Then Lady Eldridge had gone to the Hall, and had a long conversation with him and his sister-in-law. Cynthia had seemed to want him to give way, but he had refused to do so, firmly though not with the slightest show of temper. He had, in fact, treated Lady Eldridge with the most courteous consideration, but he had put her in somewhat of a difficulty. "I don't think William sees the situation very clearly," he had said. "I haven't so many outside matters to occupy my thoughts as he has, and I do see it clearly. Have either of you ever expressed to one another this idea that I am jealous of William's success in life, which has been so much greater than mine?"
She had cast down her eyes and there had been an awkward pause, which he had cut short by saying: "That feeling has never existed in my mind, and therefore I can't have shown it. That's what's between us, Eleanor—that unjust and damaging accusation. William sees nothing more than disrespect in what his servant said to me, but I see that accusation defended in him, and as long as he's here, allowed to spread unchecked. William can only put that right by dismissing Coombe. It's no good writing any more or talking any more until that's done."
So Coombe remained the obstacle to at least a formal reconciliation. For he did remain, and it may be supposed that his tongue was not idle in the village, where, however, he was not liked. Colonel Eldridge was; far more liked than his brother, in spite of Sir William's open-handed ways. He was stiff, but he was kind. He lived among his people, and they knew that he was interested in all of them, though he was never hail-fellow-well-met with anybody. There was growing up a strong body of support for him, in a controversy into which the village folk had a far clearer insight than might have been supposed. If he had escaped the jealousy that had been laid to his charge, they had not, on his account. It was hard lines that the Squire at the Hall should have to give up this and that that he'd always been accustomed to, and Sir William at the Grange should be rolling in money. It didn't seem right somehow. And the Colonel had been out and fought in the war, and lost his only son too, while Sir William had stopped at home and made money. No, it didn't seem right, did it? And now they'd gone and made him lord and all; and when the Colonel died he would step into the Hall, and Mrs. Eldridge and the young ladies would be turned out. And so he'd have everything, which didn't hardly seem fair, whichever way you looked at it.
That was the way the majority of opinion went, and when the affair at Barton's Close came to give point to it, crystallized into still sharper criticism. No wonder the Colonel had objected to that—money chucked away in cutting up good pasture, and more labour wanted for a garden that wouldn't be no use to anybody, while the garden at the Hall was run with two men short now, and the road through the park was getting into a dreadful state. It was generally supposed, and approved of, that Colonel Eldridge had peremptorily stopped the garden-making at Barton's Close. Quite right too! Time he stopped something! He hadn't thought of the men who'd lose their jobs by it; but see how he'd put that right! He hadn't wanted to spend the money on the road, but he wasn't one to see a man out of a job if he'd got one to give him. They'd work for him too, and at less wages than they could get working under a man like Coombe. Coombe ought to have been sent off for what he'd let out about the Colonel. It wasn't the way to talk, for a man who'd been brought into the place when there were other men there who could have done his job just as well as he could. Sir William would have sacked him too, if he'd done what he ought. They did say that he'd quarrelled with the Colonel for stopping him cutting up Barton's Close. Sir William was getting a bit too big for his boots. That was about the size of it, and it wouldn't do him any harm to be told so.
Thus the commonalty of Hayslope, not knowing everything that had passed, and splitting no hairs, but ready to endorse in their Squire a more unreasoned attitude than he had actually yet taken. It was not suspected, either at the Hall or the Grange how keen was the interest in the dispute, or even that it was known that the brothers were keeping apart; for there was still coming and going between the two houses as before, and a great carefulness that no significant word should be dropped before the servants. But Pamela, going about in the village, had sensed the feeling of expectation. Coombe, she felt sure, was still making mischief. If only Uncle William would send him away, there might be a chance of their all settling down again.
Treading very delicately, she put it to Norman. Couldn't they do something to find out what was going on? Uncle William wouldn't believe that Coombe had made mischief. But if it was proved to him that he had!
Norman took refuge in their compact, but in defence of it made it plain that he thought her father's demand unreasonable. This warned her that she mustn't look to him for any help now. He was on his father's side, as she was on hers. She couldn't blame him, but it was good-bye, for the present, to the freedom and confidence that had always existed between them. She felt sad, when he had left her, but a little hurt with him too, because he had failed her.
Fred wouldn't fail her. He showed himself eager to help her in any way that she might suggest. What they were going to do this morning was to see old Jackson together, and get from him exactly what had happened at first, and what was happening now.