by Ellis Peters
He chewed his knuckles, and frowned at the memory of flying books and inkwell, thanking heaven that by some uncanny chance the lid of the well had jammed shut, and only a few minute drops had oozed out of its hinges to spatter the floor. He cocked a bright hazel eye at the large youth, whose name was Warren, and hence inescapably “Rabbit” Warren. “Anyhow, you try it some time. It felt like being skinned alive to me.”
“Sensitive plant!” said Rabbit scornfully, for he had not been on the receiving end of the drastically quiet storm, and had in any case little respect for the power of words, least of all when delivered below a shout.
Dominic let it pass. He felt peaceful, for people like Rabbit seldom interested him enough to rouse him to combat. All beef and bone! He looked small enough when he was turned loose with Virgil, Book X!
“But when you think what he’s supposed to have done,” said Morgan helplessly, “what can you make of it? I mean, stealing about in the mountains knocking off sentries, and slipping a knife in people’s ribs, and marching hundreds of miles with next to nothing to eat, and rounding up thousands of Germans—”
“And now he’s too soft even to lick a chap for cheek—”
“Never once—not all the term he’s been here!”
“Of course, we could be rather small fry, after all that,” said Dominic, arrested by the thought.
“Oh, rot, he just hasn’t got the guts!”
“Oh, rot, yourself! Of course he has! He did all that, didn’t he?”
“I tell you what,” said Rabbit, in very firm tones, “I don’t believe he did!”
The circle closed in a little, tension plucking at them strongly. Dominic unwound his long, slim legs from the boundary railing and hopped down into the argument with a suddenly flushed face.
“Oh, get off! You know jolly well—”
“We don’t know jolly well one single thing, we only know what they all say, and how do they know it’s true? They weren’t there, were they? I bet you it’s all a pack of fairy tales! Well, look at him! Does he look like a bloke that went around knocking off sentries and rounding up Germans? I don’t believe a word of it!”
“You can’t tell by looking at people what they are, anyhow. That’s just idiotic—”
“Oh, is it? And who’re you calling an idiot?”
“You, if you think you can just wipe out old Wedderburn’s record by saying you don’t believe it.”
“Well, I don’t, see! I don’t believe he ever killed all those Jerries they say he did. I think it’s a pack of lies! I don’t believe he ever saw Markos, I don’t believe he ever was knocked about in a prison camp, see? I don’t believe he’s got it in him to stick a knife in anyone’s ribs. I bet you he never killed anybody!”
“I bet you he did, then! Who do you think you are, calling him a liar? He’s worth any ten of you.”
“Oh, yes, you would stick up for him! He let you off lightly, didn’t he?”
“That’s got nothing to do with it,” said Dominic, meditating how little he had ever liked Rabbit’s face, and how pleasant it would be to do his best to change it.
“Well, all right, then, I still say it’s a big lie about his adventures—all of it! Now! Want to make something of it?”
“It wouldn’t settle anything if I did fight you,” said Dominic, tempted, “but I’m considering it.”
“You don’t have to, anyhow, do you? Not you!” And he raised his voice suddenly into the taunting chant from which Dominic had suffered through most of his school years: “Yah, can’t touch me! My dad’s a p’liceman!”
Dominic had finished considering it, and come to a pleasing decision. His small but solid fist hit Rabbit’s left cheek hard on the bone, and distorted the last word into a yell of quite unexpected delightfulness. Rabbit swung back on his heels, and with the recovering swing forward launched himself head-down at his opponent with both arms flailing; but before they could do each other any damage a window flew up in the classroom, and the voice of Chad Wedderburn himself demanded information as to what the devil was going on out there. Everybody ducked, as though to be shortened by a head was to be invisible, and the latecomers on the outside of the circle faded away round the corner with the aplomb of pantomime fairies or stage ghosts; but enough were left to present a comical array of apprehensive faces as supporting chorus to the two red-handed criminals pulled up in mid-career. They all gaped up at the window, made themselves as small as possible, and volunteered not a word.
“Felse and Warren,” sad the unwontedly awful voice, crisply underlined by the crook of the selective forefinger, “up here, and at the double! The rest of you, beat it! And if I catch any of you fighting again, take warning, I’ll have the hide off both parties. Get me?”
They said, in one concerted sigh, that they had indeed got him.
“Good! Now scram!”
It was popular, not classic, language, and it was certainly understood by the people. They departed thankfully, while with mutual recriminations Dominic and Rabbit scrambled up the stairs and arrived panting before the desk at which Chad sat writing. He looked them over with a severe eye, and then said quietly: “What you fellows argue about is your business strictly. Only what you fight about is mine. Understand me once for all, fighting is something not to be considered short of a life-and-death matter, and something I will not have about me on any less pretext than that. It proves nothing, it settles nothing, it solves nothing, except the problem of who has the most brawn and the least of any other qualities. There could be times when nothing else would serve, but they’re not likely to occur in the school yard—and they always indicate a failure by both sides, wherever they occur.”
A rum couple, he thought, comparing them. On such an occasion the face is, of course, worn correctly closed and expressionless, but the eyes become correspondingly alive and responsive; and while the eyes of Warren were respectful and solemn and impervious, the light, bright, gold-flecked eyes of Felse were extremely busy weighing up his judge. A little puzzled about him the child seemed, but getting somewhere, and probably not, to judge by the reserve of those eyes, exactly where he would have liked the young mind to arrive. Be careful, Chad! In this small package is unsuspected dynamite.
“Understand me?”
“Yes, sir!” If he said it, he meant it; but the reserve was still there. He understood, bless him, but he did not altogether agree.
“Well, then, let’s put it this way. You two have still got a score not settled. Give me your word you won’t try that way again, and we’ll say no more about this time. Is it a deal?”
Rabbit said: “Oh, yes, sir!” promptly and easily. The other one looked worried, and a little annoyed, even, as if something had been sprang on him before he was ready, and from an unfair angle. He said, hesitating, standing on one leg the better to think, a method by which he often wrestled the sense out of a more than usually tough line of Virgil: “But, sir, could I—?” He wanted Rabbit to go, so that he could argue properly.
“All right, Warren, remember I’ve got your word for it. Now get out!”
Dominic still stood considering, even after his enemy was gone in a clatter of grateful haste down the staircase. Chad let him alone, and thoughtfully finished the sentence of his letter which their entry had interrupted, before he looked up again and said with a slight smile: “Well?”
“You see, sir, it isn’t that I don’t think you’re right about fighting being the wrong way to do things, and all that. But, sir, you did fight.”
“Yes,” said Chad, “I did fight.” He did not sound displeased; Dominic raised the fierce glance of his eyes from the floor, and looked at him, and he did not look displeased, either. “Not, however, at the drop of a hat. And not because some lunatic threw at me: ‘My dad’s a policeman!,’ either.” He smiled; so did Dominic.
“No, sir! But that wasn’t why I hit him. I’d just made up my mind I would, and that didn’t make any difference.”
“All right, that’s understood, if
you tell me so. But I’m still sure that what you hit him for was something a thousand miles from being worth it. And what I said still goes. All the more because you were certainly the aggressor. Either you give me your word not to go and reopen that fight in a safer place, and not to start any more so lightly, either, or else we’ll settle our account here and now.”
Dominic followed the turn of his head toward the cupboard, with hurt and incredulous eyes. “But, sir, you can’t! I mean— you don’t!”
“On the contrary,” said Chad remorselessly, “on this occasion I can and do.”
Dominic’s mind calculated values frantically. He said in a small, alert voice: “Sir, if a fellow made another fellow fight him, you wouldn’t blame the other fellow, would you? Even if he’d promised never to fight, would you?”
“In that case I’d hold the attacker responsible for both of them. He’d have quite a charge-sheet to answer, wouldn’t he? Come along, now, no sidetracking. I want an answer.”
Dominic thought, and squirmed, and would not give in. He said almost apologetically: “You see, sir, it’s like this. Didn’t you decide for yourself what was worth fighting about? I mean, wouldn’t you insist— Well, it isn’t even a thing you can put on to conscription, is it? Because lots of fellows, if they felt like that, refused to fight. I mean, it’s just oneself who must decide, in the end, isn’t it?”
He looked a little harassed, and Chad felt sufficiently appreciative to help him out. “You’re doing fine. Don’t mind me! What’s the conclusion?”
“I think, sir, that I ought to decide for myself, too.”
“Ah!” said Chad. “Then if you’ve gone as far toward maturity as that, you have to take the next step forward, whether you like it or not, and realize that in any society you have to be prepared to pay for that privilege.”
“Yes, sir!” sighed Dominic, resigned eyes again straying. “I have realized it.”
Chad was sorry that he had got himself into this situation, and even sorrier that he had dragged this new kind of schoolroom lawyer into it with him. But there was no way out of it now. To let him off would be to insult him; even to let him down lightly would be to make light of his conclusions. Chad dealt with him faithfully, therefore, and left, in the process, no doubt of his own ability. But the persistent child, even when dismissed after the humane minute or two allowed for recovery, did not go. He lingered, breathing hard, with his burning palms clenched uneasily in his pockets, but his eyes once again speculative upon the future.
“Sir, could I ask you—you go home by the road, usually, don’t you? I mean—not over the fields—”
“Sometimes,” said Chad, examining him with respect, “I have been known to walk through the fields.” The eyes clouded over ever so slightly, but he saw the cloud, and understood it. “But this afternoon I shall be going home as you supposed—by the road.” The cloud dispersed, the eyes gleamed. Chad knew himself transparent as his adversary, and the knowledge dismayed him considerably. If they were all like this one, he thought, I’d have to get out of this business; and that would be the devil, because if they were all like this one it would be well worth staying in it.
“Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!”
“You won’t, however,” said Chad delicately, “be in very good condition to give of your best. Why not change your mind? No discredit to you if you did, I assure you—quite the reverse.”
The child, still tenderly massaging his hands in the deeps of his pockets, said hesitantly: “Sir, I hope you won’t think it awful cheek, but—well, it wasn’t a question of odds with you always, was it?”
The water was getting too deep for him, he made haste out of it, slipping away out of the room before Chad knew how to reply. It was reassuring to find that he supposed any situation to be beyond him.
On the way home by the fields, that afternoon, Dominic finished what he had begun, and conclusively knocked the stuffing out of Rabbit. He was a little handicapped by the puffiness of his hands, but he managed, and the fact that it hurt him somehow added to the satisfaction he got out of it. He marched home flushed and whistling, one cheek a little bruised and the eye discoloring, his hands now hurting at the back as well as the palm, because he had skinned the knuckles, but his crest well up and his self-esteem buoyantly high. One couldn’t, of course, even by a roundabout method, tell the person most concerned how the affair had been concluded, but it was really a pity that he couldn’t simply know.
The oblique illogic of proceedings which seemed to him directly logical did not worry Dominic at all. If you fight for somebody who doesn’t believe in fighting, and has choked you off for it in advance, that’s still your own affair. Especially when you have already paid for the privilege and, like the village blacksmith, owe not any man.
Three
« ^ »
Dominic came in to tea scrupulously washed and tidied, because Aunt Nora was there, and six-year-old Cousin John; but in spite of all his precautions he did not escape from the table again before his mother had observed and interpreted more or less correctly the various small changes in his appearance. It might not have happened but for the brat John, for he was taking care to keep his knuckles as far out of sight as possible. John had so far resisted all attempts to teach him to recognize letters, and was not interested in figures for their own sake, but he could count éclairs on a plate and people round a table as fast as anyone, and make them come out right, too. Having observed by this means that the éclairs outnumbered the people by one, and that he himself was the youngest and most indulged person present, he had assumed that the extra one would be his as of right; and it was a serious shock to him when Dominic’s acquisitive hand shot out and abstracted it from under his nose. He let out a wail of indignation, and seized the offending hand by the wrist as it flicked back again with the prize, and both mothers, naturally, leaned forward to quell the argument before it could become a scrimmage. Maybe Aunt Nora did miss the significance of the skinned knuckles and tender palm, but Bunty Felse didn’t. Her eyes sought her son’s, she frowned a little, and then laughed, whereupon he scowled blackly, relinquished the éclair, and hurriedly put his hands out of sight under the table. But she didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t, until the others had gone, and by then, with luck, Dominic himself could be out of the way for an hour or two. Maybe she’d forget, maybe his father wouldn’t notice. Inside an hour he could finish his homework and be off to the kitchen-yard of the Shock of Hay to collect Pussy.
Unhappily in his haste to get rid of his homework he forgot to conceal his hands, and the jut of scored knuckles from a chewed pen was too obvious to escape Sergeant Felse’s notice when he sat back from his late tea. George wasn’t yet so far from his own schooldays that he couldn’t interpret the signs. But George had an inconvenient conscience which moved him occasionally to demand more from his son than he had ever provided for his father. He reached over Dominic’s shoulder, took the inky hand and turned it about in his own palm, and held on to it firmly when Dominic attempted to slide it away again. Dominic, sighing, thought and almost said: “Here it comes!”
“Hm!” said George. “Interesting! Who licked you?”
Dominic fidgeted, and frowned, and said: “Old Wedderburn.”
“Oh, I thought he didn’t go in for violence?”
“This time he did,” snapped Dominic. “Look out, the pen’s going to drip. Mind my algebra!” He wriggled, and was released; he grumbled just above his breath, like a half-grown pup growling, and mopped the small blot in the margin with unnecessary energy, to divert attention from his injuries. But he heard George chuckle.
“What was it all about? Fighting? Oh, don’t trouble to duck, I’ve already seen your eye.”
“Does it show much?” asked Dominic, fingering it rather anxiously.
“Going to be a beauty. Somebody else licked you, evidently, besides old Wedderburn.”
“He didn’t!” said Dominic indignantly. “You just ought to see him, that’s all. I bet he’ll hav
e more than just a black eye to show by tomorrow.” The gleam came back to his eyes readily, brightening them to the color of home-made marmalade. He pushed his chair back from the table to balance it on its two back legs, and wound his own long, flanneled shanks bewilderingly about the front ones, braced on his taut brown arms, suddenly grinning, suddenly gloating, the little devil, about as subdued as a cock robin in the nesting season. Four feet seven of indiarubber and whalebone, with a shock head of dark chestnut hair growing in all directions, and a freckled nose, and an obstinate mouth; a good deal like his mother, only Bunty’s hair was frankly red, and her skin fair and clear of freckles. George’s resolution to be properly paternal, and read the appropriate lecture, went by the board, as it usually did. After all, he spent all his days being serious, even portentous, about minor crimes, he couldn’t quite keep it up after hours with his own boy; and he was well aware in his own heart, though he never admitted it, that while he was more ready to threaten, it was usually Bunty who performed. She had a way of advancing with perfect calm and patience to the limit of what she would stand, and then, only occasionally and with devastating effect, falling on her startled son like a thunderstorm. And George’s conscience, aware of shortcomings, impelled him sometimes to express concern ahead of her, so that he might at least appear to be the seat of authority in the house. She never snubbed him, she only smiled, and said with suspicious sweetness: “Yes, darling, you’re perfectly right!”
Tonight, when he followed her into the scullery and took the teacloth out of her hand, she turned and gave him the too demure smile which made him feel about Dominic’s age; and with a very natural reaction he resolved to be his full thirty-nine years, and be damned to her.
“Our Dom’s been in trouble at school,” he said with gravity.
“So was his father before him,” said Bunty, “many a time. It didn’t make the slightest impression on him, either. Dom’s all right, don’t you worry.” Aunt Nora and John were already down the road and waiting for the bus back to Comerbourne Bridge, and Bunty could laugh at both George and Dominic if she pleased, without hurting either of them. She patted his cheek disconcertingly with her wet hand, and snatched a cup from him just in time to prevent him from dropping it. “You’re so like him, it just isn’t true.”
