HARD ROE
Hard Roe had become a changed man. In a single crowded minute he had
thrown up the part of Napoleon Defeated which for a short while he had
acted with very tolerable ability, and had assumed instead the character
of a criminal barrister making his way to the Law Courts with secret and
sensational evidence up his sleeve. His gown was ballooning proudly
behind him, the tails of it kept aloft by the pace at which he moved.
His hands were no longer gripping one at the other behind his back.
Instead his arms were swinging vigorously from the shoulders as if to
assist in propelling him to Morley’s before Rouse could return. His lips
were parted, and such hair as he had was rustling upon his head like
meadow grass before the breaking of a storm.
The bee-line which he was making took him, first, past the Rugby
posts—mere symbols of a departed game—and here he struck the broad
pathway along the outskirts of the playing fields. Where the way
branched into two he came to Seymour’s, and he would have passed that
tall house at his best speed, cutting the night air like a land yacht,
had not a sudden clamour of excited voices, raised in consummate
confusion, floated down to him from an upstairs window and distracted
his attention. So he stopped and he looked and he listened.
The bright light in a window immediately above him, evidently that of a
study, indicated without doubt the source of the commotion. For a little
while he stood, his head thrown back, peering curiously towards it.
There was no law against a light in a senior’s study at nine o’clock,
but there could be no excuse for such disorder as was evidenced by those
so wildly contesting voices.
At last he made up his mind. Enthusiasm prompted him to hasten upon his
way, but allegiance to the dogma of unexpectedness was too strong. He
glanced round him once, then fixed the front door with protuberant eyes,
lifted the latch and went in. If Mr Seymour was out visiting some
colleague, the occasion called for action on his own part. It might well
be that this most memorable evening would grant him an all-round victory
over the school on points.
He could not have chosen a more sensational moment to appear.
As he reached the bottom of the stairs a young man came dancing down. It
may be that those who had been watching and who would have followed had
peeped over the banisters in time and had withdrawn to make good their
escape, but this one young man was in that condition in which loneliness
is as nothing. He was singing raucously, and his manner of descent was
like that of a low comedian on a sliding staircase. His hair was tangled
and his countenance was flushed to fever heat.
The Head had drawn back as if in preparation for a suitably sudden
appearance from the wings, but instead he slowly drew himself now to his
full height. As if at one touch of a magic wand Hard Roe suddenly ceased
to look merely a silly old man. He was transformed into a lonely monarch
in a terrible predicament. His rather grim face suddenly aged to that of
a man who has faced all weathers and seen all things. The look that came
into his eyes whilst he watched was not now merely one of anger or
contempt; all thoughts had fled from his mind and left him cold and
stricken, and his stare was testimony to the power of unexpectedness.
The young man was his son.
Time passed on leaden wings.
His son had stumbled once on the bottom stair and had swung forward
towards the wall. As he righted himself Hard Roe moved out of the
shadows to meet him, and they came face to face. At first the young man
did not seem to comprehend the grim reality of it. He just stood swaying
upon his heels and smiling at the old man kindly. Next he broke into
cackling laughter.
“I can’t help it,” he confessed. “I’m—I’m drunk.”
Hard Roe threw out his hand and clutched him by the shoulder.
“Stand up! You are _my son_.”
Roe made a belated attempt to look apologetic.
The Head laid his other hand alongside the first and shook him savagely.
“Where have you been? Why are you like this?”
He was speaking through clenched teeth and his arms were trembling with
the force of his passion. But there came only an unresponsive silence.
If there is one particular phase of drunkenness at which one may best
appreciate the beastliness of it, then it is at that moment when one
perceives the subject looking around him as if in search of a convenient
spot in which to be sick.
The Head removed his hands and they fell weightily to his sides. He
began to jerk words incredulously at his son, as if his power of speech
was somehow dislocated.
“You understand—you understand. You are the Headmaster’s son. You are
captain of football. You came as an _example to them_. I——”
His passion slowly subsided. He began to grow hard and isolated,
impregnable. Once he heard a hurried scuffling upstairs as if someone
were hiding away all traces of carousal and vanishing quickly from the
scene. Now the whole house was very still. He had an implicit belief
that even if the banisters were not lined with the heads of inquisitive
boys, at least every member of the house was listening at an open door,
and he knew that they would be wondering what Hard Roe would do at this,
the crisis of his life. He knew that he must not hesitate. He gave his
son a final shaking.
“Have you no explanation at all?” he begged. “Have you nothing whatever
to say to me?”
The boy could find no proper answer. His eyes were closing sleepily. He
had propped himself against the banisters. The final exhilaration that
had sent him downstairs in that eccentric dance had deserted him, and a
feeling of giddy biliousness had come in its place. He shook his head
with a comical slantwise motion.
Above the many conflicting emotions in his mind now the Head remembered
his reputation. Throughout his life, whenever he had been in doubt,
facing two roads, he had taken always that way which he felt he would
not be expected to take. Now the unexpected had, in its turn, come upon
him with a rush. Once again two ways lay open to him, and he knew now
that the way which would be the unexpected way would be a way that was
terribly hard, albeit absolutely just.
He suddenly tilted up his chin. A glare of dour pugnacity had settled
upon his features as if in token of decision. Then at last he spoke, and
his voice was resolute and even.
“There is one law in this school, and I show no favour. It was you that
I brought here as an example to a school which knew no discipline. Now
it is as an example that I shall have to send you away. You are
expelled. To-morrow you leave this school in disgrace.”
He stopped.
In all the house there was not one solitary creak. The silence was
absolutely cold and merciless. And then at last a footstep sounded in
the portico. Mr Seymour was coming in. The Head turned and looked at him
with a lofty dignity. It was as if he wanted the position to be
perfectly clear to the other before he spoke. Then when Mr Seymour had
looked dazedly first at the boy and then at the Head, Hard Roe spoke up.
“Please have this boy taken to bed at once,” he said gently. “I have
expelled him. To-morrow he will leave the school.”
He moved to the open door and, reaching it, passed out, whilst Mr
Seymour still stood looking fixedly at the boy as if he could not
believe his eyes.
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.
Terence seized him in a steely grip and thrust a handkerchief violently
into his face. But Rouse freed himself vexedly, listened a moment for
any sign of alarm, and then proceeded, in the time-honoured manner of
all who keep late hours, to remove his boots.
He turned once before beginning to climb the staircase and looked
thoughtfully through the darkness at the shape that was Terence.
“You have not,” said he softly, “such a thing as a hot drink concealed
about your person, I presume?”
Terence slowly lowered the window and secured it with the latch. When he
turned he shook his head regretfully.
“Thank you,” whispered Rouse. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
Next moment he was making his way nimbly upstairs. Terence looked round
him once, then followed after. The warmth of a bed had become a
strangely appealing thought.
* * * * *
For two hours Harley had slumbered. The last good-nights had all been
said. The last lights had been snuffed. Only the great clock over the
school, vigilantly marking time like the ghost of some soldier of the
king, was still awake and looking far out into the country, when a car
came droning down the highroad, branched along the fork that led past
the playing fields and stopped beside the school pavilion. There was a
moment’s muttered conversation, then out of the car stepped Toby
Nicholson. He turned once to the small figure wrapped in rugs that was
still reclining in a corner.
“You understand?” he said. “Wait here till I’ve spied out the lie of the
land. Then I’ll come back and fetch you. I may be some little time, but
you must wait.”
Bobbie nodded his head obediently, and Toby turned and scrambled over
the narrow gate into the school grounds. Off he set along the line of
the trees, stepping, had he but known it, almost in the very footprints
that Rouse had left in his tracks. He went swiftly, and at times, with a
furtive glance around him, he left the shadows and slipped across the
open to cut a corner. At last he came to Seymour’s and here he stopped,
just as Rouse had stopped at Morley’s, and glanced up at the windows.
Everywhere the blinds were drawn. There was not one solitary light. He
had expected as much, and now he had to come swiftly to a decision. By
hook or by crook he intended to get into the house and rouse Mr Seymour.
There were several ways and means. He could ring the bell or batter upon
the door with his clenched fists until he was answered. He could throw
stones at windows. These methods would, however, necessarily excite
undue commotion, and this Toby determined to avoid. Since nothing much
could be accomplished before morning by those within, there existed the
alternative, of course, of camping out under the trees until the first
greyness of the dawn broke through the night, and surreptitiously
slipping Bobbie into the house at the first opening of the door, if
necessary with the connivance of a servant. On a winter’s night this
solution was, however, emphatically inconvenient. There remained,
therefore, the only really sound means of entry, that of the break-in.
Without any great hesitation Toby decided upon this latter. He had once
committed a burglary for the benefit of the cinema, and he saw no valid
reason why he should not break into Mr Seymour’s bedroom for the benefit
of the school. He cast an inquisitive eye at the window behind which Mr
Seymour would be sleeping, and considered the question of the ascent. Mr
Seymour was a quiet, rather faded gentleman who affected a hat-guard all
the year round and who looked upon school life from the scholarly rather
than the magisterial standpoint. Above all, he hated to be bothered.
Somewhere within him Toby cherished a distinct affection for this
old-fashioned gentleman, and he was aware that this was reciprocated. To
how great an extent, however, this esteem would be affected by his
entering the gentleman’s room by the window at one A.M. he did not care
to surmise. He made a brief inspection, then secured a firm hold on the
drain-pipe, collected a bunch of ivy in the other hand, and commenced to
climb. At first his progress was slow. By skilful work he nevertheless
rose foot by foot until he at last reached a window on the first floor
parallel with Mr Seymour’s own. He swung on to this window-ledge and
gravely considered the prospect of his being able to move sideways
across the face of the wall. So far as he could see there was only one
practicable route. He must climb to the story next above, make use of
the attic window-ledge, and swing from here to the window immediately
above his destination. From here he could drop from his hands and land
neatly and daintily, like the falling petal of a flower, upon Mr
Seymour’s window-sill. This he did with delightful grace.
Five minutes later the blade of his pocket-knife was moving gently
between the upper and lower halves of the window, and after a moment’s
work he had pushed the catch carefully aside. He paused then for a
moment, like the look-out in the crow’s nest of a ship, to gaze down and
take in the surrounding view. For the first time in his life he was
clinging to the wall of a house in the loneliest hour of the night and
about to break into a gentleman’s apartment. He sighed happily as a man
will who delights in new experiences, turned inwards and slowly raised
the lower half of the window. Then he stepped into the room and sat down
on the inner window-ledge. The blast of cold air which his entry had
introduced had an almost immediate effect in a noise of pronounced
discontent from the recesses of the room. As his eyes grew used to the
dark he dimly perceived a long arm reaching a bunch of blanket and
drawing it gratefully about the pillow. Toby collected himself for
discovery. The terrifying thought flashed through his mind that he might
possibly have come to the wrong room. Supposing that by some freak of
Fate Mr Seymour chanced to have changed his quarters during the last few
days? He cast a hurried glance at his only means of escape, then steeled
himself for the worst and spoke:
“Mr Seymour.”
At first there was no reply. It was difficult to know, however, whether
this was because Mr Seymour was not yet awake or whether he was
endeavouring to decide what to say in reply. At last Toby repeated his
salutation.
Mr Seymour woke in a sudden convulsion of uncertainty, shuddered a great
many times, and spoke.
“What?” said he. “Oh, please—for goodness’ sake do shut that door.”
Toby considerately closed the window.
“May I switch on the light?” he inquired. “Shall I fall over anything?”
“Whatever is it?” sighed Mr Seymour. “Put on the light, yes. Really, I——
Who is it wants me? I——”
Toby stumbled across the room, cannoned violently into the bed and,
reaching the switch, at last flooded the room with light. As he did so
he explained himself briefly:
“It’s me—Nicholson.”
Mr Seymour peered at him dazedly.
“Nicholson? Why, yes, I see it is. But how very odd. Do you know, I
_quite_ thought you’d gone away. Quite. I must have been dreaming. How
very strange.”
Toby approached and sat down pleasantly on the bed.
“I did go away,” he confessed. “But you know how a felon always returns
to the scene of his crime. As a matter of fact, I have just come in
through the window.”
He paused a moment as if to allow this information to sink well in. Mr
Seymour took the news oddly. He just sat up in bed and looked as if he
were about to weep.
“What time is it?” he demanded. “Dear me, how troublesome a night! It
seems only a few minutes ago that I was having a boy put to bed.
Whatever is it now?”
Toby leaned over him.
“Were all your boys present to-night?” he inquired. “Was anybody
reported missing?”
The other grew visibly perplexed.
“Really, I can hardly say. So much has been happening to-night. No doubt
you have not yet heard——”
Toby waved the point aside.
“I may have done you a good turn. I hope so, anyway. One of the
youngsters in your house has been bullied into getting whisky for
someone amongst your seniors, and at last he’s kicked. So this evening
he ran away.”
“Good gracious me!” exclaimed the other, “who’s run away? Why, only this
evening I have had——”
“Fortunately,” said Toby, pressing on hastily, “I came across him myself
and I have been able to lead him back to the fold. It may be in time for
you to take this matter of the whisky in hand yourself before anything
comes out about it.”
Mr Seymour rose a little farther out of his bed and pointed at Toby
excitedly. He was suddenly very wide awake.
“You say this boy ran away? I am not surprised. This evening a boy was
found in this house drunk, and he was expelled.”
“Expelled?” repeated Toby, cocking one eyebrow in surprise. “By the
Head, do you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Who was the boy?”
“It was his own son,” said Mr Seymour, and drawing himself completely
out of bed he began to feel for his slippers. Suddenly he looked up with
a jerk.
Toby was still staring at him thoughtfully.
“He found his own son drunk?”
“Yes.”
“And nobody else?”
“Apparently not,” said Mr Seymour. He stood up. “Nicholson,” he
demanded, “who is this boy? And,” he added, “how on earth did you get
into this house?”
“His name is Carr,” said Toby. “And I came in via the window. I crawled
up the wall.”
Mr Seymour approached the window, looked at it incredulously, then
opened the lower half and peered out.
“It is a nasty drop,” he declared.
Toby moved to the window and stood beside him.
“Yes,” said he. “It looks worse from here. Nevertheless that is how I
got in. Those pieces of cloth you see there hanging on nails amongst the
ivy are pieces of my trousers. In other words, you have been burgled.”
“But why on earth didn’t you ring the bell?”
Toby tapped him upon the shoulder.
“The boy who ran away is outside in a car. I thought you would rather we
got him in without attracting attention.”
“But, goodness me,” said the other, “a number of boys in the house will
know that he was out. What will be the excuse?”
“The other boys in the house,” said Toby, “know a great deal more about
what’s been going on than you do. You can bet your life on that. And
after this evening’s little entertainment there won’t be many who won’t
understand the truth. My advice to you is to let him come in and go to
bed without a word. You yourself need know nothing about it.”
Mr Seymour was looking at him dubiously.
“The reason I say this,” Toby explained, “is that it means a lot to the
school if we can come through this term without the spirit having been
knocked out of any single boy by the Head’s idea of justice. It won’t be
quite so satisfactory if this youngster should be found out. It’s the
last lap, too, Seymour. In another ten days term will be over.”
He paused.
“There will be another term following after,” said Mr Seymour gloomily.
Toby nodded his head.
“Yes,” he admitted; “but it will not be quite the same. Next term the
Grey Man is coming back.”
He smiled. Mr Seymour gazed at him with open mouth.
“Are you sure?”
“I saw him yesterday,” said Toby. “But it is better that the school as a
whole should not know just yet. If one thing rather than another would
send Harley completely off its head just now it would be the rumour that
the Headmaster was defeated and that the Grey Man was coming back. Well,
we must play fair. There is something about the Head that at times makes
him almost likeable in his loneliness. Now the only ally that he had has
let him down and the Head’s done the right thing by expelling him. There
will be hard days coming for the Head, and, after all, you and I are
masters and have a master’s point of view. I fancy the Head knows his
fate already, but I think that we ought to respect his position to the
end. It’s up to us to let him break the news when he feels ready. Don’t
you think so?”
Mr Seymour nodded his head.
“It makes a difference,” said he. “I had always rather looked upon you
as an Old Boy pure and simple, Nicholson. But I see now that there is a
little of something else in your composition as well. If you will go out
and fetch this boy I will see that he gets in by the front door.”
Toby held out his hand.
“I hope you’ll forgive me getting in by the window,” he said. “It was
the only way. I’ll go out by the door now, though, and leave it unbolted
for Carr. I shall see you again soon.”
“You will be coming back?”
“I am starting again next term,” said Toby. “See you then.”
* * * * *
With morning sensation came like a dust-storm to sweep Harley in its
whirl and leave her spinning. The whole of Roe’s own house, of course,
knew overnight. Those who had been asleep were violently awakened to be
told. And in the morning the members of Seymour’s spread out fanwise and
ran through the other houses before their breakfast, carrying the news.
At morning prayers there was some kind of hope that the Head would make
an announcement revoking his selection of a football captain, and
perhaps even acknowledging the claims of Rouse, but instead he came in
without an indication of any kind that anything was untoward and faced
them. His eyes roamed round the sea of their upturned faces. He noticed
Rouse in the forefront, but Rouse did not look his way. Next his eyes
turned upon the rebels of the Sixth lined up beneath his dais, each in a
most devout and learned attitude, and finally he turned to Pointon and
jerked his head at him. So Pointon’s voice broke the silence at last as
he began to read.
When, later, the moment came for the Head to walk down the aisle between
them, his gown majestically swinging, and to pass through the open doors
before their shuffling dismissal to their classes could begin, he walked
with a quick and irritable step, and it was not until he had reached the
quiet of his own room that he remembered one saving thought in his
bitter sorrow. They did not yet know that he himself would, at the end
of term, leave them in triumphant possession of their own unwritten
laws.
One master and one boy were, as we know, in the secret, but the boy had
honourably promised not to speak of it to anyone in the school, not even
to Rouse or Terence or Henry Hope.
“It is not your secret,” Toby had said. “You have stumbled upon it, and
so it is not yours to tell.”
In Seymour’s they had looked at Bobbie curiously in the morning, and a
great many boys of his own age had gathered about him to satisfy their
curiosity by asking questions. But he had smiled at them and shaken his
head.
“I went out for someone and I was late back,” was all he would say; “but
I got in all right.”
For the rest, he let their imagination carry them where it would. Rouse
came upon him and he too would have begun to question, but Bobbie gave
him a note from Toby and this appeared to afford him wholesome
satisfaction.
For a little while those who knew that Roe had found a friend in Coles
wondered what part he had played in Roe’s downfall, and indeed curiosity
as to which other boys from somewhere behind the scenes had really been
responsible for his own son’s defection troubled the Head himself; but
the awe in which he held his father effectually prevented Roe from
turning King’s evidence. He went quietly, with abashed mien, intensely
annoyed with his father for ever having fetched him from Wilton to
become a puppet at Harley. Afterwards Hard Roe seemed almost to forget
the incident, for he asked no questions of anybody in the school. It may
well be that in certain respects his sense of pride was satisfied by the
certainty that his iron justice would live in the memory of the boys he
would leave at Harley long after he had gone, and that for this reason
he preferred to leave things entirely as they were. By digging deeper
into the mystery and dragging to light whatever other miscreants there
were in Seymour’s he would seem to be finding excuses for his son by
sweeping away a handful of other boys as bad as he on the grounds that
they had led him astray, when his one expulsion would have all the
effect that was necessary in curing the evil by making an example of the
chief wrong-doer.
He had a distaste for excuses of any kind. His son should have been
strong enough to stand alone. Instead he had sinned, and he could not
pardon his son for drinking whisky on the grounds that another boy had
given it to him.
Coles lived in considerable anxiety during those last long days, because
he was unaware of the Head’s real attitude and quite uncertain whether,
before he left, Roe had given him away.
He had Bobbie before him and extracted an oath of secrecy.
“If you breathe so much as a word of this,” he had said, “I’ll tell your
secret too, and all the school shall know that a low professional pug
has sent his brat to a school for the sons of gentlemen. Not only that.
If you let me down I’ll see that your life here is a never-ending
nightmare. Are you going to promise?”
“I don’t see any need to promise,” said Bobbie, “but I’ll do so if you
like.”
Coles shook his fist angrily.
“I shall hold you to it,” he declared. “One word, and you’ll wish you’d
been born dumb.”
Bobbie turned and left him. After all, there was nobody he would need to
tell—now.
The last few days of term passed slowly. The most sensational thing that
could have come about had happened. That which followed was only
aftermath. To the last day they did not know how completely they had won
the long fight, nor guess that when Hard Roe stood in the great hall and
spoke to them of their Christmas holidays in a quiet and unemotional
voice he was in reality bidding them good-bye.
He had not altogether the bearing of a man who had failed. It was rather
that of a man who knew that he would leave his mark.