Eustace and Hilda (34 page)

“Oh, please, just this once. I ... I shall never write to him again.”

The assistant's heart was touched. “You made a mistake, then,” she said.

“Yes,” breathed Hilda. “I don't know...” she left the sentence unfinished.

“You said something you didn't mean?”

“Yes,” said Hilda.

“And you think he might take it wrong?”

“Yes.”

The assistant dived into the box and brought about twenty letters. She laid them on the counter in front of Hilda.

“Quick! quick!” she said. “I'm not looking.”

Hilda knew the shape of the envelope. In a moment the letter was in her pocket. Looking at the assistant she panted; and the assistant panted slightly, too. They didn't speak for a moment; then the assistant said:

“You're very young, dear, aren't you?”

Hilda drew herself up. “Oh, no, I've turned fourteen.”

“You're sure you're doing the right thing? You're not acting impulsive-like? If you're really fond of him...”

“Oh, no,” said Hilda. “I'm not ... I'm not.” A tremor ran through her. “I must go now.”

The assistant bundled the letters back into the box. There was a sound behind them: the postman had come in.

“Good evening, Miss,” he said.

“Good evening,” said the assistant languidly. “I've been waiting about for you. You don't half keep people waiting, do you?”

“There's them that works, and them that waits,” said the postman.

The assistant tossed her head.

“There's some do neither,” she said tartly, and then, turning in a business-like way to Hilda:

“Is there anything else, Miss?”

“Nothing further to-day,” said Hilda, rather haughtily. “Thank you very much,” she added.

Outside the Post Office, in the twilight, her dignity deserted her. She broke into a run, but her mind outstripped her, surging, exultant.

“I shall never see him now,” she thought, “I shall never see him now,” and the ecstasy, the relief, the load off her mind, were such as she might have felt had she loved Dick Staveley and been going to meet him.

Softly she let herself into the house. The dining-room was no use: it had a gas fire. She listened at the drawing-room door, No sound. She tiptoed into the fire-stained darkness, crossed the hearthrug and dropped the letter into the reddest cleft among the coals. It did not catch at once so she took the poker to it, driving it into the heart of the heat. A flame sprang up, and at the same moment she heard a movement, and turning, saw the fire reflected in her father's eyes.

“Hullo, Hilda—you startled me. I was having a nap. Burning something?”

“Yes,” said Hilda, poised for flight.

“A love letter, I expect.”

“Oh, no, Daddy; people don't write love letters at my age.”

“At your age——” began Mr. Cherrington. But he couldn't remember, and anyhow it wouldn't do to tell his daughter that at her age he had already written a love letter.

“Must be time for tea,” he said, yawning. “Where's Eustace?”

As though in answer they heard a thud on the floor above, and the sound of water pouring into the bath.

“That's him,” cried Hilda. “I promised him I would put his feet into mustard and water. He won't forgive me if I don't.”

She ran upstairs into the steam and blurred visibility, the warmth, the exciting sounds and comforting smells of the little bath-room. At first she couldn't see Eustace; the swirls of luminous vapour hid him; then they parted and disclosed him, sitting on the white curved edge of the bath with his back to the water and his legs bare to the knee, above which his combinations and his knickerbockers had been neatly folded back, no doubt by Minney's practised hand.

“Oh, there you are, Hilda!” he exclaimed. “Isn't it absolutely spiffing! The water's quite boiling. I only turned it on when you came in. I wish it was as hot as boiling oil—boiling water isn't, you know.”

“How much mustard did you put in?” asked Hilda.

“Half a tin. Minney said she couldn't spare any more.”

“Well, turn round and put your feet in,” Hilda said.

“Yes. Do you think I ought to take off my knickers, too? You see I only got wet as far as my ankles. I should have to take off my combinations.”

Hilda considered. “I don't think you need this time.”

Eustace swivelled round and tested the water with his toe.

“Ooo!”

“Come on, be brave.”

“Yes, but you must put your feet in too. It won't be half the fun if you don't. Besides, you said you would, Hilda.” In his anxiety to share the experience with her he turned round again. “Please! You got much wetter than I did.”

“I got warm running. Besides, it's only salt-water. Salt-water doesn't give you a cold.”

“Oh, but my water was salt, too.”

“You're different,” said Hilda. Then, seeing the look of acute disappointment on his face, she added, “Well, just to please you.”

Eustace wriggled delightedly, and, as far as he dared, bounced up and down on the bath edge.

“Take off your shoes and stockings, then.” It was delicious to give Hilda orders. Standing stork-like, first on one foot, then on the other, Hilda obeyed.

“Now come and sit by me. It isn't very safe, take care you don't lose your balance.”

Soon they were sitting side by side, looking down into the water. The clouds of steam rising round them seemed to shut off the outside world. Eustace looked admiringly at Hilda's long slim legs.

“I didn't fill the bath any fuller,” he said, in a low voice, “because of the marks. It might be dangerous, you know.”

Hilda looked at the bluish chips in the enamel, which spattered the sides of the bath. Eustace's superstitions about them, and his fears of submerging them, were well known to her.

“They won't let you do that at school,” she said.

“Oh, there won't be any marks at school. A new system of plumbing and sanitarisation was installed last year. The prospectus said so. That would mean new baths, of course. New baths don't have marks. Your school may be the same, only the prospectus didn't say so. I expect baths don't matter so much for girls.”

“Why not?”

“They're cleaner, anyway. Besides, they wash.” Eustace thought of washing and having a bath as two quite different, almost unconnected things. “And I don't suppose they'll let us put our feet in mustard and water.”

“Why not?” repeated Hilda.

“Oh, to harden us, you know. Boys have to be hard. If they did, it would be for a punishment, not fun like this.... Just put your toe in, Hilda.”

Hilda flicked the water with her toe, hard enough to start a ripple, and then withdrew it.

“It's still a bit hot. Let's wait a minute.”

“Yes,” said Eustace. “It would spoil
everything
if we turned on the cold water.”

They sat for a moment in silence. Eustace examined Hilda's toes. They were really as pretty as fingers. His own were stunted and shapeless, meant to be decently covered.

“Now, both together!” he cried.

In went their feet. The concerted splash was magnificent, but the agony was almost unbearable.

“Put your arm round me, Hilda!”

“Then you put yours round me, Eustace!”

As they clung together their feet turned scarlet, and the red dye ran up far above the water-level almost to their knees. But they did not move, and slowly the pain began to turn into another feeling, a smart still, but wholly blissful.

“Isn't it wonderful?” cried Eustace. “I could never have felt it without you!”

Hilda said nothing, and soon they were swishing their feet to and fro in the cooling water. The supreme moment of trial and triumph had gone by; other thoughts, not connected with their ordeal, began to slide into Eustace's mind.

“Were you in time to do it?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Well, what you were going to do when you left me on the sands.”

“Oh, that,” said Hilda indifferently. “Yes, I was just in time.” She thought a moment, and added: “But don't ask me what it was, because I shan't ever tell you.”

“I
DIDN'T
know you had a sister, Eustace.”

“Oh, didn't you? Well, as a matter of fact, I have two.”

“Tell me about them.”

Eustace Cherrington hesitated. Stephen Hilliard was a comparatively new friend. They had met in the Summer Term, at the end of Eustace's first year at Oxford. Eustace had been reading a paper to one of the many inter-collegiate societies for the discussion of art and letters which had sprung up with the post-war renascence of the University; they had a Ninetyish air, unashamedly æsthetic. Mushroom growths for the most part, they had their moment of glory. Their members sported striped silk ties, impossible to mistake for an old school tie, so friendly were the colours to each other. A great deal of lobbying and intrigue went to the election, or rejection, of candidates. Feelings ran high, enmities and friendships were created. Stephen Hilliard, president of ‘The Philanderers,' as the society was ambitiously and misleadingly named, had congratulated Eustace on his ‘Some Nineteenth-Century Mystics,' and afterwards invited him to a stately meal; and when they met again after the Long Vacation, they found themselves, to Eustace's surprise, on terms of friendship. Eustace's friends were seldom of his own choosing, but they had one thing in common: they tended to be rather well off. To this tendency, which had grown on Eustace without his noticing it, Stephen was no exception.

Rumour said that he was rich, and his rooms in the High, where they were now sitting, gave colour—brilliant colour—to the rumour. Stephen had had them done up himself, and they had none of the shabbiness of college rooms or of rooms let to undergraduates. The bright, rather hard colours did not aim at harmony or achieve it. The black carpet was relieved by splashes of scarlet lacquer; the cushions were of lilac or scarlet, and edged with black lace; between the two windows stood an ivory-coloured lacquer cabinet, with figures in dull gold and most elaborate brass hinges. In the centre of the chimney-piece, raised on a cube of honey-coloured marble, was a crystal object which reminded one of a skull, but looked at closer, proved not to be. On the opposite wall was a long black mirror, in the mysterious depths of which Eustace could see half of himself, and all of his host, as they sat over their port. At least, Eustace was sitting over his. Stephen did not drink port.

The mirror, which kept so much to itself, reflected the shape of his narrow, aquiline face, which a cardinal's hat might so suitably have surmounted, and the deliberate, rather conscious gestures with which he peeled his pear. By comparison, Eustace's half-face, a dusky D, looked rotund and undistinguished, and he averted his eyes from it.

“Tell me about your sisters,” repeated Stephen, as Eustace did not speak.

“I'm afraid I should have to go rather a long way back.”

“Never mind,” said Stephen. He dipped his long fingers into a finger-bowl of blue-black Bristol glass. “Pre-natal influences are often interesting, and always important.”

Eustace smiled. Stephen's critics complained that if one made him a confidence he turned it to mockery. Eustace did not mind this; indeed, he sometimes felt relieved when one of his remarks was taken more lightly than it was uttered.

“I'm afraid it will be a long story,” he said, “wherever I begin. Compression isn't my strong point. I could never write a précis.”

“Waste no time in self-depreciation, Scheherazade, but fill up your glass, and take up your tale. I am all ears for the recital. But first let's move to what they call more comfortable chairs.”

Stephen was in the habit of putting inverted commas round a cliché; it was his way of discrediting those aspects of the commonplace, and they were many, which offended against whatever might be his pose of the moment.

Glass in hand, Eustace followed his host from the table.

“You take the sofa, and I'll take the chair,” chanted Stephen, “this striped one. Don't you think the colours accuse each other rather charmingly? The other we must leave for whatever ghost your recherche into the past may conjure up.”

Whose ghost would it be? wondered Eustace. His eyes were drawn to the shining crystal that was just not a skull, and immediately the empty chair seemed to be occupied by the outline of a figure, a dark, muddled shape to find in that precise, brightly coloured room, but one which took him straight back to his childhood.

“I suppose it all began with Miss Fothergill,” he said at length.

“‘It' began?” asked Stephen. “What began, my dear Eustace? You must be more definite. Am I to assume that this Miss Fothergill was a kind of Eve?”

At the touch of criticism Eustace's self-confidence crumbled, and he looked downcast and ashamed. “I can't help it,” he mumbled. “It's the way I talk. You're not the first person who's complained of it.... No, Miss Fothergill was a cripple. She used to ride in a bath-chair on the cliffs at Anchorstone, where we lived as children. She was, well, she was deformed, and I used to be afraid of her.”

“But
what
began with her?” asked Stephen. “To what, if I may put it so, did she give rise?”

“Well,” said Eustace, “without her, my life would have been quite different. I shouldn't be here, for one thing—I mean, not here in your room.”

“In that case I feel very grateful to her,” said Stephen courteously. “But how did she know about me? Did she give you my address?”

Eustace smiled.

“You see, it”—Stephen frowned, but Eustace did not notice—“it was like this, and this is where my sister Hilda comes in.”