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,
assisted by an intimate friend of his own age to whom he had disclosed
the matter, that he had been a bally ass to be put down by them.
He had entered the republic of his school with unhappy anticipations 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 anticipatory 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 assistants, were kind and
protective. The only objection to the system was that a new boy of
self-assertive 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 aptitude 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
attitude 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 sniggering 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 repetition 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 muffled 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 ass 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 scrapping
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
attitude 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 pronounced. 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 altitudes. 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.
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
repetition 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 coarse 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 grass 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 passionately. "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 scrap, 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.