Chips…”
Chips sat by the fire again, with those words echoing along the corridors
of his mind. “Good-bye, Mr. Chips…” An old leg-pull, to make new boys think
that his name was really Chips; the joke was almost traditional. He did not
mind. “Good-bye, Mr. Chips…” He remembered that on the eve of his wedding
day Kathie had used that same phrase, mocking him gently for the seriousness
he had had in those days. He thought: Nobody would call me serious today,
that’s very certain…
Suddenly the tears began to roll down his cheeks—an old man’s
failing; silly, perhaps, but he couldn’t help it. He felt very tired; talking
to Linford like that had quite exhausted him. But he was glad he had met
Linford. Nice boy. Would do well.
Over the fog-laden air came the bell for call-over, tremulous and muffled.
Chips looked at the window, graying into twilight; it was time to light up.
But as soon as he began to move he felt that he couldn’t; he was too tired;
and, anyhow, it didn’t matter. He leaned back in his chair. No chicken
—eh, well—that was true enough. And it had been amusing about
Linford. A neat score off the jokers who had sent the boy over. Good-bye, Mr.
Chips… odd, though, that he should have said it just like that…
When he awoke, for he seemed to have been asleep, he found
himself in bed; and Merivale was there, stooping over him and smiling. “Well,
you old ruffian —feeling all right? That was a fine shock you gave
us!”
Chips murmured, after a pause, and in a voice that surprised him by its
weakness: “Why—um—what—what has happened?”
“Merely that you threw a faint. Mrs. Wickett came in and found you—
lucky she did. You’re all right now. Take it easy. Sleep again if you feel
inclined.”
He was glad someone had suggested such a good idea. He felt so weak that
he wasn’t even puzzled by the details of the business—how they had got
him upstairs, what Mrs. Wickett had said, and so on. But then, suddenly, at
the other side of the bed, he saw Mrs. Wickett. She was smiling. He thought:
God bless my soul, what’s she doing up here? And then, in the shadows behind
Merivale, he saw Cartwright, the new Head (he thought of him as “new,” even
though he had been at Brookfield since 1919), and old Buffles, commonly
called “Roddy.” Funny, the way they were all here. He felt: Anyhow, I can’t
be bothered to wonder why about anything. I’m going to go to sleep.
But it wasn’t sleep, and it wasn’t quite wakefulness, either; it was a
sort of in-between state, full of dreams and faces and voices.
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