Eustace and Hilda (14 page)

“Think about Miss Fothergill. You know she's taken quite a fancy to you. She sent down to ask after you ever so many times.”

“I know I ought to like her, but I don't. She isn't pleasant.”

“Think about the nice boy who helped you when you felt ill in the park.”

“Young Mr. Staveley? I thought about him yesterday.”

There was a pause, then Eustace said in the tone of one who re-opens an old controversy: “Can't I think about Nancy?”

“Oh, I shouldn't bother about her. I don't think she's really a nice girl.”

Eustace sighed. Nurse Hapgood always said that. He decided to think about the Harwich Boat Express—a somewhat threadbare subject of contemplation, but it would soon be time for him to open his eyes.

“You're so well to-day,” said Minney, bustling in one morning with his breakfast, “that you're going to be allowed to see a visitor. Guess who it is.”

Eustace searched his mind, but to no purpose.

“Hilda?” he suggested at length, with exactly the same sensation he had at lessons when he gave an answer he knew to be wrong.

“Why, you silly boy, she comes every day, besides she's a relation. Relations and visitors are not the same.”

A wild idea struck Eustace.

“Not Nancy?”

Minney pursed her lips. “No, not Nancy. You don't want to see her, do you? Mrs. Steptoe has been very kind in making inquiries —the least she can do,
I
say.”

By such straws as these Eustace was able to gauge the strength of the tide of family feeling flowing against Nancy.

“No, I don't want to see her,” he said, and regretted the words the moment they were out of his mouth. “But, of course, if she came,” he added, “I should have to see her.”

“I don't think she'll come.” Again that significant tone. “But if Nancy had been different to what she is, it wouldn't have been a bad guess. Now are you any warmer?”

On the contrary Eustace was still more mystified.

“Who was very kind to you one day in the rain?”

Eustace opened his eyes wide.

“You don't mean young Mr. Staveley?”

“Yes. But he's not Mr., he's only a boy about fifteen or sixteen, I should say. He was out riding and he called here on his way home. He let Hilda hold his horse.”

“Did he? She didn't tell me.”

“I expect she forgot. But he's a fine-looking young gentleman.”

“I can't remember what he looks like. It's all so muddled. But he must be very strong—he carried me all the way to the Hall, and his gun too—I remember how shiny and wet it looked.”

“Well, he's coming this afternoon to have tea with you.”

“Will Hilda have to hold his horse all the time?”

“Oh, I expect he'll have a groom or something.”

Dick Staveley didn't ride over, he explained to Eustace, he was driven in a dog-cart, and when the coachman had done some errands in the town it was coming back to fetch him.

“I expect he's waiting at the top of your road now,” he said.

The idea that anyone should be kept waiting for him had always distressed Eustace, and after the paper-chase it seemed doubly sinful.

“Perhaps you ought to go, then?” he said with anxious politeness.

“Oh,” said his visitor airily, “it'll do him no harm to wait.”

Eustace heard this callous utterance with a kind of shocked amazement, not unmingled with admiration. He felt he ought to protest, but the door opened and in came Minney with the tea.

“Oh, let me,” said Dick Staveley, taking the tray from her with a gesture of infinite grace. “Now I'll put it on this chair and sit on the bed, so that we shall have it between us.”

“I'm afraid there's not much room,” said Minney apologetically, thinking of Anchorstone Hall and its more spacious accommodation.

“I'm very comfortable like this. Now shall I pour out the tea, then you won't have to bother?”

“I never heard of a young gentleman pouring out tea,” said Minney. There was an accent in her voice Eustace had never heard before, nor did he ever hear it again.

“Oh, but we do it at school.” He returned to Minney who was lingering near the door. “I beg your pardon,” he exclaimed, swung his long legs over the bed and opened the door for her.

“Thank you,” said Minney. She was going to add something, then hesitated and went out.

Dick Staveley resumed his place on the bed.

“Is she an old family retainer?” he asked.

“Retainer?” Eustace was puzzled.

“Here's your tea. I mean, has she been with you a long time?”

“Oh yes, since before I can remember. She was Hilda's nurse and then mine, and now she's Barbara's, the baby, you know.”

“Then Miss Cherrington's a good deal older than you are? Have some bread and butter?”

“Thank you ever so much. You are kind. Oh yes, she's my aunt, you know.”

“I meant your sister.”

“Oh, Hilda!” Eustace had never thought of her as Miss Cherrington: how nice it sounded, how important, somehow. “Yes, she's nearly four years older than I am.”

“She looks more, if I may say so.”

“That's because she's always had to look after me, you see.”

“Yes. I know you take a lot of looking after.”

Eustace blushed.

“I shan't do that again ... ever. Oh, and I forgot to say, when you asked me how I was, that we are all so grateful to you for rescuing me.”

“Oh, that was nothing. Your sister thanked me too, as a matter of fact.”

“Wasn't I very heavy?”

Dick Staveley stretched himself. The afternoon sun did not come directly into the room, but was reflected, all tawny, from the wall of the house next door, and it glowed on Dick's face, sparkled in his dark-blue eyes and lit up his crisp, brown hair. His arms fell to his sides as though glad to be re-united to him.

“I didn't mind carrying you,” he said. “I didn't want to have to carry your friend as well.”

“But Nancy wasn't ill.”

“She made out she was, though.”

Eustace reflected on this. “They never told me anything,” he said.

“She was yelling like mad,” said Dick Staveley. “That's how I found you. She'd quite lost her head. I bet your sister wouldn't have done.”

“I'm glad you like Hilda,” said Eustace.

“I've only seen her once. She seemed to like my horse. Do you think she'd care to go for a ride some time?”

“She doesn't know how to,” said Eustace. “Wouldn't that be rather dangerous?”

“She'd be quite safe with me.”

Eustace looked at him with admiration. “Yes, I'm sure she would.”

“Here, your cup's empty. Have some more. Let's ask her, shall we?”

“She's out shopping now.”

“When she gets back, then. Are you allowed cake?”

“One little bit.”

The conversation returned, under Eustace's direction, from Hilda to the scene of his arrival at Anchorstone Hall. He learned how Lady Staveley, Dick's mother, had plied him with brandy, and how Sir John Staveley had sent a footman with a message to Major and Mrs. Steptoe at the church. How they fitted him out with an old suit of Dick's and how funny he looked in it; how he kept saying that he had killed himself and everyone would be very angry with him. “I couldn't help laughing, you looked so funny,” Dick concluded. “But you were in a bad way, you know. You don't look up to much now, but you're a king to what you were then.” He smiled at Eustace a fascinating, disconcerting smile, that began by being intimate and suddenly cooled, as though it was a gift not to be bestowed lightly. Eustace was enchanted. His grip on external reality, never very strong, lost its hold and he felt himself transported into another world, a world in which strange shapes and stranger shadows served as a background for heroic deeds, performed in company with Dick Staveley. The throng of glorious phantoms still pressed around him as he said rather wistfully:

“I don't suppose you ever play on the beach?”

“No, I ride on it sometimes.”

It seemed right to Eustace that so magnificent a being should spurn the humble sands beneath his palfrey's hoofs. “It belongs to you, doesn't it?” he said.

“The beach? Yes. We are lords of the foreshore.” Dick Staveley laughed. “The legend says it belongs to us as far as a man can ride into the sea and shoot an arrow.”

Instantly Eustace's imagination pictured Dick Staveley performing this symbolic feat. “Well,” he said, “perhaps one day when you are riding by you'll stop and talk to me and Hilda. She could hold your horse and you could ...” Eustace paused, obscurely conscious of the inadequacy of this invitation, the first he had issued in his life.

“Thanks. Perhaps some day I will but I usually go the other way, you know, to avoid those beastly rocks.”

With a pang that was half pain, half pleasure, Eustace had a vision of his beloved rocks reduced to the meagre rôle of providing obstacles for Dick's horse to stumble over.

“But you must come and see us, you know,” Dick Staveley was saying; “you and your sister, too, before I go back to Harrow on the twentieth. It's the fifth to-day, isn't it?”

Eustace shook his head. He knew the hour of the day but not the day of the month.

“And you got ill on the second of August. I remember, because it was the day I took out my new gun for the first time. You've been in bed nearly five weeks. What hopes of your being well enough to come before the twentieth?”

“I'll try to be,” said Eustace fervently.

“I'd better ask your sister myself.” He looked at his watch. “Hullo! It's just six. I must be off. Perhaps I can speak to Miss Cherrington as I go out?”

“She ought to be home any minute now, Mr. Staveley, if you could wait.”

“Call me Dick if you like.”

“Oh, thank you!”

“Well, I'll put this bed straight. I've made it in an awful mess. What a lucky chap you are to have two beds to choose from.”

“The other one's Hilda's, really, Dick,” said Eustace.

“Oh, is it?” The sound of patting and smoothing stopped, and Dick Staveley stared intently at the bed.

“So you have company? Very pleasant, I should think.”

“Oh yes, Dick, I'd much rather have Hilda than Nurse or even Minney.”

“I bet you would. Getting a bit big, isn't she?”

“Oh, but the bed's quite big, Dick,” said Eustace, misunderstanding him. “Her feet don't touch the bottom, nearly.”

“Where do they come to?” Dick asked.

“Just about where your hand is.”

Dick Staveley stared at the hand, and then at the end of the bed, as if he were making some sort of calculation. Keeping his thumb on the place he spread his fingers out, then moved his thumb to where his little finger had been and repeated the process. Now his little finger touched the wooden rail. Two hand-breadths. At this moment the door opened.

“Oh,” cried Hilda, and paused on the threshold apparently about to retreat. “I came straight in ... I didn't know ...”

“That your brother had a visitor? How do you do, Miss Cherrington?” In a flash Dick Staveley had slipped off the bed and was standing with his back to the fireplace, where the bronchitis kettle puffed a little cloud of steam round his well-creased trousers—its dying breath, for it was to be abolished to-morrow. “Take my place, Miss Cherrington,” Dick was saying. “Eustace has just told me that it really belongs to you.”

Still breathing fast, her bosom rising and falling, her pigtail hanging down over it, very bedraggled at the end, Hilda looked away from her interlocutor. Eustace was distressed by her manner and still more by her appearance. Then, confused by the heat of the room, the smell of tea and the commanding figure by the fireplace, Hilda sat down on the edge of her bed.

“I thought you would have gone,” she said, without looking at Dick.

Eustace blushed for her; but Dick, in no way put out, said:

“I should, but I waited to see you. Eustace says there is a chance you might come over to Anchorstone one day and go for a ride.”

“Oh, I didn't quite say that,” interpolated Eustace.

“We've got a very quiet horse,” pursued Dick Staveley, not seeming to notice the interruption. “Just the thing for you.” He looked down at her, nibbling the end of a long forefinger.

“I don't know why Eustace said that,” Hilda observed, continuing to look at her feet. “He knows I can't ride.”

“But wouldn't you like to try?”

“No, thank you, I shouldn't.”

“But you told me you were fond of horses.”

“Just to look at.” Unwillingly Hilda raised her eyes to Dick's face.

“Oh, Hilda,” said Eustace, “you know you've always wanted to ride. And he said I could come too, didn't you, Dick?”

“By all means if you're well enough. We couldn't leave him at home, could we?” he said to Hilda.

Eustace looked at her imploringly.

“I don't know why you both want me to do something I don't want to do,” said Hilda as ungraciously, it seemed to Eustace, as she could.

“We only thought you might enjoy it, didn't we, Eustace?”

“Then you thought wrong,” said Hilda, but she spoke without conviction. Dick's determination to get his way was so strong that Eustace could almost feel it in the room. Suddenly Hilda's resistance seemed to crumble. For a moment she turned the lovely oval of her face towards Dick Staveley: it wore a puzzled, defenceless look that Eustace had never seen before. “I'll ask Aunt Sarah,” she said, “when you've gone.”

“Splendid!” said Dick. Leaving the fireplace he came out into the room like a victorious advancing army. “Good-bye, Eustace. I'm so glad you're better. But no more paper-chases, mind. And thank you very much for my nice tea.” He turned to Hilda with his hand outstretched.