A careful onlooker casting back his mind in after years to the ten days that intervened between the greatest depth of the school’s dejection and its complete recovery has said that the countenance of the average Harleyan of that day was to him the face of a good barometer showing a steady rise from storm to set-fair by regular upward moves from day to day.
From the moment when Rouse, by breaking the news to Saville, had, as it were, thrown that message like a pebble into the pool of Harley’s dejection, the rippling circles of water that showed just where it had sunk spread with almost mathematical precision until the outermost circle had reached the outermost boys in the school. The countenance of the school was, therefore, more than a barometer. It was a graph, showing exactly how far the whisper reached each day.
The manner in which the quickly passing word somehow avoided masters was enigmatical. It may be that some few of them knew without seeming to know. If so, there was not one enemy amongst them. For all the groups of boys that the Head might have seen any day standing about school deep in some earnest discussion, their eyes newly bright, all symptoms of their depression vanished, he never guessed the truth, so that each little band of friends were able to make their own arrangements for the journey to Rainhurst on that great day that was surely coming without one single obstructing order from the Head.
Directly the school had reassembled after half-term Rouse sent for Henry Hope.
“Henry,” said he to Terence, “can always indicate to a man the temper of the school in a few well-chosen words. Henry knows everybody. In short, what Henry thinks to-day Harley will think to-morrow.”
Henry appeared before him without delay, and was interrogated.
“As far as I know,” said he, “there’s nobody now who hasn’t heard.”
“Has there been upraised,” demanded Rouse, “one single dissentient voice?”
“There has not,” responded Henry; “except in places where it doesn’t matter.”