He looked round the room over his spectacles with little jerky movements of the head, seeing no single thing save pictures in his mind’s eye portraying that phase of the future which was of the first importance to his personal pride.
In ten days term would be over. The probability was that the school would never know this sequel to the long fight until he had really gone. Rumours that he was not to stay might reach them during the holidays, but not until they reassembled for the Easter term and found that they had really triumphed would they be sure. His imagination presented him with a mental vision of how things would be then, and in the forefront of the picture he saw the boy who throughout the term had fought him, gloating over his fall. The flood-tide of Rouse’s popularity would carry him in wild idolatry to the top of the school. And Rouse would ascend, laughing bombastically at the memory of the master who had challenged his hold over the school and who had been defeated. He slowly shook his head in grave unhappiness. Always there had been strong in him a deep desire to make a reputation and to hold it throughout his life. He would like, after he had gone, that all honest fellows in the school should say of him that he delighted in every crisis to stand alone, that he had always taken them by surprise, that he had never done what they had counted upon him doing.
Now he was defeated. The school would say of him instead that all his life he had done wrong and that he had never been exposed till now. The bubble that would be pricked would not be Rouse’s but his own. He suddenly stood up. To be relieved of his post was not so terrible a blow as was the certain knowledge that he would be remembered by the school only as one who had been a three months’ wonder and who had failed. That was more than he could bear. He looked round the room in sudden petulance, and thought it stiff and unresponsive. The sober pictures and the heavy curtains were glaring at him stupidly. He moved hesitantly towards the door as if to escape from this environment. He wandered into the passage, came to the old oak door and swung it upon its hinges. The night air came round the corner, cooling his forehead with the touch of an old friend. He knew then what he needed ... the friendly solitude of the night. For perhaps the last time he would roam his provinces alone, fighting the black depression that was slowly weighing him down.
He came out on to the gravel path and looked up at Harley. Here and there lighted windows, out of true keeping with the school’s proud majesty, were winking at him as if in teasing. He turned across the football ground. The night air did not seem very cold. Indeed it served him rather well by clearing his troubled mind. So he was moving with hands clasped under his gown, his square-built head sunken between his shoulders, when his attention was suddenly distracted by a footstep upon the pathway by the pavilion just in front of him. He stopped and looked ahead, his chief hope an anxious one that he would not himself be noticed wandering about so oddly on a winter’s night without his hat. Only for one moment was he uncertain as to the identity of the young man who was passing. Then clear recognition came to him. That young man was Rouse. Funnily enough, he too was going his way without hat or overcoat, and the Head stared in perplexity. Next he considered the time.
His definite order had declared that no boy should be out of school after seven o’clock. This was defiance. He moved along the grass in the stealthy manner of a domestic cat. Rouse, engrossed upon his mission, never even turned his head. At last he came to a narrow gate that led into the roadway, and here he made a moment’s pause before he boldly scrambled over and set off unhesitatingly towards the town.
The Head had stopped to watch with eyes that were fixed and wide, and now he stood rooted to the spot, still staring tensely in the direction Rouse had taken. It was as though a star of hope had suddenly shone through the darkness of the night. The curtain had risen upon a dramatic scene that should prove the climax of the play. For ten days more he would still be Headmaster of the school. They had not yet taken from him the power to expel, and Rouse had played into his hands. Here was a way to win.
That sense of crushing defeat lifted from his shoulders as if by magic. He turned. Decision had come to him. He began to step out towards the school houses. He would go to Morley’s and ask for Rouse. At this hour every boy in Harley should be in his study or in his cubicle. There could be no conceivable excuse for Rouse. The whole of Morley’s should know that the Headmaster had been to the house and had found him missing. His sense of dramatic effect bounced around his heart. The school should have little enough to laugh at in his own departure after all. His wish might yet come true. It should not be by the folly of his government but by the outstanding boldness of his last act that Harley should ever afterwards remember him. Before he left the school Rouse should be expelled.
CHAPTER XXI
SECRET SERVICE
The fight was very nearly over. One man was covering up with evident caution; his legs were almost giving way beneath him. The other was Johnny Winter, and Johnny was standing away and waiting for his opening.
They had said that he was too old. They had even thought it pathetically sad that a man who, in his prime, had been unbeaten champion at his weight, should be lured back to the ring after three years away from it to fight again. Some had supposed it was the bombast of the man who was at the top of the tree, and who claimed that not even Johnny Winter could have defeated him, that had tempted the master boxer of his day out of retirement. Others argued that the size of the purse that was up for competition had had the most to do with it. And they had all agreed that Johnny was foolish to have yielded to temptation. There was never a boxer in all the world who, when his day was passed, came back to the ring and fought again just as he had used to fight in his own hey-day.