At the door he turned and said: “I don’t—
umph—intend to resign—and you can—umph—do what you
like about it!”
Looking back upon that scene in the calm perspective of a quarter of a
century, Chips could find it in his heart to feel a little sorry for Ralston.
Particularly when, as it happened, Ralston had been in such complete
ignorance of the forces he was dealing with. So, for that matter, had Chips
himself. Neither had correctly estimated the toughness of Brookfield
tradition, and its readiness to defend itself and its defenders. For it had
so chanced that a small boy, waiting to see Ralston that morning, had been
listening outside the door during the whole of the interview; he had been
thrilled by it, naturally, and had told his friends. Some of these, in a
surprisingly short time, had told their parents; so that very soon it was
common knowledge that Ralston had insulted Chips and had demanded his
resignation. The amazing result was a spontaneous outburst of sympathy and
partisanship such as Chips, in his wildest dreams, had never envisaged. He
found, rather to his astonishment, that Ralston was thoroughly unpopular; he
was feared and respected, but not liked; and in this issue of Chips the
dislike rose to a point where it conquered fear and demolished even respect.
There was talk of having some kind of public riot in the School if Ralston
succeeded in banishing Chips. The masters, many of them young men who agreed
that Chips was hopelessly old-fashioned, rallied round him nevertheless
because they hated Ralston’s slave driving and saw in the old veteran a
likely champion. And one day the Chairman of the Governors, Sir John Rivers,
visited Brookfield, ignored Ralston, and went direct to Chips. “A fine
fellow, Rivers,” Chips would say, telling the story to Mrs. Wickett for the
dozenth time. “Not—umph—a very brilliant boy in class. I remember
he could never—umph—master his verbs. And now —umph—I
see in the papers—they’ve made him— umph—a baronet. It just
shows you—umph—it just shows you.”
Sir John had said, on that morning in 1908, taking Chips by the arm as
they walked round the deserted cricket pitches: “Chips, old boy, I hear
you’ve been having the deuce of a row with Ralston. Sorry to hear about it,
for your sake—but I want you to know that the Governors are with you to
a man. We don’t like the fellow a great deal. Very clever and all that, but a
bit too clever, if you ask me. Claims to have doubled the School’s endowment
funds by some monkeying on the Stock Exchange. Dare say he has, but a chap
like that wants watching. So if he starts chucking his weight about with you,
tell him very politely he can go to the devil. The Governors don’t want you
to resign. Brookfield wouldn’t be the same without you, and they know it. We
all know it. You can stay here till you’re a hundred if you feel like
it—indeed, it’s our hope that you will.”
And at that—both then and often when he recounted it afterward
—Chips broke down.
So he stayed on at Brookfield, having as little to do with
Ralston as possible. And in 1911 Ralston left, “to better himself”; he was
offered the headship of one of the greater public schools. His successor was
a man named Chatteris, whom Chips liked; he was even younger than Ralston had
been —thirty-four. He was supposed to be very brilliant; at any rate,
he was modern (Natural Sciences Tripos), friendly, and sympathetic.
Recognizing in Chips a Brookfield institution, he courteously and wisely
accepted the situation.
In 1913 Chips had had bronchitis and was off duty for nearly the whole of
the winter term. It was that which made him decide to resign that summer,
when he was sixty-five. After all, it was a good, ripe age; and Ralston’s
straight words had, in some ways, had an effect.
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