His mouth took on again a natural grimness.
He looked round the room over his spectacles with little jerky movements of the head, seeing no single thing save pictures in his mind’s eye portraying that phase of the future which was of the first importance to his personal pride.
In ten days term would be over. The probability was that the school would never know this sequel to the long fight until he had really gone. Rumours that he was not to stay might reach them during the holidays, but not until they reassembled for the Easter term and found that they had really triumphed would they be sure. His imagination presented him with a mental vision of how things would be then, and in the forefront of the picture he saw the boy who throughout the term had fought him, gloating over his fall. The flood-tide of Rouse’s popularity would carry him in wild idolatry to the top of the school. And Rouse would ascend, laughing bombastically at the memory of the master who had challenged his hold over the school and who had been defeated. He slowly shook his head in grave unhappiness. Always there had been strong in him a deep desire to make a reputation and to hold it throughout his life. He would like, after he had gone, that all honest fellows in the school should say of him that he delighted in every crisis to stand alone, that he had always taken them by surprise, that he had never done what they had counted upon him doing.
Now he was defeated. The school would say of him instead that all his life he had done wrong and that he had never been exposed till now. The bubble that would be pricked would not be Rouse’s but his own. He suddenly stood up. To be relieved of his post was not so terrible a blow as was the certain knowledge that he would be remembered by the school only as one who had been a three months’ wonder and who had failed. That was more than he could bear. He looked round the room in sudden petulance, and thought it stiff and unresponsive. The sober pictures and the heavy curtains were glaring at him stupidly. He moved hesitantly towards the door as if to escape from this environment. He wandered into the passage, came to the old oak door and swung it upon its hinges. The night air came round the corner, cooling his forehead with the touch of an old friend. He knew then what he needed ... the friendly solitude of the night. For perhaps the last time he would roam his provinces alone, fighting the black depression that was slowly weighing him down.