Eustace and Hilda (63 page)

“Will you take my hat?”

“Of course I will,” he answered, and holding the hat in front of him with a reverent air he laid it on the chair beside his cap.

A look of surprise appeared on several faces; but Lady Nelly and Antony both smiled.

The glasses clinked on the silver tray as the footman carried them up the steps, and Crosby followed with the champagne foaming into its napkin. As the bottle went its round, and another was brought to supplement it, Eustace marvelled at the transformation in the faces round him. Nothing, they seemed to say, could ever go wrong again.

Sir John stood up and tapped on the table.

“Now we must drink the health of the happy—of the happily returned pair,” he said.

The company rose to their feet, leaving Dick and Hilda seated.

They seemed a little doubtful how to frame the toast; ‘Dick,' of course, was on every lip, and in the glorious excitement of the moment, Eustace did not mind if some voices said ‘Miss Cherrington' instead of ‘Hilda,' for they were one and the same person, and she was his sister, Hilda Cherrington, an honoured guest, nay the guest of honour, at Anchorstone Hall.

They did not return to the drawing-room but said their good-nights, which for some were good-byes, outside the door of the New Building, under the stars. When Eustace and Antony had climbed the college staircase, Eustace said:

“They never told us where they'd been.”

Antony followed him into his room and sat down on Eustace's dressing-gown which was draped over a chair.

“Oh, that's Dick all over,” he said. “He likes to make a mystery of everything. The plain truth bores him. I expect they just went to Southend. Perhaps your sister will tell us in the train to-morrow.”

Eustace wondered how he could get his dressing-gown from under Antony without seeming to reproach him for sitting on it.

“I don't suppose she will,” he said, “if Dick asked her not to. She didn't tell Victor Trumpington, even when he asked her straight out.”

“She was quite right,” said Antony, taking the cord of the dressing-gown and absent-mindedly winding it round his neck. “It would have been like telling the town crier. But she'll tell you.”

“I'm not sure,” said Eustace. “She doesn't tell me a great deal. But why should they mind us knowing?”

“I don't suppose your sister objects,” said Antony. “It's because Dick delights in mystification. No doubt that's how he got round the Arabs. He kept them guessing. Perhaps we shall never know where they went. Should you mind?”

From over the cord of the dressing-gown, which he had tied in an enormous bow, he suddenly gave Eustace a look of piercing inquiry.

“Sir John and Lady Staveley will think it rather odd,” said Eustace. “Besides, they must have been
somewhere
.”

“Now you're playing Dick's game for him,” said Antony. “He'll be prowling about his room with wolfish strides, doing his nightly exercises, and saying to himself, ‘Eustace is wondering where I and Hilda went to.' In that order—of course he'd put himself first. Anyhow, we shall know when the postcard comes.”

“We shall be gone before then,” said Eustace.

“Perhaps they never sent it,” said Antony—“you remember Sir John asking where they could have bought a postcard on a Sunday.”

“That was when Hilda swallowed her champagne the wrong way. She isn't used to it and doesn't like it really.”

“Yes, and Sir John patted her on the back, which I thought rather familiar.”

Eustace laughed.

“Well, as long as it doesn't matter,” he said.

Antony seemed lost in thought.

“Oh, I don't think it
matters
,” he said, “what matters is that they got back. I'm sure that's all Sir John and Cousin Edie are thinking about.”

“You don't think they blamed Hilda?” said Eustace. “They didn't seem to, but she said it was partly her fault.”

“She had to say that,” said Antony. “Women always do—I mean—you know what I mean. If you knew our hosts as well as I, you would realise how pleased they were. They were not only articulate, they were almost demonstrative. And the champagne! And Sir John's birthday-bridal toast! I daren't look at you while he said it. He's clearly losing grip, poor old gentleman.”

“I'm not sure that Lady Staveley thought that funny,” said Eustace.

“Well, you know how mothers feel on such occasions.”

“But you said Lady Staveley was so thankful to see them back.”

“Of course she was. But——” Fixing on Eustace a dark and enigmatic look, Antony sprang to his feet. The captive dressing-gown, tethered by its belt, swung into the air, then settled gracefully round his slight figure.

“Don't you think we shall soon hear of the engagement?” he said slyly.

“The engagement?” echoed Eustace.

“Well, everything points that way.”

Catching sight of himself in a looking-glass, he twitched the crimson mantle.

Eustace also rose to his feet.

“Do you mean Dick and Hilda?”

Antony inclined his head. “Don't you like the idea?” he asked, as Eustace was silent.

“I don't know what to think,” said Eustace at last.

“We'll talk about it tomorrow,” said Antony, and before Eustace could answer he was gone, the crimson cloud streaming from his shoulders.

The warmth of the bed contributed deliciously to the wine-warmed glow of Eustace's thoughts. What a momentous evening it had been—all the broken threads of the day drawing together, all the disparities and antagonisms (if such they were) united in one current of feeling! A climacteric. The empyrean that had received Hilda had at last received them all and they had wandered in it unchecked. The absolute sense of spiritual well-being that Eustace had coveted all his life now enveloped him; it breathed in every glance of admiration bestowed on Hilda, in every understanding smile accorded to himself. He felt, as he had felt then in the sunshine of their appreciation, an extraordinary lightness and freedom. They had taken something from him, something off him; a burden, a weight, the stone of Sisyphus.

His life's work had been achieved, and he was sinking, sinking, through layers of accomplished effort, or of effort that need no longer be accomplished, into a soft ecstasy of being where Lady Nelly's smile, shining down from the interminable parapets of Whaplode, performed for him vicariously all that the world, at its most demanding, had ever expected of him. She was his justification, at the mere mention of whose name all newspapers, statesmen, poets, archbishops and aristocrats did homage: and he wore her like a crown. She was his firmament, in the unchallengeable order of which Dick and Hilda and Sir John and Lady Staveley had their appointed places and shone for ever, a mighty constellation. Oh, if he could only share with Hilda his rapture at her apotheosis! If only he could glide along those passages—passages that were as good as hers now—and pour his pride and happiness, like a farewell, in her ear!

‘Yes, of course, Mr. Cherrington, naturally you want to see your sister, who wouldn't at a time like this? Wait until I put the light on. Now.' The passage was flooded with light except where the shadows, the high, rectangular shadows, marked the many doorways; but Eustace could not quite see who his interlocutor was. His voice was not very cultured; could he be a burglar? ‘Oh, but you've got no dressing-gown; won't you catch cold? Oughtn't you to go back and fetch it? Of course we don't mind how you look, I was only thinking of your health.... The Honourable Antony Lachish took it with him, did he? How thoughtless of him. But why not go back and ask him for it? I'll wait for you here. Don't go down into the courtyard, you might get a chill, there's a way through the house—you'll find it.'

But Eustace was a long time finding it because the other passages were in darkness and he didn't know where the switches were. He began to feel very cold, and there were so many doors. But at last he was standing in Antony's room. The moonlight shone in. The room was bigger than he remembered, and clothes in heaps were lying all about. How could he tell which was his dressing-gown? He didn't want to wake Antony up. But in the end he had to. ‘Oh, Antony, where's my dressing-gown? I'm so sorry, but I must have it to go and see Hilda. I want to tell her how happy I am.' ‘Can't you tell her in the morning?' ‘No, I must tell her now. Besides there's someone waiting for me.'

Antony got out of bed. ‘Well, here it is, but you must be careful with the cord because it might trip you up or curl round your neck and choke you. I had a narrow escape myself.' ‘Oh I think I can manage it.'

Warmer now Eustace sped down into the quadrangle. But the door of the New Building was locked and he had to start again from his own bedroom. It was a long business and at first he thought his guide had forgotten to wait; but suddenly he spoke from the shadow of a doorway and said, ‘Oh, here you are; that's much better, but what's the thing crawling round your neck?' ‘Oh, just the girdle of my dressing-gown, it has a way of doing that.' ‘Well, don't let it catch on a nail. Now come this way.'

Something started ahead of him; Eustace had the feeling that he was following his own shadow. ‘This door should be your sister's because, you see, she has put her dress outside. What a funny thing to do.‘ ‘Oh, I expect she thought they would clean it and press it. She isn't used to staying in houses like this—she didn't want to, really, you know. It was I who persuaded her. But, of course, the house belongs to her in a way, doesn't it?' ‘Yes, but why has she put
all
her clothes outside? Here are her stockings and her—well, everything—What can she be wearing? She can't have any clothes on at all, she must be a regular Lady Godiva.'

‘If you knock,' said Eustace, gathering the clothes into his arms, ‘I'll bring them all in.' ‘She doesn't answer,' said the guide. ‘Perhaps she has just left all her clothes there and gone for a walk in the park.' ‘Oh no, she wouldn't do that, she doesn't do that even at home—try the door.' There was a pause. ‘It's locked,' said the guide, ‘locked on the inside—that shows she doesn't want you to come in. She doesn't want anyone to come in.' ‘I'll call her,' cried Eustace in an agony. ‘Hilda! Hilda!'

With the sound of her name in his ears Eustace woke up. For a moment all the horror and distress of nightmare clogged his unfolding senses. But soon the blessedness of reality began to assert itself, doubly sweet for the fears that it suppressed. He lay awake, savouring the contrast. Why did his dreams never get the facts right? The dream suggested that Hilda had gone out naked into the night, whereas the truth was that she had come in from the night, clothed in more than her own clothes, clothed in the glory and radiance of Anchorstone Hall.

What a different home-coming from that other—when he had been brought back to Cambo from this very house—guilty, ill, almost dying, to be greeted by sparse words and tense faces, by an anxiety too strained to show its tenderness. No champagne then, no fatted calf for the prodigal who had preferred the way of pleasure to the path of duty. For Dick and Hilda—also, it might be said, absent without leave—a rousing welcome had been prepared; and that welcome, Eustace obscurely felt, had made amends for the other, had repaid him for what he suffered then. How fascinating it was to try to trace a pattern in one's life. By giving way to Hilda (for in spite of his attempted rebellion she had prevailed in the end) he had inherited Miss Fothergill's legacy; by giving way to him in the matter of coming to Anchorstone, Hilda was to inherit Anchorstone itself.

No wonder, Eustace thought confusedly, that Justice was depicted bearing a pair of scales. He realised the truth of what, until now, he had always doubted: that one might know what was best for other people and be justified in urging them to take a certain course and bringing moral pressure to bear on them, however much against their will. For Hilda to overcome such an obstacle as this, and the dead weight of circumstance too, was easy; for him it had been supremely difficult; yet his success had been even more startling than hers. He was glad now that he had failed in one of his minor projects—to walk with Hilda along the sands to revisit the scene of their old-time pond-making. Had they gone, that flight—that almost nuptial flight—into the zenith could not have happened—and who knows?—Anchorstone might still be a-begging and Hilda deprived of her reward. And besides, it would have been a cowardly sneaking back to the past, a feeble poor-spirited attempt to revive the joys of childhood, a journey à la recherche du temps perdu, interesting as a literary experiment perhaps, but to modern minds a most serious sin—the denial of life. At all costs one must go forward. Hilda had always known that—she had only not wanted to visit Anchorstone because in this particular instance she could not see where the true path of her development lay. But she had never been afraid of big things. She had never shared his weakness for the motionless and the miniature and the embalmed; she never clung, as he did, to the forms of things after the spirit had gone out of them. He had never got the chance to ask her to go for that sentimental journey on the sands; but no doubt she would have refused if he had. She did not like retracing her steps. She would not have wanted to look for a sea-anemone in a pool or stop outside the white gate of Cambo and try to recapture their feelings when last they stood there.

Perhaps Eustace did not really want to either, for as he began to evoke the brown façade, with the rather grand bow window on the left and the small flat one on the right that did not match, the smell of food coming through the door, and the voice inside telling him to hurry up, the vision faded; and now his car, a Rolls Royce, was stopping outside another doorway, upon whose grey stone pediment reclined in proud abandon portly rococo angels blowing trumpets. On either side, farther than his car-bound eye could see, extended the mighty walls of Whaplode, a Palmerston Parade celestially amplified; and down the steps came six butlers, their normally impassive features lively with expectation. ‘They think you're
someone else
!' whispered the chauffeur, holding the door open; but before he could put his foot to the ground Eustace was asleep.