Fallen Into the Pit

panic from some mysterious place to which he had retired to think. The Head was not convinced that what occupied him there was thought. Chewed to fragments, Dominic did not really seem to mind as much as he should have done, but only to wriggle and circle uneasily, like a dog anxious to get back to a bone from which it has been chivvied wantonly by spiteful children. If the tongue-lash left him unstung for two minutes, he was off again, blank- eyed, into the depths of himself.

It went on like that all day, and by last period in the afternoon, which was Latin, he had even begun to look a little ill with the indigestible weight of his thoughts. Virgil could hold him no better than x and y, though he had normally a taste for the full, rolling hexameters, which were round in the mouth as a sun-warmed apple in the palm, tactile satisfaction somehow molten into the ear’s delight. He made a stumbling mess of passages which would ordinarily have made his eyes lighten into gold; and Chad, after a succession of rather surprised promptings and patient elucidations, gave him a more searching look, and on the strength of it let him out gently a few lines before he had intended to do so. Dominic retired ungratefully, with bewildering promptness and a single-mindedness Chad could not help admiring, and sank his teeth once again into the throat of his own peculiar problem. Which by then he had almost settled, in so far as it could be settled short of the assay.

Chad set some written work, and perceiving, as he expected, that one pen was loitering after only a few tentative words, called Dominic to him. “The rest of you,” he said almost automatically, as the few inevitably inquisitive heads were raised to follow Dominic’s resigned progress, “get on with your work. We’re no better worth prolonged examination than we were five minutes ago.” The “we,” Dominic thought, was rather decent of him.

The Fourth Form, as always, looked mortally offended at being told to mind their own business, and elevated their eyebrows and looked down their noses in their best style to indicate their total lack of interest in anything so insignificant as Dominic Felse and Chad Wedderburn. And if here and there an ear was flapping a little in their direction, it flapped in vain. Chad had a quiet voice, and leaned forward over his desk to reduce the distance between them so that it might be even quieter and still adequate. He looked, now that Dominic examined him closely, distinctly worn and haggard, and his scar stood out more lividly than usual, though his manner was exactly as they had known it ever since his return, unhurried, calm, past surprise but wryly alert to impressions, and sensitive in response to them. If sleep had largely left him, if he knew as well as they did that the whole village was settling his guilt and seething, with speculations as to his future, he gave no outward sign of it, made no concessions. And he could still see sufficiently clearly to observe that one of his boys had something on his mind. The only mistake he had made was in thinking that it might be something which could be got rid of by sharing it.

“Come on, now,” he said quietly, “what’s the matter?”

“Nothing, sir,” said Dominic, but in a discouraged tone which did not expect to convince.

“Don’t tell me that! Your mind hasn’t been on what we’re doing here for one minute this afternoon. I know your work well enough to know that. What’s wrong? Are you feeling off-color?”

“Oh, no, sir, really I’m all right.”

“Then there’s something worrying you sick. Isn’t there? Don’t you dare hand me: ‘Oh, no, sir!’ again,” he said smartly, warding off another disclaimer, “or I’ll take you at your word, and make you pay through the nose for what you just did to the shield of ?neas. How would you like it if I kept you here for an hour after school, and let you make me a decent translation of the whole passage?”

Dominic’s face woke into sudden alarm and reproach, because his inner world was touched. He breathed: “Oh, but, sir, please— You don’t really mean it, do you? Please not today! I’ve got such a lot to do this evening, honestly.”

“I’m sure you have,” said Chad, watching every change of the vulnerable face, and at a loss as yet to account for the success of his pinprick. “Suppose you tell me the truth, then, and talk yourself out of it. Or, of course, you could regard it as merely getting a load off your chest, in strict confidence. Wouldn’t you like to unload?”

Dominic would, as a matter of fact, have liked to very much; but if he couldn’t entirely trust George with it, how could he give it to anyone else? No, as soon as it was shared it was rendered ineffective. He had to carry it through alone, or some ham-handed well-intentioned adult would throw sand in the works. He had it ready now, exactly planned out in his own mind, and no one knew anything about it except himself, and no one was to know except Pussy, who had only a minor part and could in any event be trusted to the death. So nobody could ruin it. And that was the best, the only way.

“It’s only something I have to do,” he said carefully, “and I would like to tell you, but I mustn’t—not yet.”

“Something as anxious as you’ve been looking? Couldn’t you use some help, then? It might not look so bad if you compared notes with somebody else over it.”

“Oh, it isn’t bad,” said Dominic, opening his eyes wide. “It’s a bit difficult, but really, it’ll be all right. Only it’s important that I should have this evening free; truly it is. I’m sorry I mucked up the construe, I didn’t have my mind on it.”

Chad looked at him silently and thoughtfully for what seemed a long time; and by the pricking of his thumbs he was warned that the child was most certainly up to something. No light employment, no mischief, no slender personal affair to be squared up in half an hour of getting round someone; but a serious undertaking. Nothing less could account for the odd, withdrawn look of the hazel eyes, which regarded him from beyond an impassable barrier of responsibility. A look at once calm and desperate, resolved and appealing. “I’d like awfully to tell you,” said the eyes, “but I can’t, so don’t ask me. I’ve got to do this myself.” And deep within all the other expressions they held was a bright, still excitement which made him very uneasy.

“You’d rather I didn’t pursue the subject. Well, I can’t press you to tell me, if you don’t want to. But at least remember, Dom,” he said, suddenly flicking a petal of color into Dominic’s cheeks with the unexpected use of his name, “that there’s no need for you to look far for help, if you do want it. If it’s something you don’t want to take home—well, even beaks are capable of listening to something more important than Virgil, on occasion. I hope you’d feel you could come to me, if you ever did need a second judgment.”

Dominic, pink to the temples, but remarkably composed, said: “Thanks awfully, sir! Only I can’t—not yet.”

“All right, leave it at that. You can go back to your desk.”

Somehow the probing of that level, illusionless voice, and its unexpected kindness, had shaken Dominic’s peace of mind, making him turn and look more closely at what he was doing; and he was a little frightened at what he saw, but it was fright without the possibility of retreat. He had started the thing already, and it would have to run.

When he was released from school he ran nearly all the way back into the village, and caught Pussy just biking into the yard of the Shock of Hay, wobbling across the dipping threshold with her eyes alert along the road for him. They retired into the loft, which was their usual conference hall when the cooler weather came; and before he was