great preoccupation, but in a friendly tone, and accepted a cigarette. He didn’t have to act as if nothing had happened, because everyone knew by now that it had. No need even to wonder if it had reached this particular person; it had reached everybody.
“That’ll mean a summons for assault, I suppose,” said Chad.
“Be well worth it,” said Jim serenely, narrowing his far-gazing eyes against the blown smoke of the cigarette.
“What did he say to you?”
“Who? Weaver?”
“Helmut. What was it he said, to make you hit him?”
Jim turned his big, gaunt face and looked at him narrowly. “What makes you think he didn’t hit me first?”
“The Helmuts don’t—not unless you’re small, peaceful, and at a disadvantage—and they have no other immediate way of getting at you.”
The dark look lingered on him a long minute, and then was withdrawn, and Jim gazed up the rise of the fields again, and walked intact and immured in his own sufficiency.
“Didn’t say nothing to me. I got tired of waiting.”
“He knows how to angle for sympathy,” warned Chad.
“He can have all of that.”
“Well, you know your own business best. But you could find yourself in gaol unless you’re more forthcoming in court. If you don’t put him in the wrong, he’ll take jolly good care he doesn’t put himself there.”
“Thanks for the goodwill, anyhow!” said Jim, and smiled suddenly, and went on up the rising path with a lengthened stride, to disappear in the twilight.
Three
« ^ »
The chairman of the magistrates was Selwyn Blunden, the old man himself, Charles’s father. He behaved admirably, eliciting, as on the bench he frequently did, some less obvious aspects of what on the face of it was a simple case. As a result of which astute activities, the bench discharged Jim Tugg on payment of costs, and with a warning against taking the law into his own hands. His previous unspotted record of civic usefulness, especially his war reputation, stood firmly by him; his plea of guilty, which spared everybody the trouble of lengthy evidence, did him no harm. Even Helmut’s able display of hunted and frustrated good intentions, his portrait of a misunderstood young stranger in a very strange land, did not appear completely to convince Blunden. He delivered a short but pointed lecture on the responsibilities of an ex-P.O.W. to a country which had made repeated efforts to find a niche for him. It had been a generous gesture on the part of Hollins, said the chairman, to take him in after a previous conviction, and it could not be accepted that the failure of the experiment was due only to Tugg; it would appear that something in the nature of a special effort was now required from Helmut himself, if he was to remain
Afterwards he admitted to George that he had some qualms about Helmut. Maybe the difficulties of his position had not been sufficiently appreciated. Maybe England still owed him one more chance; but how was it to be arranged, in order to protect both parties? People must be a little tired of taking risks on Helmut.
“To tell the truth,” said the old man candidly, “I have a horror of doing the young wretch less than justice. Maybe I’m leaning over backwards to avoid it—I don’t know—if he were anything but German it would be easier to discount the feeling. But at any rate, I would like to see him have one more shot before we decide he’s quite irreconcilable.”
“The difficulty,” said George, “is what to do with him. He might have ideas himself, but I very much doubt it. I think he intends to be carried. He’ll work—oh, yes, everyone admits that!—but he won’t take one crumb of responsibility for himself if he can leave the load on us.”
Selwyn Blunden pondered, and stroked his broad brick-red forehead, from which the crisp gray hair had receded into a thick, ebbing wave. He was very like his son Charles; the authentic yeoman flavor, indefinably not quite county, glossed him over healthily and brightly, like a coat of tan. He was between sixty-five and seventy, but he still looked somewhere in the fifties, walking as straight as his son, carrying himself, thought George, rather like a retired general, if generals ever retired in such good condition. He had a beautiful big white moustache, behind which he was accustomed to retire when deep in thought, caressing it meanwhile with a large and well-shaped hand to enlarge the screened area.
“I could say a few words for him in quite a few directions,” he said thoughtfully, uttering no more than the truth, since he probably carried more influence than any other man in the district, “but I want to see him somewhere where he can’t do any more mischief—and not on false pretenses, either—must let ’em know what they’re biting off, whoever’s bold enough to take him on. Wouldn’t bother about him, as a matter of fact, only the fellow’s so young, after all.” He fingered the moustache’s gleaming curves, emerging from its shelter reluctantly. “Tell you what, I think the best bet might be the opencast contractors. Tough company there, all right, tough enough to hold him down, I should think. They’re still taking on men when they can get ’em, I’m told, and everybody admits the boy does at least work.”
“Seems to be his one virtue,” said George.
“Well, no harm in trying, at least. I’ll have a word with the contractor’s man, give him the facts straight, and we’ll see how he feels about it.” He frowned for a moment, and George guessed that he was thinking about the delicate matter of the appeal, still pending, still threatening the effectiveness of the unit’s operations in Comerford. “Hm! Equivocal position, very!” he said cryptically, but shook the embarrassment away from him with a twitch of his big shoulders and a flash of his old, bold blue eyes. Better-looking than Charles, on the whole; sharper-boned, more acid in him. “I’ll have a word with the young fellow, too,” he decided. “Might do more good in private. I don’t know —never been a P.O.W. myself—I dare say it does seem as if we’re all incurably against him.” He shook his head doubtfully, sadly but firmly, and marched away. It was curious that the back view of him undid some of the effect of talking to him face to face. His gait, after all, wasn’t so young; he bowed his shoulders a little, he leaned forward heavily. One was reminded that he was getting old, that he had had his reverses in his time. From behind it was possible to be sorry for the old man; from in front one wouldn’t dare.
When Bunty heard the story, her eyes opened wide, and she laughed, and said: “The cunning old devil!” almost in her son’s tone. “What effrontery!” she said, but with admiration rather than indignation. “He pretends it’s an embarrassing position for him, to have to approach those people when he’s doing his best to keep them off his own ground; but he knows jolly well they’ll jump to do as he asks them all the more eagerly, because they’ll think, if we
