The Hall and the Grange Part 28

"Just we three bright young sparks, and you. We're going in Eric Blundell's car. She's a flier, but she only holds four, sitting rather snug, or we'd have asked Judy. He wants to go and see some cousins who live at Medchester. It's about forty miles there and another forty back, so we ought to start at once. Are you on?"

She was on; and soon they were walking down the wood together.

"I say, old girl," said Norman, as soon as they started, "I was rather s.h.i.+rty with you yesterday, and I'm afraid I showed it. I'm sorry. You won't have it up against me, will you?"

"You didn't like me taking notice of Fred Comfrey, I suppose."

"You've hit it. I always say you can see a thing as quick as anybody, and I'll maintain that against all and sundry."

He seemed to be in high spirits. It was grateful to Pamela to find him like that, and relieved some of her soreness. "Fred Comfrey is going away this afternoon," she said. "He came up to say good-bye this morning."

"Did he? Well, we must try to bear up under it. Is he coming back to-morrow afternoon?"

"No, he isn't. He's going to London to start work again. So you won't have to lose your temper any more because of him."

"No. That's such an advantage, isn't it? I hate losing my temper, especially with you. It wastes such a lot of time."

"You're very foolish to have done it at all. You know I don't really like him much; but I can't treat him rudely, just to please you."

Norman became a shade graver. "I said to myself that you couldn't really like him," he said. "But I'm glad _you've_ said it too. You see, Pam, when you think a lot of a girl, as I do of you--I mean when you put her high--you don't like seeing her make friends with somebody miles below her. That's really how it was when I saw you going off with that creature; but of course I was an a.s.s to get s.h.i.+rty about it. You see, old girl, it means nothing to you. I know that. But probably it means a good deal to him, and you give him a handle. You can't afford to give handles to people like that. At least--no; I didn't mean to say that.

I'm not going to lecture you about it. You do exactly what you like, and I'm sure it will be all right."

"Well, it's self-denying of you not to want to lecture me about it; and I think you can trust me too. Talking about it at all makes it of too much importance. So let's leave off. There are other things to talk about, and I shouldn't have been sorry to have had an opportunity of doing it yesterday."

"Ah! Well, I wasn't ready to talk about those other things yesterday.

Now I am. In fact it's what I came over to do, and I had some trouble to prevent those other lads from coming with me. We've got plenty of time.

Let's sit down here and discuss the situation."

They had come to the stile leading to the meadows. Norman perched himself upon it. Pamela stood in front of him, with some indecision in her face. She was not quite prepared for a full-dress debate, and the afternoon's pleasure was in front of her. "I thought you said we must start at once," she said.

"That was camouflage. I told Castor and Pollux that we'd start in half an hour. I gave them two gla.s.ses of port each to keep them quiet. What I've got to tell you won't take long. It's chiefly that I investigated that business of Coombe for myself, as the governor didn't seem to be giving it enough attention. I think Uncle Edmund made a bit too much of it, because it hasn't really done him any harm; in fact, I think it has rallied the enlightened electorate of Hayslope to him. At the same time the fellow _had_ tried to make mischief, and I think the governor ought to have sent him away for it. I told him so, in a letter written under my own hand and seal, and I got his reply this morning. I'm glad to say that he had come to the same conclusion himself, and Mr. Coombe departs immediately. So that ought to end it, oughtn't it, Pam?"

"I'm very glad you did that, Norman," said Pamela, looking down. "I knew you were trying to find out something, but-- Oh, I _am_ so glad." She looked up at him, smiling.

"Dear old girl," he said affectionately. "You set Master Comfrey on to it, didn't you? Well, I'm not going to say any more about that. We can forget all the disagreeables now--I'm afraid I must continue to think Master Comfrey one of them--and be as we were. I think we ought to be moving on now, or Castor-oil and Pole-ax will be getting restive. I say, mother told you about the shoot in Suffolk, didn't she? It's a topping place. I expect the governor will want to ask Uncle Edmund to come up and blaze at 'em directly they've made it up. You'll have to come too.

It's a good big house, and we shall be able to put up lots of bright spirits."

"Oh, it will be heavenly to get all this trouble over," said Pamela, as they walked on together. "You can't think how glad I am. It's like a great weight lifted off me."

"I know. They're both of them a bit touchy; but they're good sorts. I knew _we_ could put it right if we took it in hand. I wanted to tell you what I'd done yesterday; but I thought it would come better if I could tell you that it was all finished with."

"Oh, Norman, I'm afraid I was rather horrid. I'm sorry. I'm sorry about asking Fred to help me too. But let's forget all about him, and about it, and enjoy ourselves. It will be rather fun this afternoon, won't it?

I feel I can _really_ enjoy myself now."

She chatted on gaily as they climbed up through the wood at the Grange garden, and hardly left off chattering and laughing as preparations and adjustments were made for their drive, and she was packed into the front seat beside the owner of the car. It was Norman's suggestion that she should keep company with his friend Blundellovitch on the outward journey and with his friend Pollocksky on the homeward. But he altered this arrangement on the return, and insisted upon sitting behind with her himself. "She's my cousin and not yours," was his argument, "and I find I've got a lot to say to her."

For a good many months afterwards Pamela looked back upon that expedition as the last entirely happy time she had had. It seemed as if the troubles that had been darkening her home life increasingly of late had all been swept away, for she had no doubt then that her father and her uncle would immediately compose their differences, and the close intimacy between the two families would go on as before. It had not occurred to her that the Grange would be completely unoccupied. Her uncle and aunt had often been away, for many weeks together, and she had sometimes been with them, in the South of France or in Scotland, or elsewhere. It would be fun to go to the house in Suffolk; she had not been away from home for a long time, and change was agreeable to her, especially in that company.

So she gave herself up to the enjoyment of the hour, and was sparkling and radiant with happiness. Mr. Blundellovitch, as he was called throughout the afternoon, was a stricken victim of her charms, and Mr.

Pollocksky, though unrighteously deprived of his opportunities, was not behind him in admiration of her. They had a merry time in the house which they visited, and started homewards so late that it was dark long before they reached Hayslope. During the last half hour she and Norman talked quietly together, her hand in his. There had been misunderstandings between them, as between their parents, but they were done away with now, and they were as close together as they had ever been. It was not until then that she realized that the Grange was to be forsaken in two days' time, which induced a slight touch of melancholy, not unpleasing under the circ.u.mstances, which included a full moon, and a delicious astringent hint of autumn in the warm night air. Norman wasn't sure that even the partridges would make it worth while to exchange Hayslope for Eylsham; but Pamela said wisely that it would be better for their two families not to be so close to one another for a time. "When you're as old as Dad and Uncle Bill," she said, "it's more difficult to make up a quarrel. They'll like each other much better if they don't see so much of one another for a time."

"Yes," said Norman, "I think that's true. They wouldn't be able to treat it as you and I should. We might have little rows occasionally, but we should always make them up, and when we had we should forget all about them at once. That's one of the advantages of being young. I like being young, don't you? It comes over me sometimes that I am, just as it used to come over me out there, 'I'm in France.' But I'm not in France now, and I shan't be young any longer in half a minute or so."

"I don't know that I quite follow you," said Pamela politely.

"Oh, I follow myself, all the way. Don't you see? Take the governor, for instance. He must have enjoyed himself as we're doing now when he was our age, and sometimes thought how jolly it was to be young. And being old seemed centuries off, or at least so far off that it didn't count.

Yet here he is thirty years or so older, and it's what he's doing now that matters to him. It isn't that it's a short time or a long time.

It's just that time doesn't seem to count somehow. Look at old Horace, we three Latinists were reading this morning. He was extraordinarily alive, and aware of himself, so to speak. But nearly two thousand years have slipped by since he got tight, or half tight, and played the goat generally. They don't count when you read him, and another few years won't count for us when we look back on to-day. We're here--now. That's all that seems to matter."

"Yes, I think I see it dimly," said Pam. "Anyhow, I'm very glad that we are here now. It's a lovely world, and I think you _must_ enjoy it more when you're young."

The next day there was some coming and going between the Hall and the Grange, but the shadow of immediate departure lay over the Grange, and it was impossible not to take it as a departure more significant than it had hitherto appeared. Lady Eldridge might come down again for a day or two to finish her packings away for the winter. Norman said that he would come down before he went back to Cambridge. But the prospect of autumn and winter pa.s.sing over the house emptied of its usual life could not be ignored, and as yet there were no signs of the complete reconciliation that Norman had announced. All the family from the Hall were at the Grange during the afternoon except Colonel Eldridge. Pamela had thought he would come with them and was disappointed because he didn't. Her mother and her aunt talked together, but, it seemed to Pamela, not in quite the same way as before.

She had one more talk with Norman alone. They went down together to Barton's Close, not with any conscious intention of visiting the scene of so much disturbance, but probably led to it by some such impulse. The wide, wood-enclosed meadow lay quiet and deserted. The soil that had been dug up for the plantings over a considerable area had been gra.s.sed over again, with the sods cut from it, but the design of the garden, as far as it had gone, was plain to be seen. It would never be made now.

That thought struck them both at the same time, for they had taken a modified interest in the project, and their imaginations had played about the garden that was to have been made here. It was almost as if it had been, and was now destroyed.

"It's a pity," Norman said. "However, it doesn't really matter, if we can get rid of the bothers that came of it."

For the first time, the thought came to Pamela that her father had been unreasonable. But she put it away from her. "It wasn't this that they really quarrelled about," she said, "though it began it. Norman, do you think that it is all over? I don't feel quite so sure as I did yesterday."

Norman didn't feel quite so sure either. He had had a talk with his mother, and though she had agreed that there was nothing left now of the original grounds of the quarrel, she had not treated it as if they were back on the old terms yet. It had almost seemed to him that she didn't wish that particularly. She had been very quiet about it, but what had struck him most was that she was obviously glad that they were going away. He knew that she loved the home that she had made for herself at the Grange. She had not even seen the Suffolk house, which had not at first been talked of as if it were to provide them with more than a place for the entertainment of their shooting-parties. Some of those might very well have been for men only, and she might have preferred to come to the Grange at intervals instead of arranging for everything away from it, as she was doing now, hurriedly but completely.

But he didn't want Pam to think that they were leaving Hayslope because of the quarrel. Better debit something to his father rather than that!

"Well, all this sudden pus.h.i.+ng off is rather like the governor, you know," he said. "He's kept himself young in that way. He gets a sudden idea into his head, and that's the great thing for the moment. I'm rather like that myself. Perhaps Uncle Edmund thinks it all rather funny; but--you'll see--when he's been up to Eylsham and shot a few birds and drunk a few gla.s.ses of good old tawny, they'll be as thick as thieves together again."

"Do you think Uncle William will ask him to shoot with him?"

"Why, of course he will." But as he said it Norman had some doubts of his own. Uncle Edmund was a difficult person. The disordered ground in front of them seemed to cry that aloud. His father was about fed up with it. If Uncle Edmund didn't respond graciously to this last attempt to satisfy his demands there might be no reconciliation at all. There was nothing more left to be done, and he would just have to be left alone till he came round of himself. If Norman read his mother aright, she was already preparing for that to be a long process.

Moreover, he had asked if Pam couldn't be included in the first party, which his father had already made up. The guns were to be three of his father's friends, and Norman and Blundell and Pollock, who were proposing to pursue their course of reading in whatever intervals of leisure might be left to them at Eylsham. Only one man was bringing his wife. There would be plenty of room for Pam. But his mother had said that his father didn't want anybody from the Hall until they knew where they stood. There would be plenty of time later.

So there was something that couldn't be said to her, and yet she must know that in ordinary times she would have been asked. Oh, it was all becoming difficult and beastly again. Why on earth couldn't Uncle Edmund do the proper generous thing for once and put an end to it all for good?

Yesterday they had been as happy as larks because they had thought their elders had settled their quarrel. Perhaps they had, but it wasn't certain yet, and in the meantime here was poor little Pam getting sad about it again. And no wonder, with this beastly half-made and unmade garden in front of her eyes.

"Oh, why did we come down here?" he said, turning away in impatience. "I hate the very sight of the place. Let's go back and find the others."

They went back, and were cousinly to one another, but careful again now not to touch upon the awkward subject. The cord that had bound them together so closely the evening before was loosened.

The next day the Grange was left empty, and the gardeners went down to Barton's Close with a horse-roller, and flattened down the places where the ground had been disturbed.