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. _Nobody_
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 ass 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."
Judith, having laid her train, returned to serious conversation. "I
don't know why one should be ashamed of it," she said. "But I do keep my
actual tastes rather dark before Pam. Of course she's much cleverer than
I am, and I don't mind her poking fun at me a bit; in fact I rather
enjoy it. But you're the first person I've ever confessed to that I
really like dates and things of that sort. I find them--refreshing. Do
you feel that too?"
Horsham's face lit up. It seemed that he did, and that he had never
forgotten those of the Kings and Queens of England, which he had also
learnt in childhood. They recited them together, with mutual pleasure,
in a sort of measured chant, and laughed heartily when they had done so.
"Of course, that capacity, which we both seem to have, is going to be
very useful to me in my career," Horsham said. "If you can get facts at
your fingers' ends, and keep them there--"
"What career do you mean?" inquired Judith. "I didn't know you'd got
one."
"Oh, yes. Don't tell anybody, because it isn't _quite_ settled yet, but
I'm going to be Private Secretary to--unpaid, of course--to--well,
perhaps I'd better not mention his name, even to you; but he's a Cabinet
Minister. Perhaps I shall try to get into Parliament by and by."
"You can't, if you're a lord, can you?"
He explained that difficulty away for her for ever, so exhaustively did
he handle it. He was going to take politics seriously. He thought it his
duty; but it would also be his pleasure. "I've played the fool a bit,"
he confessed; "but that's all over now. I was young, and--"
He broke off in some confusion. He had suddenly remembered Hugo, and
didn't know how much she knew of the disturbance of three years before.
She knew no more than Pamela, which was scarcely anything; but they had
discussed it together. "You and Hugo played the fool together, didn't
you?" she asked, with a slight frown.
He was rather taken aback by her directness, but he spoke as directly,
after a short pause of reflection. "Hugo was blamed for what was just as
much my fault as his," he said stoutly. "He was older than me--that was
all. It's all over long ago--poor fellow!--and we don't want to think
about it any more."
"I'm glad you've said it like that," she said with a glance of approval
at him. "So will Pamela be. I shall tell her. But don't _you_ say
anything to her about it."
"You don't think--?"
"No, I don't. What you've said is quite enough, and we don't want to
talk about it any more at all. Let's go and find Pamela, and Fred. We
might have another game before tea."
Horsham was quite willing to go and find Pamela, though he had
unexpectedly enjoyed his chat with Judith, who struck him as a girl of
quite remarkable intelligence. He told her so, as they walked together.
"Of course you were only a kid when I was here last," he said, making
allowances for her, and for himself.
"Yes," said Judith. "And you weren't much to write home about, either."
He looked surprised at this speech, until she laughed, when he laughed
too. "You and Pamela both like chaffing a fellow, don't you?" he said.
"I suppose some fellows wouldn't see it, and be offended. But I'm rather
quick at seeing things, and I don't mind."
Judith suddenly felt an immense liking for him, compounded in a curious
way of respect and tenderness. He was a heavily built young man, though
his figure was upright, and had the activity of his youth. His face was
neither handsome nor ugly, but there was a look of honesty and
simplicity in it that gave it character. She felt a strong compunction
at having prepared a trap for him. "I was chaffing you when I advised
you to recite poetry to Pamela," she said hurriedly. "Don't you. At
least, don't recite 'The Wreck of the Hesperus.' She'd think that tosh;
and so do I."
This disturbed him for a moment, but he soon recovered. "I was an ass
not to see what you were driving at," he said. "But you must remember
that _I_ never said I thought that was a fine poem."
"No, you didn't," she said soothingly. "And I don't suppose either of us
really care much for what _they_ would call fine poetry. What I do like
of Longfellow's is his 'Psalm of Life'."
"Do you mean that?" he asked; and when she said she did he repeated
slowly and impressively, as they walked beneath the trees:
"'Life is real, life is earnest,
And the grave is not its goal.
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.'
"Ah, yes. That's poetry. I don't envy people who can't see the beauty of
that."