CHAPTER XVAFTERMATH
Mr. Chowdlertook the blow standing. “What else could you expect,” he said contemptuously, “from such a Council! Like master, like man!” He did not even break down when his house gave him an ovation at prayers, such as might have greeted a conqueror. It was not so much a demonstration against the headmaster as a display of tribal loyalty to a fallen chief; and it had its touch of chivalry.
Mrs. Chowdler was completely bewildered. She could not understand how anybody, having to choose between Harry and that dreadful Mr. Flaggon, could fail to choose Harry. But she played up to her husband nobly. “Of course,” she said, “we never expected anything else; but Harry felt that it was his duty to give the Council a last chance of saving the school. They have rejected it, and that is the end of Chiltern.” Needless to say, nobody contradicted her, and she was the object of much silent sympathy.
Some people supposed, and many hoped, that, when the verdict was given against him, Mr. Chowdler would leave at once or at least withdraw from active life; and the headmaster allowed it to be known in the Chowdler circle, through Mr. Chase, that if such a step were contemplated everything would be done to make it easy. But Mr. Chowdler preferred to die fighting. In deference to the entreaties of his friends, he did indeed absent himself from masters’ meetings; but, otherwise, his presence was as much felt, his voice as often heard, as ever. No martyr has ever stood at the stake with a prouder or more defiant mien.
Now a martyrdom is always an unpleasant business for others than the victim; and one of the spectators who felt the unpleasantness most acutely was Mr. Bent. Mr. Bent repudiated the title of sportsman, but he had scruples and susceptibilities of his own. As unacknowledged heir to Mr. Chowdler’s house he found his position a delicate one, and he hesitated to proclaim his right to the succession while Mr. Chowdler was so very much alive. It would have been comparatively easy to speak the word while the battle was still raging and the issue in doubt; but he had missed the psychological moment, and to speak it now, smacked too much of a mean triumph over a fallen foe. Therefore, when people wondered in his presence who wouldsucceed to the house, he held his peace and felt a little like a boy who had committed an offence and fears to own up to it. The situation was particularly awkward, because it was high time that he should be making arrangements for moving in; and the holidays were short.
His friend Plummer put a finger, inadvertently, one afternoon on the raw place and received a disagreeable shock.
“I wonder,” he said, “who will get Chowdler’s house. It’s very tactful of Flaggon to keep it in abeyance; but he’llhaveto make the appointment soon—certainly before the end of Term.”
“Perhaps it’ll beme,” said Mr. Bent, colouring slightly.
“Impossible!” cried Mr. Plummer in a voice of genuine alarm. “You’re joking, I hope.”
“Why impossible, pray?” asked Mr. Bent, in tones of unusual chilliness.
“Why, because ...” replied Mr. Plummer irritably, “... it’s really very difficult to explain ... but of all people you’re the very last who ought to succeed Chowdler. Think what people would say!”
“Whatwould they say?” asked Mr. Bent doggedly.
The task of enlightening an obtuse friend as to what people are saying of him is adelicate one; and Mr. Plummer couldn’t help thinking that Bent was singularly and unexpectedly obtuse.
“Well, of course,” he began, “ithasbeen said by ill-natured people—when you became a Flaggonite, you know, and seemed to be seeing a good deal of him, that.... Well, in fact, that you had an axe of your own to grind, and wanted——”
“The women, I suppose,” interrupted Mr. Bent.
“I expect so,” Mr. Plummer admitted.
Mr. Bent had always suspected that something of this kind would be said. But it is one thing to have disagreeable suspicions, and another to hear them confirmed. He looked pained, and said after a short pause:
“And do you believe it?”
“Of course not,” cried Mr. Plummer. “Nobody who knows you would believe anything so ridiculous for the moment.”
“Then I don’t see why I should mind,” said Mr. Bent.
“But, my dear fellow,” protested Mr. Plummer, “you can surely see ... and then there are the boys. Have you thought about them? Everybody knows—or at least thinks—that you have a special ‘down’ on that house; and the boys——”
“You mean they’ll fight?” suggested Mr. Bent.
“Undoubtedly,” replied his friend.
“Good!” cried Mr. Bent. “Excellent! Then there’llbea fight; that’s all. It will be the making of me; and, by the Lord Harry, I’ll smash ’em.”
There was only one other incident in the Term that could be called at all sensational. At the last masters’ meeting, about a week before the holidays, Mr. Flaggon distributed some printed papers, which were found to be a rough draft of the summer hours for Sunday, and a proposed new curriculum. “I meant you to have these before,” he said, “but I fear I have been too busy. I propose to discuss the whole question early next Term.”
Mr. Beadle buried his head in his hands but said nothing; and almost everybody felt a slight shock of pained surprise. This was surely pushing the claims of the conqueror ungenerously far! They had accepted their new headmaster—had even begun to discover qualities in him which extorted admiration. But they expected that he, in his turn, would make concessions, come at least part of the way to meet them; whereas, to choose this particular moment for securing their tacit assent to disputed principles, seemed an unfair use of a delicate situation and peculiar circumstances. And it was inevitable that they should think so; for, as Mr. Bent observed, they could not understandthat what they were willing to accept as the end, was to Mr. Flaggon only the beginning.
The remaining days of the Term lingered like an unwelcome guest who does not know how to take his leave. Everybody was nervously anxious to have got through without further shocks or excitement, to close a tragic chapter and plunge into the waters of oblivion before beginning a new page. For the strain of the past weeks had been almost intolerable.
And the end came at length, and in a gloom that made the last chapel seem like a funeral service. Dotted about among the congregation were the boys who were leaving under a cloud, and, in his stall on the south wall of the nave, sat Mr. Chowdler, red, unhappy, and defiant. Though he was convinced of the necessity, Mr. Flaggon could not but feel the pity of it all; indeed, for a moment, he experienced the sensations of a humane executioner in the presence of his victims. And worse was to come. For, as he knelt for the last time in the school chapel, Mr. Chowdler was suddenly overpowered by his emotions, and his broad shoulders shook with the sobs that he was powerless to control. It was not remorse; it was not even regret for anything he had done. Something there was of the bitterness of defeat, and something of the grief of a sanguine man who has lostan only child. Mr. Chowdler had loved Chiltern with all the strength of a robust and unimaginative nature; and, in a few short months, he had seen his roots in the past and his heritage in the future destroyed, utterly and for ever. The holy places had been defiled and Jerusalem made a heap of stones.
The headmaster saw and understood; and he had to make an unusual effort before he was able to pronounce the blessing.
With the departure of Mr. Chowdler the Lanchester tradition, according to one school of thought, received its death-blow. According to another, it was really disinterred and given a new lease of life; and a pamphlet containing some hitherto unpublished letters of the great man, which can be obtained at the school stationer’s, lends some colour to this view.
What Mr. Flaggon made of Chiltern and how Mr. Bent fared with his house, may, possibly, be told hereafter. For the present we will leave them to fight out their battles under the eyes of watchful colleagues and the shadow of Dr. Lanchester’s statue in the great quadrangle.
THE END
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