The Lanchester tradition

When Term began again towards the end of January, Mr. Tipham and his many-coloured scarf were no longer a feature of Chiltern. He had transferred himself to Cambridge and tutorial work, feeling possibly that Cleopas College and the undergraduate were in closer touch with Nature than Chiltern and the public schoolboy. Anyhow he was gone, and his place had been taken by a young man of less pronounced views, who wore spectacles and listened deferentially to Mr. Chowdler.

Mr. Chowdler himself had returned in splendid fighting form. He had spent the greater part of the holidays at Sauersprudel, and he had employed the time in wrestling and prevailing. Long before “all the vulgar people that Harry hates so” (we are quoting from Mrs. Chowdler) flocked out to Switzerland at Christmas, Mr. Chowdler had discovered Sauersprudel in the Spitzenthal and planted the British flag there. It is true that all the English families who have visited the place in Mr. Chowdler’s wake speak of themselves as having discovered it too. But that does not alter the fact that Mr. Chowdler was the real Christopher Columbus of Sauersprudel and the father of the Adler Hotel—at least as a winter resort.

In the early days of the British occupation the settlers were not numerous, but they came regularly every winter. There were, besides Mr. and Mrs. Chowdler, the Hon. Fitzroy Plashy and party, Canon and Mrs. Dubbin, Dr. Cushat and family, Mr. Weatherbury, K.C., and a few others who had suddenly realised that sunshine and frost are not peculiar to the Engadine, and that Sauersprudel is much nearer to London than St. Moritz is. These pioneers lived together on fairly amicable terms, enjoying equal rights, but possessing no written laws, no organised constitution.

But, as the tide of cheap immigration brought strange faces to the Adlerhof in ever-increasing numbers, the old patriarchal life was bound to come to an end in favour of some system more congenial to the British temperament—one, that is to say, which would classify the guests and admit of a distinction between governors and governed. Accordingly, Mr. Chowdler and the original families took up the white man’s burden, formed themselves into a permanent committee, and set themselves to organise life on the principles which have made sport the thing it is. They created a skating club, a tobogganing club, a ski-ing club, and a curling club, each with rules and tests and an etiquette of its own; they appointed competitions, and decided in what particular form of dissipation the guests were to indulge of an evening. In a word, they gave the Adlerhof the blessings of a firm and orderly government. With a prescriptive right to the best rooms and the chief place at feasts, they were the aristocracy of the hotel, governing, as befits an aristocracy, in the interests of the many, but holding discreetly aloof.

Unfortunately, amongst Britons, one of the first results of a firm government is a factious and discontented Opposition; and the Adlerhof was no exception to the rule. No sooner had Mr. Chowdler and his friends assumed the cares of office than murmurs of complaint began to be heard, feeble at first but gathering strength with each successive season. Wild young men and women, athirst for bandy and bunny-hugs, for impossible ski-jumps and noisy races along the corridors, protested that they had not come out to be drilled like schoolboys but to enjoy themselves; and they began to question the authority of the self-appointed committee. Profoundly ignorant of the past history of the place and of all that it owed to its aristocracy, they felt no reverence for Mr. Chowdler and the Hon. Fitzroy Plashy circling sedately round an orange, and only wondered why the best part of the rink was reserved for these old fogeys and their friends. At last a moment came when, conscious of their strength, they passed from murmurs to action. When the committee arranged a toboggan race, the opposition organised a ski-ing competition; when the committee decreed a gymkhana, the opposition engineered a dance; and the hotel was divided into hostile camps.

Things were in this critical state when, on December 28, Mr. Chowdler arrived in Sauersprudel to lend his powerful support to the cause of law and order. His annual appearance had always been treated as an event of importance in the life of the hotel—obsequious smiles from mine host and a flutter among the servants. You would have thought him a governor returning to his colony, or a chieftain to his clan. But, on this occasion, Mr. Chowdler, who had left his wife at home, was met in the hall by the landlord with a face of woe. The room on the first floor with the south aspect, the room that he had selected as his own in 1896 and which had been specially reserved for him ever since, had been forcibly annexed and occupied, a fortnight previously, by a young English Herr who refused to turn out for all the Chowdlers in creation. Would Mr. Chowdler mind going into a room on the other side of the passage for a few days—a larger and a better room, though facing north? The young Herr talked of leaving very shortly.

“His name?” asked Mr. Chowdler curtly.

“Mr. Maurice Veal of London.”

“Bring him to me,” said Mr. Chowdler.

Impossible; the young man had gone out ski-ing for the day, taking his lunch with him.

“Then send my boxes up to my room,” said Mr. Chowdler. “My own room mind. I will arrange matters.”

The landlord hesitated between fear of Mr. Chowdler and the danger of losing a wealthy customer who drank champagne every night and paid exactly twice as much for the room as Mr. Chowdler did. But fear of Mr. Chowdler prevailed; and, when young Mr. Veal returned from his day’s sport at five in the afternoon, he found his own effects in the passage and Mr. Chowdler, in shirt sleeves, busily engaged in installing himself in the disputed apartment.

Mr. Veal, though not deficient in bounce, was not remarkable for his physical proportions. Perhaps a long and fatiguing day in the snow, in the course of which he had taken many severe falls, had damped his spirits; or, perhaps the sight of Mr. Chowdler in shirt sleeves, with his broad shoulders, bullet head, red face, and determined jaw, was more formidable than anything he had anticipated. At all events he lost his nerve, and, after a little bluster and some futile threats, he withdrew to abuse the landlord, leaving Mr. Chowdler in possession.

“I engaged this room in 1896,” Mr. Chowdler shouted after him, “and I intend to keep it.”

And he kept it.

However, the victory of the bedroom did not end the campaign against the committee; it only spurred the enemy to greater exertions. And young Veal, panting for revenge, became the recognised leader of a guerilla campaign. No step that the committee took was allowed to pass unchallenged; no rule was made but it was straightway broken, no notice was posted without provoking a counter-notice or a parody. Half the hotel was on terms of active hostility with the other half. The older men and their wives stood by the committee, the younger ones rallied round the banner of Veal. And a climax seemed to have been reached one afternoon, when Veal and a friend dashed across the sacred enclosure, where Messrs. Chowdler, Plashy and Weatherbury were cutting figures, kicked away the orange which formed the centre of their evolutions, and spilled Mr. Chowdler—accidentally, as they maintained; of set purpose and malice aforethought, as others asserted. After this anything was possible. But the situation was saved by the timely arrival of Lord Budleigh of Salterton and his brother the Admiral. By a masterly stroke of policy they were co-opted on to the committee before they had been five minutes in the hotel; and the opposition collapsed. For even in moments of the wildest aberration, a hotelful of English folk knows the value of a lord. Moreover, Lord Budleigh was a man of courteous and conciliatory manners, far less exclusive in his behaviour than either Mr. Chowdler or the Hon. Fitzroy Plashy, and tolerant of the vagaries of youth; while his brother the Admiral, who was out to enjoy himself and sublimely unconscious of anything amiss, fraternised with everybody in the most natural and friendly way. Within eight-and-forty hours, Mr. Veal found himself without followers and left the hotel. The committee had triumphed, and, with the committee, Mr. Chowdler.

“There had been a little unpleasantness before I arrived,” he said afterwards, in describing the events, “but I soon settled all that.”

It will be readily understood, therefore, that Mr. Chowdler was in no mood to tolerate rebuffs when he returned to Chiltern. And yet, as ill-luck would have it, a rebuff of the most unexpected kind awaited him. On the eve of his departure for Switzerland he had written to the headmaster to intimate that he wished to have Cheeny as a house Prefect in the following term, and it would therefore be convenient if the boy were made a school Prefect at the same time. In all his past experience a wish of this kind had been equivalent to a command, and had only needed the official endorsement of the headmaster. However, this time, on his return from Sauersprudel, he found, not the official endorsement he expected, but a note, requesting him to come and see Mr. Flaggon on the matter at his earliest convenience. The interview was more surprising even than the note. Mr. Flaggon, it appeared, intended, when appointing Prefects, to take much less account in future of mere athletic distinction and much more of mental ability; “because,” he said, “although I know that there are often striking exceptions, brain power and character are closely allied, and the boy who has brains is more likely to understand and appreciate high ideals than the boy who has none. I have gone into Cheeny’s claims very carefully; and, except for your high opinion of him, which of course weighs with me, I can find no reason for promoting him to such a responsible post. He is quite low in the school and——”

“Then you can’t have seen him in the Cock-house match last Term,” interrupted Mr. Chowdler angrily.

“I did,” replied Mr. Flaggon. “I admired his spirit and I envied him his agility. But that kind of spirit alone doesn’t make a Prefect; and I notice that all his masters say of him that he collapses before any difficulty in his work and is inclined to sulk.”

Mr. Chowdler was too indignant to speak; but worse was in store; for Mr. Flaggon continued implacably:

“But there is another boy in your house whom I am very glad to make a Prefect. I mean Dennison. He has earned the honour by his place in the school alone, and, so far as I can judge—and I have been studying him rather closely—he has qualities which justify me in feeling very hopeful about him.”

Dennison! Mr. Chowdler nearly had a fit. Dennison! One of those morbid, cantankerous, precocious boys, who have none of the good-fellowship, none of the joy of life, that are the crown of youth. A boy with a jealous, sour, carping disposition, unpopular with his fellows and unresponsive to his housemaster; a boy without influence and eaten up by an unhealthy egotism.

“You misjudge him,” said Mr. Flaggon. “The boy is reserved, rather sensitive, and shy of expressing himself; but he has character and a conscience. With guidance and a little sympathy he will make a very useful Prefect.”

“Will make!” Mr. Chowdler protested vehemently. He knew the boy as only a housemaster could know a boy, whereas the headmaster was only judging superficially. At no price would he accept Dennison as a Prefect in his house.

“I am sorry,” said Mr. Flaggon stiffly, “to be obliged to force on you as Prefect a boy with whom you are clearly so much out of sympathy. But I have quite made up my mind to make Dennison a school Prefect; and, of course, if he is a school Prefect, he must be a house Prefect too.”

“In that case,” said Mr. Chowdler, scarlet with passion, “I decline to be responsible for anything that may happen in my house.”

“Those are serious words for a housemaster to use,” said Mr. Flaggon gravely.

“They were not spoken in jest,” retorted Mr. Chowdler, as he left the study; and, though the headmaster made no reply, he realised that things could not go on much longer on this unsatisfactory footing.

From that moment Mr. Chowdler became a man with an obsession. The mere mention of the name Flaggon temporarily upset his mental balance. In all the petty annoyances of life he saw the hand of Flaggon, and anybody who was not ready to curse Flaggon by all his gods became at once suspect.

At Chiltern, as in all intellectual societies, the personal doings and idiosyncrasies of its individual members formed the staple of daily conversation; and, before the Term was two days old, Mr. Chowdler knew that Bent and Flaggon had walked together in the holidays, taken tea together, and, no doubt, conspired together. He never had liked Bent—a cynical egotist (all the people whom Mr. Chowdler disliked were egotists) with dangerous principles. He shouldn’t wonder if Bent had been poisoning the “empty one’s” mind against Cheeny. Bent always had a grudge against his boys.

Accordingly, coming across Bent one morning in the masters’ reading-room, which adjoined the Common Room, he could not resist the impulse to attack.

“Well, Bent,” he said, in tones of forced geniality through which the sarcasm pierced like a needle, “I’m told I ought to congratulate you on your promotion. I hear that you have been privileged to drink deep draughts out of the Flaggon in the holidays. I hope you found the beverage stimulating.”

Mr. Bent had returned from his week-end in town with a chill on the liver which made him disagreeable to his friends and offensive to his foes. He flushed with anger, but forced himself to reply with affected airiness.

“Very, thank you. And I suppose you have been rapping tables and communicating with the spook of Old Lanchester. Did he tell you, by the way, that I have been reading some unpublished letters of his, which are rather sensational and upset most of your pet theories about the tradition?”

It came as a perpetual surprise to Mr. Chowdler, whenever they had words, that Bent did not know how to behave like a gentleman or answer a civil question civilly. But this went beyond all bounds. So he drew himself up and replied with dignity:

“I am not in the habit of answering flippant and offensive questions.”

“In that case,” said Mr. Bent, suddenly losing his self-control, “I should advise you not to make offensive and impertinent remarks about matters which don’t concern you.”

Which reply left Mr. Chowdler justly indignant, and confirmed him in the belief that Bent had had something to do with the rejection of Cheeny.