They were like days of drought. Wherever one moved about the school one noticed everywhere the same set look on every fellow’s face of patient resolution. There was very little ragging. Harley had become a kind of expanded orphan school. They took their exercise in crocodile formation, moving shamefacedly two by two. The only permitted recreation was the reading of heavy books. No boy so much as dared to kick a fives ball before him along the gravel path. Few had the heart to whistle. To those who were onlookers of it all—the masters, school servants, neighbouring inhabitants—this had never been expected. So soon as the news had sped its rounds that Toby was leaving, and that all games were to cease, those who were wisest shook their heads and foretold whole-hearted revolution. Some vividly imagined the Head being captured by boys and ducked. Others anticipated open refusal to do any work whatever in school hours. Yet Harley took them by surprise. They went like lambs, and this was because they had a memory to give them heart. It was the day that Toby had left. He had caught an early train. With barely half-a-dozen exceptions the whole school had turned out to say good-bye. It had been like a ceremonial parade on Founder’s Day. Toby had shaken hands with every fellow he could reach. He had said nothing at all. He had just shaken hands. And the fellows had understood. 219They had started to sing: “He’s a jolly good fellow.” Rouse had stopped them. He had got up on to a pile of boxes at the station and addressed them with some hesitation and an uncertain voice, and he had explained things to them.
“We’ve got to stick it out.” Those had been his words. Toby had foreseen this possibility and he had sent that message. “Hang on till he can bring up reinforcements from outside. Do nothing that may make it harder for you to wait. Get nobody expelled. Wait. Things will come out all right if you only show your grit. All you’ve got to do is to stick it out.”
They had understood.
Toby was leaving then, not for good, but merely as their messenger to every other old Harleyan who still loved the school, and every parent, and he would fetch help. They need write no whining letters home. Toby would know how to do it. There would be no unpleasant scandal, no trouble with the Press. Toby had the honour of the school at heart. He would know how to do it. Sooner or later the Head would find that out. Then it would be their day. Till then their duty lay in knowing how to wait. Every day that passed and left them idle and bored to tears would, nevertheless, be a day upon which Toby would without doubt have gone another step on the road of retribution.
Whether he could call up the outside forces in time to avail during the present term could not be guessed. But he would be working for them. That would be enough. This was the memory that those who looked on in wonder at the school’s forbearance did not understand. It was Harley’s secret.
So the days passed.
The Head, for his part, found them pleasant days. He knew at last the wonder of his power. His strength had triumphed. He had the reputation of 220never doing the expected. His answer to their challenge had taken the wind completely from their sails and left them open-mouthed with awe. They were spellbound with his invincible strength of purpose. They realised at last that they had met their master. Slowly but surely he was making them bow before him. They had counted upon him making Rouse the scapegoat and they had prepared to defeat him. Instead he had defeated them. The feeling was delightful. He went his way with a shrewdly grim expression befitting a man of such resolution, but at heart he was laughing in delight. He began to overlook the disappointment he had experienced in his son. Perhaps his son was not to blame. After all, one of his stamp in one family was all that folk could reasonably expect. He looked round and about him each day and saw boys wriggling under his iron rule. He did not wonder why they did not defy him. He was content to know that they were learning a lesson they would never forget as long as they lived, and he gloried in prolonging it. Once he reminded them that their punishment could not be lightened in any way until Rouse came to him to say that the school would bow to his ruling and would recognise his son. They just ignored him.
So days passed.
Soon Toby had been gone a fortnight. No news came. Terence had had letters but they conveyed only one exhortation. They gave no such message as the whole school longed so feverishly to hear.
And then at last, when the utter weariness of life had grown almost more than they could bear, and some had begun to doubt if Toby could really do anything for them, something happened. Terence was sitting with Rouse in his study one evening when there sounded upon the door a sharp, peremptory knock. Then the door swung on its hinges and there 221entered one who held himself strangely erect, whose chin was so proudly uplifted that he seemed a living example of the proud and patient spirit that was keeping Harley solid during this the last round of the long fight. His glasses had slipped a little over the bridge of his nose, and when he stopped and brought his gaze to bear upon them each in turn he looked at them quaintly over the rims. At last his bearing relaxed. Safely inside the room with the closed door behind him he became suddenly a human boy, and it was clear that he was somewhat unsettled. It made him rather more likeable.
“I want to tell you something,” he began. “P’r’aps I ought to have come before, but I’ve been waiting to make sure.”
“What is it, Henry?” said Rouse.
Henry cast a deprecating eye at his clothes and, following his gaze, Rouse perceived that they were smeared with dirt. He held out his hands and revealed their blackened palms.
“I’ve been climbing up another drain-pipe.”
“How many is that you’ve climbed up now?” asked Rouse. “What is your average for the season?”
Henry ignored him.
“There’s a drain-pipe at Seymour’s,” said he, “that takes you on to a ledge, and you can walk along the ledge and look into Coles’ study.”
“What did you want to look into Coles’ study for?”
“I didn’t look in,” said Henry. “I listened.”
He paused. Rouse was looking at him dubiously. Terence had moved from his chair and was leaning over the table.
“Why couldn’t you listen at the door, then?”
Henry looked at him scornfully. It seemed almost superfluous to explain that in the cinematograph world nobody listens at a door if they can climb 222up a pipe and listen at a window. He heaved a sigh.
“Something has happened,” he said. “Until now no single fellow in the school has let us down. If the Head’s been looking for a chance to put the screw on a bit, he’s been disappointed. No one’s been caught out after the hours he laid down. No one has broken bounds. No one’s played games. The chaps have hung together. But to-night I came across Bobbie Carr creeping out of school just before seven o’clock.”
“Well,” said Rouse, “what did you do?”
“I stopped him and asked him where he was going, and he wouldn’t say. I jawed him a bit and told him that no matter what he was going for he wasn’t playing the game. I said he was bound to be caught, and he’d be the first one who’d let us down.”
“Did he turn back?”
“No,” said Henry soberly. “He shook me off and went on.”
“And where do you think he’s gone?”
For a moment Henry hesitated. Then he spoke up boldly.
“Seeing how much I know,” said he, “I hadn’t got any doubt. It was my idea that Coles was sending him down to the town to get something to drink.”
The captain of cricket and the captain of football looked at one another gravely and finally looked at Henry.
“And so,” continued Henry, looking at them modestly over the tops of his glasses, “I decided to get additional information, and I climbed up the drain-pipe and listened at Coles’ window.”
“Well?” said Terence.
“There isn’t any doubt about it at all. Coles was in there with some of his pals and they’re drinking. Young Carr’s been sent for another bottle.” There 223was a brief silence. “That’s isn’t quite all,” said Henry presently. “I went back to the little gates and waited for Carr to come back. I meant to take the stuff away from him and bring it to you. But—he’s never come back. I’ve waited an hour and a half. One of two things has happened. Either he’s broken the bottle and gone back for another, or else after what I told him he’s afraid to come back. Perhaps he’s run away.” Henry concluded on a low note. He was clearly distressed. “Any day now,” said he, “Mr Nicholson might make something happen. The chaps have hung together all this time and given the Head no loophole. Now this will be found out.”
It was Terence who answered first. He turned to Rouse.
“You’ve tackled Coles once,” said he. “It’s my turn. I might have better luck. I’ll go to his study and make him say where Carr’s gone.”
Rouse shook his head.
“No, it would be no use. If he’s at all tight he’d only make an unholy shindy. That’d be worse than anything. I’ll go out. I’ll see if I can’t find young Carr somewhere or other between here and the town and bring him in.............