Eustace and Hilda (24 page)

Crestfallen and ashamed, Eustace relaxed his grip. The needle flashed back to zero and the machine, radiating malevolence from all its hard dull surfaces, with a contemptuous click gathered the penny into its secret maw. Breathing gustily Eustace stared back at it, like a boxer who has received a disabling blow but must not take his eyes off his enemy.

“I told you not to try,” said Hilda. “You'll only strain yourself.” She added more kindly: “Those machines are just there for show. I expect they're all rusted up inside, really.”

“Do you think Daddy could get the penny back?” asked Eustace.

“He couldn't have at your age. Now you must tell me what you were thinking of. I know you've forgotten.”

“I'll tell you when we get down on the beach,” said Eustace evasively.

They began the descent. September winds had blown the sand up to the topmost steps; they felt gritty to the tread. In the corners where the staircase turned, paper bags whirled and eddied; quite large pieces of orange-peel sprang to life, pirouetted and dropped down dead. Around, below, above, gulls wheeled and screamed, borne aloft on the airs that came racing from the sea. All this pother plucked at the nerves and whipped up the blood, but Eustace plodded stolidly in Hilda's wake, secretly examining his reddened palm and wondering how he would be able to hold the spade. If he was as weak as the machine said, he would soon have to stop digging anyhow.

“Let's make the pond larger this time,” said Hilda when they reached the familiar scene of irrigation. “We're earlier than we generally are, we may not get a chance like this again.”

“Much larger?” asked Eustace.

“Well, we could take in this rock here,” said Hilda, walking with long strides to a distant boulder. “Then the wall would go like this”—and cutting with her spade a line through the sand she sketched an ambitious extension of their traditional ground plan. “It will look wonderful from the cliff,” she added persuasively. “Like a real lake.”

“Don't you think it's more than we can manage?” asked Eustace, still smarting from his defeat at the hands of the automatic machine.

“You can't tell till you try,” Hilda said, and immediately set to work on the retaining wall. Eustace walked slowly to his post at the far end of the pond. Their custom was to begin at opposite ends and meet in the middle, but Eustace seldom reached the half-way mark. Now that mark, thanks to Hilda's grandiose scheme, was at least two yards further off than it used to be. Consciousness of this increased his bodily and mental languor. For him the pond had ceased to be a symbol. Of old, each time it rose from the sands and spread its silver surface to the sky it proclaimed that the Cherrington children had measured their strength against the universe, and won. They had imposed an order; they had left a mark; they had added a meaning to life. That was why the last moment, when the completion of the work was only distant by a few spadefuls, was so tense and exciting. In those moments the glory of living gathered itself into a wave and flowed over them. The experience was ecstatic and timeless, it opened a window upon eternity, and whilst it lasted, and again when they surveyed their handiwork from the cliff-top, they felt themselves to be immortal.

But what assurance of immortality could there be for Eustace now, when at any moment the clock would strike, the sounds in the house would cease, the call would come and he would pass through the open front door to find the chariot standing outside? Sometimes it was just the landau with Mr. Craddock on the box, staring ahead; sometimes it was a hearse; sometimes it was a vehicle of indefinite design, edged with light much brighter than the day, and seeming scarcely to rest upon the ground. The vision never carried him beyond that point, but it brought with it an indescribable impression of finality, it was a black curtain stretched across every avenue of thought, absorbing whatever energies of mind and spirit he had left. Why go on digging? Why do anything? But no; even in this featureless chaos something remained to be done.

He straightened himself, and shook his head vigorously.

“What's the matter?” said Hilda. “Is a fly bothering you?”

“No,” said Eustace, “it was some thoughts I had.”

“Well, you won't get rid of them like that, and your hat will come off. Oh, and that reminds me! You promised to tell me what your thoughts were, and you haven't. I knew you'd forget.”

“No, I haven't forgotten,” said Eustace.

“Well, come on. I'm waiting.”

An overpowering reluctance, like a spasm in the throat, seized Eustace, almost robbing him of speech.

“Just give me a little longer.”

“Very well, then, I'll give you five minutes from now.” Digging her chin into her chest she looked at the watch which hung suspended there. “That'll be five minutes past eleven.”

They worked on in silence, Eustace searching frantically for a formula for what he had to say and finding none. So acute was his sense of the passing minutes that he began to feel himself ticking like a clock. Twice he saw Hilda surreptitiously glancing at her watch.

“Time's up,” she said at last.

Eustace gazed at her blankly.

“Well?”

“Do you really want to know?” Eustace temporised, shuffling with his feet.

“I don't suppose it's anything important, but as I've paid for it I might as well have it.”

“It is important in a way, to me at any rate. But I don't think you'll like to hear what I'm going to say, any more than I shall like telling you. At least I hope you won't.”

Hilda frowned. “What
is
all this about?”

The rapids were close at hand now and he could hear the roar of the cataract. He plunged.

“You see, I want to make my will.”

If Eustace had counted on making an effect, he ought to have been gratified. Hilda opened her eyes and stared at him. She opened her mouth, too, but no words came.

“You didn't know about me then? I didn't think you did.”

“Know what?” said Hilda at length.

“That I was going away.”

Hilda's heart turned over, but bewilderment was still uppermost in her mind.

“I thought they hadn't told you. It was so as not to worry you, I expect.”

“But who told
you
?” asked Hilda, making crosses in the sand with her spade.

“Mr. Craddock told me first, the evening we drove back from Frontisham. He said I was going away and he would be sorry to lose me. And then I asked Minney, and she told me not to pay any attention to what Mr. Craddock said because he was an old cabman. But she didn't say it wasn't true, and I could see she knew it was. You know how you can sometimes tell with grown-up people.”

Understandingly but unwillingly Hilda nodded.

“And then I asked Daddy.”

“What did he say?”

“He said something about not taking offences before you came to them, which I didn't quite understand, and not meeting trouble half-way. He was angry with Mr. Craddock too, I could see that. He said he was a silly old gossip. He said it wouldn't be as bad as I thought, and that everyone had to go through it sooner or later, and I shouldn't mind much when the time came, and I wasn't to think about it, because that only made it worse.”

“They never said anything to me,” said Hilda.

“Well, I had to tell you because, you see, I wanted to give you my things before I go away.”

Hilda said nothing to this, but she sat down rather suddenly on a rock, with back bent and knees spread out, in the attitude Eustace knew so well.

“I've been thinking about it,” he went on with an effort, “because, you see, unless I leave a will you might not get my things at all—they might go into Chancery. But I haven't many that would do for someone who isn't a boy” (Eustace was unwilling to call Hilda a girl, it would sound like a kind of taunt). “My clothes wouldn't be any use, except my combinations, and they're too small. I should like you to have my handkerchiefs, though. They would be washed by that time, of course.”

“There's your red silk scarf,” said Hilda, with the stirring of self-interest that no beneficiary, however tender-hearted, can quite succeed in stifling.

“I was just coming to that. And my woolly gloves too. You've often worn them and they've stretched a bit. When you had the scarf on and the gloves, and one of my handkerchiefs, it would look almost as though I was still walking about.”

“No one could ever mistake me for you if that's what you mean,” said Hilda.

“It wasn't quite what I meant,” said Eustace, but a doubt crossed his mind as to what he really did mean, and he went on:

“My hairbrushes wouldn't be any good because they haven't got handles, and besides you have some. Perhaps Daddy could use them when his wear out. Then there's my sponge and toothbrush and flannel. Some poor boy might like them when they've been well dried.” Raised interrogatively, Eustace's voice trailed away when the suggestion met with no response.

“I doubt it,” said Hilda practically, “but of course we could try.”

“There isn't much more,” said Eustace. “I should like Minney to have the watch that Miss Fothergill gave me. Of course it's rather large for a lady, but it goes very well because I've never been allowed to take it out of my room, and hers doesn't; and you have yours, the one that belonged to Mother.”

“I've never seen a lady wear a watch that size,” said Hilda. “But she could tuck it in her belt where it wouldn't show, though of course it would leave a bulge.”

A shadow passed over Eustace's face.

“Well, perhaps she could use it as a clock. Then I thought I'd give all my toys to Barbara, except Jumbo, who you take to bed. She uses them already, I know, so it wouldn't seem like a present, but she might like to know that they were hers by law.”

“I don't think she minds about that,” said Hilda. “She takes anything she can get hold of.”

“Yes, she's different from us, isn't she?” said Eustace. “She doesn't seem to care whether something is right or wrong. It will be a great handicap to her, won't it, in after-life.”

“Not if she doesn't mind about it,” Hilda said.

“I've nearly done now, and then we can go on with the pond. I haven't anything to leave to Daddy and Aunt Sarah, so I thought I'd take two of those sheets of writing-paper from the drawing-room table, which we only use to thank for presents, and write ‘Love from Eustace' on them. I think I should print the messages in different coloured inks, and then put them in envelopes addressed to Mr. Cherrington and Miss Cherrington, and drop them in the letter-box when the time came, and they might think they had come by post, and it would be a surprise.”

“Yes,” said Hilda, “that's a good idea.”

“And all the rest I should leave to you, Hilda. That is, my money in the money-box, and my books, and my guide-book, and my knife, and my pencils, and the ball of string, and the india-rubber rings, and the pink rosette that I wore at the election, and the picture postcard of Zena Dare, and the General View of Mt. Pelée before the earthquake.”

“You won't want to be parted from that,” said Hilda. “I should take that with you.”

“I don't think I should be allowed to,” said Eustace. “You see...” marvelling at Hilda's obtuseness, he left the sentence unfinished. “I won't leave the things lying about, I'll put them all in the drawer with the pencil-box—the one with marguerites on the lid—so you'll know where to find them.”

“I always know better than you do, really,” said Hilda.

Eustace let this pass.

“The only thing I'm not sure about is how to get my money out of the post office. There's quite a lot there, thirty-three pounds. Do you think if I went and asked for it they'd give it me? They ought to, because it belongs to me, but I don't think they would. Daddy once told me that banks use your money for themselves. I shall have to ask Daddy and I don't want to do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don't want to talk about it to anyone but you. And I only told you because I thought you didn't know what was going to happen. But I shall write everything down and put it in an envelope under your pillow, so that's where you'll find it when the time comes.”

“When will that be?” said Hilda.

“I don't quite know yet.”

Eustace picked up his spade and, returning to his unfinished portion of the wall, began to dig. He was a little disappointed with the matter-of-fact way in which Hilda, after the novelty was over, had discussed the items of his bequest; she might have been more demonstrative; but the relief of having told her was immense. All that remained to do now was of a practical nature and would make no call on his emotions. The question of the Post Office he tried to thrust out of his mind. After all, it was a grown-up's matter and grown-ups would know how to deal with it. He worked on, and only when his spade, instead of sinking into the moist sand, struck a stone and jarred him did he look up and notice that Hilda was not doing her piece, but was still sitting on the rock where he had left her. He stopped digging and walked across to her.

“What's the matter, Hilda?”

She lifted her face and he saw that it was full of pain. It kept twitching and crinkling in places where normally it was smooth and stationary. She tried to speak for a moment, and then said:

“I don't see why you are giving all these things away, to me or to anyone else. You'll want them when you come back.”

So that was how it was. She hadn't understood after all. She didn't realise that he wasn't coming back, and how could he tell her, how could he deal her a second blow when the first had been so hurtful?

“I don't think I shall come back for a long time,” he said at length, hoping that this was not an implied falsehood.