"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.
CHAPTER IV
PAMELA
"Pam, I've got something to tell you."
Norman had waited until they were away from the glare of the garden, and the green gloom of the summer woods was all about them, cool and secret and inviting to confidences.
He had not changed much since those days of boyhood, though he was now nearly twenty-five, and the last years of the war had caught him, and taught him some things that he wanted to forget, as well as much that had strengthened the fibre of which he was made. There was a boyish atmosphere about him still. He was tall and slim, and his fair hair, which he tried to keep plastered to his head, was always breaking away from the bounds of its cosmetics and dropping a skein over his forehead. Nothing he had undergone had affected that bright light-hearted charm of his boyhood. He seemed to be rejoicing in his youth and his strength, and in all the world about him, which, in spite of the shadows that still hung over it, he at least found as good as the young men of a generation earlier had found their more untroubled world.
Pamela was very young still, and very pretty. Her hair and her colouring were as fair as Norman's, whom she resembled in a cousinly way. Indeed the resemblances between them were more than superficial. They had the same eager pleasure in whatever life they found about them. They thought alike in most things to which they put their adventurous minds, and to neither of them did it seem odd that Pamela, who had not long since left the schoolroom, and had grown up under the shadow that had dulled and limited the life of her kind, should claim an equality of opinion with Norman, who was six years older, and knew so much more than the generality of young men had ever known before.
One may pause for a moment to note this unexpected attribute of those whose early years of manhood, instead of being passed in the pursuits and interests, educative or otherwise, adapted to their youth, had been given to the war, of which they had borne the ultimate brunt. The years which divide us from it are passing away. The social phenomena of each successive stage of the long struggle, and those that have succeeded it, too familiar to call for much notice at the time, will become blurred, and half forgotten even by those who were part of them; and in after years they will be difficult to gauge. This, among them, is not likely to be seen as it was, when the years have increased, and later generations try to recapture the spirit of the great war: that the young men, and the older men too, who lived through it, and came out of it whole, or not too broken to make what they would of their lives, put it to all effective purposes out of their minds. While it was going on they did the work appointed to them as if it were no more than any other work proper to their years, and pursued their recreations with an added zest. And when at last they were released, they crowded back into the various ways of life open to them, and put it all behind them as just an experience like any other which might have come to them. It could never be forgotten, but it was not to come between them and the life to which they had returned; and the interests of that life were exactly what they would have been if it had never happened.
So Norman Eldridge, who would have gone to a university in the ordinary way, but for the war, was at Cambridge now, three years later than his time, and with his three years of service behind him. His enjoyment of undergraduate life was even greater than it would have been in normal times, for it was a more conscious enjoyment, and he could gauge his opportunities better. Games, in which he excelled, though he had not quite succeeded in gaining his hoped-for Blue for cricket, did not take up even the greater part of his attention. He was a lover of the arts, and found Cambridge a delectable place in which to pursue them. He had plenty of money at his disposal, and social life was