Eustace and Hilda (46 page)

The answer did not seem to please Aunt Sarah.

“I had somehow imagined him older than that,” she said. “Perhaps it was because you told me he would soon be beginning his career.”

“Twenty-five isn't really young,” said Eustace.

“Only relatively, of course. Youth ends with the acceptance of responsibility. For some this happens early, too early. They miss their youth, which is a pity. Barbara might well have waited a little, I think. But there comes a time after which it is unsuitable to cling to youth.”

“Yes,” said Eustace uneasily. He could see that from his aunt's point of view he was at once too young and too old, too young for his opinions to carry weight, too old to be at Oxford. Perhaps he would never be the right age. Against her standard of suitability —which was moral in origin, but with more than a dash of worldliness in it—he seemed to have no appeal. There was much to be said for suitability: it was the essence of good taste. His knick-knacks did not look right in this room because they were unsuitable; and perhaps that was why he did not feel right in it either. They were undeniably beautiful, he felt sure, in spite of his momentary exasperation with the Kelim dog, and might have retorted that the room was unsuitable to them. But Eustace did not feel he could adopt their argument. It would be safer to bring the conversation back to Stephen.

“Stephen would soon catch up,” he said. “He's a very able man.” He felt that Miss Cherrington would have to respect this definition. “I expect Hilda realised that, even at a single meeting.”

“It's possible she has seen him more than once,” said Miss Cherrington.

Eustace was startled. “Oh no, I don't think so,” he said. “They're both too busy; besides, I should have heard.”

Aunt Sarah looked as if he might not be as omniscient as he thought, and a doubt wriggled into Eustace's mind.

“Well,” she said, rising. “I only hope this new arrangement about the solicitor will turn out satisfactorily. Hilda does not often make a mistake. Thank you for telling me, Eustace. I must get ready to go out now.”

Aunt Sarah often thanked Eustace as it were for nothing, but this time there was real gratitude in her voice, and he was reminded of his resolution to try to meet her on a more human plane.

“Oh, where are you going?” he asked, with every appearance of interest.

Miss Cherrington turned round, surprised.

“To do a little shopping, and then to the Bank. It closes early on Thursdays.”

“Oh, does it? How tiresome for you.”

“Bank clerks must have their holidays as well as other people,” said Aunt Sarah. “Only this morning it does happen to be a little inconvenient.”

“I should think so,” cried Eustace, with what he knew to be an unsuitable display of sympathy. “I can lend you some money if you like.”

“Thank you, Eustace, but I don't like borrowing, and I shall have to go some time.” She turned away.

“Tell me,” implored Eustace, throwing into his voice all the interest he could muster, “what other errands have you? Anything really exciting?” He felt the inquiry to be a little fatuous.

Miss Cherrington retreated a pace from the door.

“I'm going to the butcher's for one thing,” she said. “I don't know if you would call that exciting.”

“Oh, do bring back some of those delicious sausages,” said Eustace. “I enjoyed them so on Saturday night.”

“We have had better, but I'm glad you appreciated them,” Miss Cherrington said.

“They were absolutely divine,” said Eustace. Noticing a shadow cross her face at his use of such an inappropriate epithet, Eustace added hastily, “Where else are you going?”

“To the grocer's, and then to the library, and then to the chemist's, if I have time.”

“Will you have time for a cup of coffee at the Tivoli?”

“Thank you, I don't want to spoil my lunch.”

“I adore chemists' shops,” persisted Eustace. “All those fascinating new cures. They make one almost long to be ill, don't they?”

“They don't have that effect on me,” said Aunt Sarah. “But if you're so interested in them, why don't you come with me, Eustace? There are one or two small commissions I could give you, and we should be back all the sooner.”

“Oh
well
,” said Eustace, dismayed at the turn the conversation had taken, “I don't think I could—you see, I ought to stay in and do this work. I'm a little behind-hand already, I'm afraid.”

He glanced guiltily at the clock.

“I see,” said Miss Cherrington, and Eustace felt he deserved the grimness in her tone. “And what will you be doing this afternoon, may I ask?”

“This afternoon?” said Eustace, as if that date, with all its obligations of time properly spent, were a century distant—“this afternoon?” he repeated; “why, this afternoon I thought of going to see Hilda. I've hardly seen her since the wedding. As you reminded me, it's Thursday, and Thursday is one of the days she sees people. I can telephone to her.”

He seized the back of an undamaged chair, and from behind this bulwark gazed defiantly at Miss Cherrington.

“What sudden decisions you make,” she said. “But I think this may be a sensible one. You will have business matters to discuss with her. Would you like me to go with you?”

Eustace hesitated only a split second before saying “Oh, Aunt
Sarah
!” with a gush of delighted invitation in his voice, but he hesitated too long. Or perhaps Miss Cherrington had merely wanted to test a second time the genuineness of his interest in her day's employments. At any rate she said, “Perhaps, after all, you had better go by yourself,” and left the room with a dignity and an absence of visible disappointment that made Eustace feel more than ever ashamed.

It was not till Annie came in to lay the table that he remembered the letter in his pocket. He might safely open it now, for the thought of lunch provided all the artificial stimulus necessary to live through the half-hour before it arrived.

The address, a London club, was scratched out, and by the side was written, Anchorstone Hall, Norfolk. The words gave him a curious thrill, and he put the letter down for a moment before reading it.

On a third reading the sting in the tail of the letter shed its venom and seemed quite playful. As a matter of fact, by no means all the members of the Lauderdale had taken part in the rag; Eustace was not alone in declining its excitements, and he had certainly shown no signs of open disapproval. It wasn't only that he didn't enjoy smashing things up: he had his rather delicate position in the College to consider. He would explain that to Dick Staveley, who would of course understand.... The rest of the letter was friendly.

How pleasant it would be to see Anchorstone Hall from inside.

The house had been a lodestar of his childhood, though for some reason it had always touched a negative pole in Hilda. She had refused to go when they were jointly invited, and Dick had never seemed to want him without her. Nor did he now.

But the Hilda of to-day, who had knocked about the world, would surely feel differently. She might perhaps find Dick interesting; he was obviously interested in her, and in what she was doing.

Eustace abandoned himself to a day-dream. It passed through several stages, growing more ambitious with each.

‘I'm just going to Anchorstone to spend a day or two with my sister, Hilda Staveley. Oh, didn't you know? Yes, in July' (Eustace's imagination never allowed much time for things to happen) ‘at St. Margaret's, Westminster. We couldn't very well have the reception here, so Lady Nelly kindly lent us her house in Portman Square. But surely you knew, Stephen? We sent you an invitation.... The chicken-run? Oh, I expect she's forgotten about that now—she's given up the clinic—it was just a pastime really—she's busy trying to make Anchorstone a little more habitable—it's so Victorian—you must come and take a look at the old house some time—I'll get Hilda to write to you, if that seems more in order.'

He did not tell his aunt about the second letter, but when he started off for Highcross Hill, he made sure that it was in his pocket.

H
IGHCROSS HILL
was the other side of London, in Surrey. To get there took nearly two hours and involved a great many changes, not only of tram and train, but of tense and mood. With the ring of a conductor's bell-punch, the future hardened into the present; with the casual discard of a ticket, the present fluttered into the past. Drawing near to Hilda was a ritual. Eustace liked to approach his friends in this way; the successive stages were like purifications of his personality; other associations were dismissed, competing preoccupations were sloughed off, and he would bring to the encounter a mind like a clean slate, charged with expectancy —if a slate could be. The interest of seeing whether he was before or behind his schedule—for Eustace, like many unpunctual people, was exceedingly time-conscious—also helped, in its humble way, the process of perlustration. But to-day the process was not quite complete. His thoughts kept returning to the letter in his pocket. More than once he took it out and read it. When at last he arrived at Lowcross Station, it was still germinating in his mind, so that instead of waiting, as he usually did, to see the train dramatically disappear into the tunnel in the hill-side which almost overhung the platform, he brushed past the ticket collector and had to be recalled by one of those loud shouts, which always seem meant for someone else, to receive back the return half of his ticket.

The exertion of climbing the hill, however, pushed the letter into a lower stratum of consciousness. Eustace had been told to take hills easily. Highcross Hill could not be taken easily, but he had established certain rest stations at which he called, somewhat in the spirit of a railway train.

The fascination of this pretence had remained with him since childhood. He could be a fast or a stopping train, according to how fit he felt. To-day he was in good form. No signal-slack at the chestnut tree; no slowing down by the churchyard wall for repairs to the permanent way. He had reached the inn—appropriately called The Half-Way House—without a stop. The Half-Way House was a kind of Clapham Junction, and to wait there was compulsory. Alas! it was always shut at this hour; no chance of refuelling: the prosperous, brick-red face—heavily made up, Eustace felt, like a middle-aged barmaid's—was impassive over its legends of Saloon Bar, Private Bar, Jug and Bottle: a cynic openly exhibiting her broken promises.

Eustace spent two minutes' silence leaning against the square mast pole that supported the heavily flapping sign, and then, Excelsior! ‘Try not the pass, the old man said'; but the youth paid no heed, because he had Hilda waiting for him at the summit. ‘Dark lowers the tempest overhead.' Eustace glanced up; it had been raining, as befitted an April day, but the sky was now quite clear. ‘The roaring torrent is deep and wide,' the discouraging voice persisted. There was no torrent: Eustace pressed on through the now semi-Alpine scenery. ‘Beware the pine tree's withered branch,' counselled the voice—the peasant's voice, speaking in English, for the Swiss were a cultivated nation. Sure enough, overhead there was a pine tree, and it had a withered branch. Exactly why the branch was dangerous Eustace had never understood. That it would fall off just as he was going under it was a supposition too unlikely to affright even the most timid. Longfellow's stalwart traveller would scout such a risk; and to climb the tree and sit on the branch would be meeting trouble more than half-way.

Unexpectedly, for he had been doing so well, Eustace felt a little out of breath, but to stop now would be against the rules. The next station, the Gothic lodge of Highcross Place, was round the bend, out of sight. He was undoubtedly panting: supposing he just stopped for once, here, where he was, without paying any attention to his self-imposed traffic signals? It was no disgrace for a train to stop between stations. He stopped, but his heart went on thumping. ‘What shall I do?' he wondered, panic rising in him. Seeing the pine tree's withered branch, the youth decided to retrace his steps. There was no point in going on to die on a mountain top: nobody would be the better for it. As he descended the mountain the peasant and the maiden and one or two more came out from behind some rocks and said, ‘Bravo, Eustace, you've done the right thing after all. None of us wanted you to go on. It would have been certain destruction.'