Eustace and Hilda (37 page)

“Which aspect?” asked Eustace.

“You'll hear. But perhaps you know the piece?” Stephen added. “Bach's Concerto for Two Violins.”

Eustace did not know it. He had ambitions to be musical, and music-teachers had cherished ambitions on his behalf; but at a certain point he had stuck. It was a point he had reached in several of his studies, a respectable distance from the ground but out of sight of the summit. He had learned—perhaps too readily—to take these stopping-places for granted and not try to improve on them. Their presence still constituted a challenge, but then, the background of his mind was littered with challenges. How often had he begun to discuss music with a musician, only to find himself out of his depth, clutching at some straw of information that was not knowledge, though it had the air of being; while his interlocutor, not suspecting that a fraud was being practised on him, launched into deeper waters where Eustace dared not follow. Yet how dull it was to say, ‘I haven't heard that,' or ‘I'm afraid I don't know what the Lydian Mode is.' Stranded on some convenient sandbank, Eustace would try to lure the expert back to the shallows of his subject without exposing his own ignorance.

Enclosed in this mood of self-depreciation he suddenly realised that the music had been going on for some time. That was what music did for him: it made him think more intensely, but about something else. He really must pay attention. One could not always tell, at least he could not always tell, with Bach: there were signs that this concluding phrase might be the last but one. He stole a glance at the position of the gramophone needle. Yes, it would be.

“That was lovely,” he said, as Stephen got up to turn over the record.

“I don't believe you heard a note,” said Stephen. “But you must listen to the next movement, for this is just how I imagine you and Miss Hilda in your times of greatest spiritual” (he paused for a moment)—“interpenetration.”

He gave Eustace a slight bow, which Eustace automatically returned; and the movement began.

If Eustace did not understand music, he could appreciate and enjoy it, and the first phrase of that divine melody held him spell-bound, not only to the spirit of the music, but for a time to the music itself; so that when Stephen, his impassive face transformed and softened, murmured, “You see that you begin to repeat what your sister says,” he heard as well as saw what Stephen meant.

“Yes, but I answer her sometimes, too,” he said. Stephen nodded. Did Hilda ever repeat what he said? he wondered. He did not say much that was worth repeating—but he sometimes quoted Hilda's remarks, the more trenchant and incisive ones, half in admiration and half in malice. But that was not the kind of repeating Stephen meant. He frowned. The music seemed to rebuke him with its nobility, its integrity of feeling. His thoughts travelled back. It was not in their everyday relationship, he realised, that such harmony was to be found. There Hilda always took the lead. Stephen should have chosen an air with an accompaniment as his symbol of their relation to each other. This was all give and take.

The music went on, establishing in his mind its convention—if a mood so living could be called a convention—of flawless intellectual sympathy, of the perfected manners of the heart. The beauty was founded on the reasonableness of each utterance; it was born miraculously out of a kind of logic; the notes were not the parents of beauty, as with Schubert, but the children. This celestial conversation gave a sense of union no less compelling than the impulse to a kiss.

Eustace's mind travelled back, looking for the moments when he and Hilda had been most nearly in accord. He seemed to have to go a long way back, to the cliffs of Anchorstone, when she asked him to partner her in a pretence three-legged race; to the Downs, after another race in which they had defeated Nancy Steptoe and her brother, Hilda's traditional foes. He remembered the exquisite sense of communion he had with her then; he remembered a similar enlargement of the spirit when he had persuaded her to accept the half of Miss Fothergill's legacy. The quality of these moments could be heard, he fancied, in the serene interaction of the two violins. But they were the outcome of emotional stress, in one or two cases of differences and hard words; how could they compare with this music, which was like a reconciliation without a quarrel?

And what was there to show lately for the promise of those early days? Had he fulfilled his manifold obligations to Hilda? Had he paid her back? He had given her the money, true; he had been as good as his childhood's word, but only after a struggle with his conscience very unlike the eager giving on the beach at Anchorstone. Since then, in moods of self-complacency, he had caught himself reasoning that he had done for Hilda all that he could be expected to do, and that his generosity entitled him to all the efforts she made for him, entitled him even to feel annoyed and irritable when those efforts required, as they often did, corresponding exertions on his part. Indeed, Hilda was always putting her oar in, constituting herself the voice of conscience; she was a task-mistress, leading the chorus, undefined, unrecognised, but clearly felt, of those who thought he ought to try more, do more, be more, than he had it in him to try, or do, or be.

A sense of unworthiness stole over Eustace and came between him and the music. The heavenly dialogue seemed now to be couched in a foreign language: though he could still follow the sense, he no longer understood the words. Why not enjoy the beauty? Why try to relate it, competitively, to something in his own life? What had made Stephen dig up the question of his relationship with Hilda? To keep its meaning at full stretch was, he sometimes felt, a burden greater than he could bear. He tried to put her out of his mind and listen unhampered by the thought of her, but it didn't do; something cold and set in his attitude resisted the music. He must humble himself and invite her back. He did so, the stiffness round his heart relaxed and melted and the music once more poured its ineffable message into his waiting ear. Only just in time; the two voices maintained their sublime colloquy for a bar or two more, and were silent.

“I could see you liked that,” said Stephen, “and I think Miss Hilda would have liked it too. In the third movement, which I'm just going to put on, I'm afraid you'll have to face ordinary life again, and a moment comes, I must warn you (indeed it comes twice), when you both grow rather strident and shout defiance in unison, whether at each other, or at a third party, I leave you to decide.”

The music started off at Bach's typical quick trot, a pace which, being uniform and neither fast nor slow, the pace of the mind rather than of the emotions, left Eustace respectful but unmoved. This was a case for understanding, not feeling, and he did not understand. But he was waiting with interest for the strident passage when the sound of shouting, that had been audible for some moments but had seemed part of the general noises of the street, suddenly localised itself under their window and seemed manifestly addressed to them.

“Hilliard!”

“Eustace!”

The names came up raggedly from below. Then someone called out, “We want Eustace.” Immediately four or five voices took up the refrain, and “We want
Eustace
,” chanted with a formidable and threatening accent on the last word, filled the air.

Stephen looked interrogatively at his guest.

“Shall we take no notice?”

“I'm afraid that wouldn't be any good,” said Eustace. “They'll have seen the lights. Ask them what they want me for, would you, Stephen?”

Stephen opened the window, letting in a rush of fresh air, and leaning out spoke in an impersonal and affronted tone, rather as one might address a gathering of footpads.

“They want you to go down to them,” he said, coming back and not trying to conceal the vexation in his voice.

“Who are they?” asked Eustace.

“I don't know, but I should guess they come from Christ Church. I think it was Lakeland who spoke to me.” There was rancour in Stephen's misrendering of the name.

“I thought I recognised his voice,” said Eustace. “It isn't easy to mistake. Did they sound hostile?”

“No, just rather drunk.”

Eustace looked about him in perplexity, avoiding Stephen's eye. It was a flattering summons, and Antony would be sober even if his friends were not. Suddenly the rhythmic scratching of the gramophone needle filled the room; during the interruption the Concerto had played itself out, without either of them noticing. Stephen walked across to the instrument, and with a gesture much brisker than was usual with him removed the record.

“But we heard the strident passage after all, didn't we?” said Eustace ruefully.

Stephen said nothing, but immediately, like a commentary on Eustace's words, the concerted demand “We want Eustace” again smote their ears.

“I think I'd better go down and placate them,” said Eustace uneasily. He rose, looking guilty and worried. “It's been a lovely evening, Stephen, and I hate to break it up—but I think they would if I didn't. I know them in that mood.”

Stephen didn't seem to be open to good-byes.

“What about the work you were going to do?” he said.

Eustace glanced at the skull on the chimney-piece. It gave him an old-fashioned look, but could not tell him the time, and he had to fumble in rather an exposed manner for his watch which had slipped into a corner of his pocket as if ashamed of recording misspent hours.

“It's only eleven—I shall just rush round and see them, and then dart back to Stubbs.”

“Well, well,” said Stephen, who seemed to have recovered his good humour, “if you must, you must, but I don't think Miss Hilda's blessing will go with you.” He stooped to pick up Eustace's gown, which lay in a round heap in a corner like a black cat asleep. Relieved and grateful that his host now seemed accessible to farewell, Eustace took the garment from him.

“You will come and meet Hilda at lunch next Wednesday, won't you?” he said. “She'll be up for the day.”

“I shouldn't dare,” said Stephen.

“Oh, do come. She's lovely, as I told you, almost a great beauty. Everyone says so.”

Suddenly a terrific blare of “WE WANT EUSTACE” burst through the window, and even crept faintly up the stairs.

“Good-bye, Eustace,” said Stephen. “I mustn't keep you from your friends.”

He shut the door, turned out the light, and sitting on the window-seat looked down into the street. He saw Eustace step on to the pavement, to be at once enveloped by scurrying, eddying figures whose wild cries suggested they might be going to tear him to pieces. His long scholar's gown, among their short ones, made him look, to Stephen's disenchanted eye, like an older crow mobbed by fledglings. When the uproar died down, he heard Lachish say, “Was it very awful of us, Eustace? You see, we did want you to come down.”

Stephen couldn't catch Eustace's reply, but it sounded conciliatory, even gratified. Soon the sound of voices faded away, in the direction of Carfax, except for an occasional high-pitched laugh or bass guffaw, and then the clocks of Oxford, striking eleven, drowned the last audible trace of Eustace and his rout.

Finding the air pleasant and not too cold, Stephen sat on at the window, and let the night stream over him. The High was almost empty now, and flooded with pale light against which the shadows showed dark as the black notes on a keyboard. While he watched, the moon swung clear of the crocketed spire of St. Mary's, opposite. It was nearly full, and the white disc seemed to be peering at him. Lifting his face to its scrutiny, he stared back with a look as enigmatic as its own.

I
T WAS
seven o'clock, and Miss Cherrington was laying the table for their evening meal. Her hands, gracefully shaped but seamed from hard work and with the veins standing out, showed bluish against the table-cloth. Having laid two places, they paused in their to-and-fro movement and she raised her head.

An electric-light bulb hung over the table. Someone had draped the hard white shade with a petticoat of pink silk to save the eyes and spare the complexions of the diners; but Miss Cherrington, leaning forward, got the full glare on her upturned face. It revealed many things—abundant grey hair, pulled but not strained back, wrinkles on her brow and cheeks, a faded skin, tired eyes still startlingly blue, a prominent bony nose, and a mouth that self-discipline had forced into a straight line. She thought so intently that she might have been listening. Then, apparently unable to answer her own question, she opened the door and called up the staircase.

“Barbara!”

Unmistakable but not overpowering, bathroom noises, always a festive and reviving sound, trickled down into the little hall. There was no answer, and she called again.

The swishing ceased, and a voice that easily overcame the obstacles to audibility replied:

“What is it, Aunt Sarah?”

“Did Hilda tell you”—Miss Cherrington began in tones almost as loud as Barbara's, but the effort to be unladylike was too much for her and she resumed her speaking voice—“what time she would be back?”

A moment's silence was followed by a great parting of the waters and then by the opening of a door, and a figure, clad only in a bath-towel, appeared at the head of the staircase.

“Oh!” Miss Cherrington's exclamation conveyed a host of misgivings.

“Excuse my unconventional attire,” Barbara said, “and don't be afraid, I shan't catch cold. Hilda said she might be a bit late, but we weren't to wait for her.”

“I'll lay for three, then,” said Miss Cherrington.

“Yes, I should. If Jimmy blows in he'll have had his supper. If not, he can go without.”

“Oh, is he coming?” asked Miss Cherrington rather helplessly, but there was no answer, only a whirl of the bath-towel, a flash of pink leg and a slam of the bath-room door.