To You, Mr Chips by James Hilton Page B

with him?'
    'I'm damned if I know. What can  anybody  do with him? If schoolmasters themselves . . . but it's my belief they don't try. I've not a lot of faith in schoolmasters.'
    'Neither have I--sometimes,' said Chips.
    During the days that followed Chips would have had more and better chances to get to know David if Mr. Renshaw himself had been less obtrusive. He seemed a lonely, unhappy sort of man, and, having found in Chips a tolerant listener, he made the most of his opportunities. Chips could hardly get rid of the fellow at the hotel, and was heartily glad that he was no mountaineer. It was not that there was anything especially unpleasant about him--merely that he was a loud-voiced nuisance, and the more Chips saw and talked with him the more he felt that David, with or without bad blood, could not have found life very harmonious with such a stepfather. Chips wondered why such an ill-assorted pair chose to take their holidays together. The answer came in Renshaw's own words. 'Y'see, Chipping, there's nowhere else for him to go. The rest of the family wouldn't take him as a gift--and you can't blame 'em. So he has to stay with me whether he likes it or not. I'm here for my health and he's here for his sins.'
    Chips smiled. 'I only hope my own sins will never take me to a worse place.'
    'Oh, Keswick's all right, I know. Quite a nice spot for a holiday. But the boy isn't satisfied with a stroll in the afternoon--he's restless all the time--restless as a monkey. Only the other day one of the waiters caught him in the hotel kitchen tasting all the food out of the pans . . . of course I had to give the fellow a tip to say nothing about it. The boy's incorrigible, I tell you. Hasn't even the sense to see what's to his own advantage. He knows that his whole future depends on what I decide to do with him during the next few days.'
    'Oh?'
    'Well, y'see, I promised that if he was a good boy I'd overlook his disgraceful behaviour at school and put him under a private tutor for a couple of years--then after that, if he still behaved well, my son in Birmingham--the accountant, y'know--might take him into his office. . . . Wonderful chance, that, for a boy who's had to leave school under a cloud. . . . You'd think it would make him turn over a new leaf, wouldn't you? But it doesn't . . . he doesn't seem to care.'
    Which was true enough. David's efforts to impress his stepfather with any appearance of remorse or future good intentions were, Chips could see, so vagrant as to be almost imperceptible. Once Chips gave the boy a lead to discuss the matter by saying, during a casual conversation in the hotel lobby: 'By the way, your father says there's a chance of your becoming an accountant. . . . It's a good profession, if you like it.'
    'I wouldn't like it,' answered David, with decision.
    'What do you want to be, then?'
    'An explorer.'
    Chips smiled. 'That's not a very easy thing to be, nowadays.'
    'I once explored some caves in Scotland. It was easy enough. It was father who made all the fuss about it.'
    'Oh?'
    'Just because the tide came up and I had to sit on a ledge all night and wait for it to go down again. But I didn't find any gems.'
    'Any gems? What do you mean?'
    'Well, it said in the poem, you know--"Full many a gem of purest ray serene the dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear." . . . But I didn't find any.'
     
    Towards mid-September, as the beginning of term at Brookfield approached, Chips began to feel the familiar willingness to be back at work. His strenuous month of walking and climbing had made him feel immensely fit for his years; even Renshaw's conversations couldn't spoil such a holiday, despite their tendency to become less restrained and more repetitive. They dealt largely with the trials and tribulations of family and business life; Renshaw had not been a happy man, nor--quite evidently--had he possessed the knack of making others happy. It seemed that he had lost a great deal of money owing to the War. He