Eustace and Hilda (10 page)

Yet this particular Monday he deliberately evoked it, in the hope that its formidable but manageable horror might overcome and drive away the rising terror he was feeling at the thought of Miss Fothergill's face. Perhaps she hadn't even got a face! Perhaps the black veil concealed not the whiskers and snub nose and large but conceivably kindly eyes of a lion, but just emptiness, darkness, shapeless and appalling.

“Hilda,” he whispered, “are you awake?”

No answer.

I mustn't wake her, Eustace thought. Now supposing Miss Wauchope said, ‘Eustace, you've been so very stupid all these months, I'm going to ask your aunt to make you a dunce's cap, and you'll wear it every time you come here, and I shall tell the rest of the class to laugh at you.'

For a moment Eustace's obsession, distracted by this new rival, lifted a little; he felt physically lighter. Then back it came, aggravated by yet another terror.

“Hilda! Hilda!”

She stirred. “Yes, Eustace?”

“Oh, it wasn't anything very much.”

“Then go to sleep again.”

“I haven't been to sleep. Hilda, supposing Miss Fothergill hasn't got a face she wouldn't have a head, would she?”

“Silly boy, of course she's got a face, you saw it.”

“I thought I saw her eyes. But supposing she hadn't got a head even, how could her neck end?”

Hilda saw what was in Eustace's mind but it did not horrify, it only amused her. She gave one of her loud laughs.

Closing his eyes and summoning up all his will power, Eustace asked the question which had been tormenting him:

“Would it be all bloody?”

Still struggling with her laughter, Hilda managed to say:

“No, you donkey, of course it wouldn't, or she'd be dead.”

Eustace was struck and momentarily convinced by the logic of this. Moreover, Hilda's laughter had shone like a sun in the Chamber of Horrors that was his mind, lighting its darkest corners and showing up its inmates for a sorry array of pasteboard spectres. He turned over and was nearly asleep when the outline of a new phantom darkened the window of his imagination. Restlessly he turned his head this way and that: it would not go. He tried in vain to remember the sound of Hilda's laugh. The spectre drew nearer; soon it would envelop his consciousness.

“Hilda!” he whispered.

A grunt.

“Hilda, please wake up just once more.”

“Well, what is it now?”

“Hilda, do you think Miss Fothergill really is alive? Because if she hadn't got a head, and she wasn't bloody, she'd have to be——” Eustace paused.

“Well?”

“A ghost.”

Hilda sat up in bed. Her patience was at an end.

“Really, Eustace, you are too silly. How could she be a ghost? You can't see ghosts by daylight, for one thing, they always come at night. Anyhow there aren't any. Now if you don't be quiet I won't sleep with you again. I'll make Minney let me sleep with her—so there.”

The threat, uttered with more than Hilda's usual vehemence and decision, succeeded where her reasoning had failed. It restored Eustace to a sense of reality. At once lulled and invigorated by her anger he was soon asleep.

He slept, but the night's experience left its mark on the day that followed, changing the key of his moods, so that familiar objects looked strange. He was uncomfortably aware of a break in the flow of his personality; even the pond, to which (in view of the afternoon at the dancing class) they repaired earlier than usual, did not restore him to himself.

He was most conscious of the dislocation as he stood, among a number of other little boys, in the changing-room at the Town Hall. The act of taking his dancing shoes out of their bag usually let loose in him a set of impressions as invariable as they were acute. His habitual mood was one of fearful joy contending with a ragged cloud of nervous apprehensions, and accompanying this was a train of extremely intense sensations proceeding from well-known sounds and sights and smells. These were all present to-day: the pungent, somehow nostalgic smell of the scrubbed wooden floor of the changing-room; the uncomforting aspect of the walls panelled with deal boards stained yellow, each with an ugly untidy knot defacing it (Eustace had discovered one that was knotless, and he never failed to look at it with affectionate approval); and through the door, which led into the arena and was always left the same amount ajar, he could hear the shuffling of feet, the hum of voices, and now and then a few bars of a dance tune being tried over on the loud clanging piano.

All these phenomena were present this Tuesday, but somehow they had ceased to operate. Eustace felt his usual self in spite of them. He even started a conversation with another little boy who was changing, a thing that in ordinary circumstances he was far too strung-up to do. It was only when he approached the door and prepared to make his début on the stage that he began to experience the first
frisson
of the Tuesday afternoon transformation. Before him lay the immitigable expanse of polished floor, as hard as the hearts of the dancing mistresses. Beyond stood the wooden chairs, pressed back in serried ranks, apparently only awaiting the word to come back and occupy the space filched from them by the dancing class. And all round, the pupils lining up for their preliminary march past. There was a hot, dry, dusty smell and the tingle of excitement in the air. Avoiding every eye, Eustace crept along the wall to take his place at the tail of the procession. Then he timidly looked round. Yes, there was Hilda, in an attitude at once relaxed and awkward, as though defying her teachers to make a ballroom product of her. Twisted in its plait her dark lovely hair swung out at an ungainly angle; her face expressed boredom and disgust; she looked at her partner (they marched past in twos) as though she hated him. Eustace trembled for her, as he always did when she was engaged in an enterprise where her natural sense of leadership was no help to her. His gaze travelled on, then back. No sign of Nancy Steptoe. She was late! She wasn't coming! The pianist's hands were poised for the first chord when the door opened and Nancy appeared. What a vision in her bright blue dress! She came straight across the room, and late though she was, found time to flash a smile at the assembled youth of polite Anchorstone. How those thirty hearts should have trembled! Certainly Eustace's did.

The afternoon took its usual course. Hilda did her part perfunctorily, the arrogant, if partly assumed, self-sufficiency of her bearing shielding her from rebuke. Eustace, assiduous and anxious to give satisfaction, got the steps fairly correct but missed, and felt he missed, their spirit. He was too intent on getting the details right. His air of nervous and conciliatory concentration would have awakened the bully in the most good-natured of women; little did Eustace realise the bridle Miss Wauchope put on her tongue as she watched his conscientious, clumsy movements. Sometimes, with propitiatory look he caught her eye and she would say, “That's better, Eustace, but you must listen for the beat,” which pleased his conscience but hurt his pride. He would never be any good at it! Yet as the hand of the plain municipal clock wormed its way to half-past three, proclaiming that there was only half an hour more, Eustace missed the feeling of elation that should have come at that significant moment. Where would he be, to-morrow at this time? On his way to Laburnum Lodge, perhaps standing on the doorstep, saying good-bye to Minney who had promised to escort him, though she would not fetch him back because, she said, “I don't know how long you'll be.” How long! All the phantoms of the night before began to swarm in Eustace's mind. Oblivious of his surroundings he heard his name called and realised the exercise had stopped. Ashamed he stepped back into his place.

“Now we're going to have a real waltz,” Miss Wauchope was saying, “so that you'll know what you have to do when you go to a real dance. You, boys, can ask any girl you like to dance (mind you do it properly) and when the music stops you must clap to show you want the waltz to go on.” (All loth, Eustace reminded himself to do this.) “And the second time the music stops you must lead your partner to a chair and talk to her as politely as you can for five minutes. That's what they do at real balls.”

Eustace looked round him doubtfully. Already some of the bigger boys had found partners; Eustace watched each bow and acceptance, and the sheepish look of triumph which accompanied them filled him with envy and heart-burning. In a moment the music would begin. Unhappy, Eustace drifted to where the throng was thickest. A little swarm of boys were eddying round a central figure. It was Nancy. With the sensations of some indifferent tennis-player who in nightmare finds himself on the centre court at Wimbledon Eustace prepared to steal away; perhaps Hilda would dance with him, though they never made a good job of it, and brother and sister were discouraged from dancing with each other. He could not help turning to see to whom Nancy would finally accord her favours when, incredibly, he heard her clear voice saying “I'm afraid I can't to-day, you see I promised this dance to Eustace Cherrington.” Eustace could scarcely believe his ears, but he saw the foiled candidates falling back with glances of envy in his direction, and the next thing he knew he had taken Nancy's hand. They moved into an empty space. “You never bowed to me, you know,” Nancy said. “I'm not sure I ought to dance with you.”

“But I was so surprised,” said Eustace. “I don't remember you saying you'd dance with me. I'm sure I should if you had.”

“Sh!” said Nancy. “Of course I didn't, only I had to tell them so.”

Eustace gasped. “But wasn't that——?”

Nancy smiled. “Well, you see, I wanted to dance with you.”

Eustace had been told that lying was one of the most deadly sins, and he himself was morbidly truthful. Recognition of Nancy's fib struck him like a smack in the face. A halo of darkness surrounded her. His mind, flying to fairy stories, classed her with the bad, with Cinderella's horrible sisters, even with witches. Then as suddenly his mood changed. She had committed this sin, violated her conscience, on his behalf. For him she had made a sacrifice of her peace of mind. It was an heroic act, comparable in its way to Grace Darling's. He could never be worthy of it. The inky halo turned to gold.

The challenge to his moral standards deflected his mind from the business in hand, and to his intense surprise he found he had been dancing for several minutes unconsciously, without thinking of his steps. This had never happened before, it was like a miracle, and, like other miracles, of but brief duration. Directly he remembered his awful responsibility, that he was actually the partner of the belle of the ball, and chosen by her too, his feet began to falter. “What's the matter?” Nancy asked. “You were dancing so well a moment ago.”

“I can't really dance as well as that,” Eustace muttered.

“You could if you didn't try so hard,” said Nancy with an insight beyond her years. “Just keep thinking about the music.”

“But I keep thinking about you,” said Eustace.

His intonation was so despairing that Nancy laughed. Delicious wrinkles appeared in the corners of her eyes. “Oh, Eustace, you say such funny things. But you're dancing much better now. I knew you could.”

To have so signally pleased Nancy had indeed robbed Eustace of his nervousness, and his feet now seemed the most creditable part of him. They had advanced him to glory. Never, even in the most ecstatic moments of the toboggan run, had he felt so completely at harmony with himself, or with the rest of the world: he found himself smiling self-confidently at the other couples as he steered, or fancied he was steering, Nancy through them. But he did not recognise them; he did not even notice Hilda passing by on the arm of a tall youth in spectacles. Only when the music stopped did he realise how giddy he was. “Turn round the other way,” advised Nancy, with her laugh that made light of things.

“But I want to clap,” cried Eustace, afraid the dance might not continue for lack of his plaudits. But it did; and the sweet-ness of those last five minutes, made more poignant by his consciousness of their approaching end, left an impression Eustace never forgot.

“Now you've got to talk to me,” said Nancy, when they were seated in two wooden chairs (her choice) somewhat apart from the rest. “What shall we talk about?”

Eustace felt completely at sea. “They didn't tell us, did they?” he said at length.

“Oh, Eustace, you're always waiting to be told. I believe you'd like to go and ask Hilda.”

“No, I shouldn't,” said Eustace. “It wouldn't be one of the things she knows. Would it do if I thanked you very much for that beautiful dance?”

“Well, now you've said that.”

“Oh, but I could say a lot more,” said Eustace. “For instance you make me dance so well. I didn't think anybody could.” He paused and went on uncertainly: “That's polite, isn't it?”

“Very.”

“I mean it, though. But perhaps that isn't the same as being polite? I could talk easier without being.”

“Eustace, you're always very polite.”

Eustace glowed.

“I thought it meant saying how pretty you were, though I should like to, but you can't talk much about that, can you?”

“It depends if you want to.”

“Yes ... well ... should we talk about the beach? You weren't there yesterday.”

“No, I find it gets stale. Yesterday I went out riding.”

“Oh, I hope you didn't fall off?”

“Of course not; I've been told I ride as well as I dance.”

“You must be clever. Can you hunt?”

“There's no hunting round about here. It's such a pity.”

“Yes, it is,” said Eustace fervently. He felt he was being taken into deep waters. “Though I feel sorry for the fox.”

“You needn't, the fox enjoys it too.”

“Yes, of course, only it would be nice if they could have a hunt without a fox, like hare and hounds.”