The night was suddenly broken by a roar of clashing voices, a riotous outburst of fierce cries, then the whole assembly was in sudden movement. He strained his eyes for a clear sight of what was happening, tried all he knew to catch the sense of all the clamour. No set phrase reached him. All he could properly distinguish here and there in the turmoil was the sound of his own name shouted again and again as if in passionate loyalty by many voices that he could not recognise.
But it was evidence enough. The last resort of discipline had failed. The school had been irremediably snubbed. And, as he waited, there came to him an almost dreaded thought. The school would still not take it. He read this as the message of that chaotic shouting. They were coming for him. The Head had dragged him from his high estate and the school would not lie down that night until they had hoisted him up again, if only to see him enthroned upon their shoulders as a little tin god, idolised and ten times as strongly established as their captain now than ever before, whatever the Head might have to say.
It came to Rouse as a fear.
He imagined himself hatefully in the limelight, a puffed-up and imaginary hero without just cause. He had some inkling now as to the temper of the school and he knew what it would mean.
He listened again. They were certainly coming towards him. Above the lasting din he could still hear his own name shouted ever and again. He looked round his study nervously, suddenly spotted the lofty cupboard, darted into it and shut the door gingerly behind him.
Two minutes later the clatter of a great stampede was breaking the peace of Morley’s. He crouched in his hiding-place and scarcely dared to breathe. Soon the forerunners were pounding up the stairs and along the passage shouting his name in turn as they came, with a desperate affection that would not be denied.
The door of his study flew open and he heard them tumble in one after the other, and finally cry the news back to those behind.
“He isn’t here. He’s gone!”
This meant no ending to the uproar. He heard the message passed to those on the road outside, in high-pitched voices that clamoured for ideas as to where he could be hiding. Then those below, realising that they would now be foremost in the search, turned excitedly, scrunching the gravel underfoot, and made off towards the school again. But those who were in the house intended first to make a proper job of it, while they were here, and he heard them running like a pack of hounds into the common room, and down to the dining-hall below, whilst all the time they shouted for him pleadingly, hoping against vain hope that he would answer and produce himself at last.
Then, in the end, they seemed resolved that he was nowhere there, and off they set in a stern chase after the body of the hunt, racing across the open spaces towards the school again.