"I'm glad you didn't. It's tiresome, of course; but we don't want to quarrel with the Williams, do we? You're not going to tell him to stop it, are you?"
"Oh, I suppose I shall have to swallow it. William is such a much bigger man than I am now. He's made a lot of money, and they've knighted him. I dare say they'll give him a peerage, if he makes much more. I can't stand out against him. I'm only an old dug-out of a soldier, and don't matter."
"Well, dear, you're Squire of Hayslope, which counts for something. As for me, I'd rather be Mrs. Eldridge of Hayslope Hall than Lady Eldridge of Hayslope Grange. I don't mean I'd rather be me than Eleanor, though of course I would. But she isn't spoilt by all their money, and I certainly don't want to quarrel with her."
"Oh, quarrel! I don't want to quarrel with William, either. We've been good friends all our lives, and nobody's more pleased with his success than I am. Still, what I feel, and feel strongly, is that he ought not to make his success an excuse for changing his attitude towards me. I'm his elder brother, and he has always treated me so until lately. He'd never have thought of doing a thing like this a few years ago, and he wants telling so. Then I dare say we shall get on as we ought to. This has got to be the last of it. Anything further I shall veto. The Grange is mine as well as the Hall. When I'm dead he can do what he likes with both of them. Until then he must be content with what he has."
"Oh, I think he will be. And he's sure to see your point, if you put it to him without irritation. Of course you are irritated, dear, and it's only natural. I should be myself, though I'm not an irritable person. I flatter myself that I can see below the surface of things, and I'm sure William is really devoted to you, and looks up to you. He wouldn't want to do anything to displease you, and Eleanor would be horrified at the very idea. Eleanor is very level-headed. I have a great admiration for her, and I'm not a woman who gives her admiration to everybody. Just say something to William when they come down again, and I'll say something to Eleanor: and I'm sure everything will be all right for the future."
"They are not coming down this week; and I have something else to write to William about. I shall write about this too, and if he takes what I say in the right spirit I shan't mention it again."
Mrs. Eldridge rose. "Oh, I'm sure he will," she said, "especially if you don't show irritation, dear. It's always a mistake to show irritation. Now I must go and see about things. Lunch at half-past one. That will give us a nice long morning."
She kissed him, as she always did, and went out. He had already lost some of the irritation which she had so deprecated. If he had sat down and written to his brother without further reflection, he would probably have made a mild protest against the gardening scheme and at the most reminded him of certain arguments that he had used to him already. But his pen never got started very easily. He had to think over the best way of putting the business affair upon which he had meant to write, and when that was decided his mind went back to the other question, and his anger rose again at the way in which he had been treated. When he did sit down to his table, it was with a face as dark as he had worn on riding into the stable-yard an hour before, and he embarked upon his protest at once.
"Dear William:—I was much annoyed this morning, and I must say surprised too, to find that you had disregarded my wishes in the matter of Barton's Close, and that there is a small army of men there already, cutting it up. I don't want to go again into the reasons I gave you on Sunday for my objection to turning the greater part of your holding into an extravagant pleasure garden. They seem to me to be eminently sound, and I do not remember your bringing any counter-arguments that would affect them. What you have done is simply to ignore them, and treat me on my own property as if my undoubted rights in a matter of this sort could be set aside with not even so much as a word of warning. I must say now at least, that this sort of treatment must stop. However superior your standing may be in the world outside, here at Hayslope I am on my own ground, and you ought to show respect to my position, as until lately you always have done."
A pause came to the rapid scratching of the pen, and Colonel Eldridge looked up towards the garden outside, so quiet and green and happy, with the whirr of the mowing-machine already to be heard where the girls were busy with the lawn, and their young voices coming to him between their bursts of energy. His face had cleared. He had written a straightforward protest, without any beating about the bush. There was no need to say more, though more might very well have been said. In days gone by William had treated him with the respect due from a younger brother to the head of the family. There had been affection between them from their early childhood, but the elder brother had been the leading spirit, as was only right, and when it had been necessary to rebuke the younger he had done it in much the same way as this. William had accepted the rebuke and they had remained as good friends as before. This would be all that would be wanted. William could have his garden, which, after all, didn't so much matter with things as they were now—poor Hugo dead and he the one to come after—although—although—
The frown returned faintly to his face, and he added another paragraph:
"You said on Sunday that in spite of all the money you had spent on your garden, this was really a better one. Well, you know that I have had to cut down labour in it, and at this moment Pamela and Judith are at work on the tennis lawn, which they have to keep in order themselves if they want to play on it. That's how it is here at Hayslope Hall now, and the girls are happy enough, though I can't spend what I used to on them, and what I should like to. So it really isn't necessary, especially in these days, when nearly everybody is feeling the pinch, to spend a fortune on a garden to get pleasure out of it. If I may say so, I think there's even a touch of vulgarity in it."
Another pause. He didn't want his pen to run away with him. Didn't the last sentence go rather beyond what he could say to William without offence?
No. They had had that out once, years before, in their father's time. Edmund Eldridge was at home on leave from the Curragh, and William on summer vacation from Cambridge. They were driving over to lunch at Pershore Castle, and William appeared for the expedition in a pair of lemon-coloured spats, a form of decorative summer attire then in its infancy. The cavalry subaltern, spick and span in a style of sober correctitude, objected to the lemon-coloured spats, and used the same word, vulgarity, in connection with them; and the undergraduate bowed meekly to his ruling and took them off.
Better leave it at that, though. He had said quite enough to bring William to his bearings, and relieved his own mind of the annoyance that had irked it. It was with quite another feeling underlying his words that he went on to write about the estate affairs in which he was relying upon William's help to deal with the Government. But this was not a matter in which there could be much indication of any state of feeling, unless it was annoyance with the obliquity of the Department concerned; and his letter ended as his letters to William always did, whatever their subject: "Your affec. brother, Edmund Eldridge."
He read the letter over again before dispatching it, but did not detach himself from the varying moods in which it had been written, and when Mrs. Eldridge asked him later what he had said to William, he told her that he had just said that it would be a mistake to enlarge the Grange garden any further, and had written chiefly about another matter.
"You didn't say that he mustn't make this enlargement, did you, dear?" she asked.
"Oh, no. He can go on with that, as he has begun it. I must say that I think it will be the best thing that he has done there. I can't say that I like to see the pasture broken up, but there's been such a lot of it during the war that perhaps it's not so much of a point as it was. One seems to have to change one's views about everything nowadays.