Eustace and Hilda (51 page)

“Did he, by Jove,” said Sir John. “He must have been what we called a ‘groize.'”

“And when Dick went down the other day to address some society there, he found that this Mr. Cherrington was the secretary, and I suppose they talked about old times.”

“I still don't see where the sister comes in.”

“Oh, that's to do with politics. Dick wants to know about Child Welfare, and so on, and as this seems to be Miss Cherrington's subject he thought he would pick her brains.”

“Couldn't he have done that in London?” said Sir John.

“Well, you know how he loves showing people the house, and he wanted to see the boy, who's thought to be promising, and is fond of old houses, so it seemed a good opportunity to ask them both. She seems quite a nice girl, judging by her letter.”

“I expect she is,” Sir John said, absently. His indignation appeared to be cooling, now that he knew the worst. But it would be a pity to abandon the fire while the embers were still glowing. “What I want to know,” he demanded, “is, who arranged this party?”

“Dick and I between us,” Lady Staveley said, “with some help from Anne. Do you see anything to object to in that?”

“I think I can guess who chose who,” Sir John said darkly. “And where are you going to put them all?”

“What an extraordinary question for you to ask, Papa!” Anne exclaimed. “Do you really want to know?”

“Well, I suppose it's my house.”

“Nelly is in the State bedroom. Monica is in the Magnolia room, Miss Cherrington is in Anne Boleyn's room, Victor is in the Nelson room, and we've put Antony and Mr. Cherrington in two of the tower rooms, where they'll be company for each other. Antony likes to have someone to talk to.”

“He does indeed,” said Sir John feelingly. “Where's Dick's room?”

“His sitting-room?”

“No, I know which that is. I mean, the room where he sleeps.”

“He's got King Henry's room,” said Lady Staveley. “His own is being done up.”

Sir John looked as if he would have liked to find fault with this arrangement, but all he said was, “I suppose that's all right.”

“You can alter them if you wish, dear.” Lady Staveley's voice was suave. “The cards are all in the doors, but they can easily be changed.”

“I'd know what to do with them if I had my way,” said Sir John, but it was a tired thunderbolt and fell quite harmlessly. “If you'll excuse me, I'll go and have a nap now,” he said. “Do you want me to be on duty at tea-time?”

Lady Staveley felt she could afford to be magnanimous in victory.

“Just as you like, dear; Antony and the two Cherringtons are coming by the six-twenty-eight. The others are all motoring down unless Dick comes in his plane.”

“Hope he won't do that,” said Sir John, rising. “I don't like this new idea of his. Cars are quite bad enough. The boy's too reckless: he'll end by breaking his neck.”

Lady Staveley was ruffled out of her usual composure.

“Don't talk like that, for Heaven's sake,” she said, almost sharply. “I wish he wouldn't, too. Perhaps one day he'll get tired of taking risks.”

Sir John, who was gathering up his cap and stick, was heard to mutter something. Then his steps clattered up the polished stairs and the door closed behind him.

Left to themselves, mother and daughter exchanged sighs of relief, and as far as their notions of deportment allowed them to, slumped in their chairs.

“All things considered, I think that went off very well,” said Lady Staveley. “You were a great stand-by, Anne.”

“You'd never guess, would you?” Anne said, “from the way Papa talks, that he really enjoys having people to stay? I think he enjoys it more than we do.”

“He has none of the responsibility,” said her mother.

“I know. When they come he'll be all affability and old-fashioned courtesy and blame us for not doing enough for them. I shouldn't be surprised if he took quite a fancy to this Miss Cherrington.”

A shadow passed over Lady Staveley's face. Her eyes, which generally beamed with good humour, turned slightly hard, and her small, well-shaped, aristocratic nose, usually in retirement between the bulwarks of her plump cheeks, suddenly asserted itself.

“There's no telling whom he'll like,” she said. “We've been married all these years and I still don't know. But I think it would be quite a good thing if he did find Miss Cherrington interesting to talk to.”

“There'll be Monica,” said Anne thoughtfully.

“Yes, dear Monica. I was afraid she might not be able to come at such short notice.”

“I thought you managed the Infant Welfare part wonderfully,” Anne said. “Even I found it quite convincing.”

“I'm always a little nervous about Dick's sudden fancies,” said Lady Staveley. “And he's so headstrong. We don't know anything about the girl: she might take him seriously. I never knew a man so restless. I expect it's just another whim. After all, he hasn't seen her for fifteen years; she may have changed completely.”

“Perhaps it'll be like that time when he made us ask Miss Vandernest down, do you remember?” said Anne, “and he took against her the first evening and wouldn't speak to her, and went out all the next day and left her on our hands?”

Lady Staveley laughed.

“Yes, it was a great nuisance, but it was also a good riddance.... If I knew how to put someone in an unfavourable light I should be tempted to do it, for her sake and his.”

“Oh, you do know, Mama.”

“Not when Dick is concerned.... And fifteen years. It's odd he should have remembered her all that time. I wonder what she's like? I suppose a hospital nurse sort of person. They're often very pretty.”

“He told me she didn't like him,” said Anne suddenly.

Lady Staveley looked serious again.

“Oh, he has spoken to you about her?”

“He just told me that,” said Anne. “Perhaps she's fond of old houses too, not only to look at.”

“That's the most plausible explanation, but she doesn't sound quite that sort of person.”

“Then I wonder why she is coming?”

The answer to that they never knew.

A
LL THE
house-party, except Lady Nelly Staveley, had arrived, saluted their host and hostess, and dispersed to their rooms to change for dinner. Stretched in his bath, Eustace let his mind dwell on the events of the past hours. He tried to imagine what Hilda was doing, but since she parted from him, under Anne's escort, at the drawing-room door, he had been unable to visualise her; she would not come at his call. The play of circumstance, tampering with reality, had severed them. This was a new experience, and it left him at once uneasy and elated. Despite the nervousness, all his feelings tended to elation; they soared up in him like bubbles in champagne.

He was here, in the shrine of fantasy, that was the great thing, in the very scene of so many waking and not a few sleeping dreams. And Hilda was here too. It was a fulfilment.

The long journey had passed quickly, beguiled by the inspired impromptus of Antony's conversation. Eustace was afraid Hilda might be shy and distrustful with him, for he had a frivolous way of talking, and the seriousness of his mind he kept for ideas, not for the practical issues of life. But he was insatiably curious about people, and few could resist the very evident interest he took in their lightest remarks. Talking came as naturally to him as breathing, and every breath he drew seemed to discharge its oxygen into his mind, sometimes to the neglect of his body. Sitting beside Hilda, whose face glowed with health, he looked terribly tired; his face was grey, and there were shadows on his temples. Once or twice he dropped off to sleep almost in the middle of a sentence; his head rolled on to his shoulder, almost on to Hilda's, his mouth fell open and he even snored; but so deeply had the spirit left its mark on his features and on his slight, thin body, that even in these moments, when most people would have seemed completely animal and a little disgusting, his physical envelope never lost the impress of his mind, and when he came to himself it was instantaneous, like the switching on of a light. Nor did he find any difficulty in the transition between talk and silence; they flowed naturally into each other, and when he wanted to read he took up his book and did so. Social constraint could not live near him, he banished it, and with it many tedious preoccupations that, for Eustace, clogged the machinery of living. What matter if they lost their luggage? What matter if the train broke down? What matter if Lady Staveley hadn't after all been expecting them and sent them away to find rooms in an hotel? Such disasters were infinitely unimportant while Antony Lachish talked.

This sanguine mood persisted to the very gateway of Anchorstone Hall; survived the crossing of the moat and the opening of the great door; endured while they walked across the courtyard, framed by unfamiliar buildings that looked down on them with critical eyes, and did not fail when the door opened to reveal the impassive Crosby flanked by his two aides in their silver buttons.

Crosby had begun to talk to Antony in low and solemn tones about the disposal of their luggage, a question which would have driven any competing thought from Eustace's head. But Antony brushed it aside with rapid gestures and torrents of incoherent speech, and this method seemed effective, for the man inclined his head, as if satisfied, and, his demeanour imperceptibly changing gear, led the way with slow steps in a diagonal direction across the hall. Hilda and Eustace followed at a distance, but Antony crowded on to Crosby and, barely waiting for the door to open, glided rapidly round a screen and into the room. Before they were half-way across he had reached the fireplace, where four or five people were standing in attitudes, as it seemed to Eustace, of critical expectancy; and he flung up his arms with the movement of a bird learning to fly and cried, “Here we are!”

Thus the ice was broken. There were many questions that Eustace still wanted to ask Antony, but he had disappeared. Finding he had arrived without a black tie, he had rung the bell, in his own room and then in Eustace's, but there was no answer to either summons.

“I don't like it,” said Antony. “Dick has arranged for us to be isolated here like the Princes in the Tower, beyond the reach of help and where our screams can't be heard. He might do anything to us.”

Warning shadows gathered on Antony's face; Eustace began to feel nervous. “I think we had better look behind the arras,” said Antony. He gave the blue-green tapestry, which Eustace thought must be priceless, a disrespectful tug and peered behind it.

“No, that plan would be too obvious for him,” he said. “I expect defenestration is what he has in mind.”

Eustace followed him to the window. Below them in the moat, dark clusters of lily leaves stood out from the brown water. The park lay in front of them. Stunted and gnarled and silver-green from exposure to North Sea weather, the trees looked very ancient, rising from the long shadows in their gold-washed carpet. Many were out at elbows and none seemed to have their full complement of leaves. They only came half-way up the church tower, which looked out serenely over them. To the left, along the wall, was the oriel window of Antony's bedroom.

“I expect that's the one he'll choose,” Antony said. “But I must die in a black tie. I'll go and borrow one from him; I'll beard him in his den while you are having your bath.”

“Do you know where he is?” Eustace asked.

“No,” said Antony, “but by the system of trial and error I shall find out. You must pray for my safe return.”

The bath-room was hardly more than a cupboard between their two rooms, and smelt strongly of steam. The window was too high up, Eustace noticed with relief, to lend itself to defenestration. He wondered if Hilda had a bath-room to herself, or whether she was sharing one, as he was—perhaps with Anne, perhaps with Monica whose other name he hadn't caught. He hoped she wasn't feeling lonely.

When they suddenly decided it was time to go and dress and the party broke up, he hadn't noticed how she was looking, he had felt so pleased to be going off with Antony. Anne had taken charge of her, perhaps a little with the air of finding it a duty. At any rate, not quite with the look he liked to see directed at Hilda.

Eustace would have gone to her room, but he wasn't sure that it would be correct, and he was anxious, as always, not to do anything that was not correct. Besides, he did not know which her room was, and the passages might not be well lit, and he might find himself in some one's room by mistake. She was somewhere in the main building, her door guarded perhaps by red fire-buckets with Anchorstone Hall on them, as his was, and printed instructions what to do in case of fire. Perhaps a maid would have unpacked for her, and she might be feeling that her things were not as good as other people's and the maid would smile at them and tell the other maids. She had very little jewellery, only one or two brooches of their mother's, and her garnet engagement ring; and the necklaces that he had given her, of an antique and arty kind. He had liked them at the time, but didn't feel so sure of them now. Hilda didn't care in the least for such things, and never wore them.

But at any rate she would have his watch. Her birthday had been in May, and he had insisted on presenting her with a wristwatch set in diamonds. It had cost a great deal, but Eustace's pleasure in making a gift mounted in direct ratio with the price: the satisfaction of the donee counted with him much less. Hilda had shown remarkably little satisfaction, and would gladly have refused the gift. Indeed he had only persuaded her to take it by saying that he ought to share the expenses of her wardrobe.

Actually, with her salary, her income was larger than his, but she might be hard up if, in spite of Stephen's opposition, she had contributed to the buying of the chicken-run. It made Eustace uncomfortable to think that her preparations for this visit should have put her out of pocket. To the last she had protested against going; even on the station platform she had protested: he might have been leading a sheep to the slaughter. It would have been a dismal journey but for Antony. If she had guessed that he got the watch partly with the idea that she might wear it here, she would never have accepted it. Perhaps she wouldn't wear it after all. Perhaps she was wondering whether she should or not, and meanwhile wishing herself back at the clinic. Did women wear wrist-watches at dinner? Eustace couldn't remember, and Hilda wouldn't know. If only he could have seen her face as she was led away! His imagination still seemed unable to get into touch with her.