The Hall and the Grange Part 36

Mrs. Eldridge sometimes asked herself if it was possible that she should ever come to enjoy life again, the question being prompted not by the desire to do so, but by an uneasy suspicion of disloyalty because she was beginning to find these bright soft spring days pleasant, in the house and in the garden. She need not have feared, for she never had that sensation of grateful expectancy which is spring's message and bright consolation without an immediate pang to follow it. She had not made herself his constant companion in the comings and goings of his days, but never for very long together had she been without the sense of his being there. When she had most seemed to be taking her own way, her life in its ultimate ends had yet been lived with reference to him. Now she had to adopt a life not so very different from that which she had led before at Hayslope to a new impulsion. The life was pleasant enough in itself, but at present it seemed to count for nothing. The days came, ran their quiet course, and ended. Each one carried her a little farther from the time when she had had him with her. And she would live them for years to come, with nothing to look forward to. So it seemed to her when she thought about it; and presently she found it was better not to think about it, but to take the days as they came. Then her spirit quieted itself by degrees, and her grief became less bewildering.

She and Lady Eldridge were close friends again now. There had been a time, after her husband's death, when she had put it down to the trouble through which he had gone on account of his brother. Then she had held herself aloof from them. But the feeling had faded away. What did it matter now? He was dead. Keeping up the quarrel in her mind would not bring him back. And he had been so glad to have it ended. He had given her and his children over to his brother's keeping, in solemn words to her, almost the last of any he had spoken. Her mind was too tired to think it out. She just let go of the feeling, and presently it died.

William was very good to her, and she recognized that his goodness came from his love for his brother, whose wishes in anything to do with Hayslope it was his guiding principle to follow. He took all money affairs into his hands. He had a.s.sured her that the substantial income she had to spend was due to her, and not supplemented by him, except that he asked her to live at the Hall, as long as it suited her, and she paid no rent for it. He professed great frankness with her, and told her that the lines upon which he was dealing with her income enabled him to make more of it. She did not ask how it was done; she was content, for herself and her girls, to live quietly for the present at Hayslope, under his protective influence. They were all one family again now, though its heads.h.i.+p had s.h.i.+fted.

One windy day of early April, when the daffodils were gleaming and swaying under the trees, and all the air was clean and sweet, Norman and Pamela walked together in the garden and down through the wood. Norman had just come home from Cambridge. He and Pamela had been very little together since the discovery of their love for one another, under the sorrow that had prompted it but forbidden that absorption in themselves which is the usual effect of such discoveries. Perhaps their love was all the deeper because of the sorrow. Pamela had clung to Norman in her grief, and had aroused in him the strongest emotion to pity and protection towards her. Their love had struck deep roots during that sad time.

Then had followed the constant interchange of letters, in which all the marvellous phenomena of their mutual attraction had been minutely explored with one hurried week-end visit from Norman, just to a.s.sure himself that Pamela was real flesh and blood, and that she loved him as much as she said she did. Now they would be together for a month, before Norman's final term at Cambridge. Already Pamela's sorrow had become gentler. They would often talk very seriously and soberly together; but they were very young, and they were going to be very happy. It would not be forbidden them to be light-hearted during that Easter vacation.

They were discussing the future now. It involved, immediately, a great deal of work for Norman's final examinations, and a visit from Pamela to Cambridge when their tyranny should be overpast, and more lightsome pursuits would follow. After that?

Well, Cambridge term ends when summer is still young. Wouldn't this be the happiest time for a honeymoon? They would go abroad, to the most beautiful places they could find, within the restricted area which the war had left in Europe for searchers after summer beauty. Then they would come back to England, at the time when England--or perhaps Scotland--offered more than any other country. And some time in the autumn they would make a home for themselves, which gave them more to talk about even than the prospective travels.

Their first home was to be that Town Farm which Colonel Eldridge had so wished he could afford to restore for his own occupation. The visits of the best available architect, and consultation over plans, would very pleasurably occupy the weeks of the vacation. The work would go on while they were abroad, and be finished in the late summer, if the conditions of the building trade permitted. Then there would be the house to furnish, and the garden to make anew. Here was something to dwell upon!

But Pamela had a trifle of doubt in the corner of her mind. "Of course it will be perfectly heavenly living there together," she said. "But I shouldn't like you to lead an altogether idle life."

He laughed at her. "Darling old thing!" he said. "I shall be as busy as the day is long. I had a talk with father last night, which I wanted to tell you about; but there are so many things to say that you've just got to take them as they come. He says I needn't work with the idea of earning my living. It seems that he has been watching me, when I thought he was so busy about other things that I was out of the orbit of his eagle eye. I hardly know how to tell you this without blus.h.i.+ng; but he says that if I'd shown myself any sort of a waster he'd have dumped me down on an office stool and seen that I stuck to it, or made me do something equally beastly until I'd made good for myself. He was quite frank, as only a father can be, and said that he had sometimes thought I was a bit too pa.s.sionate in the pursuit of pleasure. But he'd come to the conclusion that on the whole I had made whatever I had to do for the time being the chief thing. So he thought I could be trusted not to abuse the freedom he was going to give me. And this is where _you_ blush, Pam--he thought you were just the right sort of girl to temper my wayward tendencies. He wasn't sure what I could do best in the world, because I seemed to like doing such lots of things that if he gained an idea of anything special one moment he had to give it up the next. But with you to steady me, I ought to be able to do _something_. He's a wise bird--the Lord Eldridge of Hayslope. He knows how happy we are going to be together, and he's going to let us be as happy as ever we can. Make people happy, and you'll make 'em good."

"He has been very good to us," said Pamela. "I wasn't quite sure that he was really pleased, at first. It was very sweet of him to talk like that about me. I'm sure there are heaps of things you will do, darling, better than other people; and you know I'll do every mortal thing I can to help you. Uncle Bill shan't be disappointed in me."

"Adorable angel," said Norman. "Father's as pleased as he can be about us. He said he saw it coming all the time. So did mother. It seems so extraordinary that _we_ didn't."

The conversation then took a lighter turn. Pamela threw a quick look at him, and said: "Well, you were rather busy looking out for somebody else, weren't you? I often used to wonder who it would be, and I'm bound to say that I never thought it would be me. I can't be blamed. It would have looked so very unlikely."

"Now, Pam, we've had that out before. If I hadn't told you all about all of them as they came and went--especially as they went--I might be inclined to wince at your reminder. But I suppose you only want me to say again that I could never have loved anybody but you for more than a few minutes, and that what I felt for all those charmers put together wasn't a drop in the ocean compared to what I feel for you. Oh, Lord!

What a discovery it was! Pam darling, could I have just one? It would be such a refreshment."

There was a short interlude, and then Pam said: "I don't think I really feel jealous about Margaret and Company--Unlimited. It will give us something to talk about in future years. Still, I'm glad that I didn't go about falling in love myself."

"So am I, darling. But people would soon have begun to fall in love with you. There was poor old Jim already."

She turned her head away, and a blush came to her face. "I'd rather that you didn't talk about him and me like that," she said. "For one thing, he will almost certainly marry Judith some day."

"I suppose so. How are they getting on together? Has he been over since he came down?"

"Yes. It's rather touching to see them. Poor little Ju! She has been frightfully sad, and she's kept it so much to herself. Jim seems to have just the right way with her. She talks about father to him, I know. And he was so nice about us, Norman. I think there's something really fine about Jim, and we've been rather prigs about him. He hasn't got our sort of interests; but Judith hasn't either, and n.o.body could call her dull.

Jim is simple in a large sort of way; and it's a very good quality."

"Yes, I think it is. And he _has_ behaved well, for it must have been a bit of a knock for him to come and find you and me as we were. You do think he and Judy will fix it up between them, do you?"

"Not yet. But I think it will come. They're rather like you and me. Each of them is what the other wants, and they'll find it out all of a sudden."

"What has become of Mr. Fred Comfrey, Pam? I haven't seen him since father found out what sort of a fellow he was, and wouldn't have anything more to do with him."

Her face grew shadowed again. "He doesn't come here," she said. "Mrs.

Comfrey thinks it is my fault. At least, she'll hardly speak to me; and I suppose it is that. I'm not sure that I ought not to have given him my answer myself, instead of leaving it to Daddy."

"Oh, my dear child, it was infernal impudence of him to think about you at all--a creature like that!"

"Well, I suppose you have always been right about him. But he showed his best side to me. There was a lot that was good and kind in him."

"n.o.body is all bad, I suppose; and even a beast like that rises to something, when he's thinking about somebody else, and not always about himself. The trouble is, though, that it doesn't always last. I've seen it in marriages made in a hurry during the war. What's so heavenly about us, Pam, is that we do know each other; and yet there's always something new, somehow. I don't believe there's anybody in the world loves somebody else more than I love you. And I love you more and more every day. I may have made one or two half-hearted experiments before, but there was never anything like this."

"Not even when Margaret said 'Good-bye, Norman'?"

"That was a thrill, I admit. But what a faint thrill, after all! Nothing like what I get every time you come into a room. But there's something more than thrills in it. The thrills are only the ripples on the surface. The real love is the quiet deep water underneath. That's what we've got, darling. It will last us all our lives."

They had come down to Barton's Close, where the thick gra.s.s had already hidden all signs of the disturbance to which it had been subjected.

They found a bank on the edge of it bright with primroses, upon which the sun was s.h.i.+ning, and sat there for a time. Looking over the rich green carpet of the meadow, it was natural that they should fall into talk of the disturbances that had had their rise here; for there was no subject that they s.h.i.+rked, and this one had affected them deeply.

"Of course it was nothing in itself," Norman said. "If it hadn't been for an accident here and there, they would have settled it at once.

Father says that. It began with their writing letters to one another, instead of talking it over. Then when they did talk the quarrel had gone too far."

"Does Uncle Bill talk about it still?"

"He talked about it yesterday. He feels it very much still."

"Poor Uncle Bill! But I've thought about it a lot, and I don't love him any less because of it. If he weren't sorry about it himself, I suppose it would make a difference. But I know he did love my darling Daddy; they loved one another underneath it all. They both knew it at the last.

When father couldn't speak any more, and Uncle Bill took my hand in his, and said he would look after me and all of us, I could tell by the way he looked at him that that was what he wanted. Oh, they did love one another, I know. If only that quarrel hadn't come between them, almost at the last! Why do people quarrel who love one another?"

"I think that we ought not to make too much of it, Pam darling. I've thought about it too. It's because poor Uncle Edmund died that it seems so important. If he had lived they would have made it up. They couldn't have helped themselves, because of what they really were to one another.

Then it would all have been forgotten very quickly; and I should think they would both have been careful that it shouldn't happen again."

"Yes, I dare say that's true. But it just shows that it doesn't do for people who love one another to let themselves quarrel at all. We never will, will we?"

They agreed upon that, and upon many other things. Then they walked slowly back to the Hall together, hand in hand part of the way. Miss Baldwin, from her watch tower of the schoolroom window, saw them under the trees before they came out on to the lawn as separate units. She had seen few signs of the emotion she had craved for between them, and to catch that glimpse of them together pleased her. It was the right ending of the story whose vicissitudes she had watched with such interest. Its later chapters had been sadder than she had antic.i.p.ated, and her sympathies had of late been more human than literary with the family with whom she lived. But the shadow of loss seemed to be lifting, in these sunny spring days. It was not forbidden to her now to weave her tales around them. Already she scented another absorbing romance to unfold itself before her eyes. And with this one, the interest of which she might have expected to come to an end with the approaching pealing of wedding bells, she found herself still looking forward. For if you could take leave of the heroes and heroines of fiction at the church door, with no wish to follow their fortunes further, it was not so with those with whom you had come to feel a living sympathy. For them a new story was beginning, from which as much happiness was to be looked for as from the one that had led up to it.

THE END