Miss Baldwin's letter did not disclose what seemed to her to have been the inspiration and intention of this highly appreciated entertainment. It was so much in matter of her own discovery that she hardly dared to lay stress on it, even in her own imaginings. And yet she thought she could not be mistaken. There was a round dozen of young girls there, some of them of more obvious social importance than Pamela; but the honours were hers. She was not mistaken there, for the nice clergyman's wife asked her who Pamela was, and seemed surprised to hear that there was no title attached to her, as there was to some of the others. And the nice clergyman's invalid daughter asked her pointblank whether Pamela was engaged to young Lord Horsham. Both Lord and Lady Crowborough appeared to treat her as if she were; but, as Miss Baldwin knew that she was not, this could only mean that they wanted her to be. Nor was it too much to suppose that, by treating her almost as the most honoured guest, they were willing that all these country neighbours whom they had gathered together should know that they wanted her to be.
And yet nothing came of it. The few days, exciting to Miss Baldwin because of what she was expecting, which followed the picnic brought no announcement. Lord Horsham came over to the Hall the very next day, but nothing came of that, as might so confidently have been expected. He came over several times more before he went back to Oxford in October. He was the admitted friend of the family; there was no young person who was there more often, and no young man of those who came to the house who could be considered in the light of a rival, now that Fred Comfrey was off the scene. It seemed to Miss Baldwin that there was an air of expectation abroad; that both Colonel and Mrs. Eldridge were waiting for something. And the conviction grew upon her that there was a hitch somewhere.
Where was it? There was no doubt about the young man's admiration for Pamela. He was the best of friends with Judith, and very nice to the children, as was natural, but it was Pamela who drew him. Her attitude towards him was frank and kind. Oh, she did like him, and was bright and gay when he was there, though not always so at other times. Could it be that she was, after all, casting thoughts back to that other? By this time Miss Baldwin was inclined to resent such an idea. Fred had taken his place in her scheme as the rejected suitor, and it now seemed to her that Pamela had never treated Fred with the same kind of friendliness as she treated Horsham. Couldn't she make up her mind about him? Or was there something else going on that delayed the wished-for climax?
It came gradually to Miss Baldwin, as the months passed by, that there was a good deal going on at Hayslope of which she had not the key.
Life was duller there, and sadder, than she had known it at any time during the two years she had been there, even during the last months of the war, when Colonel Eldridge had been mostly away, and the shadow of Hugo's death still lay over them. But during that first winter, when things were beginning to settle down, there had been a good deal going on that had interested Miss Baldwin in her first experience of the life of a country house. Very little of it went on now.
What had become of all the visiting that seemed to play such a large part in the lives of such people as the Eldridge's? Colonel and Mrs. Eldridge never slept away from Hayslope during that autumn and early winter. Pamela went away twice, and Judith once. Pamela had a girl friend to stay with her for a week or so, and an aunt of Mrs. Eldridge's, who had been wont to spend the month of October at Hayslope for years past, came with her maid, but went back to Brighton, where she lived, after a week. It was then that Miss Baldwin first realized how everything was being cut down, more and more closely. The old lady was reported to have said that she didn't get enough to eat, which was of course ridiculous; what she didn't get was the elaborate provision that had struck Miss Baldwin herself when she had first come to Hayslope Hall. Nor did she get the service, except what her own pampered grumbling maid gave her. Nobody else came to the Hall, where there had been a constant succession of guests. There were only enough servants now to do the work of the house for the normal family life, which was also being reduced all the time, something here always being cut off or something there. The drawing-room was shut up, the billiard-room was never used. Mrs. Eldridge gave up her room and took to the morning-room, which all the family inhabited. More wood than coal was to be burnt in the schoolroom, and everywhere else. The outdoor staff was cut down to one man and a boy for the garden, and Timbs for stable and garage; but the cars were little used now. The light supper which had taken the place of dinner during the summer was continued, except for the week during which the old woman from Brighton was there.
There was never any discussion of these and other economies, at least before Miss Baldwin, and there was no grumbling at them. Colonel Eldridge was far more silent than she had ever known him, and she thought he was ageing, and seemed now, when she saw him sometimes from the schoolroom window walking alone, always to have his eyes on the ground, and to stoop slightly, who had been so upright and active. Mrs. Eldridge was just the same, always unruffled, always well-dressed, though seldom in the beautiful clothes Miss Baldwin had been wont to admire. Pamela and Judith had taken to doing things that had been done before by servants, mostly out of doors. They looked after the poultry entirely, making a pastime of it to all appearance. And they had taken to making many of their own clothes; Mrs. Eldridge's maid, who had also looked after them, was much occupied in housework. No word ever fell from either of them to show that they were affected by the change in their circumstances, which by now had come to be a complete change from the way of life lived at Hayslope during that first winter after the war. Pamela was not nearly so bright as she had been; there was something the matter with her, though it was not, apparently, discontent with home conditions. Judith was much the same as she had always been, sometimes silent, sometimes uproarious; half a child, half a woman; but Judith had not known the life that Pamela had known, after she was grown-up. Judith's life was altered chiefly by her emancipation from the schoolroom. Her home and what went on in it was enough for her, as it was for the children.
The outstanding difference at Hayslope, greater even than the changes at the Hall, which, after all, did not affect the core of family life, was the Grange unoccupied. There it stood, a big, rich house, from which had radiated sociability and close intimacy, with all its rooms shut up, its chimneys cold, its windows shuttered. There were a man and his wife to caretake, and men still at work outside—more than there were now at the Hall, though their only task was to keep things just alive for future occupancy. It made a blank, even to Miss Baldwin and the children, who sometimes went through the gardens in their walks, and lamented its desolation, as remarkable by contrast as if it had been falling into complete disuse. Presently there seemed to grow up about its forsaken state something significant of a change more unhappy than was shown by a house from which life had only been removed for a time. What did it stand for in the story that Miss Baldwin was tracing out for herself from all the happenings around her?
Neither Lord Eldridge nor Lady Eldridge, nor Norman, had come back since they had left Hayslope at the end of August. Nobody from the Hall had visited them, either in London or at the other house they had taken in the country.
Miss Baldwin was not in the way of picking up rumours at Hayslope. She was not in close enough contact with the family in which she lived to get much from them, and she was in no closer contact with servants or with people outside. But she could not help knowing that there had been something of a split; and indeed that was now taken for granted. Alice and Isabelle knew it. "Father and Uncle William aren't very good friends now. I think Uncle William takes too much on himself now he is a Lord, and father doesn't quite like it. But they'll be friends again when Uncle William comes back to Hayslope." Isabelle had said that, as they were going through the Grange garden. Some of it she had been told, some of it she had probably made up for herself, for Alice had contradicted her. "I don't think it's anything to do with his being a lord. Auntie Eleanor is a Lady, and she's just the same; and so is Norman."