Considering the various handicaps under which he laboured notably a cold in the head, a fear of the Little Nugget, and a reverence for the aristocracy—Mr Abney's handling of the situation, when the runaways returned to school, bordered on the masterly. Any sort of physical punishment being out of the question—especially in the case of the Nugget, who would certainly have retaliated with a bout of window-breaking—he had to fall back on oratory, and he did this to such effect that, when he had finished, Augustus wept openly and was so subdued that he did not ask a single question for nearly three days.
One result of the adventure was that Ogden's bed was moved to a sort of cubby-hole adjoining my room. In the house, as originally planned, this had evidently been a dressing-room. Under Mr Abney's rule it had come to be used as a general repository for lumber. My boxes were there, and a portmanteau of Glossop's. It was an excellent place in which to bestow a boy in quest of whom kidnappers might break in by night. The window was too small to allow a man to pass through, and the only means of entrance was by way of my room. By night, at any rate, the Nugget's safety seemed to be assured.
The curiosity of the small boy, fortunately, is not lasting. His active mind lives mainly in the present. It was not many days, therefore, before the excitement caused by Buck's raid and the Nugget's disappearance began to subside. Within a week both episodes had been shelved as subjects of conversation, and the school had settled down to its normal humdrum life.
To me, however, there had come a period of mental unrest more acute than I had ever experienced. My life, for the past five years, had run in so smooth a stream that, now that I found myself tossed about in the rapids, I was bewildered. It was a peculiar aggravation of the difficulty of my position that in my world, the little world of Sanstead House, there should be but one woman, and she the very one whom, if I wished to recover my peace of mind, it was necessary for me to avoid.
My feelings towards Cynthia at this time defied my powers of analysis. There were moments when I clung to the memory of her, when she seemed the only thing solid and safe in a world of chaos, and moments, again, when she was a burden crushing me. There were days when I would give up the struggle and let myself drift, and days when I would fight myself inch by inch. But every day found my position more hopeless than the last.
At night sometimes, as I lay awake, I would tell myself that if only I could see her or even hear from her the struggle would be easier. It was her total disappearance from my life that made it so hard for me. I had nothing to help me to fight.
And then, one morning, as if in answer to my thoughts her letter came.
The letter startled me. It was as if there had been some telepathic communion between us.
It was very short, almost formal:
'MY DEAR PETER—I want to ask you a question. I can put it quite shortly. It is this. Are your feelings towards me still the same? I don't tell you why I ask this. I simply ask it. Whatever your answer is, it cannot affect our friendship, so be quite candid. CYNTHIA.'
I sat down there and then to write my reply. The letter, coming when it did and saying what it said, had affected me profoundly. It was like an unexpected reinforcement in a losing battle. It filled me with a glow of self-confidence. I felt strong again, able to fight and win. My mood bore me away, and I poured out my whole heart to her. I told her that my feelings had not altered, that I loved her and nobody but her. It was a letter, I can see, looking back, born of fretted nerves; but at the time I had no such criticism to make. It seemed to me a true expression of my real feelings.
That the fight was not over because in my moment of exaltation I had imagined that I had conquered myself was made uncomfortably plain to me by the thrill that ran through me when, returning from posting my letter, I met Audrey. The sight of her reminded me that a reinforcement is only a reinforcement, a help towards victory, not victory itself.
For the first time I found myself feeling resentful towards her. There was no reason in my resentment. It would not have borne examination. But it was there, and its presence gave me support. I found myself combating the thrill the sight of her had caused, and looking at her with a critical and hostile eye. Who was she that she should enslave a man against his will? Fascination exists only in the imagination of the fascinated. If he have the strength to deny the fascination and convince himself that it does not exist, he is saved. It is purely a matter of willpower and calm reasonableness. There must have been sturdy, level-headed Egyptian citizens who could not understand what people saw to admire in Cleopatra.
Thus reasoning, I raised my hat, uttered a crisp 'Good morning', and passed on, the very picture of the brisk man of affairs.
'Peter!'
Even the brisk man of affairs must stop when spoken to. Otherwise, apart from any question of politeness, it looks as if he were running away.
Her face was still wearing the faint look of surprise which my manner had called forth.
'You're in a great hurry.'
I had no answer. She did not appear to expect one.
We moved towards the house in silence, to me oppressive silence. The force of her personality was beginning to beat against my defences, concerning the stability of which, under pressure, a certain uneasiness troubled my mind.
'Are you worried about anything, Peter?' she said at last.
'No,' I said. 'Why?'
'I was afraid you might be.'
I felt angry with myself. I was mismanaging this thing in the most idiotic way. Instead of this bovine silence, gay small-talk, the easy eloquence, in fact, of the brisk man of affairs should have been my policy. No wonder Smooth Sam Fisher treated me as a child. My whole bearing was that of a sulky school-boy.
The silence became more oppressive.
We reached the house. In the hall we parted, she to upper regions, I to my classroom. She did not look at me. Her face was cold and offended.
One is curiously inconsistent. Having created what in the circumstances was a most desirable coldness between Audrey and myself, I ought to have been satisfied. Reason told me that this was the best thing that could have happened. Yet joy was one of the few emotions which I did not feel during the days which followed. My brief moment of clear-headedness had passed, and with it the exhilaration that had produced the letter to Cynthia and the resentment which had helped me to reason calmly with myself on the intrinsic nature of fascination in woman. Once more Audrey became the centre of my world. But our friendship, that elusive thing which had contrived to exist side by side with my love, had vanished. There was a breach between us which widened daily. Soon we hardly spoke.
Nothing, in short, could have been more eminently satisfactory, and the fact that I regretted it is only a proof of the essential weakness of my character.