Fallen Into the Pit

Two

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It rained heavily most of the night, and the thirsty earth drank madly, but still there was water to spare next day, lying in all the dimples of the road, and making a white slime of all the open clay faces on the mounds. By the time Dominic came home from school the clouds were all past, and the sky from east to west hung pale and faint and exhausted into calm.

Just when he wanted to rush his tea and his homework, and be away on the job in hand—though when it came to expecting any results from it he might have been regarded as a despairing optimist—Cousin John was at the house visiting, and without his mother, so that it inevitably followed that Dominic was expected to help to look after and amuse him. Not that young John was such a bad kid, really, but who could be bothered with him on this particular day? Dominic made an ungracious business of it, so much so that Bunty was a little hurt and put out at his behavior. He was usually an accommodating child. Still, she admitted his right to his off-days, like the rest of us, and good-humoredly, if a little coolly, relieved him of his charge as soon as she had washed up. Dominic rushed through his French, made a hideous mess of his algebra, and scuttled out at the back door in a terrible hurry, with George’s best torch in his pocket. It wasn’t that he expected to find anything, really, but there was somehow a satisfaction in furious activity, and, after all, if one raked around persistently enough, something might turn up. At least he had keyed himself to the attempt, and he meant to leave no blade of grass undisturbed between Webster’s well and the Harrow fences.

This was the day on which the news went round Comerford that the Harrow appeal had been allowed. In view of the objections raised by the owner, the Ministry had decided not to proceed with the extension of the open-cast site, but to cut their losses and end their operations in Comerford at the Harrow borders. Nobody was much surprised. The Blundens almost always got their own way, and it wasn’t to be expected, in view of what Comerford had yet seen of nationalized industries, that the new setup was going to alter the rule very much. It took more than a change of name to upset the equilibrium of Selwyn Blunden when it was a case of manipulating authorities.

Dominic had heard, distractedly from behind a French prose extract, the discussion round the tea-table. He wasn’t surprised, either, everyone had been saying for weeks that it would go that way, but somehow long delay raises disconcerting doubts far back in the mind, behind the façade of certainty. Every speculation always ended with: “But after all, you never know!” Well, now they did know, and that was done with. Now there was only one topic of conversation left in Comerford.

At the last moment, just as he was sliding out at the gate, Bunty called him back, and asked him to see John safely on to the bus for Comerbourne Bridge; which meant that he had to go all the way round by the green, and stand chafing for five minutes until the wretched bus arrived, instead of taking all the most convenient short cuts to his objective. But as soon as John was bundled aboard, off went Dominic by the fields and the lane and the quarry, heading by the longer but now more direct route for Webster’s well.

He came to the stile in the rough ground outside the Harrow preserves, where the silvery green of birches fluttered against the background black of the conifers; and there was Charles Blunden sitting on the stile, with a shotgun on his arm and a brown-and-white spaniel between his feet. He was looking straight before him with mild, contemplative eyes, and he looked vaguely pleased with the contents of his own mind, and rather a long way off. But he smiled at Dominic when he came up, and said: “Oh, hullo, Dom! Made any more interesting discoveries yet?”

Dominic had walked off the remnants of his impatience and ill-temper, and grinned back quite cheerfully at him. “No, nothing new! Did you get any birds tonight?” He peered through the stile, and saw a brace dropped in the grass by the side of the path. The spaniel, sad-eyed, poked a moist nose into his palm; its brow was covered with raffish brown curls, and its front legs were splayed out drunkenly, spreading enormous feathered paws in the wet grass. It had a pedigree rather longer than its master’s, and shelves of prizes, and rumor had it that he had refused fabulous sums for its purchase; but it was not in the least stuck-up. Dominic doubled its ears and massaged them gently in his fingers, and the curly head heeled over into his thigh heavy and lopsided with bliss.

“I heard,” said Dominic, looking up into Charles’s face, “about the result of the appeal. I bet you’re glad it’s settled, aren’t you?”

“Settled? Ah!” said Charles absently. He grew a little less remote, his wandering glance settling upon Dominic thoughtfully. “Tell me, Dom, as an intelligent and unprejudiced person, what do you think of that business? What were the rights and wrongs of it? Don’t mind me, tell me your opinion if it kills me.”

“I hadn’t exactly thought,” said Dominic, taken aback.

“Neither had I, until the thing was almost settled. D’you know how it is, Dom, when you want a thing against pressure, and want it like the dickens—and then the pressure’s withdrawn, and you find you don’t really want it, after all?”

“Oh, yes,” said Dominic readily, “of course! But I don’t—”

“Well, after all, we seem to have made all this fuss about twenty acres of second-rate pasture. It got to looking like the fattest agricultural land in the county to me, while the fight was on. What do you think we ought to have done? I’ll bet you had an opinion one way or the other. If you didn’t, you’re the only person over the age of five in Comerford who didn’t.”

“Well, I don’t know much about it,” said Dominic doubtfully. “It does look an awful mess when the land’s being worked, but the old colliers say the shallow pits made a worse mess in the end. And it’s all shallow coal, isn’t it? So if it’s ever going to be got at all, it’s got to be one way or the other, hasn’t it? It seems almost better to have the mess now, and get it over. It doesn’t last so long as when the ground caves in, like under those cottages out on the Comerbourne road— all pegged together with iron bars. And even then the walls are cracking. I know a boy who lives in one. The bedroom floors are like this,” said Dominic, tilting his hand at an extravagant angle.

Charles looked at him, and the odd, finished peacefulness of his face broke into a slow, broad smile. “Out of the mouths—” he said. “Well, so you think we raised a song and dance for next to nothing, and on the wrong side?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I only said— And I told you, I don’t really know much about it.” Dominic was uncomfortable, and found it unfair that he should be pinned into a corner like this. He scrubbed at the bunched curls of the spaniel’s forehead, and said placatingly: “But anyhow, in the end it seems the Coal Board didn’t want it as much as they thought they did, either. Especially after they started to have such rotten luck. If it was luck! You remember that grab that went over the edge? I was talking to one of the men off the site once, and he told me he thought somebody’d been mucking about with the engine. He said he thought a lot of those repairs they had were really sabotage, only he couldn’t say so openly because he couldn’t find any proof. I don’t suppose there’s anything in it, really,” owned Dominic regretfully, “because I’ve often talked to the same man, and he likes a good story, and anyhow if there wasn’t the least bit of evidence there may not have been any sabotage, either. But still, it was funny that they had so much trouble so quickly, wasn’t it?”

“I never heard that story,” said Charles.

“Oh, he wouldn’t dare tell it to anyone responsible, he’s known for an awful old liar. Anyhow, the whole unit will soon be packing up now, I suppose, so there isn’t any point in guessing.”

Charles looked at him, and smiled, and said: “Maybe they won’t, after all. It rests with them entirely.”

“But—they’ve nearly finished the rest of the site, and now that they’ve allowed the appeal—”

“Oh, I took it to a further appeal, Dom. I told you, I stopped being indignant as soon as I got my own way. I’ve been walking round having another look at all my grandfather’s wreckage this evening, since we heard the result. I’m going to withdraw my objections, and waive the result of the appeal. Tomorrow, while I know my own mind. They can carry right on, and be damned to grandfather and his methods.”

Dominic, staring with open mouth, perceived that Charles meant what he was saying. This was no joke. The tired, satisfied, almost self-satisfied glow which Charles had about him this evening emanated from this decision, and he wanted someone to share it so that it would be irrevocable, underlined, signed and sealed, with no room anywhere for another change of heart. For which rôle of witness even Dominic had sufficed.

He asked, swallowing hard: “Does Mr. Blunden know?”

“Not yet!” Charles laughed, a large, ruddy, bright sound in the evening, breaking the sequence of gunshots, far and near, which were now the commonplace of the season, and almost inaudible unless one consciously thought about them. “Expecting me to get a thick ear? Don’t you worry, if I know him he’s lost all interest since he heard he’s carried his point. That’s what mattered with the old man, to have his own way. I suppose it’s in the family. Besides, it’ll please his cussed nature, making ’em sweat blood losing the ground to him, and then chucking it to ’em when he’s won. Take his side of any argument, and he’s sure to hop over to yours. No, this is really hot news, young Dom. You’re positively the only one who knows it yet.”

As a consequence of which accident, he was now unusually pleased with Dominic, and suddenly fishing out a half-crown from his pocket, flipped it over into his startled hand. “Here, celebrate the occasion, while I go and break the news.” He swung his legs over the stile, hoisting the shotgun clear of the gate-posts, and gathered up his birds from the grass. Dominic was stammering delighted but rather dazed thanks, for he was not used to having half-crowns thrown at him without warning, or, indeed, at all. The cost of living, so his mother said, was turning her into a muttering miser, and causing her to cast longing eyes even on her son’s weekly one and sixpence, and occasional bonuses.

“That’s all right!” said Charles, laughing back from the shadow of the trees. “Buy your girl a choc-ice!” And he whistled the spaniel to heel, and marched away into his dark woodlands with his half of the momentous secret.