Eustace and Hilda (58 page)

‘Enter not into judgement with Thy servant, O Lord.'

The party from Anchorstone Hall were sitting in the choir, on both sides of it apparently; through the painted screen, mutilated but lovely, he could see Sir John and Lady Staveley and Anne, and Dick at the end; the others must be facing them. He could not see Hilda, and not seeing her he was more than ever cut off from communion with her thoughts. She was not religious, at least she received no support from religion; if anything, she lent religion her support. She was so self-sufficient, so used to doing things for other people, that even religion could do nothing for her. Was that spiritual pride? Even to offer a prayer for her seemed an impertinence, or at any rate an irrelevance, just as it would be to offer a prayer for a saint. In childhood Eustace had always prayed for her, and he found himself wanting to now; but to pray for her was an admission of her fallibility, and Eustace's conception of her as infallible confused his thoughts. And for what benefit should he intercede?

He looked round him. There were about fifty people in a church that would easily have held five hundred. They would know he was a stranger, of course, but they would not know he was a guest at the Hall, because he was not sitting in the seats of the mighty, but in the body of the church with fishermen, farm labourers and such—or with their wives, for only a few men were present. These looked so conscious of their collars that you could tell they wore them but once a week. Eustace felt like a first-class passenger whom circumstances had obliged to travel third.

Perhaps his host and hostess would be annoyed, and imagine that by segregating himself he was advertising Socialist opinions. He might have broken an important convention by not sitting with them. He would come out carrying some invisible but perceptible stigma of proletarianism. Moreover, he would miss seeing the back of the choir screen which was the glory of Anchorstone church. All things considered, he had better have kept away. No doubt he wouldn't have come if he hadn't hoped to make a good impression on the Staveleys, and be gaped at by yokels as he sat in a feudal and privileged position on the horns of the altar.

‘Enter not into judgement with Thy servant, O Lord.'

He had been half angry, or at any rate surprised, when Dick asked him that question about Hilda. What question? No matter. Better not think about it here. But why not? What more natural for a man like Dick to ask a question like that? Stephen too had asked him a lot of questions, but not that one. At Oxford Eustace lived in a specialised society that didn't ask such questions. But they asked others which would have seemed just as surprising, no doubt, to Dick, and probably in still worse taste. In the war, in the Ministry of Labour, in the wide world, which included his tightly collared fellow-worshippers in this very church, that question (no matter what it was!) was often asked—not perhaps about his, but about other men's sisters. How childish to take fright or umbrage, as if no one had ever been—well—kissed, as if Barbara and her Jimmy had never got married! Would he have minded if Dick or anyone else had asked him who was the first man to kiss Barbara? No, he would have laughed, and felt rather pleased, and proud of Barbara's many conquests. A kind of crust had formed round his relationship with Hilda, impervious to air and sunlight, banishing humour, making for stiffness. What right had he to fasten on Hilda feelings which he only imagined for her? He ought to be grateful to Dick, not annoyed with him. A shrine was one thing, but a shrine was for the dead not the living.

I must see Miss Fothergill's grave, he thought, as soon as the service is over. There'll just be time, while they are coming out, and then I can catch Hilda up, and find out about her hands, and ask her how she's getting on, and where her room is, and say anything else that occurs to me.

‘Enter not into judgement with Thy servant, O Lord.'

With the conviction of his own unworthiness Eustace's resentment against Dick passed.

Self-abasement brought peace of mind. Ceasing to criticise others, he ceased to feel at odds with himself, and began to listen to the service, which by now was half-way through.

But he miscalculated the time it would take the manorial party to get out of church. Standing by the marble tombstone with ‘Sacred to the memory of Janet Fothergill' in lettering as black and fresh as if it had been engraved yesterday, he could see them walking down the path that led to the park gateway—Dick and Hilda in front. They must have come through a door in the transept. He tried to fix his thoughts on Miss Fothergill, but the glistening black and staring white of her headstone recalled nothing of the faded reds and purples that she loved, just as the sunshine had nothing to do with the half-light that even on the brightest day bedimmed the drawing-room at Laburnum Lodge. Turning away, he hurried after the others. For a moment, however, the pond in front of the church detained him. Tree-shadowed and duck-haunted, it brought a pang of authentic recollection, almost the first his visit had vouchsafed him. So strongly did he feel his childhood pressing round him, usurping his present self, that the Tudor gateway seemed a barrier against his entry, defending the privacy of the park against him, the public. As on Highcross Hill, though with a far, far feebler utterance, something warned him to turn back, making his steps difficult and slow, so that he slunk through like a trespasser.

Deserted, the courtyard sweltered in the sunshine, and somehow seemed the hotter for being empty. Eustace stood in doubt, watching the spirals of heat as they flickered up from the baking cobbles. Suddenly he heard a shout, coming apparently from nowhere, and a moment later Antony was there, outstripping, as so often, all the visible signs of his approach.

“Oh, Eustace, I've been looking for you. We saw you in the churchyard, but you were staring so sadly at a tombstone that we didn't like to disturb you. What are you doing now?”

“I was just wondering where Hilda is,” said Eustace.

“Oh, I can tell you. Dick's taking her round the house. The others have all seen it,” he added.

“I should rather like to see it,” said Eustace. “But perhaps——” He left the sentence unfinished. “We shouldn't know where to find them, should we?”

Antony thought a moment. “They might be anywhere. I know, I'll take you. There's not much to look at, really. The library's rather nice, but wasted on them, for they never open a book, except Cousin Edie. You don't want to explore the Victorian dormitory, do you? All the rooms are named after departed kings and queens who couldn't possibly have slept in them, unless their ghosts were fireproof. It's really rather awful, beds made out of battlements, you know, and water colours of the house done by maiden Staveleys in the 'sixties—and in their sixties.”

“Sh!” said Eustace, for all the windows seemed to be bending outwards to drink in the sound of Antony's voice. “I'd rather like to see the bedrooms.”

“Believe me, you wouldn't,” said Antony firmly. “Let's go to the dungeons first, and if Dick has locked your sister up we shall be able to rescue her.”

They did not, in fact, come across Dick and Hilda in the course of their tour. But just before luncheon, as Eustace was patrolling the courtyard in order not to be late, Fate lifted its ban and presented him with Hilda. The thing seemed so easy when it happened, that he could not believe he had spent the whole morning trying to bring it about. He realised how exaggerated was his relief in seeing her when she, on seeing him, betrayed no emotion beyond a look of wonder.

“Oh, Hilda!” he cried. “I couldn't find you; you were always being spirited away from me. How are your poor hands?”

“My hands?” echoed Hilda. “My hands? Oh, I see what you mean. My hands. Yes, they're quite all right.” She held them out to him, first with the knuckles upwards, then the palms. One nail was a little torn, and a few bruises still showed yellowish under the healthy skin.

“Why, were you worrying about my hands?”

“I was, a little,” Eustace unwillingly confessed, for he knew how much any kind of anxiety on her account irritated Hilda.

“My hands are quite all right,” said Hilda again.

“And you're all right?” persisted Eustace, hoping there could be no occasion for offence in an inquiry couched in such general terms.

“Yes, I'm quite all right,” repeated Hilda.

“Enjoying yourself?”

“Do I look as if I wasn't?”

If she did, it was wiser not to say so. “Not bored?”

“Not more bored than I expected to be,” Hilda said.

“Not worried about anything?”

“No,” said Hilda. “Why should I be worried?”

“No reason, of course, but I just wondered”—Eustace was determined to rid himself of this tormenting uncertainty, ridiculous as he knew it would sound when uttered—“if your room was all right?”

Hilda stiffened, and Eustace felt that he had tried her too far.

“You know I don't care where I sleep,” she said sombrely, and added as if it was an afterthought—“Dick may be taking me up in his aeroplane when we get this meal over.”

“Oh, Hilda, don't do that!”

She turned on him as if he were a fly that had settled on her, but fly-like he disregarded the gesture. “Promise me you won't,” he urged.

Instead of reiterating her resolve, she gave him an abstracted look which seemed to be weighing factors in the proposal more important than his liking or not liking it.

“You might come too,” she said.

“Oh,” cried Eustace, “I couldn't! There wouldn't be room, and I should be air-sick, and anyhow, Dick hasn't——”

“What haven't I done?” said a voice at his elbow. “What's this?” Dick went on, coming between them, “a family conference?” He looked sternly at Eustace, and then began to smile. “You know, I shall have to stand up for you,” he said. “In the name of my sex I shall protest against the tyranny of petticoat government.”

“Oh,” said Eustace, “but it was I——” He stopped.

“Well, whoever it was,” said Dick firmly, “mustn't. Now I shall sweep you into luncheon, or my father will be getting restive.”

T
HE MOMENT
the aeroplane began to move, Eustace was convinced that something had gone wrong with it. It slid along, rapidly gathering pace, but with its impotent-looking wheels, so unequal to its weight, hanging only a foot or two above the ground. Not very far ahead, three or four hundred yards at most, the trees of the park loomed up, innocent objects once, now suddenly charged with dread. The aeroplane would never clear them. If only Dick would stop while there was time, and start again or, better still, call the venture off!

Eustace glanced at his companions, drawn up as if on the touch-line at a football match. But there was no consternation on their faces. They were all laughing and waving. The nearest thing to a scream was Lady Staveley's cry, “Expect you back for tea!” which Dick and Hilda seemed to hear, for they turned and waved. To Eustace any parting was an emotional experience: how could they all take this so calmly? He held his breath while, with a triumphant roar as though it had only pretended to be earthbound, the aeroplane drew away from the grass and space showed between it and the ground. Space but not sky, for the trees still overtopped the line of its flight. Then, with a transition too quick to follow, the trees had shrunk to bushes, with a wide strip of blue between them and the aeroplane. Wheeling, it brushed the tree-tops, seeming to lose height; now it was travelling across a background of massed green foliage, a steel point boring into the soft body of the air. The drone of the engine grew fainter, then louder again, and Eustace realised that the aeroplane was coming back. Had they run out of petrol? Had Hilda asked to be put down? In vain to speculate on something that moved quicker than his thoughts. The roar increased: for a moment it seemed as though the machine stood still above their heads, a timeless interval in which Eustace imagined all kinds of happenings—wavings, leanings over the side, even an exchange of remarks—which his memory could not afterwards confirm. Hardly had the contact been established before the aeroplane and its living freight became again depersonalised, a thing of sight and sound. Darkening, black, invisible, it swung into the sun, to reappear far off, transparent and insubstantial. Purposefully now it held to its course; swaying slightly, it dipped its wing to the sun, receiving in return a silvery salutation.

Watching its flight, Eustace felt his mind growing tenuous in sympathy. Something that he had launched had taken wing and was flying far beyond his control, with a strength which was not his, but which he had had it in him to release. Somewhere in his dull being, as in the messy cells of a battery, that dynamism had slumbered; now it was off to its native ether, not taking him with it—that could not be—but leaving him exalted and tingling with the energy of its discharge. The sense of fulfilment he had felt when Hilda promised to come to Anchorstone returned to him, the ecstasy of achievement which is only realised in dreams.

As the sound of the engine died away, he turned to the others, expecting to see on their faces a counterpart of his own elation. But just as he had been surprised by their light-heartedness at the terrifying moment of the take-off, so now he was disappointed by their prosaic acceptance of the apotheosis. Lady Staveley, who scanned the sky still longer than he did, heaved a sigh, but the others might have been watching somebody catch a bus.

“You look so pleased,” said Lady Nelly. “Do you always look like that when you speed your sister off into the void?”

“I never have before,” answered Eustace. “I didn't know I should feel like that. I didn't want her to go. I tried to persuade her not to.”

“But now she has gone, you feel it's for the best?”

Eustace regarded this question from several angles before he answered.