“I’m not going to particularise,” said Mr. Plummer, “but I distrust Flaggon’s whole attitude; especially in a man who has no experience. The boys are discontented, the staff is divided, the numbers are down, and we’re all wondering where it’s going to end.”
“‘Ye fools and uncircumcised in heart and mind,’” burst out Mr. Bent, “‘ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.’”
“That’s blasphemous,” cried Mr. Plummer.
“I believe that’s what they said of Stephen,” replied Mr. Bent, recovering his composure. “But, as a matter of fact, I was quoting from an unpublished letter of Lanchester’s; and he happened to be speaking of an eighteenth-century Chowdler.”
CHAPTER XIII
IN DARK PLACES
It was obviously to the interest of all parties that the appeal should be settled as soon as possible. But the Council showed no haste in coming to a decision. The delay was ominous, for it seemed to indicate that they regarded the question as an open one.
This being so, Mr. Pounderly and several of his senior colleagues were anxious that the staff should take combined action. There was no doubt in Mr. Pounderly’s mind as to what form the combined action should take. “If,” he said, “the policy of cutting off the heads of the tallest lilies receives official sanction, it will not stop with Chowdler. The lives and fortunes of all of us are at stake. It is most important that at this crisis the staff should show a united front.”
It took many hours of patient argument to persuade Mr. Pounderly that the front of the staff was not, and could not be, united; and, when the unpalatable truth was at last forced in upon him, he went about his daily duties once more wringing his hands and whispering, “lamentable, lamentable.”
However, he was to have an opportunity of expressing his own views fully and in an influential quarter. Mr. Benison-Benison, a local magnate and a member of the Council, had determined to get to the bottom of things for himself. Mr. Benison-Benison was one of those honest and incapable men whom the British public delights to honour, and his idea of getting to the bottom of things was to give an impartial hearing to one side only. It was the method he had always adopted in forming his opinions on political or theological questions; and he prided himself on his freedom from prejudice. “I always make a point of studying any controversial topic,” he would say, “before I make up my mind about it.” Consequently, when he set to work to master the Chiltern problem, he could think of no better way of doing so than by interviewing personally Mr. Chowdler and his friends. At much physical inconvenience to himself, for he was crippled at the moment by rheumatism, he drove over to Chiltern, had a long talk with Mr. Chowdler, and, at that gentleman’s suggestion, had separate interviews also with Mr. Pounderly, Mr. Black, Mr. Beadle, and some others of the faction. And, as a result of it all, he carried away “a very strong impression” that Mr. Chowdler stood for the best interests of the school, that Mr. Flaggon was the wrong man in the wrong place, and that the masters, as a body, would be very glad to see the last of him. And this impression received a striking corroboration from an entirely unprejudiced quarter. Mr. Benison-Benison had occasion to call, on his return journey, at Thrale’s, the local motor and motor-cycle shop; and, in answer to some discreet feelers, Mr. Thrale became voluble and stated confidently that Mr. Flaggon was letting down the school “terrible” and ruining the town, and that the citizens looked confidently to the Council to set matters straight over “this here appeal that they talk of.”
But, while the issue was still in doubt and Chiltern was humming with excited gossip, events occurred which turned all thoughts for the moment into other channels.