CHAPTER III

NORMAN

Norman Eldridge and his cousin Pamela detached themselves from the tennis players and strolled off through the bare blaze of the upper garden with its elaborate architecture of walls and steps and pavings and pergolas, and its bright, restless plantings, into the shade of the woods.

They were close friends, these two, and had been so ever since Norman as a boy of eight had fallen in love with Pamela as a baby of two. It's a nice sort of boy who loves children, and Norman had been a very attractive small boy, high-spirited, energetic and mischievous, but never a source of anxiety with his mischievousness, as his cousin Hugo had been. Hugo was a year older than Norman, and always eager to make his seniority felt. In those early days Norman had paid visits from the little house in Hampstead where his parents then lived, to Hayslope Hall, and greatly enjoyed the ample life of the country house, with ponies to ride, the river to fish, later on rabbits and birds to shoot, and all the blissful freedom of the woods and fields. But Hugo, his constant companion in holiday activities, had spoilt a good deal of the pleasure of them. At first Norman had given way and been bullied. It seemed as if Hugo were unable to enjoy himself without being unpleasant.

He was bigger and stronger than Norman, and had all the advantage of being on his own ground. In earlier visits, when both children had been under the eye of nurses and governess, there had been frequent quarrels, but Hugo had been forced more or less to behave himself. But during that month of Christmas holidays, when Hugo had come home from his first term at school, he had turned Norman's excitement and pleasure into a dragging unhappiness, which increased so much that he came to count the days before the end of his visit as eagerly as he had counted those which had brought him to it.

Hugo, as a schoolboy, tyrannized over him, and yet he wanted him for his games, and hardly ever left him in peace. There was another boy, a year older than Hugo--Fred Comfrey, son of the Rector of Hayslope--who was constantly with them. He took his line from Hugo, and helped in the bullying. Poor little Norman used to cry himself to sleep every night, but it was his pride never to let his tormentors see how much they hurt him. His uncle and aunt were kind to him. It would sometimes come over him with a sense of bewilderment how little they knew of his real feelings; for everything seemed to be right when the boys were with them. No doubt they thought he was enjoying himself to the full, having everything that a boy could want to make him happy.

It was at this time that he came to adore little Pamela, whose bright prattle and pretty, loving ways with him soothed his sore heart. But it was only now and then that he could forget himself, playing with her.

The other boys were brutally scornful of his taste for the companionship of a baby.

He did not go to Hayslope again until a year later. By that time he was a schoolboy himself. He had thought a good deal about his cousin Hugo, and about Fred Comfrey, in the interval, and come to the conclusion, a.s.sisted by an intimate friend of his own age to whom he had disclosed the matter, that he had been a bally a.s.s to be put down by them.

He had entered the republic of his school with unhappy antic.i.p.ations of the life he would lead there, with forty tyrants to domineer over him instead of two. If it had not been for his experience with Hugo and Fred, he would have escaped months of antic.i.p.atory dread. But his fears proved groundless. This was a very good school for small boys, with a headmaster whose outstanding aim was to make friends of them all and to keep them happy. He was helped by his wife, who loved children and had none of her own. The forty boys were her family, and outside school hours they used the whole house as if it were their home. Under this happy rule there were no awkward fences for a little boy new to school life to surmount. He was welcomed as a member of the family, and one who was expected to do it credit. Everything was done to bring out whatever originality of character he had in him. The elder boys, taking their tone from the headmaster, his wife and a.s.sistants, were kind and protective. The only objection to the system was that a new boy of self-a.s.sertive habits occasionally made himself something of a nuisance.

But the standards and ideals of school life soon told on all but the incorrigibles; the headmaster knew when and how to exercise severity on the rare occasions on which it was required; and if a boy had not submitted himself to the tone of the school by the end of his first year his parents were asked to remove him. That sometimes made trouble for the headmaster, but he was content to put up with that now and then for the sake of his beloved school.

Norman, after a pause of bewilderment, expanded under this treatment. He was gay and bright and bubbling over with life; he was quick with his work and had an apt.i.tude for the pursuits that are valued among boys. He was made much of from the first, but his native modesty prevented his being spoilt.

It was this agreeable modesty of his that had led him to knuckle under to Hugo and Fred the year before, and they had taken advantage of it. He went down to Hayslope with his father and mother for Christmas with the determination to knuckle under in nothing, and rather enjoyed, though with some tremors, the prospect of making it quite plain where he stood, and where he intended to stand for the future. He had learnt to box a little at school, and thought it might come in useful. He didn't suppose that he was capable of taking on Hugo and Fred together, but if it should be necessary he was not averse from trying.

To his immense surprise, however, Hugo greeted him affably, and seemed to have forgotten the disagreeables of the previous visit. They played together with no more than the normal amount of friction between small boys, and settled their differences as they arose without coming anywhere near to blows.

Then Fred Comfrey, who had spent Christmas away from home, came on the scene. Now was the time for the three of them to take stock of one another. So far, Norman had been content to make friends with an apparently much improved Hugo, without bothering himself about whether he would have liked him if he had seen him in contact with other boys.

In the give and take of school life a boy finds his level very quickly.

He is known through and through, and sized up with an accuracy seldom at fault, though the rule by which he is measured is more rigid than any that is applied in after life. Outside, the rule is somewhat relaxed.

Boys not acceptable to their fellows may find themselves liked by older people, and show themselves in an altogether different light. The ordinary courtesies of life, disregarded at school, have some sway.

There is the softening influence of feminine and family society. A truce is called, and allowances unconsciously made. So it was with Hugo and Norman, who were not made to run together, but managed to find some community of interest in the pursuits of holiday time.

But with the advent of the third party new adjustments had to be made.

There was a pause of observation, and then the struggle began.

The Rector's son was a stocky, dark-haired boy of considerable strength for his age. He was already at one of the minor public schools, where they took boys from the age of eleven. His manners were rough, as his school was, and his ideals did not include that of any sort of courtesy, though he was retiring enough in the company of his elders.

Hugo was as tall as Fred, but not nearly so broad or strong. He was dark, too, and good-looking in boy fashion, though not remarkably so.

His manners were agreeable in grown-up society, and Norman had lately found them inoffensive when not affected by outside influences. In a very short time it was to be proved whether he would keep up his new-found amity with his cousin or put himself on Fred's side against him. His character was weak, and a year before Fred had played upon it, ostensibly following his lead, because with unpleasant precocity he recognized his superiority of place, but actually pushing him into the att.i.tude that suited his inclinations.

Now came Norman's second surprise. During the pause of observation which came before the three of them settled down to the respective places which their characters and experience had earned for them, Fred seemed to realize that Norman partook in some measure of Hugo's superiority. It would have been marked enough to anybody who had seen the three of them together. The frankness of demeanour which had been encouraged by Norman's short experience of admirably conducted school life formed a significant contrast with Fred's clumsy diffidence in presence of his elders and his sn.i.g.g.e.ring audacities when released from restraint. He was an unpleasant boy even at that early age, and Norman instinctively disliked him from the first moment of the second period of intimacy, and was inclined to hug his dislike.

It was he who made the breach that presently came. Otherwise, Fred would have kept the peace, and they would have got on as long as they were together without an open quarrel.

Three-year-old Pamela was the cause of it. Norman had found her more entrancing than ever, and had made no attempt to hide his love for her during the week before Fred had come on the scene. Hugo had grumbled sometimes when Norman had wanted to play with her, and he had wanted him to do something else, but there had been no repet.i.tion of the contempt that this unmanly preference for the society of a baby had previously called forth. Hugo was rather fond of his little sister, though he never put himself out to amuse her.

On the third day after Fred's arrival he came up to the hall immediately after breakfast, all agog for the game devised the evening before.

It had been snowing hard, then and through the night, and now it was a glorious, sparkling morning, with the garden and the park and the woods all m.u.f.fled in white, under a frost which bound the whole landscape into gleaming, motionless beauty. The boys had found a pair of Canadian snowshoes in a lumber-room. They were to use them for a game of Indian trackers in the woods, and had agreed upon their several parts, not without some dispute, but on the whole amicably. Hugo and Fred were eager to be off at once. So was Norman, but he was rolling on the floor of the hall when Fred arrived, Pamela pursuing him with shrieks of laughter, and did not at once respond to Fred's urgings. When they were repeated with impatience he responded still less. He wasn't going to be ordered about by Fred, and his latent hostility impelled him to make it plain to him that the more insistent the summons the less quickly would it be obeyed. When Hugo added his impatient word, he said: "All right, you go out and begin, if you're in such a hurry. I'll come when I'm ready."

The two boys flung off grumbling, and Norman played with Pamela until a nurse came to fetch her. Then he set out to join them, not without some tremors over the reception he would meet with. But there was something not altogether disagreeable about these tremors, and he grinned widely, though he was not in the least amused, as he turned the corner of the house and saw Hugo and Fred sitting on a snow-covered log at the edge of the wood some distance off. Curiously enough, this scene came back to him vividly ten years later as he was crouching under the lee of a trench in Flanders, waiting for the signal to attack a more formidable foe. And, though he didn't know it, there was actually the same grin on his face when the signal came.

He walked slowly across the park towards them, stepping rather carefully in the footmarks that one of them had made in the snow. When he got within hailing distance of them he called out: "Haven't you tried the snowshoes yet?"

There was no reply. They had their heads together and Fred was eyeing him balefully.

When he got near them Fred rose from his seat, and said: "Look here, we're not going to stand this any longer."

"Well, then sit it," replied Norman, rather pleased with the readiness of the repartee.

Fred looked uglier than usual, but his next speech was more in the tone of reason than Norman had expected. "You're the youngest of the three of us," he said. "You're not going to keep us hanging about waiting for you when we've all settled on something to do. The cheek of it!"

Norman glanced at Hugo, who still sat on the log. There was nothing in his face yet to show whether he was hostile or not. He looked more interested than anything, and it came home to Norman that if he got the better of Fred, Hugo need no longer be feared as an adversary.

"Well, I'm sorry I kept you waiting," said Norman. "But I'm here now, so let's begin."

Fred was still inclined for argument. "I'm the oldest," he said, "but we're both here to play with Hugo, I suppose. As you're staying with him, naturally he doesn't like to make too much fuss over your cheek.

But--"

"He didn't mind making a fuss last year," interrupted Norman, "and you sucked up to him and helped him. I was a bally a.s.s to stand it then, and I'm not going to stand it now."

Fred made a threatening gesture. "Sucking up!" he repeated. "You'd better be careful what you say."

Hugo still held aloof, hunched up on the log, with his hands in his pockets. Somehow Norman felt it necessary to bring him in. "He does suck up to you," he said. "_I'm_ not going to, you know."

Hugo stirred uneasily, and said: "It's quite true what he says. It's cheek keeping us waiting like this for a quarter of an hour."

"To play with a baby," added Fred with scorn. It was the charge, so frequently brought, which had hurt him the year before. But it hurt him no longer. "I like playing with little Pam," he said. "So does Hugo sometimes, when you're not here. You'd like it too, if you weren't such a dirty scug."

This was the turning-point. Fred made another gesture of attack, but did not follow it up. If he had done so the battle would have been short and sharp, and whoever had won--it must have been he--bad blood would have been let off and the three boys would have settled down together.

Instead, he turned to Hugo. "Really, that's a bit too much!" he said angrily. "Shall I teach him his lesson?"

Hugo rose. "Oh, let's chuck it," he said. "What's the good of sc.r.a.pping when there's a game to play?"

They played their game, which none of them enjoyed. The contest had seemed to be quite indecisive, but Norman had won it hands down. It was Hugo, the weakest character of the three, who was the decisive factor.

Fred deferred to him, and lost ground by doing so. Norman made no effort to gain ascendancy over him, being content with equal terms, but his ascendancy none the less became marked. Because he disliked Fred, finding something in him antagonistic to all the clean ideals in which he had been reared, Hugo came rather to dislike him too. Fred met this att.i.tude with deprecation, which made matters worse. He began to be cold-shouldered, and towards the end of the holidays his society was as much as possible dispensed with.

The next time that Norman came to Hayslope, in the summer, Fred had made his ground good again, having become necessary to Hugo in the meantime.

There was no quarrel this time, but Norman never liked Fred, and their intimacy was only on the surface. He didn't like Hugo much either, or wouldn't have liked him if he had known him at school among a lot of other boys. But there was some sense of relationship and he was part of Hayslope Hall and all its keen delights.

As the years of boyhood went by, the cousins remained friends in some sort. But Norman's lead became more p.r.o.nounced. Hugo went to Harrow, which was his father's school. William Eldridge by this time had left the Bar to engage in commerce, and was already beginning to make money.

Norman was sent to Eton. When he had been there a year his foot was on the ladder. He was one of those boys to whom success in school life comes naturally, while Hugo was a potential rotter, destined to remain in the ruck, unless he should emerge from it for some discreditable reason.

When Norman was fifteen and Fred nearly eighteen, the antagonism between them at last found its vent. Fred had grown into a lout of a boy, whose only saving grace was athleticism. He was already in his school eleven and fifteen, and Norman, though coming on well, was as yet far below those alt.i.tudes. Fred, uplifted by his successes, was not so careful now to conciliate him. He encouraged the worst side of Hugo, and had established an influence over him while Norman had been off the field.

This always happened, but now Hugo did not gradually come over to Norman, as he had done before. His adolescence had brought him to Fred's unsavoury views of life and conduct. Fred was his chosen companion at Hayslope, in a way that Norman would never be.

Norman, an attractive, light-hearted boy, in the early years of his school life, was not without experience of evil, to which he had shut his eyes as much as possible. The talk of the two older boys offended and troubled him, but he did not at first combat it. He was parted from them by more than years. Hitherto they had all been boys together; now the other two were essentially men, of the baser sort, and he remained a boy, with a boy's clean distaste for what was as yet none of his business. He fell silent when they pursued their promptings, and presently began to withdraw himself from them.