Eustace and Hilda (92 page)

Jasper was satisfied with his scrutiny, and the nameless stiffening of deportment that precedes farewell crisped his trim figure. “My dear boy,” he said, “I'm sure of it. We all might.”

This touched Eustace in his tenderest spot. But it was Lady Nelly he wanted to vindicate, not himself.

“But on purpose?”

“I hope you're not becoming a Christian,” said Jasper testily. “It makes people so intolerant to their friends.”

“Oh no,” said Eustace mechanically.

“Now what about this manuscript? How shall I get hold of it? I suppose you expect me to send someone for it or fetch it myself?”

“I hadn't thought——” said Eustace helplessly.

Jasper's tongue clicked.

“Well, leave it somewhere where I can find it. Not with Nelly, she's not to be trusted with anything you value. She'd say it was all her own work. It's in type, of course?”

“I'm afraid not.”

“How can you expect me to read it, then? And where shall I write to you? You never gave me your address.”

Eustace thought a moment.

“Oh, Cambo, Norwich Square, Anchorstone, Norfolk.”

“Anchorstone? Then you'll be a neighbour of the Staveleys. Tonino, a pencil, please. Give them my best respects, and tell Dick to behave himself. You saw he was engaged?”

“Yes.”

“Nelly's doing, I expect. I don't envy the girl, whoever she is. However, you probably won't see him if he's leaving at once for Irak.”

“No,” said Eustace.

Jasper twitched his shoulders into uprightness and held out his hand.

“I don't believe in drawn-out good-byes. Say you're going, and go. Good-bye, Eustace, I've enjoyed your company. Take care of yourself—you're not looking very fit—and come back soon.”

“Good-bye, Jasper.”

Eustace returned to his chair. Reflected in the mirror was the doorway through which Jasper had just gone. Eustace also was reflected there: a tumbled, heated, dejected figure, his face blotchy with drink and nervous agitation. The mirror showed him everything that Eustace would ever be. There was nothing to add, nothing to take away. As the tree falls....

The rain still stammered its impotent fury on the windows. At another time the room would have seemed snug. At another time Eustace would have been miserable to think of Silvestro and Erminio waiting for him in the wet, missing their supper, paying the penalty for their kind offices. But they were only a small burden on his mind, a small part of the greater burden of returning to the palace and Lady Nelly, whom he felt he could not see. He would get some food here and spend the night in the hotel and creep into the palace in the morning. “Another Martini, please, Tonino,” he said.

The ice rattled in the shaker, and Tonino's big moustached face, the face of Velasquez in Las Meninas, bent over him.

“How many have I had, Tonino?”

“Only three, Signor Shairington.”

Hilda did not like him to drink. ‘I can't think what you see in it,' she was saying. ‘I never wanted to, but sometimes Dick made me. Once when I came back late to the clinic, the night Sister was going her rounds and she thought I was drunk, and told the Matron so, but I wasn't really. They didn't like me coming in late, they said it set such a bad example. I hope you don't think I'm a bad example, Eustace. I've always tried to be a good example to you. Anyone can get a bit tiddly, can't they? It was only because I was unhappy. I had a bad time, but it's over now.... No, it's not over, it's come back worse than before. Much worse.

‘We had a Matron once who drank, do you remember? I got her sacked, I had to. Well, we can't keep them when they drink. But the directors said they would have overlooked that in my case if it hadn't been—well, aggravated. I minded being brought up before them like—like a servant, and censured. One of them said, “You've often told us what you thought of us, Miss Cherrington, now we must tell you. The clinic has got what we can only call a bad name. The foundations are giving way, and it's going downhill very fast. It's a landslide, an avalanche. We don't altogether blame you, though it's you who must take the blame. We blame your brother Eustace. He's a mild-mannered boy, with a soft face, and he smiles easily, and looks as if he wouldn't hurt a fly. But do you know he's really a destroyer—he was the volcano who overwhelmed the cities on the sands, he was the tidal wave who blotted them out in his bath. He may have spoken nicely to everyone, he may have kissed old ladies and inherited their money, he may have held doors open for the daughters of earls to pass through and picked up their handbags, he may have poured money into the clinic to enlarge it—but at heart he's a destroyer. Right inside him, under layer on layer of colourless fat, behind his goggling eyes and those antennæ that sway so sensitively in the current—right in the seemingly transparent middle of him, there's a tiny grain of explosive, and it's gone off at last. The rumble, the roar, the explosion, the tearing sound, the cities piled in ruins, the dead scattered on the plain, that's what he really wants, and what he's always wanted. See, the towers are toppling. And it's you who will suffer, Miss Cherrington. You will not find it easy to get another post.”'

Eustace caught sight of his face. It seemed to need comfort, and with the feeling that he was ordering a drink for someone else, he said, “Another Martini, Tonino, please.”

This time he did not hear the rattle of the ice, or see the drink being placed before him, for Hilda was speaking, more urgently than before.

‘But after that night when I wrote to you I didn't mind what they said. The days floated past me, like thistle-down in summer. I was under a cloud, I suppose, but I only felt the sunshine; the nurses were kind to me, I think they were glad to see me happy. Stephen didn't come in those days. Of course we made arrangements, Dick and I; they were like trees and mountains in the distance that we should come to in due season. I surrendered all my thoughts to him. Yes, I lived with no other thought, and never put anything in the way, as I used to do, by day or night. All that stiffness went out of me, and the headaches went too, and that ghastly feeling of loneliness in the mornings. I blessed you, Eustace, then, for I felt it was you who wanted this for me. You knew my pride had been my enemy—your heart is so clever, so understanding, there is no one like you, really, Eustace. You held the key to something I could never have found myself and would not have found if I could. You never wanted to keep anything, did you? you were always the soul of generosity, and whenever Dick seemed to be asking too much of me, I could hear your voice saying, “Let it go, let it go!”

‘How happy you must have been all these years, Eustace, never thinking of yourself except in terms of someone else's happiness—you never felt you must make a stand, or deny, or turn down, or appoint yourself the censor of other people's wishes, approving or disapproving according to your own little moral yard-stick. You have a beautiful character, Eustace, a sweet, sweet nature, and whenever my thoughts came down from the heaven where I was, they rested on you, as on a pillow—and that's how it was when I took up the paper which I don't ordinarily read and saw a place marked with a pencil.

‘I suppose one of the servants did it to spite me. I used to speak sharply to them sometimes, I felt I had to—and anyhow, it made no difference, only an hour or two, perhaps; I should have seen it anyway. Then I began to feel numb, and I dropped my coffee cup when it was half-way to my lips, and I tried to pick it up, but I couldn't. And then I began to feel frightened and wanted to ring the bell, but I couldn't get up out of my chair. So at last I called out, and somebody came running, but I couldn't tell them what had happened because my mouth was all sewn up and the words wouldn't come. They won't come now, Eustace, I can't speak any more, but I still have a voice, I can still call out, I can still make a noise, something like your name—I can still scream, EUSTACE!'

There was a noise in his head like the scratching of a gramophone needle when the tune is played out.

Speak, Hilda, speak!

She cannot speak, her mouth is sewn up. She is dumb. She can never tell you what has happened, Eustace.

The scratching went on, but now another sound was joined to it—voices, girls' voices alight with laughter. They were standing, three of them in the doorway, as Eustace could see in the mirror; they were looking sideways down the little flight of steps at someone who was coming up behind them. They were pretty and very smart; their clothes made a soft bright blur round their slender bodies, bending to an unseen wind, and their bare arms a pleading pattern like those of suppliants on a frieze. A man's voice answered, and they all began to move into the room, exploring it with glances, half proud, half shy. “Over there, don't you think, by the window?” the first one said, and they followed each other, expectation in their eyes, across the mirror. After them came a heavier tread, a taller, stronger shape, a man's. For a moment it filled the mirror, a reflection so portentous that Eustace felt the glass must crack.

Lowering his head, he slipped out of his chair, and was already in the doorway when Tonino called after him in Italian, “Shall I put these down to the Contessa?” Eustace nodded and ran down the steps. He could still hear the voices in the bar above him. Where next? The soles of his feet tingled. A page in a green uniform passed him, walking purposefully to the folding doors that led to the terrace and the canal. Mechanically Eustace followed him, and felt the landing-stage heaving under his feet. The rain had almost stopped, but the wind was as strong as ever. “Silvestro! Erminio!” shouted the boy, in tones more imperious than Eustace could have used. “Pronti!” came the answer, in a voice like the crack of a whip. Eustace heard the grating and clanking of chains coming from the darkness on his left, and soon the small square lantern of the gondola was nodding its way towards him. The boat drew up at the stage.

“Comandi?” said Silvestro. His face looked dark and sulky; self-sacrifice had turned sour on him.

Eustace hesitated; he did not know where to go.

“Al palazzo, allora,” said Silvestro impatiently, making Eustace's mind up for him. Just as he spoke a nearby window opened, someone leaned out, and he heard a girl's voice say, “It's going to be a fine night, Dick, after all.”

Eustace scrambled into the gondola, the doors of the felze closed on him, and they were off.

‘At Anchorstone Hall the helmets lay along the window-ledges just as if the knights of old time had thrown them there after a joust. The Staveley family had always been renowned for its knights; they practised daily, hourly, in the tilting-ground, they were patterns of chivalry. And one of them, Sir Richard Staveley, attained a pitch of proficiency in the knightly arts that none of his ancestors had reached before. He roamed the seashore and the forests undefeated, unchallenged even; for whosoever met him, horse and rider went down at the first onset. He was dreaded and admired by all. One day, when he was out hunting in the forest, he came across a boy called Eustace, who had fainted after taking part in a kind of Marathon race of those days, and rescued him, and carried him into his father's castle, where a great log fire was burning, and they gave him brandy and brought him round, and put him into a suit of Richard's which was much too big for him, and after that they were friends, although this Eustace was a clerk and delicate, and could take no part in knightly exercises. And it happened that Eustace had a sister called Hilda, a very beautiful girl who all his life long had taken care of Eustace and told him what he must and must not do. Now Hilda did not care for knights or for any man. But Eustace wanted to introduce her to his friend, Sir Richard, because he hoped she would like him; so he persuaded her to stay at the Castle.

‘But this Sir Richard, though he was so brave and strong and had distinguished himself in the wars against the Moslems, was a false knight, and he used his friend's sister extremely ill. He slung her across his saddle-bow and carried her off and betrayed her and ravished her. And all this time he promised her marriage and she believed him, but when the day of the marriage drew near, he broke his plighted word and said he would marry another girl, a girl much richer than Hilda and used to the life of Courts. And when Hilda heard, the cup dropped from her hand, and all her limbs stiffened and her mouth was tied down so that she could not speak.

‘Now all this time her brother, Eustace, was in Venice, where he had been lured by a princess who was Sir Richard's aunt and in the plot with him. And she bought a costly dress for Eustace's sister so that she might find new favour with Sir Richard. But Eustace discovered the plot and what had happened to Hilda, and said he must at once return to England because he was the man of the family and they relied on him. Now as he was sitting in a place of refreshment thinking of these things and preparing to depart, the mists cleared, and Sir Richard entered attended by three ladies of rank and fashion and they all laughed together.

‘Of course if Eustace had been a knight as Sir Richard was, and accustomed to the wars, he would have stayed and said “Traitor, defend thyself!” and flung his glove in Sir Richard's face. But as he was only a clerk, and suffered from a weak heart, he rose before they saw him and stole away. And everyone said, “Well done, Eustace! You have shown the discretion which is the better part of valour. You could not make a scene before ladies, that is taboo; and had you attacked Sir Richard, you would now be lying senseless on the greensward, quite unable to undertake the journey that lies before you to-morrow. Besides, duelling is a brutal and degrading custom condemned by all civilised people.”'

The gondola heeled over, flinging Eustace forward almost on to his knees, and a scatter of spray broke against the window. Peering through the running drops, he saw the great bulk of Ca' Foscari; they had passed the iron bridge and were nearly home.