Fathers of Men

“Very good of you, I’m sure!”

“That wasn’t why I came,” said Chips, braced though stung by this reception. He had shut the door behind him. He walked round the bed with the extremely determined air of one in whom determination was not a habit.

“Well, why did you come?” inquired Jan, though he was beginning to guess.

“You did a thing I couldn’t have believed you’d do!”

“Many things, it seems.”

“I’m only thinking of one. The others don’t concern me. You went into my locker and – and broke into the house money-box!”

“I left you something worth five times as much, and I owned what I’d done in black and white.”

“I know that. Here’s your watch and your I.O.U. I found them after chapel this morning.”

Jan took his treasure eagerly, laid it on the dressing-table, and produced his packet of coins from one of the small side drawers.

“And here’s your money,” said he. “You’d better count it; you won’t find a sixpence missing.”

Chips stared at him with round eyes.

“But what on earth did you borrow it for?”

“That’s my business,” said Jan, in the same tone as before, though Chips had changed his.

“I don’t know how you knew I had all this money. It isn’t usual late in the term like this, when all the subs. have been banked long ago.”

Jan showed no disposition to explain the deed.

“This is my business, you know,” persisted Chips.

“Oh! is it? Then I don’t mind telling you I heard you filling your precious coffers after dinner.”

It was Chips’s own term for the money-box in which as captain of the house he placed the various house subscriptions as he received them. He looked distressed.

“I was afraid you must have heard me.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“I hoped you hadn’t.”

“What difference does it make?”

“You heard me with the money, and yet you couldn’t come in and ask me to lend it to you.”

“I should like to have seen you do it!”

“The money was for something special, Jan.”

“I thought it was.”

“Half the house had just been giving me their allowances, but some had got more from home expressly.”

“Yet you pretend you’d have let me touch it!”

Chips bore this taunt without heat, yet with a treacherous lip.

“I would, Jan, every penny of it.”

“Why should you?”

“Because it was yours already! It was only for something we were all going to give you because of – because of those cups we got through you – and – and everything else you’ve done for the house, Jan!”

An emotional dog, this Chips, he still had the sense to see that it was not for him to show emotion then, and the self-control to act up to his lights. But he could not help thrusting the packet back towards Jan, as much as to say that it was still his and he must really take it with the good wishes he now needed more than ever. Not a word of the kind from his lips, and yet every syllable in his eyes and gestures. But Jan only shook his head, wheeled round, and stood looking down into the street.

CHAPTER XXIX

CHIPS AND JAN

Anybody entering the room just then would have smelt bad blood between the fellow looking out of the window and the other fellow sitting on the edge of the bed. Jan’s whole attitude was one of injury, and Chips looked thoroughly guilty of a grave offence against the laws of friendship. Even when Jan turned round it was with the glare which is the first skin over an Englishman’s wound; only a hoarse solicitude of tone confessed the wound self-inflicted, and the visitor a bringer of balm hardly to be borne.

“I suppose you know what’s happened, Chips?”

“I don’t know much.”

“Not that I’m – going?”

“That’s about all.”

“Isn’t it enough, Chips?”

“No. I want to know why.”

Jan’s look grew searching.

“If Heriot told you so much – ”

“He didn’t till I pressed him.”

“Why should you have pressed him, Chips? What had you heard?”

“Only something they were saying in the Sixth Form Room; there’s nothing really got about yet.”

“You might tell me what they’re saying! I – I don’t want to be made out ever so much worse than I am.”

That was not quite the case. He wanted to know whether there was any movement, or even any strong feeling, in his favour; but it was a sudden want, and he could not bring himself to clothe it in words. It was his prototype’s hope of a reprieve, entertained with as little reason, more as a passing irresistible thought.

“They say there was nothing the matter with you yesterday afternoon.”