Eustace and Hilda (29 page)

“Won't it come undone?” asked Eustace anxiously.

“Not if I tie it,” muttered Hilda. “I know a knot that can't come undone, no matter how hard you pull.”

Straightening herself, she looked critically at Eustace's
Indomitable
hat and at the ridges and creases on its brim. A pinch here and there restored it to symmetry but could not make it seem the right kind of headdress for an athletic event.

“Now put your best foot forward,” she said.

“My best foot's joined to yours,” objected Eustace.

“Well, the other then. Ready? Steady?” Hilda hesitated, and then the light of battle flamed into her eye. “Charge!”

They were off. Hilda had her right hand free. Grasped in the middle like a weapon at the trail, and swinging rhythmically as she ran, her iron spade seemed to be making jabs at the vitals of the future; while the wooden one that served Eustace as a symbol of Adam's destiny, dangling from his nerveless fingers, wove in the air a fantastic pattern of arcs and parabolas, and threatened momentarily to trip him up.

On they sped. Each lurch and stumble drew from Hilda a shrill peal of laughter in which Eustace somewhat uncertainly joined. “Look, we're catching them up!” Hilda cried.

They crossed the chalk road in safety but a patch of rough ground lay ahead, mined with splinters and palings from the broken fence; and to Minney, watching from a window, it looked as if they were sure to come to grief before they arrived at the white gate of Cambo.

I
T MAY
take time to get over an obsession, even after the roots have been pulled out. Eustace was satisfied that ‘going away' did not mean that he was going to die; but at moments the fiery chariot still cast its glare across his mind, and he was thankful to shield himself behind the prosaic fact that going away meant nothing worse than going to school. In other circumstances the thought of going to school would have alarmed him; but as an alternative to death it was almost welcome.

Unconsciously he tried to inoculate himself against the future by aping the demeanour of the schoolboys he saw about the streets or playing on the beach at Anchorstone. He whistled, put his hands in his pockets, swayed as he walked, and assumed the serious but detached air of someone who owes fealty to a masculine corporation beyond the ken of his womenfolk: a secret society demanding tribal peculiarities of speech and manner. As to the thoughts and habits of mind which should inspire these outward gestures, he found them in school stories; and if they were sometimes rather lurid they were much less distressing than the fiery chariot.

His family was puzzled by his almost eager acceptance of the trials in store. His aunt explained it as yet another instance of Eustace's indifference to home-ties, and an inevitable consequence of the money he had inherited from Miss Fothergill. She had to remind herself to be fair to him whenever she thought of this undeserved success. But to his father the very fact that it was undeserved made Eustace something of a hero. His son was a dark horse who had romped home, and the sight of Eustace often gave him a pleasurable tingling, an impulse to laugh and make merry, such as may greet the evening paper when it brings news of a win. A lad of such mettle would naturally want to go to school.

To Minney her one-time charge was now more than ever ‘Master' Eustace; in other ways her feeling for him remained unchanged by anything that happened to him. He was just her little boy who was obeying the natural order of things by growing up. Barbara was too young to realise that the hair she sometimes pulled belonged to an embryo schoolboy. In any case, she was an egotist, and had she been older she would have regarded her brother's translation to another sphere from the angle of how it affected her. She would have set about finding other strings to pull now that she was denied his hair.

Thus, the grown-ups, though they did not want to lose him, viewed Eustace's metamorphosis without too much misgiving; and moreover they felt that he must be shown the forbearance and accorded the special privileges of one who has an ordeal before him. Even Aunt Sarah, who did not like the whistling or the hands in the pockets or the slang, only rebuked them half-heartedly.

But Hilda, beautiful, unapproachable Hilda, could not reconcile herself to the turn events had taken. Was she not and would she not always be nearly four years older than her brother Eustace? Was she not his spiritual adviser, pledged to make him a credit to her and to himself and to his family?

He was her care, her task in life. Indeed, he was much more than that; her strongest feelings centred in him and at the thought of losing him she felt as if her heart was being torn out of her body.

So while Eustace grew more perky, Hilda pined. She had never carried herself well, but now she slouched along, hurrying past people she knew as if she had important business to attend to, and her beauty, had she been aware of it, might have been a pursuer she was trying to shake off.

Eustace must not go to school, he must not. She knew he would not want to, when the time came; but then it would be too late. She had rescued him from Anchorstone Hall, the lair of the highwayman, Dick Staveley, his hero and her
bête noire
; and she would rescue him again. But she must act, and act at once.

It was easy to find arguments. School would be bad for him. It would bring out the qualities he shared with other little boys, qualities which could be kept in check if he remained at home.

“What are little boys made of?” she demanded, and looked round in triumph when Eustace ruefully but dutifully answered:

He would grow rude and unruly and start being cruel to animals. Schoolboys always were. And he would fall ill; he would have a return of his bronchitis. Anchorstone was a health-resort. Eustace (who loved statistics and had a passion for records) had told her that Anchorstone had the ninth lowest death-rate in England. (This thought had brought him some fleeting comfort in the darkest hours of his obsession.) If he went away from Anchorstone he might die. They did not want him to die, did they?

Her father and her aunt listened respectfully to Hilda. Since her mother's death they had treated her as if she was half grown up, and they often told each other that she had an old head on young shoulders.

Hilda saw that she had impressed them and went on to say how much better Eustace was looking, which was quite true, and how much better behaved he was, except when he was pretending to be a schoolboy (Eustace reddened at this). And, above all, what a lot he knew; far more than most boys of his age, she said. Why, besides knowing that Anchorstone had the ninth lowest death-rate in England, he knew that Cairo had the highest death-rate in the world, and would speedily have been wiped out had it not also had the highest birth-rate. (This double pre-eminence made the record-breaking city one of Eustace's favourite subjects of contemplation.) And all this he owed to Aunt Sarah's teaching.

Aunt Sarah couldn't help being pleased; she was well-educated herself and knew that Eustace was quick at his lessons.

“I shouldn't be surprised if he gets into quite a high class,” his father said; “you'll see, he'll be bringing home a prize or two, won't you, Eustace?”

“Oh, but boys don't always learn much at school,” objected Hilda.

“How do you know they don't?” said Mr. Cherrington teasingly. “She never speaks to any other boys, does she, Eustace?”

But before Eustace had time to answer, Hilda surprised them all by saying: “Well, I do, so there! I spoke to Gerald Steptoe!”

Everyone was thunderstruck to hear this, particularly Eustace, because Hilda had always had a special dislike for Gerald Steptoe, who was a sturdy, round-faced, knockabout boy with rather off-hand manners.

“I met him near the Post Office,” Hilda said, “and he took off his cap, so I had to speak to him, hadn't I?”

Eustace said nothing. Half the boys in Anchorstone, which was only a small place, knew Hilda by sight and took their caps off when they passed her in the street, she was so pretty; and grown-up people used to stare at her, too, with a smile dawning on their faces. Eustace had often seen Gerald Steptoe take off his cap to Hilda, but she never spoke to him if she could help it, and would not let Eustace either.

Aunt Sarah knew this.

“You were quite right, Hilda. I don't care much for Gerald Steptoe, but we don't want to be rude to anyone, do we?”

Hilda looked doubtful.

“Well, you know he goes to a school near the one—St. Ninian's —that you want to send Eustace to.”

“Want to! That's good,” said Mr. Cherrington. “He
is
going, poor chap, on the seventeenth of January—that's a month from to-day—aren't you, Eustace? Now don't you try to unsettle him, Hilda.”

Eustace looked nervously at Hilda and saw the tears standing in her eyes.

“Don't say that to her, Alfred,” said Miss Cherrington. “You can see she minds much more than he does.”

Hilda didn't try to hide her tears, as some girls would have; she just brushed them away and gave a loud sniff.

“It isn't Eustace's feelings I'm thinking about. If he wants to leave us all, let him. I'm thinking of his—his education.” She paused, and noticed that at the word education their faces grew grave. “Do you know what Gerald told me?”

“Well, what did he tell you?” asked Mr. Cherrington airily, but Hilda saw he wasn't quite at his ease.

“He told me they didn't teach the boys
anything
at St. Ninian's,” said Hilda. “They just play games all the time. They're very good at games, he said, better than his school—I can't remember what it's called.”

“St. Cyprian's,” put in Eustace. Any reference to a school made him feel self-important.

“I knew it was another saint. But the boys at St. Ninian's aren't saints at all, Gerald said. They're all the sons of rich swanky people who go there to do nothing. Gerald said that what they don't know would fill books.”

There was a pause. No one spoke, and Mr. Cherrington and his sister exchanged uneasy glances.

“I expect he exaggerated, Hilda,” said Aunt Sarah. “Boys do exaggerate sometimes. It's a way of showing off. I hope Eustace won't learn to. As you know, Hilda, we went into the whole thing very thoroughly. We looked through twenty-nine prospectuses before we decided, and your father thought Mr. Waghorn a very gentlemanly, understanding sort of man.”

“The boys call him ‘Old Foghorn,'” said Hilda, and was rewarded by seeing Miss Cherrington stiffen in distaste. “And they imitate him blowing his nose, and take bets about how many times he'll clear his throat during prayers. I don't like having to tell you this,” she added virtuously, “but I thought I ought to.”

“What are bets, Daddy?” asked Eustace, hoping to lead the conversation into safer channels.

“Bets, my boy?” said Mr. Cherrington. “Well, if you think something will happen, and another fellow doesn't, and you bet him sixpence that it will, then if it does he pays you sixpence, and if it doesn't you pay him sixpence.”

Eustace was thinking that this was a very fair arrangement when Miss Cherrington said, “Please don't say ‘you,' Alfred, or Eustace might imagine that you were in the habit of making bets yourself.”

“Well——” began Mr. Cherrington.

“Betting is a very bad habit,” said Miss Cherrington firmly, “and I'm sorry to hear that the boys of St. Ninian's practise it—if they do: again, Gerald may have been exaggerating, and it is quite usual, I imagine, for the boys of one school to run down another. But there is no reason that Eustace should learn to. To be exposed to temptation is one thing, to give way is another, and resistance to temptation is a valuable form of self-discipline.”

“Oh, but they don't resist!” cried Hilda. “And Eustace wouldn't either. You know how he likes to do the same as everyone else. And if any boy, especially any new boy, tries to be good and different from the rest they tease him and call him some horrid name (Gerald wouldn't tell me what it was), and sometimes punch him, too.”

Eustace, who had always been told he must try to be good in all circumstances, turned rather pale and looked down at the floor.

“Now, now, Hilda,” said her father, impatiently. “You've said quite enough. You sound as if you didn't want Eustace to go to school.”

But Hilda was unabashed. She knew she had made an impression on the grown-ups.

“Oh, it's only that I want him to go to the right school, isn't it, Aunt Sarah?” she said. “We shouldn't like him to go to a school where he learned bad habits and—and nothing else, should we? He would be much better off as he is now, with you teaching him and me helping. Gerald said they really knew
nothing
; he said he knew more than the oldest boys at St. Ninian's, and he's only twelve.”

“But he does boast, doesn't he?” put in Eustace timidly. “You used to say so yourself, Hilda.” Hilda had never had a good word for Gerald Steptoe before to-day.

“Oh, yes, you all boast,” said Hilda sweepingly. “But I don't think he was boasting. I asked him how much he knew, and he said, The Kings and Queens of England, so I told him to repeat them and he broke down at Richard II. Eustace can say them perfectly, and he's only ten, so you see for the next four years he wouldn't be learning anything, he'd just be forgetting everything, wouldn't he, Aunt Sarah? Don't let him go, I'm sure it would be a mistake.”

Minney, Barbara's nurse, came bustling in. She was rather short and had soft hair and gentle eyes. “Excuse me, Miss Cherrington,” she said, “but it's Master Eustace's bedtime.”

Eustace said good-night. Hilda walked with him to the door and when they were just outside she said in a whisper: