Hard Roe had become a changed man. In a single crowded minute he had thrown up the part of Napoleon Defeated which for a short while he had acted with very tolerable ability, and had assumed instead the character of a criminal barrister making his way to the Law Courts with secret and sensational evidence up his sleeve. His gown was ballooning proudly behind him, the tails of it kept aloft by the pace at which he moved. His hands were no longer gripping one at the other behind his back. Instead his arms were swinging vigorously from the shoulders as if to assist in propelling him to Morley’s before Rouse could return. His lips were parted, and such hair as he had was rustling upon his head like meadow grass before the breaking of a storm. The bee-line which he was making took him, first, past the Rugby posts—mere symbols of a departed game—and here he struck the broad pathway along the outskirts of the playing fields. Where the way branched into two he came to Seymour’s, and he would have passed that tall house at his best speed, cutting the night air like a land yacht, had not a sudden clamour of excited voices, raised in consummate confusion, floated down to him from an upstairs window and distracted his attention. So he stopped and he looked and he listened.
The bright light in a window immediately above him, evidently that of a study, indicated without doubt the source of the commotion. For a little 244while he stood, his head thrown back, peering curiously towards it. There was no law against a light in a senior’s study at nine o’clock, but there could be no excuse for such disorder as was evidenced by those so wildly contesting voices.
At last he made up his mind. Enthusiasm prompted him to hasten upon his way, but allegiance to the dogma of unexpectedness was too strong. He glanced round him once, then fixed the front door with protuberant eyes, lifted the latch and went in. If Mr Seymour was out visiting some colleague, the occasion called for action on his own part. It might well be that this most memorable evening would grant him an all-round victory over the school on points.
He could not have chosen a more sensational moment to appear.
As he reached the bottom of the stairs a young man came dancing down. It may be that those who had been watching and who would have followed had peeped over the banisters in time and had withdrawn to make good their escape, but this one young man was in that condition in which loneliness is as nothing. He was singing raucously, and his manner of descent was like that of a low comedian on a sliding staircase. His hair was tangled and his countenance was flushed to fever heat.
The Head had drawn back as if in preparation for a suitably sudden appearance from the wings, but instead he slowly drew himself now to his full height. As if at one touch of a magic wand Hard Roe suddenly ceased to look merely a silly old man. He was transformed into a lonely monarch in a terrible predicament. His rather grim face suddenly aged to that of a man who has faced all weathers and seen all things. The look that came into his eyes whilst he watched was not now merely one of anger or contempt; 245all thoughts had fled from his mind and left him cold and stricken, and his stare was testimony to the power of unexpectedness.
The young man was his son.
Time passed on leaden wings.
His son had stumbled once on the bottom stair and had swung forward towards the wall. As he righted himself Hard Roe moved out of the shadows to meet him, and they came face to face. At first the young man did not seem to comprehend the grim reality of it. He just stood swaying upon his heels and smiling at the old man kindly. Next he broke into cackling laughter.
“I can’t help it,” he confessed. “I’m—I’m drunk.”
Hard Roe threw out his hand and clutched him by the shoulder.
“Stand up! You are my son.”
Roe made a belated attempt to look apologetic.
The Head laid his other hand alongside the first and shook him savagely.
“Where have you been? Why are you like this?”
He was speaking through clenched teeth and his arms were trembling with the force of his passion. But there came only an unresponsive silence. If there is one particular phase of drunkenness at which one may best appreciate the beastliness of it, then it is at that moment when one perceives the subject looking around him as if in search of a convenient spot in which to be sick.
The Head removed his hands and they fell weightily to his sides. He began to jerk words incredulously at his son, as if his power of speech was somehow dislocated.
“You understand—you understand. You are the Headmaster’s son. You are captain of football. You came as an example to them. I——”
His passion slowly subsided. He began to grow 246hard and isolated, impregnable. Once he heard a hurried scuffling upstairs as if someone were hiding away all traces of carousal and vanishing quickly from the scene. Now the whole house was very still. He had an implicit belief that even if the banisters were not lined with the heads of inquisitive boys, at least every member of the house was listening at an open door, and he knew that they would be wondering what Hard Roe would do at this, the crisis of his life. He knew that he must not hesitate. He gave his son a final shaking.
“Have you no explanation at all?” he begged. “Have you nothing whatever to say to me?”
The boy could find no proper answer. His eyes were closing sleepily. He had propped himself against the banisters. The final exhilaration that had sent him downstairs in that eccentric dance had deserted him, and a feeling of giddy biliousness had come in its place. He shook his head with a comical slantwise motion.
Above the many conflicting emotions in his mind now the Head remembered his reputation. Throughout his life, whenever he had been in doubt, facing two roads, he had taken always that way which he felt he would not be expected to take. Now the unexpected had, in its turn, come upon him with a rush. Once again two ways lay open to him, and he knew now that the way which would be the unexpected way would be a way that was terribly hard, albeit absolutely just.
He suddenly tilted up his chin. A glare of dour pugnacity had settled upon his features as if in token of decision. Then at last he spoke, and his voice was resolute and even.
“There is one law in this school, and I show no favour. It was you that I brought here as an example to a school which knew no discipline. Now it is as an example that I shall have to send you away. 247You are expelled. To-morrow you leave this school in disgrace.”
He stopped.
In all the house there was not one solitary creak. The silence was absolutely cold and merciless. And then at last a footstep sounded in the portico. Mr Seymour was coming in. The Head turned and looked at him with a lofty dignity. It was as if he wanted the position to be perfectly clear to the other before he spoke. Then when Mr Seymour had looked dazedly first at the boy and then at the Head, Hard Roe spoke up.
“Please have this boy taken to bed at once,” he said gently. “I have expelled him. To-morrow he will leave the school.”
He moved to the open door and, reaching it, passed out, whilst Mr Seymour still stood looking fixedly at the boy as if he could not believe his eyes.
He went out into the dark with his head a little bowed and his hands tight clasped again behind his gown. So he made his way slowly back towards the distant school, and now the night seemed very chill. There was no longer any attraction in seeking Rouse. Rouse was saved. Hard Roe’s part at Harley was played. The last act was done.
It might very well have ended in his son leaving with him, proudly and almost in disdain. That could not be now. Had he allowed his boy to stay on to the end of term and then to leave quietly whilst he expelled Rouse, the name of Roe would have stood for ever in disrepute. It was his duty to do all in his power to save that name. However keenly the school disliked his character, they would know now that he had at least been true to it at the crisis of his life. His prophecy would perhaps come true.
It might, after all, be the outstanding boldness of his last act by which the school would ever afterwards remember him. He had very nearly forgotten 248how badly he had wanted that to be so a short while back.
At last the Head passed through the old oak door again and back into his own room. Then it was as though the veil of night fell gently over the confines of the school. Here and there, in the haunts of the privileged, lights still glittered for an hour or so, showing that some were still up and about in Harley; but in the houses and the body of the school they vanished one by one, as if the gusty wind were scurrying on its rounds and looking in at windows to blow them out.
A full hour passed before the figure of one who was weary and inordinately cold appeared with decided caution at the little gate beside the school pavilion and, climbing over, began to trudge disappointedly along the line of trees right round the outskirts of the playing fields towards Morley’s. It was Rouse, and he had both hands rammed into his trouser pockets and the collar of his coat turned up around his neck. There was an atmosphere about the school that was unusually lonely, and he felt it. His errand had proved utterly fruitless. He had no particular idea how he was going to get in again. He missed the company of Terence. His intention to keep in the shadows was taking him a long way round and he was in no mood to enjoy the walk. Altogether things were rotten. At last he came to Morley’s and stopped to look up for a moment at the forbidding walls. Then he moved with a kind of ill-humoured curiosity to the hall window. There came back to him the memory of a night of long ago when he and Terence had as youngsters crouched below that selfsame window to find themselves locked out, and how at last a small boy had tiptoed down the stairs to their rescue, had opened the window without a word and let them in, and had then gone peaceably 249to bed. That small boy had been Henry Hope.
Rouse gazed at the window now with the affection of an old friend. Terence must surely have made some plan to effect his entry without his having to ring the front-door bell. His hand reached out and passed cautiously across the window-pane. Then he seized the framework and tried it gingerly. Without a moment’s delay there came the sound of a gentle movement within, and he perceived a long arm reaching towards him behind the glass. Next the window was slowly raised and a tousled head of hair was thrust out into the night. Rouse raised himself on to his toes and inclined his body forward.
It was Terence, and he spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“Don’t make too much row. Has anybody seen you? Have you had any luck?”
Rouse levered himself on to the window-sill and poised there miserably for a moment before he answered, and even then he did not speak. He just shook his head dismally and scrambled in. And then he sneezed.
Terence seized him in a steely grip and thrust a handkerchief violently into his face. But Rouse freed himself vexedly, listened a moment for any sign of alarm, and then proceeded, in the time-honoured manner of all who keep late hours, to remove his boots.
He turned once before beginning to climb the staircase and looked thoughtfully through the darkness at the shape that was Terence.
“You have not,” said he softly, “such a thing as a hot drink concealed about your person, I presume?”
Terence slowly lowered the window and secured it with the latch. When he turned he shook his head regretfully.
“Thank you,” whispered Rouse. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
250Next moment he was making his way nimbly upstairs. Terence looked round him once, then followed after. The warmth of a bed had become a strangely appealing thought.
For two hours Harley had slumbered. The last good-nights had all been said. The last lights had been snuffed. Only the great clock over the school, vigilantly marking time like the ghost of some soldier of the king, was still awake and looking far out into the country, when a car came droning down the highroad, branched along the fork that led past the playing fields and stopped beside the school pavilion. There was a moment’s muttered conversation, then out of the car stepped Toby Nicholson. He turned once to the small figure wrapped in rugs that was still reclining in a corner.
“You understand?” he said. “Wait here till I’ve spied out the lie of the land. Then I’ll come back and fetch you. I may be some little time, but you must wait.”
Bobbie nodded his head obediently, and Toby turned and scrambled over the narrow gate into the school grounds. Off he set along the line of the trees, stepping, had he but known it, almost in the very footprints that Rouse had left in his tracks. He went swiftly, and at times, with a furtive glance around him, he left the shadows and slipped across the open to cut a corner. At last he came to Seymour’s and here he stopped, just as Rouse had stopped at Morley’s, and glanced up at the windows. Everywhere the blinds were drawn. There was not one solitary light. He had expected as much, and now he had to come swiftly to a decision. By hook or by crook he intended to get into the house and rouse Mr Seymour. There were several ways and means. He could ring the bell or batter upon the door with his clenched fists until he was answered. He could 251throw stones at windows. These methods would, however, necessarily excite undue commotion, and this Toby determined to avoid. Since nothing much could be accomplished before morning by those within, there existed the alternative, of course, of camping out under the trees until the first greyness of the dawn broke through the night, and surreptitiously slipping Bobbie into the house at the first opening of the door, if necessary with the connivance of a servant. On a winter’s night this solution was, however, emphatically inconvenient. There remained, therefore, the only really sound means of entry, that of the break-in. Without any great hesitation Toby decided upon this latter. He had once committed a burglary for the benefit of the cinema, and he saw no valid reason why he should not break into Mr Seymour’s bedroom for the benefit of the school. He cast an inquisitive eye at the window behind which Mr Seymour would be sleeping, and considered the question of the ascent. Mr Seymour was a quiet, rather faded gentleman who affected a hat-guard all the year round and who looked upon school life from the scholarly rather than the magisterial standpoint. Above all, he hated to be bothered.
Somewhere within him Toby cherished a distinct affection for this old-fashioned gentleman, and he was a............