Eustace and Hilda (43 page)

All the wedding party were outside the café now, swarming on the steps under the Elizabethan woodwork. Only a few yards away a sleek black Daimler hung with white ribbons waited at the kerb. Eustace found himself next to Aunt Sarah; almost involuntarily he took in his her passive, well-gloved hand. The mêlée surged in front of them. Fists raised in menace hurled handfuls of confetti as if they had been bombs. Barbara and Jimmy came stumbling and ducking down the steps towards the sanctuary of the car, whose door the chauffeur was holding open. They had outdistanced their tormentors and were well inside, when a figure ran forward, wild as a Bacchante, and launched a new attack through the window. Nor did the bombardment cease until their fingers fluttering farewells in the coloured shower, husband and wife drove off.

With a gesture of exhaustion and appeasement the figure lurched into the dull yellowish light of the December afternoon. Tears of laughter were running down her cheeks.

It was Hilda.

The episode was three months old, but in recollection it still gave Eustace a shock. He still could hardly believe that that wild-eyed, tear-stained, dishevelled woman was his sister Hilda.

Startled out of his reverie, he glanced at the clock. Past seven and he had done nothing about inspecting the arrangements for the dinner. Supervision was not Eustace's strong point. Conscientiously carried out, it meant criticism, and criticism practised by someone of a normally easy-going nature often unfairly gave the impression of fault-finding. Still, he must put in an appearance.

The steward, a wispy, sallow man with a wary eye, took him into a small room, leading off the dining-room and reserved for private dinner-parties. The table laid for twenty almost filled it. What a noise there would be later on, Eustace thought; the regular diners would probably send in protests. The table was decorated with freesias and jonquils; they had been arranged symmetrically rather than with inspiration—still, they had a festive air. Soon they would be stuffed in silken button-holes, and by the morning they would be withered; but they would not be alone in being the worse for wear.

Eustace sighed and took out of his pocket a plan of where the diners were to sit. Who should be neighbours was a problem, for not all the members of the Lauderdale were on good terms with each other. At the head of the table sat the President, with the distinguished visitor on his right. Next, as Secretary, came Eustace. Passing down the table, he slowly dealt out the name cards, wondering anew if
B
's proximity to
A
would be held to atone for his proximity to
C
. Any disappointment on this score would be blamed on Eustace, but he thought he knew the internal politics of the society by this time; and if some blamed him, others would applaud his ingenious malice.

At last it was done. The steward reported everything in order; a dozen bottles of champagne were on ice, and more could be had. As Eustace listened to the man's recital, he quickly became infected by its reassuring tone; nothing could possibly go wrong.

He returned to the smoking-room in a sanguine frame of mind and with a sense of duty done.

He had hardly got inside the door when he heard his name called. The inflection was unmistakable: it could only belong to Antony Lachish. He was sitting hunched up in a leather chair, his long, thin legs dangling over its arm.

“Eustace!” said Antony again, in a way that made more than one member give him an indignant, repressive look which, however, he did not notice. “Come and sit down. Where have you been? We all thought you were dead.”

He smiled suddenly with extraordinary sweetness, and Eustace pulled up a chair and set it at right angles to his. But this tactical manœuvre did not succeed, for the next moment Antony had whisked his legs over the other arm, and was looking at him across his shoulder.

“You never stay still a moment,” said Eustace.

Antony's face took on an expression of such tortured self-criticism that Eustace could not help laughing.

“Do you think I'm frightfully restless?” Antony asked. “People say I am.” He still looked miserably worried.

“Of course not,” said Eustace soothingly. “Just mercurial.”

Antony's face cleared instantly, and began to shine with self-satisfaction.

“That's a much nicer word,” he said. “How kind and clever of you to think of it. I suppose my face does show my feelings too much?”

“I don't think even you could feel as much as your face shows,” said Eustace.

“You don't think me insincere?” The agonised look returned, then relaxed into the bewitching smile, as Antony said, “You couldn't expect me to practise facial control when I see you after such a long separation. What
have
you been doing?”

“Well, working a little,” said Eustace.

“I knew it, I told them so. I was sure you weren't angry with us. ‘He's really working for us,' I said. ‘As long as we can point to Eustace, we shan't be sent down. On the contrary, we shall shine with reflected glory.'”

“You're much more likely to get a First than I am,” said Eustace, who knew how little Antony's airy manner corresponded either to his ambitions or his powers.

“Nonsense, I've no mental stamina, I'm quite hopeless. Gamma minus is my mark. Only yesterday my tutor said, ‘Lachish, your work is like summer lightning—an occasional flash, but miles away from the subject.'”

“Mine complained that I was always peering through the undergrowth,” said Eustace despondently.

“My spies report quite differently,” said Antony. “They speak of a certain First. They are beginning to take bets on it. When are you doing Schools?”

“A year next June.”

“Then you've no excuse for living like a hermit. We shall come and serenade you every night. Let's begin your emancipation now. Let's dine together.”

Eustace explained why he could not.

“But what is this Lauderdale Society?” asked Antony. “Describe it to me.”

“Well,” said Eustace, “it began long ago as a semi-political club with a Conservative background. Then the background faded away and the Lauder became a kind of dining club, a sort of protest against the plain living and high thinking of St. Joseph's. The members threw their weight about and weren't very popular with the College or with the Dons. In fact, there was talk of suppressing it. After the war the Lauder was revived, and somehow I became the Secretary; but it didn't change its spots, the members still felt in honour bound to let the College know they felt superior to it, socially, intellectually, and in every way, and again, quite lately, there was a rumour that it was to be painlessly disbanded. That's why we're dining here; they won't let us dine in College.

“Then I had the idea of asking someone down to address us on a serious subject, like the Future of the World—someone with a name, you know, so that we might look a little less irresponsible——”

Eustace paused. He felt his effort to justify the Lauderdale to Antony had sounded lame; how much better to have said boldly, “It exists to glorify the gilded youth of St. Joseph's,” but he lacked the aplomb. It was in his nature to anticipate criticism, and in the moral sphere, the sphere where Eustace was most at home though least at ease, the Lauderdale was not easy to defend.

“I see,” said Antony. “I can't picture you among these hawbucks, but I suppose it's all right. Who are you getting down to improve your standing in the eyes of the Dons?”

“A rising young Conservative,” said Eustace. “Staveley, his name is, Richard Staveley. I trust you've heard of him?”

Antony's mobile face ran through a number of expressions, of which surprise was the first and last.

“Dick Staveley?” he said. “Indeed I have; he's a sort of cousin of mine, for one thing.”

“I met him once or twice,” said Eustace, “long, long ago when we lived at a little place called Anchorstone. I was nine then, and I suppose he was about sixteen. He rescued me once when I got lost in a wood playing hare and hounds.”

“He would,” said Antony. “He was always either rescuing or giving cause for rescue. But to think of your having known him! I can't get over it.”

“I thought him fascinating,” said Eustace.

“Many people have. I didn't know him then. I was only five, but I used to hear a lot about my extraordinary cousin who was always up to something.”

“What sort of things?” asked Eustace.

Antony thought a moment.

“Well, in those days it was schoolboys' pranks—you know, going up to London, putting eggs in the masters' hats, taking away something important just when it was most wanted—practical jokes with a sting in the tail.”

“I can see that he might have been like that,” said Eustace. “He played a practical joke on me once.”

“What kind?”

Eustace told Antony about the legacy.

“You got off lightly, I think. He never played one on me, because Mama never much liked going to Anchorstone. She went from a sense of duty, because of Cousin Edie. It was apt to be frightfully dull, you know, except for Dick's booby-traps. Papa went because of the shooting. That was always good.”

“But isn't the house lovely?” asked Eustace. “It seemed the most marvellous place to me. In those days my day-dreams were full of it.”

“Were they?” said Antony, with the rush of sympathetic interest in his voice from which some of his popularity sprang. “Well, I don't wonder. It
is
a lovely house; at least, part of it is—the Jacobean part with the moat in front. Romantic, enchanted. Do you remember the helmets on the window-ledges? You could see them from outside. They weren't arranged or grouped, they looked as if the knights had thrown them down, still warm from their hot heads, while they went to change into something more comfortable.”

“I never got near enough for that,” said Eustace. “I only went into the house once, in the dark.”

“You would go into the new part, I expect, where they mostly live—that's nothing much, Victorian Gothic of the later Staveley epoch—quite hideous, really, but I doubt if they know it.”

“Don't they care about the house, then?” asked Eustace. He couldn't bear to think they didn't.

“Oh yes, they're devoted to it and intensely proud of it. Only they don't discriminate very much; they wouldn't think it was quite nice to.”

“Wasn't there a sister called Anne?” Eustace asked.

“Yes, indeed. Poor Anne, a dear girl but dull. She never had a chance, you know. They dressed her in the most extraordinary way. At balls she could hardly bend for whalebone, she creaked all over. And her stiffness was infectious; even the most dashing young men turned into ramrods and icicles at the sight of her. It was terrible for her, terrible for everyone. She created a desert all round her. Cousin Edie was to blame in a way—but she got it from the Staveleys. They were proud of living in the last century—indeed, they were proud of everything, just of being themselves. One doesn't quite know why.”

“Aren't they a very old family?” asked Eustace, to whom the ancient lineage of the Staveleys had meant a great deal, though he was shy of admitting it.

Antony seemed surprised and slightly puzzled by this inquiry.

“Well, no older than many others. Everyone's family's old if you begin to look into it. I suppose you mean all that business about prancing on the foreshore and shooting an arrow into the sea? It does sound rather romantic, but I think it was all they were good for. They never did anything else very much. They were wonderfully undistinguished.”

“But surely Sir John Staveley was Lord-Lieutenant?” said Eustace, unwilling to relinquish his dream of the splendour of the Staveleys.

Antony answered with a touch of impatience. “Oh, everyone one knows is that. You only have to be long enough in the same place. The Staveleys are my relations and I don't want to run them down, but believe me, they wouldn't have been heard of since Domesday Book or whenever it was, if Lady Nelly hadn't married into them. It was she who put them on the map.”

“I don't think I know about her,” said Eustace.

“Oh,
don't
you?” Antony's voice betrayed surprise; his face, even more expressive than his voice, announced consternation. But there was nothing patronising or pitying in his bewilderment, and Eustace could not have taken offence, even if he had wanted to.

“She's the most divine, adorable woman,” said Antony, his face lighting up with rapture as if she had actually been present in the room. “In Edwardian days she reigned, she was a queen. Everyone was at her feet, every heart melted at the sight of her.”

“Did her heart melt too?” asked Eustace.

“Yes, alas, only too readily,” Antony said. “And sometimes over objects that were not worthy of her. She had too much pity in her nature. No one could understand what she saw in Freddie Staveley, except his looks. But she had a passion for lame dogs, and always wanted to help them.”

“Is he a lame dog?” Eustace asked.

“Well, not any longer. He drank himself to death, you see. She was an angel to him and did all she could to help him, took him from one place to another and surrounded him with amusing people and didn't mind what he did if she thought it would take his mind off the old failing. The Staveleys weren't grateful to her; they pretended it was partly her fault, and said she should have been stricter with him, and shut him up in a home, or something like that. Really they were jealous of her, as crows might be of a nightingale, or a bird of paradise. Even Cousin Edie used to say, ‘Poor Freddie, Nelly makes him lead such a tiring, unstable life.' It made Mama furious—when everyone could see that she was wearing herself out for him. She couldn't help it if people fell in love with her. They still do, though she must be nearly fifty. You must meet her. I'll bring you together.”