Fallen Into the Pit

“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.”