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.