Barbour and that House of
Cards, his school, had fallen to pieces. There at any rate was an end
to that disastrous accumulation of brick and mortar, and the harm that,
living, it had wrought upon the souls and bodies of its victims its dying
could not excuse. No tears were shed for Dawson's.
Peter, at the news, knew that now his battle never could be won. That
battle at any rate must be left behind him with his defeat written large
upon the plain of it, and this made in some unrealised way the penalty of
the future months harder to bear. He had, behind him, defeat. Look at it
as he might, he had been a failure at Dawson's--he had not done the things
that he had been put there to do--and yet through the disaster he knew
that in so far as he had refused to bend to the storm so far there had
been victory; of that at any rate he was sure.
So he turned resolutely from the past and faced the future. It was
as though suddenly Dawson's had never existed--a dream, a fantasy, a
delirium--something that had left no external things behind it and had only
in the effect that it had worked upon himself spiritually made its mark. He
faced his House....
Scaw House had seemed to him, during these last three years, merely an
interlude at Dawson's. There had been hurried holidays that had been spent
in recovering from and preparing for the term and the House had scarcely,
and only very quietly, raised its head to disturb him.
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