Henry made a comforting grimace.
“If I know Rouse as well as I think I do,” said he, “he isn’t the sort of guy to go and get caught.”
Terence slapped one hand into the other distressfully.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s just the sort of guy he is. He’s never made a plan since I knew him that ever went right.”
The Headmaster of Harley sat at his table, his elbows resting upon the handsome blotting-pad that graced it, and in his hands he held, with a curious, unnatural stiffness, a letter. His head was bowed a little, and his attitude was so very still that one who came unawares upon him sitting there might almost have thought that he had fallen asleep; but presently he moved his head and looked up and around him with a quick movement of uncertainty, as if the silence of that vast room were oppressing him. And if one might then have seen his face and noticed the setting of the deep lines upon it, one would have known the truth. Hard Roe was beaten.
The pages of history are crowded with the names of men whose rise to eminence was aided by daily self-aggrandisement, but there is no record of any one amongst them all whose besetting weakness did not sooner or later compass his fall.
If Hard Roe had ever properly understood this truth he had forgotten it long before it would have been of most use to him to remember it. For some few minutes he merely read the letter through and through, and at last, when he knew the words by heart, he found himself wondering whose influence lay behind it. He did not know the Governors of Harley well enough to understand how much they were likely to know of things at the school, and it never occurred to him at all that a man of Toby Nicholson’s stamp could have any means of influence at their councils. He was unaware how many parents might have lodged complaint against his ruling, or what influential Old Harleyans had sided against him. These were wheels within wheels which he could not understand. Now he was to leave. His term of government ended with the coming of the holidays. There was nothing in the letter that could properly offend. One might almost have thought that the regrets which it expressed were real. But there was nevertheless a coldness in its phrasing which succeeded tolerably well in conveying a stern rebuke. That he understood.
He braced his shoulders.
His mouth took on again a natural grimness.