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.”
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.