Shame and Consciences
adapted by Mihangel
29. Chips and Jan
Anybody entering the room just then would have smelt bad blood between the fellow looking out of the window and the fellow sitting on the edge of the bed. Jan's whole attitude was one of injury, and Chips looked 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 hoarseness betrayed that the wound was self-inflicted and that the balm the visitor had brought was actually salt.
"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."
"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 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 embryonic hope of a reprieve, a passing but irresistible whim with no reason behind it.
"They say there was nothing the matter with you yesterday afternoon."
"No more there was. I was shamming."
Chips felt something of Heriot's revulsion.
"They say you went off -- to -- meet somebody."
"How did they get hold of that, I should like to know?"
Of course the masters had been talking. Why shouldn't they? But then why had Heriot pretended that nobody was to know just yet? Why had Haigh talked about the worst cases being kept quiet? Jan's rising resentment was calmed when Chips said he believed it had come through a fly-man, at which Jan admitted that it was perfectly true.
"They say you drove out to Bardney Wood."
"So I did."
"It was madness!"
Jan shrugged his powerful shoulders.
"I took my risks, and I was bowled out, that's all."
Chips looked at him. The cynically glib admissions had been grating on him. Now they were reviving the incredulity with which he had first heard of Jan's suicidal escapade. This shameless front was not a bit like Jan, whatever he had done, and Chips, who knew him best, was the first to perceive it.
"I wish I knew why you'd done it!" he exclaimed craftily.
"What do they say about that?"
Chips was embarrassed, because the answer reflected his own first wild suspicions.
"Well, there was some talk about -- well, about a bit of a -- well, romance."
Jan's grin made him look quite himself.
"Nicely put, Chips! But you can contradict that on the best authority."
Chips did not allow his relief to show.
"Now it's got about that it's a drinking row."
"That's more like it."
"It's what most fellows believe," said Chips, with questionable tact.
"Oh, is it? Think I look the part, do they?"
"Not look, Jan --"
"What then?"
Chips did not like going on, but had to now.
"Well, some fellows seem to think that -- except yesterday, of course -- your bowling --"
"Has suffered from it, eh? Go on, Chips! I like this. I like it awfully!"
And this time Jan laughed outright, but did not look himself.
"It's not what I say, Jan! I wouldn't hear of it."
"Very kind of you, I'm sure. But I shouldn't wonder if you thought it all the same."
"I don't, I tell you!"
"I wouldn't blame you if you did. How things fit in! Any other circumstantial evidence against me?"
Chips hesitated again.
"Out with it, man. I may as well know."
"Well, some say -- but only some -- that's why you've been going about so much by yourself."
"To go off on the spree alone?"
Chips nodded. "You see, you often refused to go out even with me," he said reproachfully, not as though he believed the worst himself, but as an excuse for those who did.
Jan could only stare. His unsociability had been due to his unpopularity with his Eleven, his estrangement from Evan, and his delicacy about falling back on Chips. And even Chips could not see that for himself, but saw if anything with the other idiots! This was too much for Jan. It made him look more embittered than was wise if he was still to be taken as the only villain of the piece. But for the moment he was forgetting to act.
"Solitary drinking!" he exclaimed. "Bad case, isn't it?"
"It isn't a case at all." Chips was looking him full in the face. "I don't believe a word of the whole thing! Even if it's true that you went out to Bardney to meet Mulberry --"
"Who says that?"
"Oh, it's one of the things that's got about. But I can jolly well see that if you did go to meet him it wasn't on your own account!"
Confound old Chips! He could fairly see into a fellow's skull, and make a fellow look as big a fool as he felt!
"Of course you know more about it than I do!" sneered Jan desperately. "But do you suppose I'd do a thing like that for anybody but myself?"
"I believe you'd do a jolly sight more -- for Evan Devereux!"
Jan made no reply beyond an unconvincing little laugh. In his surprise at so shrewd a thrust, he was incapable of plain denial. And it showed.
"The whole thing was for Devereux!" exploded Chips with sudden conviction. "What about him and Sandham out at Bardney the other Sunday, when old Mulberry beckoned to us by mistake? Obviously he mistook us for them. I thought so at the time, but you wouldn't have it, just because it was Devereux! What about his coming to you yesterday morning, in such a stew about something? Oh, I didn't listen, but anybody could spot that something was up. What a fool I was not to see the whole thing from the first! Why, of course you'd never have touched that money for yourself, let alone left behind the thing I know you value more than anything else you've got!"
Still Jan said nothing, even when challenged outright to deny it if he could. He only stood still and looked mysterious, while he racked his brain for something to explain his look, to explain everything else that Chips had interpreted so accurately. He felt in a great rage with Chips, and yet somehow in nothing like such a rage as he had been in before. It had taken old Chips to see that he was not such a blackguard as he had made himself out. That was something to remember in the silly fool's favour. He was the only one, when all was said and done, to believe the best of a fellow in spite of everything, even in spite of the fellow himself.
Condemned men cannot afford to send their only friends to blazes. But Chips soon got himself sent there of his own accord.
"Why should you do all this for Evan Devereux?" he demanded.
"All what, Chips? I never said I'd done anything."
"Oh, all right, you haven't! But what's he ever done for you?"
"Plenty."
"Name something -- anything -- he's ever done except when you were in a position to do more for him!"
And then Jan did tell him where to go. But Chips only laughed in his face, with the spendthrift courage of a fellow who did not normally show enough of it, though he had it all the same when his blood was up. Now he was in as great a passion as Jan.
"You start cursing me because you haven't any answer. Curse away, come to blows if you like. You shan't get rid of me till I've said what I've got to say, not if I have to hang on to this bed and bring the place down round our ears!"
"Don't be a fool, Chips," said Jan, seeing that he needed self-control for two. "You know you've always had a down on Evan."
"Well, perhaps I have. Doesn't he deserve it? What did he ever do for you your first term -- though he'd known you at home?"
"That was no reason why he should do anything. What could he do? We were in different houses and different forms. Besides, I was higher up in the school, as it happened, as well as a bit older."
"That's nothing. Still, I rather agree with you, though he was here first, remember. But what about your second term or my third? He overtook us each in turn, but did he ever go out of his way to say a civil word to either of us, though he'd known us both before?"
"Yes, he did."
"Yes, he did! When you'd made a bit of a name for yourself over the Mile he was out for a walk with you in a minute. That's the fellow all over, and has been all the time. I remember how it was when you got into the Eleven, if you don't!"
But Jan did remember, and it made him think. Like most boys who are good at games, he had acquired great fairness of mind. He thought Chips was unfair to Evan. And yet he wanted to be fair to Chips, who did not know of his debt to Evan, who did not know the size of it, who did not know how Evan had been his paragon and more. All Chips knew was that the paragon was flawed. That made him jealous, though Jan was not the one to tell him so, and it made him touchy. Jan soothed the touchiness with a tact made sensitive by his own troubles.
"The fact is, Chips, you're such a good old chap yourself that you want everybody else to be the same as you. You wouldn't hurt a fellow's feelings, so you can't forgive the chaps who do it without thinking. Not one in a hundred makes as much of things as you do, or takes things so to heart. But that's because you're what you are, Chips. You oughtn't to be down on everybody who doesn't happen to be built as straight and true."
"Don't be too sure that I'm either!" exclaimed Chips, flinching unaccountably.
"You're about the straightest chap in the whole school, Chips. Everybody knows that."
"Then I've a good mind to set everybody right!" cried Chips wildly, worked up to more than he had dreamed of saying. "I can't see you bunked for nothing, when others including me have done all sorts of things to deserve it. Yes, Jan, including me! You think I've been so straight! So I was in the beginning. So I am now, if you like. But I've not been all the time. No, don't stop me, I won't be stopped. But that's about all I've got to say. I've always wanted you to know. You're the only fellow in the place I care much for, who cares much for me, though not so much --"
"Yes I do, Chips, yes I do! I never thought so much of you as I do this minute. But whatever you did ... don't you make yourself out worse than you ever were, even to me!"
"I don't want to ... It didn't go on long, and it's all over long since ... But I shall get the praepostor's medal when I leave -- unless I'm man enough to refuse it -- and you've been bunked for standing by a fellow who never would have stood by you!"
"That's where you're wrong, Chips," said Jan gently.
"No, I'm not. It's the other way about."
"You don't know how Evan's stood by me all these years."
Chips fell strangely silent -- very strangely for him, especially just then. It was a silence that made him ashamed and yet exultant.
"Do you know, Chips?"
"It depends what you think he's done."
"I'll tell you," said Jan with sudden resolution, and a lift of his head as though the peak of a cap had been pulled down too far. "I had a secret when I came here, and Evan knew it but nobody else. It was a big secret -- about my people and me too -- and if it had come out then I'd have bolted like a rabbit. I know now that it wouldn't have mattered as much as I thought it would then. Things about your people, or anything that ever happened anywhere else, don't hurt or help much in a place like this. It's what you can do and how you take things that matters here. But I didn't know that then, and I don't suppose Evan did either. Yet he kept a quiet tongue in his head about everything he did know. And that's what I owe him -- all it meant to me then, and does still in a way -- his holding his tongue like that!"
Still Chips held his own tongue. Jan was now the prey of doubts. He had thought that a plain statement of his debt would clear the air. He had not thought that the first person he confided it to would hear it in such stony silence. Suddenly aghast, he had to ask the most crucial of questions.
"Chips ... Chips ... Did he ever tell you?"
"The very first time I saw him, our very first term!"
"Not -- not about my father and -- the stables -- and all that?"
"Everything!"
Jan threw himself back four years.
"Yet when I sounded you at the time --"
"I told you the lie of my life! I couldn't help myself. But this is the truth!"
Jan took it with composure, the enviable composure which had only deserted him when Evan was being slandered. It was half a minute before he made a sound, still standing there with his back to the bedroom window, and then the sound was very like a chuckle.
"Well, at any rate he can't have told many!"
"I don't suppose he did." If there was doubt in Chips's tone, Jan did not notice it at the time.
"Then he picked the right one, Chipsy, and I still owe him almost as much as I do you."
"You owe old Heriot more than either of us."
"Heriot! Why? Does he know?"
"He knew all along, but he never meant you to know that he knew. He guessed how you'd feel if you did. He guesses everything! Why, that very first Saturday, when Devereux turned up for roll-call and began telling me the minute afterwards, it was as though Bob Heriot simply saw what he was saying! He pounced straight on us both, dropped a pretty plain hint on the spot, but asked us to breakfast next morning and then absolutely bound us over never to let out a single word about you in all our days here!"
Jan's mind felt numb as he struggled to absorb all these revelations.
"So Evan had been talking before he told me he never would," he mused. "Well, I can't blame him so much for that. I'm not sure, Chips, that I should have done so differently now even if I'd known. I -- well -- liked him even in the old days when we were kids ... Must you go?"
The question was asked very wistfully, and Chips felt that in these few minutes he had ousted Evan and taken his old place. He could not help it if he had. It had not been his intention on coming up to the room.
"I told Heriot I wouldn't stay very long. I'll get him to let me come up again."
"And you won't tell him anything about Evan?"
"How do you mean?"
"You won't tell him a single word about our having seen him and Sandham that day?"
Chips was silent.
"Surely you wouldn't go getting them bunked as well as me?"
"Well -- no -- not exactly."
"I should think not! It wouldn't do any good, you see, even if you did." Jan suddenly realised why he had looked so mysterious some minutes back. "You forget that for a time Evan and I used to go about together just like he and Sandham have been doing this year. What if it was me that first started playing the fool in Bardney Wood? What if old Mulberry knows more against me than anybody else? It wouldn't do me much good to put them in the same boat, would it?"
"But does he, Jan, honestly?"
"Honestly, I'm sorry to say." He did not have to spell out exactly what it was that Mulberry knew.
"It's too awful!"
"But you will hold your tongue about the other two, won't you. Chips?"
"If you like."
"Promise?"
"Very well. I promise."
But Chips was reckoning without Mr Heriot, a magnificent schoolmaster but a Grand Inquisitor at getting things out of fellows when he liked. To his credit, he never did like a task which some schoolmasters seem to enjoy. But he was not the man to shirk a distasteful duty. Carpenter had long outstayed his leave upstairs, and the spare room was directly over Heriot's study. Voices had been raised at one point to an angry pitch, and this had set him thinking, but not listening more than he could help. Nor had he caught a single word. But he had to remember that Carpenter's pretext for the visit was a private money matter. So he waylaid Chips on his way down.
"Well, Carpenter, you've been a long time?"
"I'm afraid I have, sir."
"I gave you ten minutes and you took thirty. However, I hope you got your money."
Chips started. "What money, sir?"
"Didn't you go to collect a private debt?"
"I don't know how you knew, sir."
"I happen to know that Rutter had a good deal of money on Saturday, and that he never as a rule has half enough."
"Yes, sir. He paid me back every penny," said Chips without attempting to escape.
He was extremely interested in this question of the money, which had been driven out of his mind by other matters, only to return now with new significance. He was wondering whether this was not a matter on which he could honourably confide in Heriot, since Jan had laid no embargo on it. He might only have forgotten to do so -- Chips had a high concept of honour in such matters -- but anything to throw light on the mystery before it was too late!
"Now, you and Rutter have been great friends, haven't you, Carpenter?"
It was the skilful questioner proceeding on his own repugnant lines.
"Yes, sir, I think we have, on the whole."
"Has he ever borrowed money from you before?"
"Never a penny, sir."
"Had he rather strong principles on the point?"
"I used to think he had, sir."
"Do you think he'd break them for his own sake, Carpenter?"
"No, sir, I don't! I -- I practically told him so," replied Chips, after considering whether he was free to say as much.
"I've only one other question to ask you, Carpenter. You told me, before I let you go up, that several of the leading fellows know something about what's happened."
"They do, sir."
"Can you think of anybody who doesn't know, and perhaps ought to know, while there's time?"
Chips felt his heart leap within him, only to sink under the weight of his last promise to Jan. He shrank from the very mention of Evan's name after such a solemn undertaking as that. And yet Jan came first.
"Well, sir, I -- could ."
"Then won't you?"
"If you wouldn't ask me for my reasons, sir."
Heriot smiled in imminent triumph. It was a wry smile over a wry job. The poor lad's honest reservations were more eloquent than outright indiscretions, to ears that were tuned to the nuances of boys.
"I may ask you anything I like, Carpenter, but I can't make you answer anything you don't like. I can only suggest to you that there's probably some fellow who might help us if he were not in the dark. Will you give me the name that occurred to you?"
Authors deserve your feedback. It's the only payment they get. If you go to the top of the page you will find the author's name. Click that and you can email the author easily.* Please take a few moments, if you liked the story, to say so.
[For those who use webmail, or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead: Please right click the author's name. A menu will open in which you can copy the email address (it goes directly to your clipboard without having the courtesy of mentioning that to you) to paste into your webmail system (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). Each browser is subtly different, each Webmail system is different, or we'd give fuller instructions here. We trust you to know how to use your own system. Note: If the email address pastes or arrives with %40 in the middle, replace that weird set of characters with an @ sign.]
* Some browsers may require a right click instead
