oblige the old boy over this he can’t very well go on being awkward about the appeal. Maybe that would be their reaction, but it won’t be his. No amount of favors done for him could restrain him from being awkward where his own privilege is concerned, and they ought to have sense enough to know it by now. They’ll find out later!”
“He says he’s abiding by the result, bad or good,” said George, “and I believe he means it. The old chap’s getting a streak of fatalism in his latter years, and honestly, I don’t think he minds as much as he would have done ten years ago. The world’s changing, as he’s never tired of reminding us.”
“He’s fondest of reminding other people of that, though,” said Bunty, grinning. “He might not be so keen on having it pointed out to him.” She added, thoughtfully tossing the probabilities in her mind: “Bet you five bob, evens, Helmut gets taken on!”
George looked scandalized, pulled her hair, and told her she would get him into trouble yet. The truth was, as Bunty maintained, that he was afraid of losing his money. By and large, Blunden was the next thing to God around here.
However, he was absolutely frank with the agent in the little concrete hut office above the gouged-out valleys of the coal-site. The name of Gerd Hollins had not even been mentioned in court, but for all that, the old man had not missed her significance; and the story he told was the full story.
“I’m no racialist myself, thank God! But that boy’s had the principles drummed into him ever since he began school, I suppose, and we can hardly be surprised if he retains ’em still. Telling’s not much use to that kind of fellow. Now if you could surround him with Jews doing the same work, doing it better than he does, and well able to knock him down if he reverts to type—well, to my way of thinking it might be more effective. But that poor, well- meaning lady at the farm has had more trouble, I fancy, than she’s let anyone else know. Tugg has eyes, and a brain. I may be wrong! I may be quite wrong! But I fancy that’s very much what happened. A Jewess is still a Jewess to Helmut, and a Jewess going out of her way to be kind to him was asking to be trampled on.”
“That at least couldn’t happen here,” agreed the agent, watching him respectfully. He was a young, hard, experienced man, but he was not past being flattered; and besides, if the old boy could bring himself to ask favors, even in this fashion, he could be handled, he could be sweetened. Up to this they had had no direct contact, and men can keep up an enmity on paper which won’t survive the personal touch. “If he steps out of line here he’s liable to get hurt; and being that kind of chap, he’ll have gumption enough to size up the odds, and stay in line.”
“I can’t guarantee it, but I think he will. And the one good thing about him, as everyone agrees, is that he will work. Strong as a horse, willing, handy, even, in that way, entirely trustworthy. It’s an odd thing, that, but at any rate it gives one some hope of him. I tell you frankly, he’ll need keeping in his place; but duly kept there, he could be a useful man.”
He could, if he only managed to place the old fellow under a very small, but strongly binding, obligation. Costs on this site had been, to tell the truth, alarmingly high, and though the extended range was a desirable way of bringing them down, if Blundens were going to put all their weight into the appeal and fight every inch of the way, frankly it wasn’t going to be worthwhile pushing the matter. But if this tiny seed of love was going to stay the defending hand, ever so lightly, and let the thing go through in comparative peace, then it was going to be very well worth it. One hypothetically troublesome hand, thought the agent contentedly, was a very small price to pay for that consummation.
“All right!” he said, making his decision. “He can start, if the employment people O.K. it. We’ll make the experiment, at any rate. I take it he’ll want help with getting somewhere to lodge? There might be a vacancy where some of the men are staying. Anyhow, we can see to all that for him.”
He thought: This really ought to be worth a little goodwill. Hope the old boy appreciates it! And it appeared to him by small but gratifying signs—for of course one must not expect too much too soon—that the old boy did.
Helmut came, and it appeared that he did too, for a more anxiously accommodating, earnest, subdued young man had never been seen on the site. He had shrunk a little from his full size again, his face was tight shut and gray with reserve, he applied himself grimly to the safe outlet of work, picked up things very quickly, and heaved his weight into the job as if his life depended on it. Perhaps the old man, briefing him for this third onslaught on reconciliation, had succeeded in impressing on him the fact that, indeed, his life did depend on it.
Four
« ^ »
Charles and Chad came down through the silvery woods, between the quivering birches, the intervals of naked whitish clay crunching and powdering softly under their feet after the hot, dry summer. They were still arguing, in much the same terms as they had argued three weeks ago, when this expedition had first been suggested.
“I still don’t see that such poor-quality coal is worth getting at all, at a time when there’s no shortage of deep-mined stuff. The question of
“But it would arise some time—or there’s a long chance it would.”
“Not in my time, or yours,” scoffed Charles, as if that clinched it.
“And that’s all you damn well think about! My God, you sound like something from the nineteenth century! ‘It’ll last our time!’ Is that all that matters?”
The suggestion that anything else ought to matter certainly jolted Charles, but some sensitivity in him recognized at once, against the whole armory of his training, that he ought to resent the implication of his short- sightedness.
“I dare say I do as much thinking a generation ahead as you do, for that matter—”
“So you never put a plough into the ground, or plant a tree, until you’ve calculated whether it’s going to be you or your grandchildren who’s going to get the benefit of it! Leaving clean out of the question anybody else’s grandchildren!”
“You’re a damned sanctimonious prig!” said Charles, and unexpectedly scored a hit. Chad was sometimes horribly afraid that he was. His dark cheeks flushed. But even if it was true, it couldn’t be helped; and what he had said of Charles was certainly no less true.
“Sorry! It’s something you’ve got to decide yourself, I suppose. Do it how you like!” He kicked at the thick blond tussocks of grass, and the trailers of bramble in his path, and moved a little aside from Charles to skirt a place where the rains of many years had made a deep channel, too permanent for even this dry season to obliterate. Aside among the scattered trees and clearings of new saplings, funnel-shaped pits, a dozen yards across and often as deep, punctured the level crest of the mounds. These were so frequent, and so taken for granted, that the infants of Comerford, though reared only a mile from genuine and normal hills, thought it more fitting to have them of waste clay, and pitted with holes.
