“Damn it, man, it’s
“All right, then,
They would go, too, wrangling all the way in precisely the same manner, with the same more peaceful intervals, in which they would discuss the problem earnestly and even amicably, but disagreeing still. They were temperamentally incapable of agreeing upon any subject, and the more serious they were, and the less obsessed by their differences, the more sharply defined did those differences become. The inhabitants of the snug listened tolerantly and with interest, grinning over their beer; and the vigorous singing of the sunshine miners in the bar subsided gently into the tinkling of the piano, and reluctantly ceased. It was at this moment of calm that the lower pane of the window suddenly exploded inward with a shattering noise, and slivers of glass shot in through the curtains and rang like ice upon the table.
A single voice, indistinguishably venomous and frightened, began bellowing outside in the lane, and there was a sound of heaving and grunting struggle under the window, but no second voice. The snug rose as one man, emptying glasses on the instant of flight, to pour out by the side door into the lane and see who was scragging whom. They were not greatly surprised, for fights, though comparatively few, were potentially many these days; and the usual speculations came out in staccato phrases as they left their seats, answering one another equably.
“That Union Movement chap again with his ruddy literature, maybe—said he was asking for trouble, coming here!”
“D.P.S, I bet!”
“More likely sunshine miners and colliers arguing the toss.”
They tumbled out by the side door to see for themselves, all but Chad Wedderburn, who sat regarding his linked hands on the table with a slight frown of distaste and weariness. Even when Charles got up with somewhat strained casualness and said he might as well see the fun, too, Chad did not move. The sounds of battle had no charm for him. Io came in resignedly from the bar, and found him still sitting there, finishing a cigarette. He looked round at her, and even for her did not smile.
“What, one superior being?” said Io, none too kindly. “Are you made of different clay, or something?” She sounded hard-boiled, and a little ill-tempered; but she looked upset, and more than a little scared. It was all very well pretending, but she didn’t like it much, either. She went to the window, and began to brush tinkling splinters of glass out of the curtains and down from the sill; but at every louder shout from outside she started just perceptibly. A dozen people were talking at once, now, and the heaving and crashing had almost ceased; there was just a breathless trampling, a babel of argument and expostulation, and then the virtuous youthful tones of Police- Constable Weaver, pitched high, to assert who was master here.
“Now, then, what’s going on? What’s going on here?”
He was very young, he liked to say the correct thing, and Chad was tempted to suppose he even practiced the tone in which it should be delivered.
“All over!” said Chad, smiling at Io. “The law’s arrived. No need to worry about possible bloodshed anymore.”
“I wasn’t worrying,” said Io smartly, kneeling over the dustpan. “I couldn’t care less! Men! They’re no better than dead-end kids, got to be either hitting someone else, or watching two other men hit each other. Even a football match is no good unless it ends in a free fight!” She marched away furiously by one door as the dispersing spectators came in by the other in a haze of satisfied excitement, with fat voices and shining, pleased eyes, doing their best to justify her strictures, and settled down contentedly to their drinks again with a topic of conversation which would last them all the rest of the evening.
Charles, tweedy and broad-set, the perfect picture of the young yeoman farmer, came back to his chair rather selfconsciously, trying to look as if the spectacle of two men trying to take each other apart had really rather bored him. In fact the mind of Charles moved with a methodical probing caution which ruled out boredom. He said with a shrug and a smile:
“Another case for the old man’s bench next week! Disturbing the peace, or assault—if they can sort out who hit whom first—or whatever is the correct charge these days.” But he couldn’t disguise the excitement which flushed his fine, candid face, ruddy and solid and simple with all the graces Chad’s black-visaged person lacked. He leaned over the table as if he had a secret, though a dozen full-voiced conversations about him were tossing the same theme. “It could have been a bad business. Didn’t you see them? My God, Jim meant making a job of it this time! I knew there’d been some bad blood up there, and I believe they’ve already been pulled apart a couple of times, but this looked like being the real thing.”
“Jim? Jim who?”
“Tugg. Good Lord, didn’t you really look? Lord knows it does seem asking for trouble to take in a German laborer on the same farm—”
“A German?” said Chad, his lean brows drawing together. “Schauffler?”
“Whatever his name is! The fellow they’ve got up there. Big, fair-haired chap nearly Tugg’s own size. I heard Hollins had had a bit of trouble with them already. Seems it’s Jim who usually starts it—”
“Yes,” agreed Chad thoughtfully, remembering another, safer, easier Jim who was just out of hospital and back at the hostel, with only a long scar on his ribs to show for it, “yes, it would be.”
“Oh, I don’t know!” protested Charles, failing to understand. “He’s usually a reasonable enough chap, I should have said. There must be something behind it. Tugg doesn’t just fly off the handle. But a German, of course—it was a fool trick to have him there, if you ask me.”
So everyone would be saying, of course, and so perhaps it was; but where, thought Chad, as he finished his drink and quietly took his leave, where is the right place for the Helmut Schaufflers? What’s to be done with them? No keeping Helmut on the Hollins farm after this, however big a something there is behind it; and no other farmer will touch him with a bargepole, with the certainty of upsetting all his other labor. And yet we can’t get rid of him. If he does something too blatantly his own fault and no one else’s, we can deport him, he’s still German; but he won’t ever be left visibly the
He was depressed. He went out, and began the green walk home by the field path, up toward the rim of the bowl; and before long, as he walked slowly, someone overtook him, and he found himself walking side by side with Jim Tugg. Jim was quite untouched, that was easily seen in the early dusk; he was neat and light and long in his walking, quiet of face, content but dark, gratified but not satisfied. He greeted Chad from the outer edges only of a
