and would only give the enemy cause to blaspheme. And he was not mistaken. Lady Bellingham was the joy of Common Room for weeks afterwards, and it was humorously assumed that she had made a convert of the headmaster. When a new chimney appeared on the Lodge, everybody said, “Flaggon is surrounding us with beautiful things”; when the rhododendrons at the far end of Colonus were thinned out, it was, “Flaggon is uncovering the great bosom of Nature.” And again, when a notice came round about the wearing of great-coats, somebody remarked that Flaggon was looking at education from the mothers’ point of view. Mr. Chowdler, who had not been present at the meeting, picked up all the best things and added them to his repertory. In fact there was a regular carnival of wit, and the wags had the time of their lives.

Only Mr. Bent affected to be agreeably surprised. “They were,” he said, “an unusually intelligent set of parents—quite unusually intelligent. Lady Bellingham, of course, talked an amazing lot of drivel; you would expect that from a woman. Still, she knows a great deal more than Chowdler does; for, though she can’t express herself rationally, she does realise in a vague way that beauty is a form of truth, and that education ought to mean something more than Balbus-built-a-wall and the off-theory. Even Mr.—I can’t remember his name—the stockbroker, has grasped what education is not; which is more than Chowdler ever has. They offered him an inferior substitute at the school where he spent his dazzling youth, and, with the intuition of genius, he divined that it was not worth his acceptance. And probably it wasn’t. And, then, the silent ones! How seldom you find four people in any given room who are wise enough to keep silence about a subject of which they know nothing. Whaley was the only really hopeless failure. Yes, they certainly were an unusually intelligent set of parents.”

“That’s all very well,” protested Mr. Plummer, “but if I had said so, you would have cursed me for my unreasoning optimism and made out that I was blinded by my infatuation for the middle classes.”