Pamela's ancestors had for many generations been Squires of Lyngates, and had resided at The Hall. Her grandfather, Mr. George Reynolds, had lived there until his death, two years ago. Mrs. Garside could remember him since her girlhood—a tall, handsome man with a brown beard, who rode about the country on a favourite white horse named Champion. He had been a good landlord, and was well liked in the neighbourhood. His wife had died early, and left two children, a son and daughter. The son, Mr. Leonard, had been a high-spirited lad, and it was said in the village that he and his father did not get on well together. There was some upset and a quarrel, the rights of which nobody ever knew, for the Squire was too proud to air his troubles, and kept family skeletons securely locked in their cupboards. At any rate, Mr. Leonard had gone away to Canada and started farming, and had never returned to his old home, though he had written that he was married, and, later on, that he had a daughter. This was all the news that Lyngates people had heard of him in fourteen years. Whether he had prospered or otherwise on his far-off Canadian ranch they did not know. Squire Reynolds's other child, Miss Dora, had been a pretty girl, and her father's favourite. Many years went by, however, before she married. She had been fond of hunting, and used to look very smart riding to hounds in her neat navy-blue habit. It was at a meet that she had first met Mr. Hockheimer. He rented a shooting-box in the neighbourhood, and came down frequently from London for week ends. Nobody could understand how this naturalized German had obtained such a hold over Miss Dora and her father, though it was rumoured that he had reinvested the Squire's money for him to great advantage. Being a City man he was well acquainted with finance. Miss Dora was long past her first youth, but she was still handsome, and everyone in Lyngates had said that she was far too good for Mr. Hockheimer. The village worthies, however, were not consulted, and the wedding took place.
A year afterwards the European war broke out. There was great comment in Lyngates on the position of Mr. Hockheimer, but he had proved himself to be a naturalized British subject, and declared he was heart and soul on the side of the Allies. He had been very energetic on local committees, and had given large sums to the Belgian Fund.
When red war flamed in Flanders, and Britain summoned all her sons to her standard, Leonard Reynolds, on his far-away ranch in the Rockies, had heard the call and answered it. He had joined one of the first Canadian contingents, and had come over the sea to "do his bit" for the Motherland, leaving his wife and child at the ranch to carry on the brave but wellnigh impossible task of keeping the home fires burning. In his passage through England he had had thirty-six hours' leave, and had visited his father at Lyngates. The villagers had seen him again after fourteen years' absence, and had admired him in his khaki uniform. He had spoken to several of them—words of fire and patriotism and enthusiasm for the coming conflict.
Everybody lived for the newspapers in those first months of war, and Lyngates was no exception to the general rule. In farm-house and cottage they read of the retreat from Mons. Duke's son and plough-boy, Oxford graduate and City clerk, scientist, shopman and crossing-sweeper alike, had paid the great sacrifice, and the name of Leonard Reynolds stood among them. The Squire was in bed at the time, recovering from a severe operation. The news was broken to him by an injudicious nurse at a crisis in his illness, and it proved his death-blow. In his few last gasping words he had tried to say something about a will, but those who were with him could not understand what he meant to convey. With the incoherent message still trembling on his stricken lips he had passed away into the silence. He was buried with his ancestors in Lyngates churchyard, but there was no cross to mark the grave of his son Leonard. The survivors of the Canadian contingent could give no details beyond the fact that a certain portion of them had been utterly wiped out by a terrific explosion. It was impossible to identify the dead. War was reaping a red harvest of human lives.
After Squire Reynolds's funeral, Mr. and Mrs. Hockheimer had taken possession of The Hall. Though search was made everywhere the only will which could be discovered was one in the custody of the family solicitor, which was dated fifteen years back. In the briefest terms it left a certain sum of money to his daughter, and the estate of Lyngates to his son, but in the event of the death of either, the survivor was to inherit the whole property. As it had been drawn up before his son's marriage, no mention was made in it of Leonard's wife and child. It was a perfectly valid will, and it was duly proved, Mrs. Hockheimer succeeding to the entire estate of her late father. She lived only six months to enjoy it, and was laid to rest with her dead baby in her arms. She had executed a will bequeathing everything to her husband, so that Mr. Hockheimer, the naturalized German, assumed absolute command of the Reynolds property.
Meanwhile, matters had gone hardly with the wife and child of Leonard Reynolds. It had been impossible for them to farm the ranch, and they had no private means. By the advice of her friends Mrs. Reynolds had sold up her few possessions and had come to England with her daughter, to find out at first hand from the lawyers whether any provision had been made for her out of the estate. The solicitors were polite and sympathetic: they acknowledged the keen injustice of the matter, but assured her that there was no redress, and, according to British law, Mr. Hockheimer had full rights of possession in the Lyngates property, while she and her child could not claim so much as a solitary farthing. They represented the case, however, to Mr. Hockheimer, and he at once offered Mrs. Reynolds the use of a cottage on his land, together with a small annual income, and promised to pay for Pamela's education at a day school in Harlingden. As she had no other means of livelihood, Mrs. Reynolds had accepted this help, and had settled down at Lyngates shortly before this story begins. She was a fragile little woman, gentle and clinging in disposition, and so battered by misfortune that she was glad to rest anywhere where she could find a home. She received Mr. Hockheimer's dole quite gratefully. With the loss of her husband life had for her practically stopped. Through her daughter it held a second-hand kind of interest. She welcomed the idea of Pamela attending a good school, and her crushed soul even began to indulge in timid little day-dreams concerning her child's future. These hopes, pathetic and tender, were like wild sweet violets springing up over the desolation of a battle-field.
Pamela viewed the situation from an utterly different standpoint. She had inherited her grandfather's strength of character along with the Reynolds features, and also a considerable share of his pride. Her early life in Canada had made her more independent than most English girls of her age. She considered that by all rights of justice an equal half of the Lyngates estate should have been hers, and that her uncle, Mr. Hockheimer, had managed to steal her inheritance. She hated to accept from him as charity what she felt ought to have been her own, and she bitterly resented the patronizing attitude which he adopted towards herself and her mother. She, too, had her day-dreams, and most of them centred round a time when she would be old enough to shake off this thraldom of dependence and strike out a line of her own in the world.
CHAPTER V
Ructions
By the end of a few weeks Avelyn began to feel more settled down in her new quarters at Silverside. The old pupils might regret the former régime, but she was tolerably satisfied with the new. She was in the fifth form, and found the work not too arduous, and liked Miss Kennedy, her teacher. She had been accustomed to the bustle of a large school, and, though Laura Talbot might rave against the crowded conditions, to Avelyn it was amusing to be in a room crammed full of girls. School is a separate world of its own, and often a curious one. To outsiders and to its Principal, Silverside might appear as an enterprise that was growing and prospering exceedingly. Its numbers had suddenly more than doubled, it had fresh teachers, and was going to build a cloak-room and a gymnasium; nothing could seemingly have more hope of success. Inwardly, however, it was a seething whirl of opposing factions. The old and the new did not readily amalgamate. The boarders were jealous of their rights, and would not yield an inch of the privileged position they had always been wont to occupy; while the Hawthorners, accustomed to the absolute democracy of a day school, could not and would not understand why boarders should expect to have any privileges at all.