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 how 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 to 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.