They walked on in silence a little way as far as the iron gate into the quadrangle. Then Maddox spoke again.
“He’s the best chap in the world, sir,” he said. “He saved me, you know. Just saved me.”
The Head pressed his arm.
“Ah, that’s between you and David,” he said. “It’s not for me to hear. But I know you love him, which is the only point. Please God, you’ll have him with you many years yet. And if not, Frank, you mustn’t be bitter, or think that it’s a cruel ordinance that takes him away. God takes him, and we must give, even as David gave himself when he just jumped at that horse. Do you think he would have withheld himself if he had known what the result would have been? Not a bit of it; he would have done it just the same; we both know that. His life was his, and, like the brick he is, he chose to risk it.”
They walked on in silence half across the quiet quadrangle.
“Will you come and sup with us?” asked the Head presently. “I can give you a bed, too, if you like.”
“Oh, thanks awfully, sir,” said Frank, “but I think I’ll go down to the house. Mr. Adams will put me up somehow. Or I shall sit up. I should like to be down there.”
The Head nodded.
“I see,” he said. “I quite understand. Good night then.”
Maddox went out of schoolyard, and down the road to his old house. The afterglow of sunset was fading fast, the road showed grey between black hedgerows, and as he crossed the stream, the reflection of a big star wavered on the quiet, flowing water. The whole place was intensely familiar to him, part of his blood, part of his intimate life, and, passing the fives-court, he remembered how, on a wet day not yet three years ago, he had given David and Bags elementary instruction in squash, and had walked down this same road afterwards, waiting for David to come in with a parcel for him. Now that friend of his heart lay between life and death in the house of which the lights already shone between the elm-trees. He tried to realise, and again shrank from realising, what the loss would mean to him. He had a hundred friends alive and well, but he could not measure David by any of them. He was just David. . . .