One
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Chad Wedderburn hesitated until nearly eight o’clock, but he went in the end.
The remembrance of Dominic’s overburdened eyes had haunted him all through the marking of two batches of homework, and made a small counter-circling pool of uneasiness on the borders of his own taut and isolated disquiet. He knew he was letting things go, lying down and letting events run over him, because he was sick of himself and his unsloughable memories; and because where one hope—but had it ever reached the stage of being a real hope?—had blotted out all lesser and more accessible consolations, and remained itself forever out of reach, there was no longer any inducement to stand upright, or any point in fighting back. He resented his own bitter acquiescence, but it was logical, and he could not stir himself out of it. He had suffered, whether by his own fault or the mismanagement of others, injuries to his nature which unfitted him for loving or being loved by an innocent like Io; and only the artificial stimulus of rivalry with Charles had ever made him quicken to the possibility of so happy and normal a relationship, exult in what seemed to be hopes, and sulk over what seemed to be reverses. Only seemed to be.
With the stimulus withdrawn, the thing was seen to be still a simple and irrevocable impossibility. But surely poor Charles didn’t have to get killed to show him that.
He knew, none better, that they were already saying he had killed Charles. With all the acquired stoicism of six years of warfare, he found himself still capable of unpracticed emotions not so easy to contain as pain, exhaustion and fear had proved; and he supposed there was little Comerford did not know about his feelings for Io Hart. Busily misinterpreting what they knew, they had made him a murderer, because he was a dog with a renowned name, which the spiral courses of history were about to use to hang him. He had, had he not, been a great killer in his day?
So he let fall out of his hands every intention of defending himself. For what? There remained a certain interest in watching the events which moved in on him, but no point whatever in caring about the issue.
Yet other people went on existing, side by side with him in the world, with a certain intermittent warmth and poignancy which still troubled him. Especially when they looked at him with harried, adventurous young eyes like Dominic’s, and reluctantly declined to confide in him. Another human being taking large and probably disastrous decisions, too early and too anxiously, perhaps mutilating himself before he was even whole. And because one had resigned all responsibility for one’s own fate, did it follow that one could not care for his?
He hesitated a long time, but he went in the end. Down to the village, among the covert, regretful, fascinated eyes, and knocked at the door of the police-station, and asked for George. He wondered if the three youths passing with their girls believed that he was in the act of giving himself up. More than likely they did.
Bunty was surprised to see him. She stood the door wide, and asked him into the office, to close the door on the chill of the evening. He thought how very like her son was to her, even to the tilt of the head and the disconcertingly straight eyes.
“I’m sorry, but George is out at the moment. He’s been gone ever since mid-afternoon, and told me he might be late getting home.” She smiled at him, rather wryly. “I don’t even know where he is. I haven’t seen much of him myself, lately. Is it something urgent?”
“Well, I hardly know. It isn’t business exactly, I only wanted to talk to him about Dominic. But since he’s already out of reach, I dare say tomorrow will do as well.”
Bunty, looking intensely serious in a moment, asked: “Dom isn’t in any trouble, is he? He hasn’t been getting himself into any bad scrape?”
“Not any scrape at all that I know of. Don’t worry, it’s nothing like that. Just that I think it might be useful if your husband and I compared notes about him. He’s a nice kid, and got more gumption than most of his age. But perhaps he’s reached a difficult stage of development rather early.”
It sounded portentous, but Bunty seemed to understand better than the turn of phrase had deserved. Her eyes lit much as Dominic’s did when his partisan interest was kindled. “Yes, hasn’t he?” she said, and bit her lips upon a slightly guilty smile, remembering how little respect she had paid to his budding manhood when her dander was up, and with how little subtlety she had approached his new complexities. Good old Dom, the first really adult quality he had acquired had been an ability to humor his elders and make allowances for them. “Have you been having trouble with him? He likes you, you know, and that’s the first essential for being able to manage him.”
A slow, dark flush mounted Chad’s lean cheeks as he looked at her. She found it astonishing and touching that the mention of a child’s liking for him could make him color so painfully. He must be awfully short of compensations to make so much of so small a one.
“I’m glad! I like him, too, and by and large, the sort of trouble he gives me is the most encouraging kind. No, I’m only concerned, probably quite unnecessarily, with Dom’s own state of mind: Isn’t there something weighing a bit heavily on him, just lately?”
Bunty hesitated, for they were approaching a subject which had thorns wherever one touched it. “Well, of course, he’s been thinking far too much about this Schauffler case, but that was hardly avoidable, since he found the body. But naturally we’ve been keeping an eye on him, and I can’t say I’ve thought there was much wrong with his reactions. One can’t just forget a thing like that, but there’s nothing morbid about Dom.”
“Good God, no! I never meant to suggest it. No, he hasn’t an ounce of humbug in him, I’m sure of that. I was thinking of something much more positive and active. Are you sure he’s not up to something on his own? By the way, where is he now?”
“He went out, immediately after tea.” Her eyes widened in suspicion and apprehension. “He was very quick and very quiet, but so he often is. He didn’t stop to do his homework first, as he usually does, but that happens, too, when he has something on. And I’ve never asked questions, it’s never been necessary, and I’m not going to start now. You don’t think he’s up to anything really hare-brained?”
“Never quite that,” said Chad, and smiled, and was glad to see her smile in response.
“That’s awfully nice of you. He is a capable boy, I know that. But we might not think exactly alike about what’s crazy and what isn’t. You see, trusting him and leaving him his privacy has been easy while he stayed transparent and calculable—maybe not so much of a gesture, after all, because we often didn’t need to ask, we could see for ourselves. But now he isn’t quite transparent, even though I think he’s as honest as ever he was. And he isn’t, he certainly isn’t, quite calculable. That’s when the pinch comes.”
“I may be thinking more of it than it really is,” said Chad, “and troubling you with what amounts to nothing. It’s only today he’s been in this peculiar state; so one can hardly blame Schauffler for it. It may even be some odd score he’s got to settle with some other boy, only he seemed to be taking it very seriously. All today he’s been miles from school, working out something which did seem rather to be giving him trouble. I wondered if between us we couldn’t find out a little more about it, without treading too heavily on his toes.”
