Part 3

“I would be the first to recognize the splendid work he did for the school in his opening years,” said Mr. Farr. “I would be the last to alter the broad lines of the work as he set it out. Barring that I should replace a certain amount of the biological teaching and practically all this new history stuff by chemistry and physics. But one has to admit that Mr. Huss did not know when to relinquish power nor when to devolve responsibility. We, all of us, the entire staff—it is no mere personal grievance of mine—were kept, well, to say the least of it, in tutelage. Rather than let authority go definitely out of his hands, he would allow things to drift. Witness that door, witness the business of the nurse.”

Mr. Dad, with his lips compressed, nodded his head; each nod like the tap of a hammer.

“I never believed in all this overdoing history in the school,” Mr. Dad remarked rather disconnectedly. “If you get rid of Latin and Greek, why bring it all back again in another form? Why, I’m told he taught ’em things about Assyria. Assyria! A modern school ought to be a modern school—business first and business last and business all the time. And teach boys to work. We shall need it, mark my words.”

“A certain amount of modern culture,” waved Sir Eliphaz.

“_Modern_,” said Mr. Farr softly.

Mr. Dad grunted. “In my opinion that sort of thing gives the boys ideas.”

Mr. Farr steered his way discreetly. “Science with a due regard to its technical applications should certainly be the substantial part of a modern education.”...

They were in the smoking-room and half way through three princely cigars before they got beyond such fragmentary detractions of the fallen headmaster. Then Mr. Dad in the clear-cut style of a business man, brought his companions to action. “Well,” said Mr. Dad, turning abruptly upon Sir Eliphaz, “what about it?”

“It is manifest that Woldingstanton has to enter on a new phase; what has happened brings us to the parting of the ways,” said Sir Eliphaz. “Much as I regret the misfortunes of an old friend.”

“_That_,” said Mr. Dad, “spells Farr.”

“If he will shoulder the burthen,” said Sir Eliphaz, smiling upon Mr. Farr not so much with his mouth as by the most engaging convolutions, curvatures and waving about of his various strands of hair.

“I don’t want to see the school go down,” said Mr. Farr. “I’ve given it a good slice of my life.”

“Right,” said Mr. Dad. “Right. File that. That suits us. And now how do we set about the affair? The next thing, I take it, is to break it to Huss.... How?”

He paused to give the ideas of his companions a fair chance.

“Well, _my_ idea is this. None of us want to be hard on Mr. Huss. Luck has been hard enough as it is. We want to do this job as gently as we can. It happens that I go and play golf at Sundering-on-Sea ever and again. Excellent links, well kept up all things considered, and the big hotel close by does you wonderfully, the railway company sees to that; in spite of the war. Well, why shouldn’t we all, if Sir Eliphaz’s engagements permit, go down there in a sort of _casual_ way, and take the opportunity of a good clear talk with him and settle it all up? The thing’s got to be done, and it seems to me altogether more kindly to go there personally and put it to him than do it by correspondence. Very likely we could put it to him in such a way that he himself would suggest the very arrangement we want. You particularly, Sir Eliphaz, being as you say an old friend.”...

§ 2

Since there was little likelihood of Mr. Huss going away from Sundering-on-Sea, it did not appear necessary to Mr. Dad to apprise him of the projected visitation. And so these three gentlemen heard nothing about any operation for cancer until they reached that resort.

Mr. Dad came down early on Friday afternoon to the Golf Hotel, where he had already engaged rooms for the party. He needed the relaxation of the links very badly, the task of accumulating a balance sufficiently large to secure an opulent future for British industry, with which Mr. Dad in his straightforward way identified himself, was one that in a controlled establishment between the Scylla of aggressive labour and the Charybdis of the war-profits tax, strained his mind to the utmost. He was joined by Mr. Farr at dinner-time, and Sir Eliphaz, who was detained in London by some negotiations with the American Government, arrived replete by the dining-car train. Mr. Farr made a preliminary reconnaissance at Sea View, and was the first to hear of the operation.

Sir Alpheus Mengo was due at Sea View by the first morning train on Saturday. He had arranged to operate before lunch. It was clear therefore that the only time available for a conversation between the three and Mr. Huss was between breakfast and the arrival of Sir Alpheus.

Mr. Huss, whose lethargy had now departed, displayed himself feverishly anxious to talk about the school. “There are points I must make clear,” he said, “vital points,” and so a meeting was arranged for half-past nine. This would give a full hour before the arrival of the doctors.

“He feels that in a way it will be his testament, so to speak,” said Mr. Farr. “Naturally he has his own ideas about the future of the school. We all have. I would be the last person to suggest that he could say anything about Woldingstanton that would not be well worth hearing. Some of us may have heard most of it before, and be better able to discount some of his assertions. But that under the present circumstances is neither here nor there.”

§ 3

Matters in the confined space of Sea View were not nearly so strained as Mr. Huss had feared. The prospect of an operation was not without its agreeable side to Mrs. Croome. Possibly she would have preferred that the subject should have been Mrs. rather than Mr. Huss, but it was clear that she made no claim to dictate upon this point. Her demand for special fees to meet the inconveniences of the occasion had been met quite liberally by Mr. Huss. And there was a genuine appreciation of order and method in Mrs. Croome; she was a furious spring-cleaner, a hurricane tidier-up, her feeling for the discursive state of Mrs. Huss’s hair was almost as involuntary as a racial animosity; and the swift dexterous preparations of the nurse who presently came to convert the best bedroom to surgical uses, impressed her deeply. She was allowed to help. Superfluous hangings and furnishings were removed, everything was thoroughly scrubbed, at the last moment clean linen sheets of a wonderful hardness were to be spread over every exposed surface. They were to be brought in sterilized drums. The idea of sterilized drums fascinated her. She had never heard of such things before. She wished she could keep her own linen in a sterilized drum always, and let her lodgers have something else instead.

She felt she was going to be a sort of assistant priestess at a sacrifice, the sacrifice of Mr. Huss. She had always secretly feared his submissive quiet as a thing unaccountable that might at any time turn upon her; she suspected him of ironies; and he would be helpless, under chloroform, subject to examination with no possibilities of disconcerting repartee. She did her best to persuade Dr. Barrack that she would be useful in the room during the proceedings. Her imagination conjured up a wonderful vision of the Huss interior as a great chest full of strange and interesting viscera with the lid wide open and Sir Alpheus picking thoughtfully, with deprecatory remarks, amid its contents. But that sight was denied her.

She was very helpful and cheerful on the Saturday morning, addressing herself to the consolation of Mr. and the bracing-up of Mrs. Huss. She assisted in the final transformation of the room.

“It might be a real ’ospital,” she said. “Nursing must be nice work. I never thought of it like this before.”

Mr. Huss was no longer depressed but flushed and resolute, but Mrs. Huss, wounded by the neglect of everyone—no one seemed to consider for a moment what she must be feeling—remained very much in her own room, working inefficiently upon the mourning that might now be doubly needed.

§ 4

Mr. Huss knew Mr. Farr very well. For the last ten years it had been his earnest desire to get rid of him, but he had been difficult to replace because of his real accomplishment in technical chemistry. In the course of their five minutes’ talk in his bedroom on Friday evening, Mr. Huss grasped the situation. Woldingstanton, his creation, his life work, was to be taken out of his hands, and in favour of this, his most soul-deadening assistant. He had been foolish no doubt, but he had never anticipated that. He had never supposed that Farr would dare.

He thought hard through that long night of Friday. His pain was no distraction. He had his intentions very ready and clear in his mind when his three visitors arrived.

He had insisted upon getting up and dressing fully.

“I can’t talk about Woldingstanton in bed,” he said. The doctor was not there to gainsay him.

Sir Eliphaz was the first to arrive, and Mrs. Huss retrieved him from Mrs. Croome in the passage and brought him in. He was wearing a Norfolk jacket suit of a coarse yet hairy consistency and of a pale sage green colour. He shone greatly in the eyes of Mrs. Huss. “I can’t help thinking of you, dear lady,” he said, bowing over her hand, and all his hair was for a moment sad and sympathetic like a sick Skye terrier’s. Mr. Dad and Mr. Farr entered a moment later; Mr. Farr in grey flannel trousers and a brown jacket, and Mr. Dad in a natty dark grey suit with a luminous purple waistcoat.

“My dear,” said Mr. Huss to his wife, “I must be alone with these gentlemen,” and when she seemed disposed to linger near the understanding warmth of Sir Eliphaz, he added, “Figures, my dear—_Finance_,” and drove her forth....

“’Pon my honour,” said Mr. Dad, coming close up to the armchair, wrinkling his muzzle and putting through his compliments in good business-like style before coming to the harder stuff in hand; “I don’t like to see you like this, Mr. Huss.”

“Nor does Sir Eliphaz, I hope—nor Farr. Please find yourselves chairs.”

And while Mr. Farr made protesting noises and Sir Eliphaz waved his hair about before beginning the little speech he had prepared, Mr. Huss took the discourse out of their mouths and began:

“I know perfectly well the task you have set yourselves. You have come to make an end of me as headmaster of Woldingstanton. And Mr. Farr has very obligingly....”

He held up his white and wasted hand as Mr. Farr began to disavow.

“No,” said Mr. Huss. “But before you three gentlemen proceed with your office, I should like to tell you something of what the school and my work in it, and my work for education, is to me. I am a man of little more than fifty. A month ago I counted with a reasonable confidence upon twenty years more of work before I relaxed.... Then these misfortunes rained upon me. I have lost all my private independence; there have been these shocking deaths in the school; my son, my only son ... killed ... trouble has darkened the love and kindness of my wife ... and now my body is suffering so that my mind is like a swimmer struggling through waves of pain ... far from land.... These are heavy blows. But the hardest blow of all, harder to bear than any of these others—I do not speak rashly, gentlemen, I have thought it out through an endless night—the last blow will be this rejection of my life work. That will strike the inmost me, the heart and soul of me....”

He paused.

“You mustn’t take it quite like that, Mr. Huss,” protested Mr. Dad. “It isn’t fair to us to put it like that.”

“I want you to listen to me,” said Mr. Huss.

“Only the very kindest motives,” continued Mr. Dad.

“Let me speak,” said Mr. Huss, with the voice of authority that had ruled Woldingstanton for five and twenty years. “I cannot wrangle and contradict. At most we have an hour.”

Mr. Dad made much the same sound that a dog will make when it has proposed to bark and has been told to get under the table. For a time he looked an ill-used man.

“To end my work in the school will be to end me altogether.... I do not see why I should not speak plainly to you, gentlemen, situated as I am here. I do not see why I should not talk to you for once in my own language. Pain and death are our interlocutors; this is a rare and raw and bleeding occasion; in an hour or so the women may be laying out my body and I may be silent for ever. I have hidden my religion, but why should I hide it now? To you I have always tried to seem as practical and self-seeking as possible, but in secret I have been a fanatic; and Woldingstanton was the altar on which I offered myself to God. I have done ill and feebly there I know; I have been indolent and rash; those were my weaknesses; but I have done my best. To the limits of my strength and knowledge I have served God.... And now in this hour of darkness where is this God that I have served? Why does he not stand here between me and this last injury you would do to the work I have dedicated to him?”

At these words Mr. Dad turned horrified eyes to Mr. Farr.

But Mr. Huss went on as though talking to himself. “In the night I have looked into my heart; I have sought in my heart for base motives and secret sins. I have put myself on trial to find why God should hide himself from me now, and I can find no reason and no justification.... In the bitterness of my heart I am tempted to give way to you and to tell you to take the school and to do just what you will with it.... The nearness of death makes the familiar things of experience flimsy and unreal, and far more real to me now is this darkness that broods over me, as blight will sometimes overhang the world at noon, and mocks me day and night with a perpetual challenge to curse God and die....

“Why do I not curse God and die? Why do I cling to my work when the God to whom I dedicated it is—silent? Because, I suppose, I still hope for some sign of reassurance. Because I am not yet altogether defeated. I would go on telling you why I want Woldingstanton to continue on its present lines and why it is impossible for you, why it will be a sort of murder for you to hand it over to Farr here, if my pain were ten times what it is....”

At the mention of his name, Mr. Farr started and looked first at Mr. Dad, and then at Sir Eliphaz. “Really,” he said, “really! One might think I had conspired—”

“I am afraid, Mr. Huss,” said Sir Eliphaz, with a large reassuring gesture to the technical master, “that the suggestion that Mr. Farr should be your successor came in the first instance from _me_.”

“You must reconsider it,” said Mr. Huss, moistening his lips and staring steadfastly in front of him.

Here Mr. Dad broke out in a querulous voice: “Are you really in a state, Mr. Huss, to discuss a matter like this—feverish and suffering as you are?”

“I could not be in a better frame for this discussion,” said Mr. Huss.... “And now for what I have to say about the school:—Woldingstanton, when I came to it, was a humdrum school of some seventy boys, following a worn-out routine. A little Latin was taught and less Greek, chiefly in order to say that Greek was taught; some scraps of mathematical processes, a few rags of general knowledge, English history—not human history, mind you, but just the national brand, cut dried flowers from the past with no roots and no meaning, a smattering of French.... That was practically all; it was no sort of education, it was a mere education-like posturing. And to-day, what has that school become?”

“We never grudged you money,” said Sir Eliphaz.

“Nor loyal help,” said Mr. Farr, but in a half whisper.

“I am not thinking of its visible prosperity. The houses and laboratories and museums that have grown about that nucleus are nothing in themselves. The reality of a school is not in buildings and numbers but in matters of the mind and soul. Woldingstanton has become a torch at which lives are set aflame. I have lit a candle there—the winds of fate may yet blow it into a world-wide blaze.”

As Mr. Huss said these things he was uplifted by enthusiasm, and his pain sank down out of his consciousness.

“What,” he said, “is the task of the teacher in the world? It is the greatest of all human tasks. It is to ensure that Man, Man the Divine, grows in the souls of men. For what is a man without instruction? He is born as the beasts are born, a greedy egotism, a clutching desire, a thing of lusts and fears. He can regard nothing except in relation to himself. Even his love is a bargain; and his utmost effort is vanity because he has to die. And it is we teachers alone who can lift him out of that self-preoccupation. We teachers.... We can release him into a wider circle of ideas beyond himself in which he can at length forget himself and his meagre personal ends altogether. We can open his eyes to the past and to the future and to the undying life of Man. So through us and through us only, he escapes from death and futility. An untaught man is but himself alone, as lonely in his ends and destiny as any beast; a man instructed is a man enlarged from that narrow prison of self into participation in an undying life, that began we know not when, that grows above and beyond the greatness of the stars....”

He spoke as if he addressed some other hearer than the three before him. Mr. Dad, with eyebrows raised and lips compressed, nodded silently to Mr. Farr as if his worst suspicions were confirmed, and there were signs and signals that Sir Eliphaz was about to speak, when Mr. Huss resumed.

“For five and twenty years I have ruled over Woldingstanton, and for all that time I have been giving sight to the blind. I have given understanding to some thousands of boys. All those routines of teaching that had become dead we made live again there. My boys have learnt the history of mankind so that it has become their own adventure; they have learnt geography so that the world is their possession; I have had languages taught to make the past live again in their minds and to be windows upon the souls of alien peoples. Science has played its proper part; it has taken my boys into the secret places of matter and out among the nebulæ.... Always I have kept Farr and his utilities in their due subordination. Some of my boys have already made good business men—because they were more than business men.... But I have never sought to make business men and I never will. My boys have gone into the professions, into the services, into the great world and done well—I have had dull boys and intractable boys, but nearly all have gone into the world gentlemen, broad-minded, good-mannered, understanding and unselfish, masters of self, servants of man, because the whole scheme of their education has been to release them from base and narrow things.... When the war came, my boys were ready.... They have gone to their deaths—how many have gone to their deaths! My own son among them.... I did not grudge him.... Woldingstanton is a new school; its tradition has scarcely begun; the list of its old boys is now so terribly depleted that its young tradition wilts like a torn seedling.... But still we can keep on with it, still that tradition will grow, if my flame still burns. But my teaching must go on as I have planned it. It must. It must.... What has made my boys all that they are, has been the history, the biological science, the philosophy. For these things are wisdom. All the rest is training and mere knowledge. If the school is to live, the head must still be a man who can teach history—history in the widest sense; he must be philosopher, biologist, and archæologist as well as scholar. And you would hand that task to Farr! Farr! Farr here has never even touched the essential work of the school. He does not know what it is. His mind is no more opened than the cricket professional’s.”

Mr. Dad made an impatient noise.

The sick man went on with his burning eyes on Farr, his lips bloodless.

“He thinks of chemistry and physics not as a help to understanding but as a help to trading. So long as he has been at Woldingstanton he has been working furtively with our materials in the laboratories, dreaming of some profitable patent. Oh! I know you, Farr. Do you think I didn’t see because I didn’t choose to complain? If he could have discovered some profitable patent he would have abandoned teaching the day he did so. He would have been even as you are. But with a lifeless imagination you cannot even invent patentable things. He would talk to the boys of the empire at times, but the empire to him is no more than a trading conspiracy fenced about with tariffs. It goes on to nothing.... And he thinks we are fighting the Germans, he thinks my dear and precious boy gave his life and that all these other brave lads beyond counting died, in order that we might take the place of the Germans as the chapman-bullies of the world. That is the measure of his mind. He has no religion, no faith, no devotion. Why does he want my place? Because he wants to serve as I have served? No! But because he envies my house, my income, my headship. Whether I live or die, it is impossible that Woldingstanton, my Woldingstanton, should live under his hand. Give it to him, and in a little while it will be dead.”

§ 5

“Gentlemen!” Mr. Farr protested with a white perspiring face.

“I had no idea,” ejaculated Mr. Dad, “I had no idea that things had gone so far.”

Sir Eliphaz indicated by waving his hand that his associates might allay themselves; he recognized that the time had come for him to speak.

“It is deplorable,” Sir Eliphaz began.

He put down his hands and gripped the seat of his chair as if to hold himself on to it very tightly, and he looked very hard at the horizon as if he was trying to decipher some remote inscription. “You have imported a tone into this discussion,” he tried.

He got off at the third attempt. “It is an extremely painful thing to me, Mr. Huss, that to you, standing as you do on the very brink of the Great Chasm, it should be necessary to speak in any but the most cordial and helpful tones. But it is my duty, it is our duty, to hold firmly to those principles which have always guided us as governors of the Woldingstanton School. You speak, I must say it, with an extreme arrogance of an institution to which all of us here have in some measure contributed; you speak as though you, and you alone, were its creator and guide. You must pardon me, Mr. Huss, if I remind you of the facts, the eternal verities of the story. The school, sir, was founded in the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth, and many a good man guided its fortunes down to the time when an unfortunate—a diversion of its endowments led to its temporary cessation. The Charity Commissioners revived it after an inquiry some fifty years ago, and it has been largely the lavish generosity of the Papermakers’ Guild, of which I and Dad are humble members, that has stimulated its expansion under you. Loth as I am to cross your mood, Mr. Huss, while you are in pain and anxiety, I am bound to recall to you these things which have made _your_ work possible. You could not have made bricks without straw, you could not have built up Woldingstanton without the money obtained by that commercialism for which you display such unqualified contempt. We sordid cits it was who planted, who watered....”

Mr. Huss seemed about to speak, but said nothing.

“Exactly what I say,” said Mr. Dad, turning for confirmation to Mr. Farr. “The school is essentially a modern commercial school. It should be run as that.”

Mr. Farr nodded his white face ambiguously with his eye on Sir Eliphaz.

“I should have been chary, Mr. Huss, of wrangling about our particular shares and contributions on an occasion so solemn as this, but since you will have it so, since you challenge discussion....”

He turned to his colleagues as if for support.