The Hall and the Grange Part 3

Pamela had reached the age of nine. She was an engaging little sylph-like creature, with laughing, mischievous ways, and a bright intelligence beyond her years. She was quite fit to be a companion to Norman, and he took pleasure in her society. Judith was only a year younger, and companionable, too, in a more serious way. Alice and Isabelle were five and four. All of them loved Norman, who played childish games with them, and was entirely happy in doing so. But this brought on him some return of the treatment by which he had been made so unhappy during his first intercourse with Hugo and Fred together. It did not make him unhappy now, but contemptuous of them. Still, there was the fact that Norman's childhood still hung about him, while they had got rid of theirs; and no boy of fifteen likes having his youth emphasized, especially by those, rather older, with whom he desires to be on equal terms. Fred and Hugo held this advantage over him, which delayed the outbreak for some time.

It came suddenly when it did come, and its beginnings were almost a repet.i.tion of the quarrel of years before. Norman was wanted to do something with the other two, and was not to be found. They came upon him by chance, with Pamela, in a retired part of the garden. They were sitting on a bench deep in conversation, for they found plenty to talk about that interested them, and Pamela was often very serious in these confabulations, when she laid aside the quick activities of her nature and was content to sit quietly and talk to a friend.

The discovery was made an occasion of whooping triumph by Fred and Hugo, as if they had surprised some secret. Pamela flamed out against them for disturbing her and Norman, and told them to go away and leave them alone. Their interference stung Norman to a cold fury that was quite a new experience to him, and beyond what was natural to his years. He stood up with a white face and confronted Fred, whose eyes flickered for a moment before him. "I'll just go and get my cap," he said, "and then I'll come with you. Wait for me down by the wood."

So he got Pamela away. She expostulated indignantly as they crossed the lawn together. "I hate Fred Comfrey," she said. "Why do you want to go with him instead of staying with me?"

"Oh, we'd already arranged something. I'd forgotten," he said shortly.

"I can't always be with you."

It was beyond him altogether to affect indifference before her, and this unusual brusqueness served its turn. "You're ashamed of them finding you talking to a girl," she said hotly. "You're like that horrid Fred. Very well, then, you needn't pretend to be friends with me any more. Go with him."

"Oh, don't be silly," he said, and left her.

He went through the garden and across the park to where they were waiting for him. As he went he gave reign to his anger. Little Pamela!

That coa.r.s.e brute to jeer at their being together! And Hugo had stood by, grinning, if not even adding jeers of his own. His fist clenched as he walked up to them. "You're a foul swine," he said, stopping short within a yard of Fred, and added more, in language that seemed to come readily to his lips, though as a rule he avoided the grosser forms of schoolboy abuse.

Fred was taken aback for the moment by the violence of the attack, and Norman turned to Hugo. "You're a swine, too," he said. "Fancy letting this filthy cad treat your own sister like that!"

Fred began to say something; Norman did not wait to hear what. Fred's speech goaded him to action, and he dashed his fist in the other's face.

Then they were at it. Fred's anger was loosed, too, and for a few moments it was a desperate scrimmage, with no science shown on either side. Norman, battered by the attack, was the first to gird himself to some self-possession, and by fighting warily delayed the end for a little. But he had no chance whatever against the much stronger and bigger boy, and was soon on the gra.s.s with the fight knocked out of him.

He was struggling up to continue it, but Hugo intervened. "This is rot,"

he said, more decisive than his wont. "Fred was only chaffing. He meant nothing by it."

Norman was gasping and sobbing, the blood dripping from his nose. "He's a swine," he cried, "a filthy swine."

Fred stood over him, breathing hard. Norman had marked him, but not enough to keep his blood hot. Already he was feeling some compunction at having let himself go to the full against a boy of Norman's size. "It was just chaff," he repeated; "nothing to get shirty about."

Norman struggled to his knees and unsteadily to his feet, and with his handkerchief to his face went off into the wood away from them.

Fred and Hugo looked at one another. "Better go after him," Hugo said.

"There'll be a row if--"

"No good my going," said Fred sulkily. Dread of what should happen began to take hold of him. "You'd better go. He won't want to sneak."

Hugo caught Norman up. He was standing against a tree, sobbing. "You put up a jolly good fight against him," Hugo said awkwardly. "Better shake hands, now it's all over."

"I shan't," cried Norman pa.s.sionately. "He's a foul swine."

"Well, you keep on saying that, but I think you're making too much of it. He didn't mean anything beastly about Pam. Naturally, I shouldn't stand that."

"Yes, you would," said Norman, facing him. "You'd stand anything from that beast. You're just like you used to be with him. I'll tell you this--I stood it then, but I'm not going to stand it now. I won't have anything more to do with him, and when you have him here I won't have anything to do with you. You can go and be swines together. I'll play with the children instead. You can say what you like about it. I don't care what you say about it."

He was still somewhat incoherent, but Hugo understood him. "I dare say it was rotten to chaff you about that," he said. "Anyhow, I apologize for it, and I'm sure Fred will. Now you've had a sc.r.a.p, you ought not to keep it up against him."

Norman turned away. "I'm going down to the river to wash my face," he said. "I don't want _you_."

"Aren't you going to make it up with Fred?"

"No, I'm not. I hate the beast, and I've had enough of him."

"Well, you won't say anything--"

Norman cut him short. "I'm not a cad," he said.

Hugo went back to Fred. The result of their confabulation was that Fred kept away from the hall until Norman's visit was over. Norman did not see him again until years afterwards.

CHAPTER IV

PAMELA

"Pam, I've got something to tell you."

Norman had waited until they were away from the glare of the garden, and the green gloom of the summer woods was all about them, cool and secret and inviting to confidences.

He had not changed much since those days of boyhood, though he was now nearly twenty-five, and the last years of the war had caught him, and taught him some things that he wanted to forget, as well as much that had strengthened the fibre of which he was made. There was a boyish atmosphere about him still. He was tall and slim, and his fair hair, which he tried to keep plastered to his head, was always breaking away from the bounds of its cosmetics and dropping a skein over his forehead.

Nothing he had undergone had affected that bright light-hearted charm of his boyhood. He seemed to be rejoicing in his youth and his strength, and in all the world about him, which, in spite of the shadows that still hung over it, he at least found as good as the young men of a generation earlier had found their more untroubled world.

Pamela was very young still, and very pretty. Her hair and her colouring were as fair as Norman's, whom she resembled in a cousinly way. Indeed the resemblances between them were more than superficial. They had the same eager pleasure in whatever life they found about them. They thought alike in most things to which they put their adventurous minds, and to neither of them did it seem odd that Pamela, who had not long since left the schoolroom, and had grown up under the shadow that had dulled and limited the life of her kind, should claim an equality of opinion with Norman, who was six years older, and knew so much more than the generality of young men had ever known before.

One may pause for a moment to note this unexpected attribute of those whose early years of manhood, instead of being pa.s.sed in the pursuits and interests, educative or otherwise, adapted to their youth, had been given to the war, of which they had borne the ultimate brunt. The years which divide us from it are pa.s.sing away. The social phenomena of each successive stage of the long struggle, and those that have succeeded it, too familiar to call for much notice at the time, will become blurred, and half forgotten even by those who were part of them; and in after years they will be difficult to gauge. This, among them, is not likely to be seen as it was, when the years have increased, and later generations try to recapture the spirit of the great war: that the young men, and the older men too, who lived through it, and came out of it whole, or not too broken to make what they would of their lives, put it to all effective purposes out of their minds. While it was going on they did the work appointed to them as if it were no more than any other work proper to their years, and pursued their recreations with an added zest.

And when at last they were released, they crowded back into the various ways of life open to them, and put it all behind them as just an experience like any other which might have come to them. It could never be forgotten, but it was not to come between them and the life to which they had returned; and the interests of that life were exactly what they would have been if it had never happened.

So Norman Eldridge, who would have gone to a university in the ordinary way, but for the war, was at Cambridge now, three years later than his time, and with his three years of service behind him. His enjoyment of undergraduate life was even greater than it would have been in normal times, for it was a more conscious enjoyment, and he could gauge his opportunities better. Games, in which he excelled, though he had not quite succeeded in gaining his hoped-for Blue for cricket, did not take up even the greater part of his attention. He was a lover of the arts, and found Cambridge a delectable place in which to pursue them. He had plenty of money at his disposal, and social life was open to him at its widest. When term-time was over he could go where he liked, and enjoy himself as he pleased. And at this time he was enjoying himself to the full.

"Pam, I've got something to tell you," he said as they went down into the wood together.

"Is it the real thing this time?" she asked, with a quick smiling glance at his face.

"Oh, none of the others have been anything--just fancies--boyish fancies, you know."

He laughed gaily. He was very good to look at, with his close-cropped shapely head thrown back on the firm column of his neck. Pam smiled up at him again, with a sort of proprietary fondness. She admired him, as she had always admired him ever since she could remember, and had never met a young man whom she thought his equal. And it was a source of pride to her that he was one of her own family--to all intents and purposes a brother. Poor Hugo, over whose death she had cried, as something strange and unexpected and infinitely pathetic, had been a kind brother to her--she liked to remember that the last time she had said good-bye to him, never to see him again, he had given her ten pounds to spend as she liked--but he had never made a confidante of her, as Norman had always done. She had known very little of Hugo's life as it was spent away from Hayslope, but she thought she knew all about Norman's life. He had fallen in love once or twice, and had always told her everything about it. Hugo seemed to have gone through life without falling in love. Poor Hugo! She could not but believe, from her intimate talks with Norman, that he had died without acquiring the crown of his manhood. Norman was attractive under the influence of his love affairs, and she was not surprised that he had them continually, though she saw quite plainly that without some such guidance as she was fortunately able to give him he might have got into trouble with them. Men were so foolish where girls were concerned. Even the best of them, who had a lot to give--like Norman--fell in love with girls who were in no way their equals. But it never did to tell them so. Give them all sympathy and affection, and the affair died away of itself. So it had been three times with Norman already, and Pamela, who had been a little alarmed over the first affair, was confirmed in the belief that she had dealt most wisely with each situation as it had arisen. Still, the genuine lasting emotion must come into play sooner or later. There must be, somewhere, a girl who was worthy of such a rare prize as Norman's love, and Pamela had always told herself that when that girl was found she would welcome her whole-heartedly.

"Yes, you've been in love with love," she said impressively; and they both laughed, for this was a quotation.

"Trying my wings," said Norman. "They were all dears, but there wasn't enough _to_ them when it came down to the things one is interested in."

"Well, now I'm free to speak," said Pamela, "I'll confess that they seemed to me a set of brainless idiots. I hope the new one has got _some_ intelligence. It would be such an advantage if you had to spend your life with her. She's pretty, of course. Have you got a photograph of her?"

"Not a proper one. I'm not up to that point yet."

"Worshipping at a distance?"

"No, not exactly. We've danced together a lot in London, and been the greatest pals. Really, I've been rather clever about it. She's very young--only in her first season. She's out to have a jolly good time, but her life isn't only amus.e.m.e.nt. She's slogging hard at the piano.