CHAPTER VII
YOUNG PEOPLE
The day had advanced to a heat unusual in our temperate climate. All nature seemed to be holding its breath in an endeavour to support it.
There was no sound of bird life, and even the insects had ceased their stir of activity. After one set, somewhat languidly pursued, the tennis players betook themselves to the seats disposed near at hand, in a shade almost as torrid as the sun-steeped open. Judith was the only member of the party who showed no manifest signs of being overheated. Her almost southern-looking beauty was enhanced by the heat. She laughed at the others, and said that it could never be too hot for her.
Jim Horsham looked at her seriously, and said that in Australia he had experienced a heat of a hundred and twenty degrees, and at Christmas time, which made it all the more remarkable.
Pamela"s eyes twinkled, and she roused herself from an exhausted reclining to ask: "Why does it make it all the more remarkable?"
"Well--Christmas time, you know," replied Jim, in the tone of one humouring an intellectually weaker vessel.
"Yes, I see that, Jim. But aren"t the seasons just the other way round in Australia?"
"Well, of course they are. That"s just what I was saying."
She laughed, and subsided again. "It"s too hot to argue," she said.
"When were you in Australia?" asked Fred Comfrey.
Horsham replied conscientiously, with dates of arrival and departure, and the further information that he had acted as A. D. C. to an uncle who was Governor of one of the States.
"How informative you are, Jim!" said Pamela lazily. But Judith unexpectedly showed interest in Australia, and asked for exact details of the behaviour of the thermometer in that Dependency, which was given to her.
"Oh, it"s much too hot to listen to all this," said Pamela, springing up from her low chair with no appearance of any essential lack of energy, in spite of the heat. "Let"s go for a stroll in the wood."
This was said to Fred Comfrey, who responded with alacrity. His eyes had repeatedly rested upon Pamela, across the luncheon table, where she had talked and laughed with the gay freedom that was hers when she was feeling what Norman would have called good and happy, and during the game in which her light movements had been partnered with Horsham"s responsible but slow-moving efforts, to their ultimate defeat. Horsham also looked at her as she rose, as if he would like to follow her; but his explanations to Judith were in full flood, and had to be carried to a conclusion. Pamela and Fred moved off together, and his eyes followed them until they were lost among the trees, though there was no faltering in his firm dealings with degrees Fahrenheit.
"Jim"s a dear old thing," said Pamela, when they were out of hearing, "but the idea sometimes crosses my mind that he"s just a little bit of a bore. I hate to think it of him, so the best thing is to run away when he begins to show signs of it. We needn"t run very far. There"s a seat just out of hearing of them."
It was the seat in which she and Norman had been surprised by Fred and Hugo years before, from which had followed that quarrel that she had never heard about. She had even forgotten the disturbance that led up to it, but it was fresh enough in Fred"s mind, and impelled him to ask with some awkwardness. "What sort of a fellow has Norman grown into? I didn"t see him when he was here last week."
This brought her to a recollection of the hostility between them, and she answered a little stiffly: "He"s just as much of a dear as ever."
She had shared Norman"s dislike of Fred in her childhood. She thought him improved, and wanted him to have a new chance with all of them. But she was on Norman"s side--always, if it was a question of taking sides.
The improvement in Fred, from the hobbledehoy of twelve years before, would have been remarked by anybody. He was still stocky of build, but his frame had become smartened, and his stature, rather below the average, only indicated its strength. The close-cropped moustache that he wore had improved his appearance, and there was a degree of self-confidence in his bearing which had not been there of old, when he had been alternately truculent and diffident. Whether or not he had improved in character was not so plain to see, but the years had brought him at least to a better understanding of the face that a man was expected to show before the world.
He laughed, a shade nervously, with his fingers at his moustache. If Pamela had been looking at him at that moment she would have seen him more like he had been as a boy than she had seen him hitherto in his manhood. "Norman and I had a quarrel about you the very last time I saw him," he said.
She did look at him then, with a hint of displeasure on her face.
Recollection began to come to her. "Oh, yes," she said. "It was when you and Hugo found us here together."
He saw that he had made a mistake, and hastened to retrieve it. "I"ve always been sorry for what happened then," he said. "I"m ready to tell Norman so when I see him. Probably he has remembered it against me. We didn"t always get on very well as boys, but I always liked him, really--and admired him too, for his pluck."
The slight frown had not yet left her face. "What did happen?" she asked.
"Well, we fought," he said, greatly daring. "That"s what I so much regret. I was much bigger and stronger than he was. It didn"t last long, and I don"t think I damaged him much, for I don"t believe you or anybody knew. Still, I don"t excuse it in any way. I know I was rather a beast, as a boy. When one goes out into the world, and gets some sense knocked into one, one becomes ashamed of a good many things, and some of them stick in one"s mind. That did--that I fought a younger smaller boy, when I"d been in the wrong from the first. It"s always been a sort of nightmare to me."
He spoke quietly, and with apparent sincerity. Pamela had a sense of something underlying the quarrel of which he spoke that she did not want to explore, brought by his first words--that the quarrel had been about her. But it was possible to put that aside. Her youthful generosity was touched by his admission. It fitted in with her own observation of him that the man and the boy might be two quite different creations, and this fact seemed to have presented itself to her out of her own knowledge of life, upon which she prided herself. "I think horrid little boys often turn into quite nice men," she said with a laugh. "I suppose you were rather horrid as a boy, though I don"t remember much about you.
So was poor Hugo, sometimes, though he turned into a very nice man. The war altered him a lot, before he was killed--poor Hugo! That"s the sad thing, I think--that so many young men who were really made better by what they were doing in the war were killed, after all."
"Yes," he said. "It was a pretty hard school for some of us. But I had had a good deal of my schooling beforehand. I"ve always been glad that I was pitched out into the world when I was quite young. I had to fight for myself; and it wasn"t fighting with boys younger than myself then--rather the other way about. I suppose that was what made me so ashamed of that business with Norman, and kept it alive in my mind."
She had forgiven him for that now, as he seemed to have found it difficult to forgive himself. "I don"t think Norman has kept up any feeling about it," she said. "I suppose the smaller boy doesn"t, does he? When you were the smaller boy and had to fight, I suppose you rather enjoyed it."
"Well, I did," he said. "It made a man of me. And it isn"t over yet. I"d practically won my battle over there, and could go back and rest on my laurels. But I"ve a mind to begin it all again over here. There"s something exhilarating in the fight itself; and if I win it the rewards will be greater."
It sounded rather fine to her. She did not translate the symbolism into the struggle of a young man of considerable commercial astuteness to gain a footing for himself, and when he had done so to seek the best opportunity of enlarging it. He was worthy of respect, in having already made a success of his work at an early age, and having left it to fight for the great cause, in which he had also made good. There was stuff in him, as there had been in his boyhood, when he had done well at his school; and it showed up now, to the disguising of what might have turned her against him. She had no suspicion that he was rapidly falling under the spell of her bright charm, for he had learnt some wisdom and self-control, and knew that there was a long and difficult road to travel before she could be expected even to see him on her level. He was content now, after the first little mistake, the reception of which had given him warning, to arouse and keep alive her interest in him, and to establish terms of friendship with her, upon which there would be no suspicion of his presuming. She found it interesting to talk to him already, and was inclined to back him up with Norman, though not to the extent of turning herself into his champion. But he ought not to be held to the mistakes of his boyhood; and with all his faults he had been poor Hugo"s friend, and had fought well in the war and been wounded, not lightly.
She asked him about that, and he answered her questions, modestly enough, though not without the design of attracting her sympathy. And they talked a little about Hugo. He seemed to have seen more good in Hugo than Norman had ever done, though Norman had never criticized him to her. But Norman had never said, as Fred did, that Hugo was a thoroughly good fellow, who had been a bit wild, like a good many more, but no more than that; and of course his fine service in the war had wiped out those mistakes many times over.
"Yes, that"s what I feel," she said gratefully. "There was some trouble with Jim. I don"t know what it was, but I know that Lord Crowborough made a fuss about it, and Dad was very angry. So it couldn"t have been very bad. Besides, you can see what Jim is. If poor Hugo is supposed to have led him into mischief he couldn"t have led him very far. _n.o.body_ could lead Jim very far into mischief. He wouldn"t go."
She laughed her tinkling laugh, which was delicious music in Fred"s ears. He laughed too, but did not make the mistake of taking up her criticism of Horsham. "I heard something about that too," he said; "but I don"t know any details either. I shouldn"t think there could have been much in it. Naturally, Colonel Eldridge would have felt sore at his being criticized at all."
Norman had always kept off this subject, and would answer no questions about it. But he had never exonerated Hugo, though he had said that Jim was a.s.s enough for anything. Norman _was_ apt to be over-critical. He had nothing much to say in favour of Hugo, her own brother, who had been killed; he was contemptuous of Jim, who was only rather slow, and perhaps dull; and he was almost violent in his dislike of Fred, whom he hadn"t seen for years. Of course he was head and shoulders above all three of them in everything that mattered, but perhaps he should have left it more to others to recognize that fact. At any rate, Fred was giving her something now which Norman withheld from her, and she was grateful for it.
Judith, left alone with Horsham, showed no disposition to regard herself in the light of a sacrifice. It seemed as if she really did take an interest in his statistics, and though she did not talk much herself her attention had the effect of drawing him out to be more informative than ever. "I do like to hear about real things," she said. "Such a lot that you read is so--so fluffy: do you know what I mean?"
"I suppose you mean poetry," he said.
"Well, I like some poetry; but it doesn"t seem to be the sort that people who think they know call good poetry." She laughed at herself, the low musical laugh that was all her own. "Pam and Norman are always making fun of my tastes."
"Does Pamela like poetry?" Horsham asked, with a shade of anxiety.
"Oh, yes," she said, and a hint of mischief showed itself in her eyes.
"Can you repeat any by heart?"
"Well, I don"t know that I can, except the things I used to have to learn. I"ve never forgotten them. It seems as if I can"t forget anything that I"ve once learnt. I could repeat "The Wreck of the Hesperus," which I learnt when I was five or six, I should think--you know, about the skipper had taken his little daughter to bear him company--I should think I could repeat that now, without a mistake."
The dark eyes were dancing with mischief now. "Oh, yes, I know it," she said. "It"s lovely. And funnily enough it"s one of Pamela"s favourite poems, and Norman"s too."
"Is it?" said Horsham doubtfully. "I didn"t really think much of it myself; it was only that I did learn it once and couldn"t forget it.
Still, of course it is by Longfellow."
"Yes, I know. I like Longfellow myself. Pam and Norman pretend they don"t. But Pam loves that particular poem. If you"d say it over to her--!"
"Well, I don"t know that I should care about doing that. I expect she knows so much more poetry than I do."
"You could get her to talk about poetry and then just bring it out casually. Say you think it"s so salient--that"s the way she and Norman talk--and then say it over. I think she"d be pleased at finding you liked something that she did."
"Well, perhaps I might do that. What word did you say--salient?"
"Yes, or basic. That"s another word they use a good deal. Perhaps you might bring them both in."
"Oh, I don"t pretend to be learned in that sort of way. And as a matter of fact I don"t really care much for poetry and all that sort of thing.
I"m like you: I like facts."