CHAPTER I
THE HALL
Colonel Eldridge was enjoying an afternoon doze, or a series of dozes, in the Sabbath peace of his garden. His enjoyment was positive, for he had a prejudice against sleeping in the day-time, and sat upright in his basket chair with no support to his head; so that when sleep began to overtake him he nodded heavily and woke up again. If he had provided himself with a cushion from one of the chairs or lounges by his side, he would have slumbered blissfully, but would have been lost to the charm of his surroundings.
These included a great expanse of lawn, mown and rolled and tended to a sheeny perfection of soft rich colour; the deep shade of nobly branching trees in their dark dress of mid-July; bright flower-beds; the terraced front of a squarely built stone house of a comfortably established age. These were for the eye to rest upon after one of those heavy nods, and to carry their message of spacious seclusion and domestic well-being. For the other senses there were messages that conveyed the same meaning—the hot brooding peace of the July afternoon, tempered by the soft stirring of flower-scented breezes, the drone of bees and of insects less usefully employed, the occasional sweet pipe of birds still mindful of earlier courtships, the grateful and secure absence of less mundane sounds. The house was empty, except for servants, who obtruded themselves neither on sight nor hearing. The tennis net on the levelled space by the rose garden hung in idle curves. Colonel Eldridge had the whole wide verdurous garden to himself, and the house, too, if he cared to enter it. Though he liked to have his family around him as a general rule, he found it pleasant to keep his own company thus for an hour or so.
He was just approaching the time when one of those droops which punctuated his light slumbers would wake him up to a more lively sense of well-being, and he would take up the book that lay on his knee, when his half-closed eyes took in a figure emerging from the trees among which the lawn lost itself at the lower end of the garden. He aroused himself and waved a welcoming hand, which meant among other things: "Here you have a wide-awake man reading a book on Sunday afternoon, but you need not be afraid of disturbing him." The grateful lassitude, however, which enveloped his frame prevented his rising to greet his brother, who came towards him with an answering wave of the hand, and took a seat by his side.
There was not much difference in the age of the two brothers, which was somewhere in the fifties. In appearance, also, they were something alike, of the same height and build, and with the same air of wearing their years well. Colonel Eldridge had the military caste impressed upon him, with closely cropped hair underneath his straw hat, small grey moustache, and a little net-work of wrinkles about his keen blue eyes. His clothes were neat and unobtrusive, as of a man who gets the best tailoring and leaves it at that.
Sir William Eldridge also, quite obviously, got the best tailoring. He wore a suit of soft brown, with boots polished to an enviable pitch; the narrow sleeves of his jacket, ornamented with four buttons, showed the doubled-over cuffs of his blue flannel shirt, fastened with enamelled links; a gay bandana tie heightened the agreeable contrast of blue and brown; his soft felt hat was of light grey, with a black band. With a new pair of chamois leather gloves he would have been beautifully dressed for any occasion that did not demand a silk hat and whatever should go with it. But he wore or carried no gloves for a walk of half a mile across the fields, by the river, from Hayslope Grange, where he lived, to Hayslope Hall, his brother's house. He had the same regularity of feature as his brother; his hair was a shade or two greyer, but he looked some years younger, with his fresh skin and his active figure. There was almost an exuberance about him. If Colonel Eldridge had allowed his hair to grow longer than convention demanded, it would only have looked as if it wanted cutting. If Sir William had done so it would have seemed natural to his type.
"Been having a little nap?" he said, as he dropped into a chair by his brother's side.
Colonel Eldridge flinched ever so little. His strict regard for truth forbade him to deny the charge, but it should not have been brought against him. "Couldn't have much of a nap sitting up in a chair like this," he said, rather brusquely.
Sir William ignored this. "How jolly and peaceful it is here," he said. "Really, I don't know a more delicious garden than this anywhere. It would take a hundred years to produce just this effect at the Grange, though I've spent pots of money over the gardens there."
"Gardening with a golden spade," said his brother. "You can't do everything with money."
"You can do a good deal. And if you've got big trees you can do practically everything. The misfortune about the Grange is that there are no big trees immediately around the house. If there had been I should have aimed at something of this sort. I could have got the lawn all right. It's the best sort of garden to look out on—an expanse of lawn and shady trees—quiet and green and peaceful. You're quite right, Edmund. With all I've done, and all I've spent on my garden, it's fussy compared to this. You remember I wanted you to do certain things here, when I first got keen on the game. Well, I'm glad you didn't. If you had, I should have wanted you to undo them by this time."
Colonel Eldridge smiled, his momentary pique forgotten. "Oh, well, people come miles to see your garden," he said. "It's worth seeing. But on the whole I'd rather have this one to live in."
"Ah, that's it; you've just hit it. There's all the difference between a garden to look at and a garden to live in. I've come to see that, and I suppose you've always seen it. I generally do come around to your views in the long run, old fellow. In this matter of a lawn shaded by trees, I've come round so completely that I've got to have it, though I'm afraid I can't have it to walk straight out of the house onto, and to look at from my windows. But there's that four-acre field—Barton's Close—down by the wood. I want to bring that in—I suppose you'll have no objection. By thinning out a bit, so as to leave some of the bigger trees isolated, and planting judiciously, I can get the effect there."
"Rather a pity to cut up old pasture, isn't it? And it must be half a mile from the house."
"Oh, nothing like as much as that—not more than five hundred yards, I should say. I wish it were nearer; but it will be effective to lead down to it by a path through the corner of the wood. You'll come upon a charming, restful, retired place that you hadn't been expecting. I only wish the lake had been closer, so as to have brought that in; but I think we could get a vista by cutting down a few trees. I might ask you to consider that later on; but we'd better see how the lawn turns out first."
"I don't think I should want to cut down trees there, William. Whatever distance Barton's Close may be from the Grange, the lake is certainly over a mile. You can't turn the whole place into a garden. As it is, it's overweighted. You've got to consider the future. It would have been all right if poor Hugo had lived. He'd have succeeded me here, and I suppose Norman would have gone on living at the Grange after you."
"Oh, I know, old fellow, but—"
"Let me finish. When I die, and you or Norman come here, Cynthia and the girls will have to live at the Grange. It's much too big a place for them already. I dare say you'd get a big rent for it; but that's not what they'll want. They would have had enough to live on there as it used to be; but with the way things are going now it'll be a place that will want a lot of keeping up. It will want a good deal more keeping up than this."
"Of course you're right to think about the future, old fellow." Sir William