Eustace and Hilda (94 page)

Dick shrugged his broad shoulders.

“Oh yes, I expect so. But England's over for the present. I'm not so very young now, but I shall be a hoary old sinner next time you see me.” He smiled again. “But you won't want to. Better out of the way, eh?”

“No,” muttered Eustace. “No.”

He remembered Dick's political ambitions, abandoned now; he remembered his life at home; he remembered his family's anxiety for him the night they all thought he had crashed; he remembered Monica Sheldon's dumb, swollen-eyed misery. The torturing uncertainty they went through then would now be a matter of months and years, not hours. I have done them all great harm, he thought, and he no longer felt vindictive against Dick.

“I hope you'll be happy,” he said.

“Happy?” said Dick. “Oh yes, I shall soon get into it all again. It's a bit tough on Monica, though.” He shot an apprehensive look at Eustace. “Sorry, I shouldn't have said that, I suppose.”

“I'm sorry for her, too,” said Eustace.

“Yes, she's a good girl, not pretty, but you can't have everything. No one else would have done it.”

“Done what?” asked Eustace.

“Well, taken me on after all the talk. Damned nice of her, really. I'm not much of a catch now.”

Eustace remembered the girls who only an hour ago were basking in the sunshine of Dick's presence like peaches on a wall, and he must have looked sceptical, for Dick said, “You were thinking of those three harpies? Good-looking, weren't they? But all they want is a romp. You do well to keep away from that sort of thing.”

There was a murmur of voices behind them, and Tonino came forward and said, “The gondola is waiting for you, Signor Shairington.”

“I must go,” said Eustace. He got up and found that he was quite steady on his feet. “What time is it, Dick? My watches are all wrong.”

Dick's armour-plated wrist-watch had dents in it, perhaps from flying shrapnel.

“A quarter-past nine. You had much better stay and dine with me. I'd like it. Company for me, you know.” He did not move from his chair, but looked up at Eustace with raised eyebrows that had more invitation in them than his voice.

Eustace hesitated.

“I'd better go—you see, Lady Nelly will be wondering what's happened to me.”

“Well, you know best.”

“Why don't you come too?” said Eustace. “She'd love to see you.”

“Thank you,” said Dick. “But I don't think I will. You see, I'm in purdah now, the prodigal nephew. But give her my best love, and say something kind about me if you can.” As he was getting to his feet he said in an elaborately matter-of-fact, off-hand tone, “I say, won't you have a drink before you go?”

“Yes,” said Eustace, “with pleasure.”

“Good man, let's sit down again then. Cameriere! That's right, isn't it? A double brandy for Mr. Cherrington, and a double whisky for me.”

Tonino brought the drinks, set them down with more than his usual care, and stood for a moment with a broad smile that seemed to pronounce a blessing on them.

“Somebody said ‘Brandy for heroes,'” said Dick.

Eustace blushed. “Yes, Dr. Johnson.”

“Think of your knowing that.” He raised his glass. “Well, cheers, Eustace.”

“Cheers, Dick,” said Eustace.

“You're not feeling so sore with me now?”

“No.”

“Are we better off than if there were any women present? Do we want them with us?”

“Well, perhaps not,” said Eustace guardedly. His head began to feel rather muzzy.

“I'm glad you came,” said Dick. “I feel much better for seeing you. A good many people have called me names from time to time, but no one has ever called me a blackguard
and
a scoundrel before. I own I didn't expect you to. You've appeared in a new light.”

Eustace had a fleeting glimpse of a prostrate St. George having his wounds licked by a dragon also badly damaged, but apparently master of the situation. His conscience, the most indefatigable of his qualities, muttered a protest, but his nerves were too tired to bid him rise. Dick's voice seemed to be coming from a distance.

“I've said too much, but I couldn't say anything without saying too much. The story you heard is the story that most people believe, and I haven't tried to contradict it, except a little in my own family, and to you. The dog has too bad a name to be believed, for one thing; and besides, how could I without making bad worse? I'm not here to save my face or because I couldn't take what was coming to me, but because it was the only way, I thought, to cut the knot. I was wrong; it was too late; Hilda had grown too—too attached to me.”

A famous line from Racine swung into Eustace's mind and would not be expelled. Appalled, he seemed to see Venus with the face of Hilda clinging to her prey; and look, where she relaxed her grip, the victim's skin was wrinkled and old from the long pressure of her ageless flesh.

Dick spoke with an effort, and his tobacco-stained fingers slid restlessly across the glass-topped table. His eyes looked questioningly at Eustace and dropped again.

“I'm no good at explanations, and I make everything sound like an excuse, which it is, no doubt. I'm sorry, Eustace, I'm sorry. And how easily I could say I wish it had never happened. But do you know, in spite of everything, I can't say that. Hilda, your sister, well, she deserved a better man, but I was that man for a time, yes, for a time I was. That's what I owe to her, and what she gave to me. The rest is all——” He shook his head. “What are your plans?”

Eustace told him.

“Well, drop in on them at the old place, won't you, and tell them you've seen me; they'll be glad to hear news. They'll feel shy with you, perhaps, but don't let that put you off. And say something to Anne—she's always liked you; not that we all didn't. She might tell you something that I couldn't. Take care of yourself, Eustace, and mind, no more fainting.”

Eustace got to his feet. Unseen by him, two couples had come in and were sitting on the high stools by the bar throwing dice for drinks. The merry clatter and the tremendous absorption of the players in their luck was a kind of tonic. “I must go now,” Eustace said.

“I'll come and see you off.”

The wind had died down and the sky was clear but for a few slowly moving clouds. Across the canal the dome of the Salute, held aloft on close-coiled springs of stone, offered its proud arch to the arch above; while the long, flat, low-pitched roofs on either side knelt to its majesty. Away to the left, beyond the Dogana, the Piccola Serenata floated in a radiance of light and song. Many gondolas were huddled round it and others were hurrying to join them. Eustace's course lay the other way, up the slowly curving canal, through the soft darkness enclosed between its walls. He told the gondolier his destination and turned to Dick.

“Good-bye, Dick.”

“Good-bye, Eustace.”

Come, then, for with a wound I must be cur'd.

A
T NORWICH SQUARE
, in Anchorstone, a September gale had left its imprint on the small front gardens. The stunted shrubs had their sparse foliage twisted inside out; loose tendrils of creepers fluttered untidily over brown bow-windows, castellated or plain; here and there a red tile was cracked or missing; and blown together in pockets in the gutters were little dumps of displaced objects—straws and twigs, peel and cigarette-cartons, thin drifts of sand and grit. Even the air seemed grit-laden: it stung the cheek.

On the map Anchorstone was an East Coast watering-place, but paradoxically it faced west. The square was open on that side, and Miss Cherrington, coming out of the front door of the last house on the right, shaded her eyes against the glitter which the sun had conjured from the sea and dispersed through the rain-washed air. She saw the Anchorstone of to-day, not of fifteen years ago, and if she noticed changes—the well-kept road at her feet, for instance, replacing the rutted chalk track down which tradesmen's carts had once refused to venture—she did not regret them.

In any case, Norwich Square had not changed much, and such changes as met her eye were mostly on the ground—as though a shock-headed youth, on reaching man's estate, had decided to keep his hair cut short and plastered down and parted; and Miss Cherrington gave them the same approval she would have given the young man who had shouldered his yoke and put away childish things.

She was dressed, as always, for an occasion, and the occasion seemed to be a journey, for she was wearing London clothes, a hat that followed the Royal but not the ruling fashion, and a dark-grey suit which fitted and became her well, but was in marked contrast to the décolleté and informal costumes, disclosing patches of red flesh, that passed her on their way down to the beach.

She went no farther than the gate, and having looked her fill returned to the house, carefully avoiding, as she did so, a brand-new bath-chair which was standing in the porch, poised as though for action. She gave it a look of unwilling but resigned acceptance, went into the drawing-room on her right, and hardly raising her voice—for at Cambo it was not necessary to speak loudly to be heard by someone in another part of the house—said, “Barbara!”

Barbara was enormous; as she came in she seemed to fill the room. “Yes, Aunt Sarah?”

“It's a pleasant morning, fresh but not cold, and I think she might very well go out.”

Barbara lowered herself into a chair and sighed. “I'm afraid she won't. I've just asked her, as a matter of fact, and she made it quite clear she doesn't want to. I can't think why.”

“She doesn't like the idea of people seeing her, I suppose,” said Miss Cherrington in a neutral voice.

“Yes, but what does it matter? I don't mind going out, and Hilda's an oil-painting compared to me.”

Miss Cherrington glanced at the unshapely figure. Barbara was wearing a flowered cotton dress that might have been a converted dust-sheet, so casually did it cover her, and a pair of dark-blue silk slippers of Chinese embroidery that Eustace had given her. One of them had come unsewn at the little toe, and a piece of padded scarlet lining showed through. There were violet shadows in the transparent pallor around her eyes, and hollows in her face which the big mound of her body seemed to emphasise, but her gaiety had remained invincible, and a less partial spectator than Miss Cherrington would still have looked at her with pleasure.

“Yes, but it's different in your case,” Miss Cherrington said.

“Oh, I don't know; people turn away when they see me coming and try to seem absorbed in something else. I'm an affront to decency—poor old Hilda isn't; you wouldn't know there was anything wrong with her until you get close. Besides, what harm is there in being wheeled about in a bath-chair? Anchorstone is full of crocks and they're not all old, by any means.”

Miss Cherrington's face saddened.

“Yes, but it's a bitter change for her to be so helpless. You can't blame her for being sensitive about it.”

“I do blame her,” said Barbara robustly. “We all have to be helpless sometimes; it's nothing to be ashamed of: look at me. And I do wish she'd have her meals with us, instead of closeted with Minney, kind as Minney is. We
know
that she has to be helped with her food, and we don't mind seeing her. It's so morbid to keep away. I shan't mind people seeing me feed my baby.”

“I hope you won't do it too publicly, dear,” said Miss Cherrington a little anxiously.

“I shall. I shall make them all come in and watch, all the Gang. This shrinking from bodily functions is so Victorian, Aunt Sarah, if you don't mind me saying so. And it isn't as if Hilda was really ill. It's only nerves, all the doctors agree. She just wants taking out of herself.” And Barbara reminded her aunt how Dr. Speedwell had assured them that Hilda's strange condition was nothing but a functional disturbance of the nervous system, resulting from shock. Her recovery, he said, was only a matter of time; it might be gradual or it might be sudden, if something, possibly another shock, occurred to jolt the dislocated mechanism back into place. “I can't help feeling,” she wound up, “that when Eustace arrives we shall see a great change. She'll be singing and dancing. When does he arrive, by the way?”

“His train gets in at a quarter-past one,” said Miss Cherrington evenly, “and mine leaves at two minutes to three.”

“So you'll have time for a talk with him,” said Barbara. “What a pity you can't both be here together. If only Eustace and Hilda could share the Blue Room, as they used to, Minney tells me, we could have fitted you in.”

Miss Cherrington did not look amused. “You will be at very close quarters as it is,” she said. “And I don't know how you'll manage later on. Minney will have to sleep out, I expect. Wasn't there a room over the Post Office?”

“Ah, those dear departed days!” carolled Barbara suddenly.

“Besides,” Miss Cherrington went on, ignoring the interruption, “I think Eustace would feel—well, freer, if I wasn't here. Of course, I don't hold him entirely to blame for this dreadful business, but he is a good deal responsible, and I should feel it only right to tell him so. No good ever comes of trying to climb out of the class of society into which you are born. I am proud of belonging to mine and I hope you are too, Barbara. Eustace always had a hankering after rich people, and it will be his undoing, just as he has made it Hilda's. He goes about with them, but he doesn't understand their way of looking at things, nor did Hilda.”

“Sorry,” said Barbara, “but I disagree with you. I'm very sorry for old Hilda, of course, but I think she let Eustace down. He took all the trouble to get her the entrée to those marble halls, loaded her with jewels and wrist-watches and pretty clothes, found her a nice young man, a trifle gay perhaps but very attractive from what people say, and then left her to do the rest. And she couldn't; she muddled it terribly. I don't know, of course, but I'm sure she made him the most appalling scenes. You know how she used to be with Eustace. She doesn't understand men and she's never tried to. What do you think, Minney?”