Eustace and Hilda (16 page)

“Nearly half-past nine,” sobbed Eustace, in his agitation mistaking years for hours. He had often been asked his age, but never roughly, always in tones of solicitude and affectionate interest.

“At your age——” Mr. Cherrington checked himself; he could not remember what he was doing at his son's age; but Eustace's conscience filled in the blank. “I was earning a living for my family.” “Anyhow,” his father went on, “it was a most stupid trick.” (Eustace couldn't bear the word stupid; he flinched every time it came.) “I hoped you'd have the sense to see that this illness was in itself a punishment; but it seems you haven't. You need something extra. Well, you'll probably get it. What with the doctor and the nurse and having to take a room for Hilda outside, we've used up our money and may have to leave Cambo; you won't like that, will you?”

Eustace opened wide his tear-filled eyes in horrified surprise; already he saw the dingy side street in Ousemouth and smelt the confined musty smell of the house where they lived at such close quarters round and above his father's office. “You didn't realise that, did you? You're so cock-a-hoop at getting well, you think nothing else matters; you don't bother about the sacrifices you've inflicted on us all, because you didn't suspect they were going to affect you.”

Mr. Cherrington might well have finished here, for though Eustace had stopped crying out of fright, his distress was obvious enough. But he didn't want to leave the job half done and also (to do him justice) he didn't want ever to refer to the matter again. He loathed scenes, or he would no doubt have managed them better. He wanted to resume his old, genial, jocular relationship with Eustace, which he couldn't do, he felt, till he had thoroughly thrashed the matter out. So, like a surgeon performing an abdominal operation, he looked round for something else to straighten out before the wound closed for ever.

“And now I hear,” he said, “that you actually have the cheek to want to see this Nancy Steptoe again.” (Eustace had been about to explain that he hadn't much wanted to see Nancy until the removal of Dick Staveley from the foreground of his imagination had necessitated the introduction of a substitute that he could feel romantic about.) “I should have thought your commonsense would have told you better. She's a silly, vain, badly-brought-up little girl, who's done you nothing but harm, and your aunt has forbidden you ever to speak to her again.”

“But what am I to do,” said Eustace in a choking voice, “if she speaks to me? I'm always seeing her, on the beach, in the street, everywhere. I can't help it.”

“You must raise your hat and walk away,” said Mr. Cherrington firmly. “But she won't speak to you; she knows quite well what we think about her.”

Even in his misery Eustace winced at the grim self-satisfaction in his father's voice.

“And another thing, Eustace—don't cry so, you only make matters worse by behaving like a baby. Sit up, Eustace, and don't look so helpless. Another thing I hear is that you're again making a fuss about going to tea with Miss Fothergill. Now don't let me hear another word of this. She's a very good, kind, nice woman, and she wants to be kind to you, and the least you can do is to go and see her when she asks you. We haven't told her more than we could help about your stupid behaviour over the paper-chase, though I'm surprised she still wants to see you after being let down once so badly. She knows you've been a silly little boy, that's all.”

This seemed such a moderate and generous estimate of his character that Eustace's tears started afresh.

“Now don't cry any more. Let's begin turning over a new leaf from to-day. Why, Eustace, what's the matter?”

“Oh, Daddy, I do feel so sick.”

Mr. Cherrington gave his son a troubled, rueful look. “Bless the boy! Hold on a second!” He went into the passage, shouting, “Minney, Minney, I want you—here in the dining-room.”

About four o'clock the next day two figures emerged from the white, wood-slotted gate of Cambo and walked slowly up the hill. Both were obviously wearing their best clothes. Minney's dark-blue coat and skirt were not new for they shone where the light caught them, but they were scrupulously neat and free from creases. Eustace was wearing a fawn-coloured coat with a velvet collar of a darker shade of brown; his head looked small and his face pale under a bulging cloth cap with ribs that converged upon a crowning button. Round his neck, and carefully crossed over his chest, was a red silk scarf. He walked listlessly, lagging half a pace behind his companion, and occasionally running forward to take the arm she generously offered him.

“That's all right,” said Minney. “But you aren't tired yet, you know.”

“I feel rather tired,” said Eustace, availing himself shamelessly of the support. “You forget I was sick four times.”

“But that was yesterday,” said Minney, “you're a different boy to-day.”

Eustace sighed.

“Yes, I am different. I don't think I shall ever be the same again.”

“What nonsense! There, mind you don't put your new shoes in that puddle. What makes you think you've changed? I don't see any difference. You're the same ugly little boy I've always known.”

“Oh, I dare say I look the same,” said Eustace. “But I don't feel it. I don't think I love anyone any more.”

“Don't you love me?”

“Yes, but you don't count. I mean,” Eustace added hastily and obscurely, “it wouldn't matter so much if I didn't love you.”

“Who don't you love, then?”

“Daddy and Aunt Sarah and Hilda.”

“Oh, you soon will.”

“No, I shan't. I didn't ask God to bless them last night.”

“You did, because I heard you.”

“I know, but afterwards, secretly, I asked Him not to.”

“Perhaps He didn't listen when you said that, but it wasn't very kind.”

“Well, they haven't been kind to me. Of course I shall go on being obedient and doing what they tell me. I shan't speak to Nancy. I shan't ever again do anything I really want to do. That's partly why I'm going to Miss Fothergill's now.”

“You told me you weren't really frightened.”

“I was till yesterday. After that it didn't seem to matter.”

“What didn't seem to matter?”

“Whether I was frightened or whether I wasn't. I mean it was so much worse when Daddy said all those things to me.”

“He only said them for your good. You'll thank him one day when everyone tells you how much nicer you are than one or two spoilt little boys I could mention.”

“I shan't thank him,” said Eustace mournfully, “and if I do it'll only be because he expects me to. I shall always do what other people expect me to. Then they can't be angry.”

“I shall be angry with you if you're not more cheerful,” said Minney briskly. “Look, here's the water-tower. How many gallons did you say it holds?”

“Two hundred and fifty-six thousand five hundred,” said Eustace in a dull voice.

“Good gracious, what a memory you've got. And how long would it take you to drink it?”

“One million and twenty-six thousand days, if I drank a pint a day,” said Eustace, a shade more interest in his tone.

“You
are
good at mental arithmetic,” said Minney admiringly.

Eustace saw through her efforts to cheer him and the genuine unhappiness he felt beneath his attempts to dramatise it returned and increased.

“I didn't do that in my head,” he confessed. “Daddy told me. He used to tell me interesting things like that.”

“Well, he will again.”

“No, he won't, he'll be too busy trying to make money because it's cost such a lot me being ill.” Eustace began to weep.

“There, there, it's no use crying over spilt milk. You'll know better another time. Now we're nearly there. That's Miss Fothergill's gate, between those bushes.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Now dry your eyes, you mustn't let her see you've been crying. You'll find she's ever so kind. I expect you'll fall in love with her and forget about us all. Isn't it a beautiful gate?”

Miss Fothergill's gate boasted at least five bars and was made of fumed oak, with studs and other iron embellishments painted blue. Across the topmost bar the words ‘Laburnum Lodge' were written in old English characters.

“Are these all laburnums?” asked Eustace, staring respectfully at the thick shrubs.

“No, they're laurels. I expect we shall see some laburnums, but they won't be in flower now.”

They passed through the gate and walked on. The house was almost hidden by an immense oval clump of shrubs. “Those are rhododendrons,” whispered Minney.

“Are they really? Which way do we go now?”

Here the carriage road, deep in yellow gravel, divided and flowed majestically round the soaring rhododendrons.

“The left is quickest. There's the house.”

Built of the tawny local stone, not very high but long and of incalculable depth, Miss Fothergill's mansion might have been designed to strike awe into the beholder. Eustace got an impression of a great many windows. They stopped in front of the porch. It framed a semi-circular arch of dark red brick, surmounted by a lamp of vaguely ecclesiastical design.

“It looks like a church,” whispered Eustace.

“Not when you get inside. There's the bell—isn't it funny, hanging down like that? Don't pull it too hard.”

Eustace was much too confused to have any clear memory of what followed. The interior which was to become so familiar to him left little impression that afternoon beyond the gleam of dark furniture, the shine of white paint, and the inexplicable to-and-fro movement of the maid, taking his cap and coat, and hiding them away. Then she opened a door and they entered a long low room flooded with afternoon sunlight and full of objects, high up and low down, which, from Eustace's angle of vision, looked like the indented skyline of some fabulous city.

Bewildered by the complexity of his sensations, Eustace came to a halt. There was a stirring at the far end of the room, between the window and the fireplace. Threading her way through chairs and stools and tables, Miss Grimshaw bore down upon them. She did not speak but from somewhere behind her came a voice that, like the singing tea-kettle, bubbled a little.

“Well,” it said, “here comes the hero of the paper-chase. This
is
nice! I'm sorry I can't get up to greet you. Can you find me over here?”

“She said I was a hero,” Eustace found time to whisper to Minney before, joined now by Miss Grimshaw, they approached the tea-table. Miss Fothergill was still hidden behind the silver tea-kettle. What would he see? The hat, the veil, the gloves? Eustace faltered, then, rounding the table-leg, he found himself looking straight at the subject of so many waking nightmares.

It certainly was a shock. Neither the hat nor the veil was there. All the same in that moment Eustace lost his terror of Miss Fothergill, and only once did it return. Before tea was over he could look squarely and without shrinking at her brick-red face, her long nose which was not quite straight, her mouth that went up sideways and had a round hole left in it as though for ventilation, even when her lips were meant to be closed. Most surprising of all, he did not mind her hands, the fingers of which were now visible, peeping out of black mittens curiously humped. That afternoon marked more than one change in Eustace's attitude towards life. Physical ugliness ceased to repel him and conversely physical beauty lost some of its appeal.

“He'd better sit there,” said Miss Fothergill, “so as to be near the cakes.”

Eustace was too young to notice that, as a result of this arrangement, Miss Fothergill had her back to the light.

“And you sit here, Miss Minney,” she continued. “You'll stay and have a cup of tea, too?”

“Just one, thank you, but I really ought to be getting on.”

Minney glanced at Eustace, who had already helped himself to a cake. “I think he can manage by himself.”

“I'm sure he can.”

Eustace's features suggested no denial of this. “What time shall I come for him?” Minney asked a little wistfully. She noticed how Eustace's small figure was contentedly adapting itself to the lines of his chair. He looked up and said almost airily:

“Oh, Minney, I can find my way all right.”

Slightly wounded, Minney hit back. “What about that black dog near the post-office?”

Eustace hesitated. “Helen will see him home if it'll save you,” said Miss Fothergill, “won't you, Helen?”

Miss Grimshaw indicated assent but no more. “We'll get him back somehow,” said Miss Fothergill pacifically.

“Then I shan't have to start at any special time, shall I?” observed Eustace, evidently relieved.

“To-night the hare can rest his weary bones,” said Miss Fothergill with a smile. But Minney looked grave.

“We don't want anything like that to happen again,” she said, as she rose to take her leave. Eustace gave her an abstracted smile, then his eyes slid from her face and wandered round the room, pleased with the bright soft colours, the glint of silver and china, the clusters of small objects.

“I shall be quite safe as long as I'm here,” he said.

I
T WAS
another September, but Eustace had not lost his taste for Miss Fothergill's company nor she for his. The room they sat in drew him now as surely as it had once repelled him. He went there not only to meet Miss Fothergill but the self that he liked best.

The curtains had not yet been drawn, but tea was over and instead of the tea-table they had between them a tall round stool, the canvas top of which was worked in a pattern of gay flowers in wool. It made a rather exiguous card-table, but then piquet does not take much space.