v If 1 11 1 'adi lion ; mrnium : j liPii | fflttM ( V i 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 vi PREFACE — 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 CHAPTER PAGE I. The Election 1 II. Mr. Flaggon Pays a Visit .... 14 III. Exit Dr. Gussy 29 IV. The First Skirmish 43 V. Mr. Tipham 56 VI. The Cloven Hoof 69 VII. The Affair of Le Willow .... 79 VIII. The Parents' Committee .... 92 IX. " God's in His Heaven " . . . .103 X. The Lanchester Letters .... 114 XI. Mr. Chowdler Wins a Battle and Meets with a Rebuff 126 XII. The Explosion 139 XIII. In Dark Places 151 XIV. The Day of Decision 164 XV. Aftermath . 176 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION CHAPTER I THE ELECTION Chiltern School lies just outside the sleepy little town of the same name. Its motto is " Providendo nee 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 2 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION with creepers. Later generations have re- lieved the monotony by adding blocks of buildings in variegated brick, and nowhere can the genius of Sir George Honeyniead, 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 per- petuate 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 under- stood 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 THE ELECTION 3 of Wykehani 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. lid. 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 workiug 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 4 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 bene- factions. As this belief is entirely without foundation, it is likely to be lasting. The country round Chiltern is pretty if THE ELECTION 5 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 land- scape 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 anaemic 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 6 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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, pro- vides the school with a unique swimming- bath (vide prospectus). Under Dr. Gussy's thoughtful regime the banks of this stream were planted thickly with rhododendrons and other flowering shrubs, which afford a reason- ably 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 THE ELECTION 7 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 Lan- chester 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 memoiy of Abraham Lanchester. The Lanchester tradition permeates the place like an atmo- sphere, invisible but stimulating. It is diffi- cult 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 8 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 - n o w - and - ever - shall - be attitude towards life that appeals to their best conserva- tive 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 made 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 THE ELECTION 9 renewed. Chiltern claims to receive a con- tinuous 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 extinc- tion. After a reign of four-and-twenty years, to all outward appearance peaceful and pros- perous, 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 tits of absent-mindedness to which govern- ing 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 B 10 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 Grand- borough, 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 THE ELECTION 11 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 conten- tion 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 alterna- tive 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 after- noon, 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 12 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 THE ELECTION 13 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 announce- ment to the school in the Great Hall ; and, when he did so, it was with the voice and gestures of the Koman praetor 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. PLAGGON 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 when- ever 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 re- consider 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 merelysaid, " /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 MR. FLAGGON PAYS A VISIT 15 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 regime, 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 begin- niDg of a new era and the death-blow to an antiquated tradition. Even a leading 16 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION Conservative journal, which should have known better, described the election as a daring but interesting experiment, and pro- ceeded 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 MR. FLAGGON PAYS A VISIT 17 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 18 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION fighting for its own sake and who triumphed through the sheer exhaustion of his enemies ; and a Term in which he did not en^a^e 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 ME. FLAGGON PAYS A VISIT 19 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 command- ing 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 arti- culation. 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 com- mentary 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 compara- tive peace by an irritable submission. Mrs. Chowdler, an obtuse little woman who wor- shipped her husband and imagined that everybody at Chiltern shared her admira- tion, 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 20 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 arrange- ment 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 in- auspicious ; 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 ME. FLAGGON PAYS A VISIT 21 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-/-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 22 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 furni- ture ; 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 fire- place ; " 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 MR. FLAGGON PAYS A VISIT 23 bring herself to shake hands with the sup- planter 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 24 THE LANCH ESTER TRADITION 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 con- spiracy, 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 MR. FLAGGON PAYS A VISIT 25 down opposite the guest of the evening and opened the main attack. 11 1 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." 26 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION "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 some- thing 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 MR. FLAGGON PAYS A VISIT 27 sentimental order and related how small boys had looked up at him wistfully, or old boys had grasped his hand with mauJy 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 : 28 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION " 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 Praetorium, 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, 11 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 30 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 im- portant 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. EXIT DR. GUSSY 31 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 32 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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, when- ever 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 EXIT DR. GUSSY 33 to duty which had always been character- istic 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 recherche 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 34 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 fiancee 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 EXIT DR. GUSSY 35 six liqueurs. Dr. Gussy was placed at the head of the table, with Mr. Chase on his right aud 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 mur- muring " 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) pic- turesquely 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 36 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 insen- sible 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 con- nivance. 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 The Badger = Mr. Bent ; the Mink = Mr. Grady. EXIT DR. GUSSY 37 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 house- masters 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 im- possible 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 unex- pected 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 UDpleasant task, and 38 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION his sense of duty was sharpened by a strong personal dislike of Mrs. and the youngest Miss Gussy. He therefore appeared in the head- master's study after lunch, wearing the particular expression which Dr. Gussy had learned to associate with some of the un- pleasanter 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 naive and not addicted to self-analysis, he had throughly 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 ringers 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 EXIT DR. GUSSY 39 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 im- pressively, " 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, con- fessed 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 40 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 con- cert 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 EXIT DR. GUSSY 41 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 be 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 D 42 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION they sang in different keys ; so that the towns- people 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 circum- stances 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 44 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 des- perately 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 THE FIRST SKIRMISH 45 no practical experience of that large and wealthy class of people who have been well oif 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 acquaint- ance 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 46 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 appoint- ment 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 con- sidered himself a possible headmaster, and an opportunity of ganging how that world would regard his claims. Chiltern, as we have seen, had no hesitation in brand in g his preten- sions 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- THE FIRST SKIRMISH 47 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 indi- vidual 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 educa- tional one which would claim the attention of a headmaster. He had always taken on trust the virtues that are considered in- herent in the public school system — loyalty, discipline, gentlemanly behaviour, and a subordination of the individual will to the interests of the community. In his under- graduate days he had often experienced an absurd sensation of being considered morally, as well as socially, inferior to the more fortunate 48 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 Chilter- nians, even higher. And it had special charac- teristics 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 manu- facturers 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 attain- ments 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 blase voices saying : THE FIRST SKIRMISH 49 " Is that the new Gus ? " 11 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 con- firmed 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 im- pressive 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 defi- nitions, 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 50 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 mani- festations 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. Hence- forward, the life of duty, and faith in the indi- vidual 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, in- stinctively 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 con- gregation. 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. THE FIKST SKIRMISH 51 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 after- wards in the great quadrangle under the shadow of Dr. Lauchester'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 52 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION 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 some- body. 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 THE FIRST SKIRMISH 53 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 54 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION that which is good ! Fortunately, and God be praised for it, they had in that place a great example by which to guide their en- deavours — Abraham Lanchcster, 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 tradi- tion, 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 con- tinually to see how he was taking it. Mrs. Chowdler, who watched him narrowly, main- tained 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. THE FIRST SKIRMISH 55 Mr. Chowdler's effort was much appreci- ated 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. TTPHAM It must be admitted that Mr. Flaggon was not uniformly lucky in his early experiments. This was notably the case in his first appoint- ment 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 reinforc- ing, 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 dis- agreeable way, and, secondly, that life in the twentieth century is governed by two con- flicting forces — convention, which is always MR. TIPHAM 57 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 58 THE LANCHESTER TRADITION clown 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 Chil- tern by its unblushing oestheticism. 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 ! ME. TIPIIAM 5