Eustace and Hilda (50 page)

Sir John laid his cap and stick on their accustomed chair and took out his watch. “Does her ladyship know it's time for luncheon?” he said to the butler.

The butler was used to this query, for it happened every other day. Not that Lady Staveley was unpunctual, but Sir John, though by no means a martinet, could not bear to wait a moment for his meals. “I'll go and see, Sir John,” he said. As he opened the door a youngish woman stepped through.

“Good morning, Anne,” said Sir John, and kissed her. “What have you been doing with yourself all this fine morning?”

“I've been doing the flowers for one thing,” said Anne, “and then I walked down into the village and did a few things there.” Her face lit up as she was speaking and became almost animated; when she ceased the interest flickered out, and was replaced by the look of a grey day, not sullen or lowering, but as though resigned to the unlikelihood of change. Her grey flannel suit fitted her beautifully, but like her expression it had the air of reducing all occasions to one.

“I congratulate you on being so usefully employed,” said her father, “and on being so punctual, too.” He paused, as if searching for another subject for congratulation, and then said, “I think we had better begin. Your mother wouldn't want us to wait. What's happened to Crosby?”

“I think you sent him away,” said Anne.

“So I did, so I did. I'm always forgetting.” The door opened. “Ah, here's her ladyship. Edie, we were just going to begin without you.”

Plump and a little out of breath, Lady Staveley sat down with her back to the window, and Crosby gently propelled her chair towards the table. Two footmen did the same service for Sir John and Anne. The diamond and the turquoise rings glinting on her short, chubby fingers, Lady Staveley began to rearrange her spoons and forks: this was a rite, and no one spoke till it was finished. She looked a comfortable, motherly woman at first sight, but her face in repose had the coldness of authority and a touch of pride.

“I've had a busy morning,” she said. “So many things to see to. Did you know the flower show was to be on the twenty-first?”

They both admitted ignorance.

“Yes, and Bates is quite beside himself. He says we shall have nothing worth showing.”

“He always says that,” said Anne. “He sent in some quite nice flowers this morning.”

“Yes, and how beautifully you've arranged them,” said Lady Staveley, looking at the six small silver vases filled with early sweet-peas, and done with such a careful eye to symmetry that you could not tell one from another.

“Oh, I don't know!” Anne regarded her handiwork without enthusiasm. “They have different ways of doing flowers now, all in a heap with reds and pinks together, which clash to my eye. I'm afraid my ideas of floral decoration are rather old-fashioned.”

“Well, we're old-fashioned people,” said Lady Staveley comfortably, “and they suit us. Did you do the flowers for the bedrooms as well?”

“I did,” said Anne. “I tried to make them a little different—the men's and the women's, I mean—the men's blue and plain and upstanding, the women's pink and fussy and drooping, but it was too much for me, and in the end I made them all alike.”

“No wonder,” said Sir John. “I never heard such a fanciful idea. And why do people want flowers in their bedrooms, anyway? I don't suppose they ever look at them. I won't have 'em in mine—I always knock 'em over. Of course, if you're an invalid it's another matter. But they ain't healthy: even in hospitals they put them out at night—shows that they poison the air.”

“Anchorstone isn't a hospital now, thank goodness,” said Lady Staveley energetically. “Those days are over. And I shouldn't like any guest of mine to find a bedroom with no flowers in it. We're not quite barbarians yet.”

“All right, my dear,” said Sir John, who seemed content to relinquish his opposition rôle. “Have it your own way. I was only trying to lighten your burdens, or rather Anne's. By the by, who
is
coming this afternoon?”

Lady Staveley waved away a plate of ham which had appeared as a supplement to the meat course.

“Well now,” she said, and wondered where she should begin. The names seemed to hang back, like guests unwilling to take precedence of each other in going through a door. She felt surprised at this, for she was not a woman subject to hesitations or second thoughts.

“There's Dick to start with,” she said.

“Oh yes, he's coming back from stumping the country,” said Sir John. “He'll be tired, I expect.”

“Dick's never tired,” said his mother.

“Political meetings are much harder work than bamboozling a lot of Arabs,” Sir John observed. “Who next?”

Again Lady Staveley took a look into her mind and found the names reluctant to come forward.

“Then there's Nelly,” she said.

“Oh, Nelly, it's a long time since we've seen her. What's she been up to, I wonder?”

“She's in London,” said Anne. “I spent two or three nights at Portman Square. She had a musical party—some foreigners playing in a quartet—and a lot of people came to it.”

“Bohemians, mostly, I suppose?” said Sir John. “Don't expect you knew any of 'em.”

“I did know one or two,” said Anne, with a touch of spirit. “And there were some older friends of Aunt Nelly's whom we all know.”

“Watching the circus, I suppose?” said Sir John.

“Well, they didn't exactly mix, but I think they quite enjoyed meeting the lions.”

“Like the Christians in the Coliseum, I should fancy,” Sir John said. “Nelly always did like that kind of thing. Still, there's no accounting for tastes.”

“It wasn't quite my cup of tea,” admitted Anne, half wishing that it had been.

“I should think not. Well, who's to keep Nelly amused? She'll be bored to tears with us.”

“Oh, nonsense, John,” said Lady Staveley. “Of course she won't. She's lived half her life in the country, and she's far more practical than you think. She used to take a great interest in local happenings at Whaplode in the old days; she was always getting up plays and entertainments for the village people and helping with charities. She was adored there.”

“I know people say that,” said Sir John; “but I've heard a different story, that the villagers didn't really relish her benevolent intentions and were terrified at being dressed up as Lady Macbeth and Julius Cæsar and being made to dance round the Maypole, and drink lashings of hot soup, however ill they felt. Anyhow, she won't have time to get up entertainments here; so what are we going to do for her?”

“Well, we shall have Antony.”

“Antony? Antony who?”

“Helen's Antony—Antony Lachish.”

“Oh, he's coming, is he? We
are
honoured. I know that people do find him amusing, but personally I can never hear a word he says. And he's so restless, always jumping about, and fading away, like a will-o'-the-wisp. And he looks so delicate—not that that's anything against him, I dare say. When he was a child Helen let him go about too much with grown-up people and over-stimulated his brain. Such a pity. Anyhow, he never turns up; he's chucked us twice at the last minute. What reason have you for thinking he'll come?”

“I had a telegram from him an hour ago,” said Lady Staveley, with a controlled air of triumph. “Here it is. ‘Arriving Anchorstone six-twenty-eight. Love. Antony.'”

“Pooh, love indeed,” said Sir John. “Love in a telegram. What are people coming to? I don't suppose he loves us very much. Still, let's hope he does turn up. He'll take Nelly off our hands a bit. Who else is there?”

Anxious to get the ordeal over, Lady Staveley made another dive into the aquarium. The next fish seemed easily caught.

“There's Victor Trumpington.”

“Good,” said Sir John shortly. “Always glad to see Victor.”

Anne coloured slightly, but made no comment.

“And then?” said Sir John. “Or is he the last?”

“By no means,” said Lady Staveley, wishing that he were. She felt that perhaps the week-end bill of fare would sound more palatable to her husband if it came from Anne, for he was seldom irritable with her. So she turned to her daughter and said:

“I'm getting muddled, Anne. Who else is there?”

Anne knew what her mother's chief difficulty was, but declined to help her out.

“Didn't you say Monica was coming?”

“Monica?” said Sir John, helping himself to a piece of cheese. “Why, she was here only the other day. I remember, because Dick should have turned up and he didn't. Kept somewhere tub-thumping. I thought she seemed a bit disappointed, but it wasn't our fault. Still, she'll see him now, if that's any consolation to her. She's a nice girl, Monica, you know where you are with her. No frills, no nonsense, good with a horse—a nice outdoor girl. So that's the party, is it? Let me give you a glass of port, Edie. You'll need it before Monday morning comes.”

He pushed the decanter towards her.

Lady Staveley exchanged glances with her daughter. It was no use putting off the evil moment. She reminded herself, as so often before, that her husband's bark was much worse than his bite. He was like a dog who made a great demonstration in front of the horses, but it was she who held the reins. Nevertheless, she broke an almost invariable rule and poured herself out a half a glass of port.

“You must be patient,” she said. “That isn't quite all.”

“What?” said Sir John, pausing with his glass half-way to his lips. “Do you mean there's someone else coming?”

Anne bent her head over the coffee tray, which the footman was handing to her, and fixed her eyes on his large red hand, and said, with the idea of postponing any outburst till the servants had gone:

“Shall I pour your coffee out for you, Papa?”

“That's very kind of you, my dear. Three spoonfuls of sugar and no milk.”

She handed him the cup. “And now shall I light your cigar?”

“That's most obliging of you.”

Over the match she watched the servant's figure retreating down the hall. Only just in time; for Sir John, unmollified by his cigar, immediately returned to the attack.

“Did you say there was someone else coming?”

The short breathing space had given Lady Staveley time to rally her forces.

“Yes,” she said, with a flourish of ironical defiance. “There's Miss Hilda Cherrington and Mr. Eustace Cherrington.”

It was out.

“Who on earth are they?”

“Miss Hilda Cherrington,” said Lady Staveley, speaking slowly and patiently and rather loudly as if she were addressing a foreigner or a refractory child—a bluff that on such occasions she sometimes tried—“is the Secretary of the Clinic for Crippled Children on Highcross Hill. That's right, isn't it, Anne?”

Anne nodded.

“Never heard of her,” said Sir John.

“Perhaps not, because you don't move in high medical circles. She's doing an extremely fine work there.”

“But what's she doing here?” asked Sir John.

Lady Staveley stirred her coffee.

“It's rather a long story, but I'll make it as short as I can. Miss Cherrington and her brother lived in New Anchorstone when they were children, and he was the little boy who got lost in the park one wet day, with Nancy Steptoe, Major Steptoe's daughter, and Dick happened to pass by and heard her calling for help and brought them in here. We gave them some dry clothes and a hot drink. The little boy had a heart attack or something, and was very ill afterwards. You probably don't remember: it all happened years ago.”

“I do begin to remember something,” said Sir John. “But you haven't explained to me why, after we've managed to get on without each other all that time, you've suddenly invited them to spend Saturday to Monday with us.”

Lady Staveley sighed. “You go on, Anne,” she said. “You know the next part of the story better than I do.”

Anne disclaimed such knowledge. “All I remember is,” she said, “that Dick and I and Nancy and Gerald Steptoe were riding on the sands towards New Anchorstone, and Dick was grumbling because there were no castles or rock gardens to trample on, when suddenly we saw two children in the distance and he called out, ‘Come on, let's ride over them!'—you know how he liked to give people a fright. When we got a bit nearer Nancy told us they were the Cherringtons, who were friends of hers, and we pulled up. They seemed to be having a quarrel. She was going for him with her spade, and he was looking at her helplessly, like a rabbit with a stoat.”

“I hope they won't do that when they're here,” said Sir John.

“Dick said we must stop her killing him, and told Nancy to ride on and congratulate the boy on having been left some money by old Miss Fothergill.”

“You remember her, John?” said Lady Staveley. “An old lady, half paralysed, who lived with a companion.”

“Of course I do. One of the pillars of the place. Great pity she died.”

“She couldn't live for ever, Papa. Well, they didn't know about the legacy, and Dick asked me if we should tell them and I said yes. Then Dick introduced me to the sister——”

“How did he come to know her?” demanded Sir John.

“He had been to the Cherringtons' house while the boy was ill to ask after him, and met her there. She didn't say very much: she seemed shy and angry. I suppose it was because of the quarrel.”

“Was she pretty?” asked Sir John. “Though I suppose you could hardly tell at that age.”

“She was rather pretty,” said Anne. “I remember Dick said something about her coming over to see us, but she never came. That's all I know. Mama will tell you the rest.”

“I can only tell you what Dick told me,” said Lady Staveley. “The boy made good use of his money, and got a scholarship to Haughton and then another scholarship at St. Joseph's——”