Eustace and Hilda (100 page)
Authors: L.P. Hartley
For the second time Eustace tried to remember having re-fused even one invitation to meet this covey of phÅnixes, but he could not.
I had to stay till midnight, when masks were taken off and one's worst fears realised. Then Grundtvig played, which might not have been so bad, though it might easily have been worse, could one have heard him; but they chattered all the way through that banal polonaise in A. No encore was called for; but an encore came, not from Grundtvig, however, but from Minerva, as I suppose one must learn to call her. (At least it isn't Pallas.) Straddling her 'cello between her distressing legs, she ground out a sonata by Brahms, a clammy composer whose work I could never care for. After this fiasco it seemed unkind to go away, so I stayed on drinking Nelly's rather tepid champagne and talking to one bore after another until nearly four in the morning. Not a loophole for escape.
Your friend Lachish isn't a bore but he is a chatterbox, so I took pity on you and didn't satisfy his curiosity about your story. Unpublished masterpieces are better hushed up. E. says it has a little lyrical something, but he hasn't had time to read it properly, he's so busy doing the social round. Why? one asks oneself.
By the way, there was one notable absentee from the ballâthe Count of Monfalcone. He disappeared in the night with a trunkful of treasures culled from trusting antiquaries. Also he turned out not to be a Count, but the son of a facchino. All doubtful or disgraceful parentage is ascribed to a facchino. So you are avenged. Nelly is very charitable about him, and constantly brings his name up in conversation as though his exit had been quite normal, but even she admits that he was a bore. Your abrupt departure caused some comment, but on the whole the constructions were favourable. No one, of course, believed that you had gone to your sister's bedside; other bedsides were suggested, but not hers. I hope that by now you have won your freedom from all family encumbrances. I long ago parted with mine.
Nelly stays on till the end of the month, but the silly rush to the shores of Lake Como has already begun and soon there won't be a pig left in Gadara. If you are feeling dull, and inclined for further dullness, come out here. I shall be pleased to see you, and Venice looks its best in October. Later on I go south. Why not join me in Rome for Christmas? You will see a lot of old faces, if that's any inducement. I suppose it's too much to ask you to writeâthe young never doâbut you have my address. I write to the one you gave me, though I don't find it very credible. What
does
Cambo mean?
Yours,
JASPER BENTWICH.
The head growled but the tail wagged. Lady Nelly's letter had a nice ending too. Eustace couldn't quite remember how it went. There would be no harm in just putting the pieces together, and he might even keep as a memento the fleur-de-lis on the flap of the envelope, a device which, for some obscure but exciting heraldic reasonâperhaps descent from the Bourbonsâshe was privileged to use. How distinguished, how personal her writing-paper was, this special paper which she kept for her special friends. The part at the beginning he knew almost by heart. She had felt after all she couldn't keep his watch, it was much too pretty; besides, “Why should I need anything of yours so long as I have you?” And if he meant the watch to be a parting gift, as she suspected he might, then all the more, she felt, must she repudiate it. “Nothing is farther from my mind than an illegal separation.” And really she didn't need a watch: “As you'll remember, I rely on other people to be punctual.” Though broken at the joins, the lovely curves of her handwriting began to resume their sweep and sway. Here was Jasper's tribute to her late guestâ“And from Jasper of all people!”âand Countess Loredan's characteristic comment: “Of course you paid him no attention, Nelly, so he
had
to go away!” The general impression was of deep mourning on the Piazza: “I never
saw
so many people in black.” Then the reference to Hildaâ“an absolutely certain cure at Le Thillot, in the Vosgesârather expensive, I'm afraid, but I'm making inquiries. The best thing in nervous casesâand, believe me, I've had some experienceâis absolute segregation from relations. No relation, however distant, however near, however dear, must cross the threshold. At the mere sound of a relation, one's nerves
wither
.” This brought her to Anchorstone where “I used to suffer tortures, simply because those dear people were relations”; and a misprint that had amused her, something about sculpting one's relation's hips.
But all the same, Eustace, I think you should pay them a visit, they would appreciate it, and you are so suited to carrying an olive branch. Vendettas are such a bore, don't you think? however much one is in the right. But what I rather hope is that you're back in nice cosy Willesden with your sister enthroned at the clinic. In any case, you must keep the second week-end in October for Whaplode: Antony and I went into the whole thing
most
carefully so that there should be no mistakeâI've persuaded him that an historian should be more date-consciousâso you'll be there, won't you? No shirking. Oxford doesn't begin until mid-October, if then.
Some more people have been hereâdarlings in their way, but I don't think they would have interested you. A hard-drinking lot, Tonino tells me, but I expect you've forgotten the Wideawake Bar?
You'll know who this comes from. I'm too tired, dearest Eustace, and too utterly devoted to sign myself anything but
N.
Eustace looked up in a dream to see Minney standing at his shoulder. He jumped.
“Why, what are you up to?” she said. “You seem to have been doing a jig-saw puzzle. You'd forgotten Miss Hilda, hadn't you?”
“I believe I had,” Eustace said.
“Well, hurry along to her now, or she'll think something's happened to you. People get such strange fancies when they're ill. I'll clear up those pieces, or do you want to keep them?”
“Only these two.” Rather self-consciously Eustace extracted the address and the fleur-de-lis.
“I'm glad people don't write me those long letters,” said Minney, advancing with the crumb-brush and tray. “I shouldn't know how to answer them.”
The letters were destroyed, but their influence lived on, and Eustace entered into a troubled state of being in which the worse no longer seemed to exclude the bad. Not to be able to go to Whaplode could be accepted as part of his penance; not to spend Christmas in Rome, that too was a milestone on the way of expiation. But to disregard the advice of his tutor, that was very like insubordination, and wilfully to endanger his chances of a possible First, that was sinning against his careerâand to Miss Cherrington's nephew, if not to Eustace, a grievous sin. He would have to decide something, and quickly; for in spite of Lady Nelly's optimistic calendar-making, Term began in less than a fortnight.
He wished he could consult somebody, somebody of stable, independent judgement. Stephen was the obvious choice, but Eustace felt shy of applying to him; whatever their future relations might be, at present they were almost inaccessible to each other, and it takes time for a new intimacy to thrive under the shadow of an old one. If he approached Aunt Sarah (whose sense of justice he respected) he would have to wear a white sheet, and this was distasteful to the new Eustace, the letter-less Eustace, now precariously in the ascendant. Jimmy and Barbara were his hosts, and they had a right to be consulted in any plan he might make, so he put the question to them, as casually as he could, choosing the time, about six o'clock, when Jimmy got back from Ousemouth, glad his day's work was over, glad to be reunited to Barbara, for whom he felt and showed an increasing tenderness.
But they didn't give him much help. Their demeanour showed that the idea of Eustace wanting to resume his studies at Oxford was new to them; they had their own situation to consider, and naturally couldn't spare much thought for other people's. Barbara said at once, as he guessed she would, “Of course you must go back to Oxford, Eustace. Leave Hilda to us; we'll look after her all right, won't we, Jimmy?” But Jimmy hesitated. The aspect of the problem that dominated Eustaceâhis moral obligation to stay at Hilda's sideâdidn't seem to weigh with Jimmy at all; at any rate, he made no reference to it, and he entirely agreed that it was a pity for Eustace to interrupt or abandon his work at Oxford. Indeed, he seemed to attach more importance to a degree than Eustace did. “But who's to carry her, that's the thing?” he said. “You and I can move her about, and when I'm out you can do it at a pinch alone; but Minney can't, and Barbara mustn't” (here Barbara made a face at him) “so where should we be? And who's to take her in the bath-chair? She doesn't want a nurse, and the doctor says she doesn't need one, and anyhow, they're damned expensive. Why not ask Hilda herself?”
But Eustace could not bring himself to do that. It would be forcing Hilda's hand: she would be almost bound to release him. Besides, the more he thought of itâand his thoughts, forbid them though he might, would fly to Oxfordâthe less was he able to see himself basking in the intellectual or the festal glow while Hilda sat, alone or without any real companionship, at Anchorstone, unable to get out, unable perhaps to move from her room, while the days grew darker and shorter and colder, and the interest in life, which even he could not always keep alight in her strained, tired, listless eyes, gradually flickered out. No, it could not be done.
But surely
something
could be done. Eustace had lost the singleness of purpose he had enjoyed before the letters came. Then he had acquiesced in Hilda's illness; now he rebelled against it. He reviewed his relationship with Hilda. After all, it was as much to her advantage as to his that she should get well. Dr. Speedwell, benign and cheery, came twice a week, but he had nothing new to suggest. “You are your sister's best medicine,” he would say, “and should be taken in frequent doses.” This pleasantry got a little on Eustace's nerves. The mixture as before didn't seem to be doing Hilda much good.
“You said a shock might cure her,” he remarked diffidently.
“Yes, but it must be the right kind of shock, and I'm afraid I haven't got the prescription. Bursting a paper bag wouldn't doâit's got to be mental as well as physical.”
The routine of Hilda's existence was specially designed to preclude shocks. Not only was she carried from room to room, and up and down stairs, with every precaution not to jolt her, but she was never told anything that might upset her. The banquet of life, so far as she partook of it, had to be predigested for her.
Eustace wondered if they were on the wrong tack, and on his solitary bicycle rides, and during his night walks, almost as solitary, with Hilda, when automatically he waited for the answer which did not come, he tried to imagine the kind of shock that might restore her. Something in the nature of a practical joke, he supposed; startling, even alarming for the moment, but quickly over. The mere idea of a practical joke was abhorrent to the old Eustace, but the serried moustaches of the new one harboured it without turning a hair.
One night, when he was pushing her along the cliff, in an interval of that dialogue which was like talking to himself, the idea came to him. He had taken his hands off for a moment to light a cigarette; and his heart turned over, for the bath-chair moved of its own accord a few inches nearer the cliff's edge. Only a few inches, but the sweat came out on his forehead. When he had recovered himself he jerked back the chair and hurried it inland.
If the mere thought of such a catastrophe could so affect him, how would a dress-rehearsal of it with the cliff's edge much nearer, and the chair moving much quicker, affect Hilda?
The scene enacted itself many times in his imagination, and always when Hilda realised her danger she cried out, and the spell that held her was broken. He tried to persuade himself that he owed it to Hilda to give the plan a trial, and more than once he was on the point of taking Dr. Speedwell into his confidence. But the words never got beyond his lips, and as for translating the idea into action, when the opportunity for action came, as it often did, he could not make the smallest move. His whole being refused. More than that, one part of him took fright at the other part that was issuing such treacherous orders, and insisted that he should provide himself with two large granite chips to stick under the wheel if ever he felt tempted to put his theory to the test. These wedge-shaped stones, bulging in his pockets, marked a return to the bad old ways; he regretted the lapse, but at night he never went without them.
This conflict, the most recent of the many that had troubled his mind, brought a new sense of strain into his relationship with Hilda. Whereas before he had looked forward to their evening outings as something that he did, unquestioningly, for her good, now he dreaded them; he could not reconcile the two voices, one accusing him of cowardice, the other of foolhardiness and crueltyâyes, and of something worse than those. The bath-chair, this mentor told him, would not stop at the cliff's edge; he had a subconscious wish to get rid of Hilda, the albatross that was hung around his neck. A sinister shape, a shadowy third, walked at his side as he took her for her nightly airing, prompting him with evil promptings. He would not listen, of course not; but what if the insidious whisper should somehow pierce the ears he was stopping against it, and start some impulse over which he had no control? The vision of himself as a destroyer came back to him.
Eustace tried to sterilise these fancies with an application of commonsense. At night it would be no use trying to scare Hilda; even by moonlight she would hardly take in what was happening; he could dismiss the plan from his mind until she consented to go out by day. Also, like The Boy Who Couldn't Shiver and Shake (whose trials Eustace had studied even to the point of wondering whether some wriggling fish in a bucket of water might not do the trick), Hilda was not at all easy to frighten: danger only exhilarated her. In that case it would be better to drop the shock idea altogether, and trust to Time to bring a cure.