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

1931… 1932…

“What do you think of Hoover, sir?”

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

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

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

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

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

Laughter.

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

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

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

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

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

“It’s an organ, sir—a cinema organ.”

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

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

CHAPTER 17

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

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

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

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

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

“I was told you wanted me, sir.”

Chips smiled. An old joke—an old leg-pull, and he, of all people, having made so many old jokes in his time, ought not to complain. And it amused him to cap their joke, as it were, with one of his own; to let them see that he could keep his end up, even yet. So he said, with eyes twinkling: “Quite right, my boy.