Dominic’s mind calculated values frantically. He said in a small, alert voice: “Sir, if a fellow
“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
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
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 eclairs 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 eclairs 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 eclair, 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.”
