When he had read and re-read the letter and marked it “private,” he dispatched it by a messenger and anxiously awaited the reply.
And he did not have long to wait. Whenever his indiscretions were called in question, Mr. Chowdler made great play with the word “gossip.” The headmaster, said Mr. Chowdler, had evidently been listening to gossip, and would do well to be more shy of it in the future. He (Mr. Chowdler) had nothing to reproach himself with, and he refused to be held responsible for other folk’s mistakes. His advice had always been at the service of the headmaster, but it had been consistently ignored. People must lie in their beds as they make them.
The headmaster sighed as he read this answer to his appeal, but he felt that nothing would be gained by continuing the correspondence or dotting the “i’s.” He hoped against hope that, though Mr. Chowdler was incapable of admitting himself to be in the wrong, he would lay the admonition to heart and be more cautious in the future.
Mr. Flaggon spent the greater part of the holidays at Chiltern, working a rough draft of a new curriculum and mastering a great mass of detail. It was rumoured that his mother and sister were coming to live with him in the summer; but at present they were wintering abroad, and Mr. Flaggon was alone. In the course of the holidays he became more closely acquainted with Mr. Bent. The two men, each out for a solitary walk, had come from opposite footpaths into the same lane. Neither was in search of company, but, as both were obviously bound in the same direction, escape was impossible.
“Hullo!” said Mr. Flaggon. “I didn’t know you were here still, Bent. I thought you were sure to be in Switzerland.”
“No,” said Mr. Bent; “I have shed my youthful indiscretions. I still can’t stand Chiltern in the Easter or summer holidays, but I have at last realised, with infinite relief, that at Christmas no place is so attractive as one’s own fireside. It saves me a world of anxious thought and planning. I just run up to town for the last week-end, and that gives me the feeling, necessary to the pedagogue, of having been away and seen things.”
Mr. Flaggon had not had time or opportunity to become at all intimate with any of his staff. He was, as we have said, by nature rather shy and reticent, and the consciousness of much latent hostility had made advances unusually difficult. There had, of course, been formal calls and dinner-parties; but neither calls nor dinner-parties lend themselves to the formation of friendships.
Mr. Bent had been a puzzle to him. The flippancy of his tone and manner at masters’ meetings had often been annoying; but he had sometimes said things which suggested ideals and a breadth of view at variance with his apparent cynicism. When, therefore, as they were passing his house, Mr. Bent said, “Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea?” Mr. Flaggon accepted the invitation. That walk and tea led to other walks and other teas. Mr. Bent recognised in the headmaster a man of great mental alertness and wide interests; and Mr. Flaggon discovered an unexpectedly serious vein in his companion, veiled, as it often was, under an ironic humour. As conversation became more intimate, Mr. Bent ventured one day to express his inner feelings about Chiltern and the Lanchester tradition.
“We are haunted here,” he said, “as you have doubtless observed, by the ghost of greatness; and it won’t let us speak, or think, or do. Nothing is so paralysing (the preachers call it inspiring) as the memory of a great man. If I want a new Latin prose book, I can’t have it because Dr. Lanchester taught out of the old one; and if I want a window that will open, it is impossible because Lanchester didn’t believe in ventilation. This, of course, is fearful heresy, and men have died on the scaffold for less.”
“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Flaggon with a laugh, “that you are so prejudiced against Lanchester, because I had a proposal to make to you. I’ve just come into possession of some papers of his, and I am going to ask you to look through them for me and see if they contain anything of real interest. I simply haven’t got time myself.”