He turned towards the door.
“Shall I leave the light on, or would you prefer it off?”
“On please. I might fall asleep in the dark.”
“Not you! And, if you did, you would dream that I was there, and wake up. There are moments, young man, when you bring me pretty near to quitting and taking to honest work.”
He paused.
“But not altogether. I have still a shot or two in my locker. We shall see what we shall see. I am not dead yet. Wait!”
“I will, and some day, when I am walking along Piccadilly, a passing automobile will splash me with mud. A heavily furred plutocrat will stare haughtily at me from the tonneau, and with a start of surprise I shall recognize—”
“Stranger things have happened. Be flip while you can, sonny. You win so far, but this hoodoo of mine can’t last forever.”
He passed from the room with a certain sad dignity. A moment later he reappeared.
“A thought strikes me,” he said. “The fifty-fifty proposition does not impress you. Would it make things easier if I were to offer my cooperation for a mere quarter of the profit?”
“Not in the least.”
“It’s a handsome offer.”
“Wonderfully. I’m afraid I’m not dealing on any terms.”
He left the room, only to return once more. His head appeared, staring at me round the door, in a disembodied way, like the Cheshire Cat.
“You won’t say later on I didn’t give you your chance?” he said anxiously.
He vanished again, permanently this time. I heard his steps passing down the stairs.
II
We had now arrived at the last week of term, at the last days of the last week. The holiday spirit was abroad in the school. Among the boys it took the form of increased disorderliness. Boys who had hitherto only made Glossop bellow now made him perspire and tear his hair as well. Boys who had merely spilt ink now broke windows. The Little Nugget abandoned cigarettes in favour of an old clay pipe which he had found in the stables.
As for me, I felt like a spent swimmer who sees the shore almost within his reach. Audrey avoided me when she could, and was frigidly polite when we met. But I suffered less now. A few more days, and I should have done with this phase of my life forever, and Audrey would once more become a memory.
Complete quiescence marked the deportment of Mr. Fisher during these days. He did not attempt to repeat his last effort. The coffee came to the study unmixed with alien drugs. Sam, like lightning, did not strike twice in the same place. He had the artist’s soul, and disliked patching up bungled work. If he made another move, it would, I knew, be on entirely fresh lines.
Ignoring the fact that I had had all the luck, I was inclined to be self-satisfied when I thought of Sam. I had pitted my wits against his, and I had won. It was a praiseworthy performance for a man who had done hitherto nothing particular in his life.
If all the copybook maxims which had been drilled into me in my childhood and my early disaster with Audrey had not been sufficient, I ought to have been warned by Sam’s advice not to take victory for granted till the fight was over. As Sam had said, his luck would turn sooner or later.
One realizes these truths in theory, but the practical application of them seldom fails to come as a shock. I received mine on the last morning but one of the term.
Shortly after breakfast a message was brought to me that Mr. Abney would like to see me in his study. I went without any sense of disaster to come. Most of the business of the school was discussed in the study after breakfast, and I imagined that the matter had to do with some detail of the morrow’s exodus.
I found Mr. Abney pacing the room, a look of annoyance on his face. At the desk, her back to me, Audrey was writing. It was part of her work to take charge of the business correspondence of the establishment. She did not look round when I came in, nor when Mr. Abney spoke my name, but went on writing as if I did not exist.
There was a touch of embarrassment in Mr. Abney’s manner, for which I could not at first account. He was stately, but with the rather defensive stateliness which marked his announcements that he was about to pop up to London and leave me to do his work. He coughed once or twice before proceeding to the business of the moment.
“Ah, Mr. Burns,” he said at length, “might I ask if your plans for the holidays, the—ah—earlier part of the holidays are settled? No? ah—excellent.”
He produced a letter from the heap of papers on the desk.
“Ah—excellent. That simplifies matters considerably. I have no right to ask what I am about to—ah—in fact ask. I have no claim on your time in the holidays. But, in the circumstances, perhaps you may see your way to doing me a considerable service. I have received a letter from Mr. Elmer Ford which puts me in a position of some difficulty. It is not my wish—indeed, it is foreign to my policy—to disoblige the parents of the boys who are entrusted to my—ah—care, and I should like, if possible, to do what Mr. Ford asks. It appears that certain business matters call him to the north of England for a few days, this rendering it impossible for him to receive little Ogden tomorrow. It is not my custom to criticize parents who have paid me the compliment of placing their sons at the most malleable and important period of their lives, in my—ah—charge, but I must
