Eustace and Hilda (102 page)

Supposing he had been going to call at Anchorstone Hall, this was the way he would have gone. He was not going to call, of course. In spite of Lady Nelly's injunction, he knew it wouldn't do. With her he might have gone, for a situation did not remain itself when she took hold of it. But not alone: alone he would tread on thorns. The machine would puncture from the start, and there would be no mending it.

‘To what, Mr. Cherrington, do we owe the honour of this visit?' ‘If I choose to call, Lady Staveley, it is hardly for you to take offence. My sister Hilda——' ‘Your sister Hilda! You talk of your sister Hilda! It is our son, Dick, we think about. You have your sister; she is sitting, safe if not sound, in a small, dark room in a poky villa in New Anchorstone, where she deserves to be. But where is Dick? Show him to us. Bring him back from the sands of Arabia where he lies wounded, perhaps dying, and all because of your precious sister.' ‘Excuse me, Lady Staveley, but it was not Hilda's fault. Your son Dick deliberately——' ‘Nonsense! She flung herself at him. You do not know, because you never went there—one part of the house, at least, was uncontaminated by your touch—but she opened the door, she opened all the doors, she opened his door, and flung herself at him.' ‘Lady Staveley, how can you possibly know all this? But even if she did do as you say, and—and made the first advances, still, it was not her fault. It was mine. I brought her to Anchorstone Hall. I persuaded her. I was to blame.' ‘You, you miserable creature, do you suppose that anything you could do would affect the ancient family of Staveley, settled at Anchorstone since the Conquest?'

Eustace pulled himself up. The interior dialogue, whether with himself or someone else, was one of his worst habits, tending to split personality and who knows what else; to indulge it was to break Rule Number One of the New Mental Order. He must concentrate on the landscape. On his left, down a side-road, squatted the decapitated lighthouse tea-house, a mournful sight. On his right, among the trees, he would soon see, after an absence not to be measured by time, the chimneys and turrets of Anchorstone Hall. Yes, there they were; look at them well, as a stranger, a tripper, a tourist on a secondhand bicycle might look. They had not fallen down, as he had pictured them falling, in the general crash; they looked just the same; some of them were smoking lazily. And here, fronting him, was the Staveley Arms. The great escutcheon over the door did not seem to have weathered since he saw it last.

The village street was not a long one, half a mile at most. When he got past the church, Eustace calculated, and the gateway into the park, he would be safe—safe from the undesirable influences that were spreading towards him, safe from any inauspicious encounter. Here it was, the little group, the church, the pond, the gate. If he could have trusted himself in that spot, he would have got off and visited Miss Fothergill's grave. But better press on. In a moment his thoughts would be free—free to wander where they would, to speculate on the future, to see the world as Hilda would see it, fresh from the gloom of her prison-house.

He had passed the danger-zone, as he thought, and was already enjoying his freedom, when he saw, coming down the hill towards him, a figure on horseback. A woman, he noticed, as she came nearer, but he did not feel specially interested, for he had crossed the Staveley frontier. Still, one never knew what a horse might do, though this one was walking, and seemed very quiet; he must be on the watch. The rider looked up at the same moment and their eyes met.

Sure she had not recognised him, he was riding on, but glancing back he saw that she had turned her horse round and was looking after him. Dick had asked him to say something to Anne. Well, he must.

He dismounted awkwardly, aware of his trouser-clips and his old clothes, and pushed the bicycle, which no longer seemed glorious, into the dangerous area of the horse's legs. Anne bent down and gave him her hand and her brief smile, to neither of which could he give due attention, as his handle-bars betrayed a wish to bury themselves in the horse's flank.

“I didn't recognise you at first. I must apologise,” she said. “Haven't you—isn't there something different?”

Eustace was grateful to her for taking on herself the onus of non-recognition.

“Yes, my moustache,” he said. “I don't wonder you didn't recognise me. Sometimes I don't recognise myself.”

Anne gave him her considering look. “Oh, it hasn't changed you as much as all that.”

Eustace thought for a moment, quite unproductively. “Were you just coming in from a ride?”

“Yes,” said Anne. “Oddly enough. I don't often go that way. And you were starting out on one?”

“Yes,” said Eustace. ‘Here it will end,' he thought, ‘here we must shake hands.' What empty words to cover so momentous a meeting. Trying to keep his eyes on her as he did so, he detached his bicycle from the horse and got round on its other side, her side, the better to say good-bye.

“If you have a moment to spare,” Anne said hesitatingly, “and don't mind interrupting your ride, won't you come in and walk round the garden? Not that there's anything to see.”

Eustace said yes before he had time to say no, and found himself riding by her side past the church, through the gateway, and along the tree-shaded drive. The college front came into view.

“Put your bicycle under the arch,” Anne said. “It'll be safe there. Ah, here's Watkins. He'll take it. Can you amuse yourself for a minute while I see to Dapple?”

The courtyard was empty. Though there were signs that it had lately been swept, autumn leaves were lying in thin drifts; and as Eustace almost mechanically turned his eyes upwards to the windows of the New Building, he saw them drifting across with a lost motion from the chestnut trees beyond. Believing himself to be alone, he tried to catch one as it fell, having been told that each leaf caught meant a month of happiness; but its eddying flight, baffling as a butterfly's, eluded him. Suddenly a leaf lodged in his hands and he felt absurdly pleased; clutching his capture, he looked round, to see Anne watching him from the garden gate. Ashamed of being caught in such a childish pastime, he dropped the leaf and walked towards her.

“I used to do that,” she said, “but I never found it work. Still, I hope it will with you. I should like to think we had been the means of bringing you some happiness, however indirectly.”

“Oh, I'm much happier than I was,” said Eustace awkwardly.

The grass that grew among the ruins was blanched and yellow. Eustace saw the broken font and fancied he could see the raw red scar where Dick had wrenched off the fragment for him.

“Let's go this way,” Anne said, leading him across the grass towards the Chinese bridge. “You know, I didn't recognise you, but I wasn't surprised to see you.”

Her voice was bleak and tinged with the greyness of her personality. If she was surprised she did not sound glad to see him. But he warned himself not to mistake her reserve for hostility.

“You knew I was here?”

“Yes.”

Eustace felt he was giving her very little help.

“Did Dick tell you?”

“Yes, he did, and Aunt Nelly. Mama wanted to write or call; but I'm glad I met you this way.”

“Dick asked me to see you,” Eustace said; “but I didn't know whether you'd want to.”

“I didn't know whether you would.”

They were standing on the little bridge, and for a fleeting moment Eustace marvelled that something which existed so strongly in his imagination could have its counterpart in reality.

“We didn't part in—in anger,” he said. “I had been angry, I was so unhappy about Hilda. But he had suffered too. And I was a great deal to blame. I see that now.”

“Were you?” said Anne, opening her grey eyes wide. “None of us thought so.”

“She wouldn't have come but for me,” Eustace muttered.

Anne was silent. Then she said, “I'm sure Dick would have found a way of meeting her. He never forgot her since the time they met as children. But he didn't think women needed understanding, and he didn't understand her.”

“She isn't easy to understand,” said Eustace.

“No. Let's go into the garden, shall we?”

They went through the gate in the green hedge. The three other sides were walled. They walked on towards a lead figure rising grey and spectral from a fountain. Bordering the path, tall clumps of sunflowers, chrysanthemums, golden rod, and Michaelmas-daisies still glowed with mauve and yellow, but some showed a disposition to fall apart from the centre, and a few were lying on the ground. Twisted this way and that, the petals of the smaller sunflowers looked like displaced eyelashes.

“There's one thing about autumn flowers,” said Anne, “they're no trouble to arrange.... No, she isn't easy to understand. If only Dick had tried sooner.”

“He did try?” asked Eustace.

“Yes, but he hasn't had the credit for that. Everyone thinks he treated her very badly. So he did, I suppose. You don't mind us talking like this?”

Eustace said he was glad to. “Hilda's my sister and you're Dick's. We needn't stand on ceremony with each other.”

“I don't defend him,” said Anne. “But he had got an altogether wrong idea of her. He thought that her beauty, and her—her work at the clinic, and the way she had lived, entirely on her own, would—well, have toughened her. I don't defend him; he behaved very badly. But you can have no idea (or perhaps you have?) how he dreads being clung to or depended on or made responsible for someone else's happiness. He's the same with us here: if we as much as look at him with affection he gets up and goes out. That's an exaggeration, but you know what I mean. He feels shut in and stifled the moment his independence is threatened, and then he becomes cruel. Some women don't mind that.”

“No,” said Eustace.

“Hilda meant more to him than anyone ever has. He adored her. He's still in love with her. And he would have asked her to marry him if she could have taken him as he was. But she marked down every moment of his time; she mixed herself up with all his thoughts. She wanted him to do this and be that, and the more he drew away the closer she clung to him. He was odious to her often, and in front of people. But her will was stronger than his, and she makes it seem wrong not to do what she wants, not only wrong but impossible. When he was with her he couldn't say the things he meant to. And being in love made it harder. Dick detests explanations; I've never heard him try to explain why he did something—but he tried to make her see that they couldn't go on.”

“Yes,” said Eustace. “He told me something about that.” They had reached the round basin. On its surface floated the discoloured leaves of water-lilies, and in a gap between them, darker than the water, darker than the statue itself, was reflected the figure of Narcissus, lost in contemplation of his own beauty.

“I'm sure he was kind to her then,” said Anne, “because of the way he told me about it. She brought us together, you know, in a way we never had been, and he told me a lot about himself, as he never had before. He's always hated one to know anything about him. I'm much closer to him now, although he isn't here.” The sweetness of a tender thought misted her eyes, then faded. “But Hilda wouldn't listen to him, she wouldn't let him go. She—she blackmailed him with her unhappiness.” Anne stopped and cleared the resentment from her voice. “I shouldn't have said that.”

Eustace turned cold. “You don't mean she really blackmailed him?”

“Of course not.” Anne spoke sharply and gave him the straight look that did not spare his feelings. “How could you think so? But she told him she couldn't live without him.” Then her expression changed; she coughed twice and said with an effort:

“You knew he offered her money?”

So this was what Dick could not tell him. “Oh no, no,” Eustace muttered. Angry thoughts of Hilda were swirling round him like black veils. He beat the air with his hands, trying to keep them off. “She has her own money. I gave her some. It's not all gone. But that was different. Why should a stranger?——” He stopped in confusion. “But she didn't accept it? Please tell me she didn't, Anne. I couldn't bear to think she had.”

Anne gave him the assurance, and for a moment they stood, not looking at each other, in the intimacy that comes from sharing a piece of knowledge, startling, saddening and revealing, about those one loves.

Eustace broke the silence.

“Did they still see each other after ... after that?”

“Yes, almost to the end. And he was quite different all that time. Much gentler. Didn't you think he'd changed?”

Eustace said he had.

“We all noticed it, and when he went away he kissed us, even Papa. Half in fun, of course, but even so——” Her lips trembled, and she could not go on.

“He left us a happy memory,” she said after a moment, piloting the words carefully through a voice treacherous with unshed tears. “And when he comes home I hope he won't have slipped back.... You did think him different?” she said again.

“Yes,” said Eustace; “but I don't know him very well.”

“He always liked you—he said something about you in his letter.”

“Oh, what?” said Eustace.

“Well,” said Anne, laughing in spite of herself, “for one thing that you'd given him quite a shock, and that's a compliment from Dick.”

“I tried to,” said Eustace.

“I wonder how you did it? Oh and if you want to know, he said you were the kind of fierce man I'd always dreamed of.”

Eustace reddened.

“Did he speak of Hilda?”

Anne's face grew grave again.

“Yes, he said the memory of her made things easy for him.”

“He didn't send her any message?”

“No.”

Eustace wondered if the memory of Dick made things easy for Hilda, but he didn't think so. Talking to Anne, forgiving Dick, enjoying the autumnal grace of Anchorstone Hall, he had been guilty of disloyalty to Hilda. Anne guessed what was in his mind.