Eustace and Hilda (59 page)

“I suddenly felt that the air was her element,” he said shyly.

“I agree with you,” said Lady Nelly, “and now she's in it. But when she comes back,” she added playfully, “I shall tell her that whichever heaven she was in, you were certainly in the sixth.”

“Oh, you mustn't,” cried Eustace. “She might misunderstand and even think I was glad to get rid of her.”

“Well, weren't you?”

“Oh
no
,” exclaimed Eustace, horrified. “It was only that I somehow liked to think of her in the sky.”

“We shall all be there one day,” said Lady Nelly, rather tartly. “Shall you like that? Does your face break into smiles whenever any of us soars aloft? Now I know the kind of treat to arrange for you—an orgy of obituary notices, a
festa
of funerals.”

Eustace laughed. He liked this kind of teasing.

“But I noticed you didn't try to give us any entertainment of the sort yourself,” Lady Nelly went on. “You didn't speak up when Dick asked for volunteers.”

“Well,” said Eustace defensively, “nobody did. They wanted Hilda to go.”

“That's what you prefer to think. I saw disappointment on several faces.”

Eustace looked troubled.

“I suppose Dick did rather hurry over it. What a pity there wasn't room for another. But I expect they'd all been up before, and Hilda hadn't, that was why he wanted her.”

“Perhaps it was,” said Lady Nelly.

“You do think she'll be quite safe?” asked Eustace with a sudden plunge into anxiety. “I couldn't bear the idea of her going at first, but when I saw them soaring up like—like larks, it seemed quite all right. I suppose Dick's had plenty of experience.”

“Yes, he's had a lot of experience, in one way and another,” said Lady Nelly. “And if they did crash, they'd crash together. He wouldn't be so ungentlemanly as to throw her out, like ballast, to lighten the load. But you needn't worry, he's a very good pilot.”

“You think I needn't?” said Eustace, who could never be reassured too often.

“I'm certain.”

They had reached the lake. Compared to Eustace's memories of it, dating from the evening of the picnic on the Downs, it seemed a small sheet of water. But it possessed in a peculiar degree the power still water has to calm the fret and ferment of the spirit. It is the movement in the mind that hurts, and the sight of water in which movement is imperceptible somehow brings the mind's traffic to a stand; and by presenting it with an unruffled likeness of itself, persuades it to peace. Here was no muddy bank, no hint that the element was being imprisoned against its will. The sweet, short grass grew right to the edge, and on the reedy margin the water was clear and sparkling. Across the feathery indented border the image of the house was spread out before them, the pink of the Banqueting Hall, the glinting, lively grey of the flint-flecked front; elongated and wavy, inflexions of the chimneys trembled into the rushes at their feet. The house had the mirror to itself, undiminished by the rivalry of Whaplode.

The rest of the party were strolling away to the right, towards the house, but Lady Nelly made no movement to follow them.

“I like the look of that bower over there,” she said, pointing to a group of willows whose silvery foliage, enclosing dark shadows, gave mystery to the top end of the lake. “As we can't have an aeroplane and ride off into the blue, shall we take a little stroll this way? I might even slip into the water, and then you would have the pleasure of saying I was in my right element. I shouldn't expect you to rescue me, of course. That would spoil everything.”

Eustace glanced at her, and at her lilac dress on which the little touches of pink had the effect of coquetting self-consciously but altogether charmingly with her age. She had asked him a question, but there was no inquiry in her face; the slight smile simply said that she was saving him the trouble of voicing their joint wishes. Her thoughts showed his the way.

“When we get back to tea,” she said, as they moved off in the direction of the willows, “we'll tell them we've had our escapade too.”

More than ever, Eustace felt in bliss.

“Why did you say ‘the sixth heaven' a moment ago?” he asked.

“Oh, I expect you always keep one in reserve.”

But their return was not to be so triumphal. Faces looked up rather quickly and then away again, as though they had been expecting someone else. Sir John Staveley rose from the larger of the two round tea-tables and said, “Come and sit with us, Nelly.” Eustace's orders seemed to hang fire, but presently he found himself installed at the other table, with Anne and Monica and Victor Trumpington, and an empty chair. Eustace glanced wistfully at the senior table and at the late companion of his walk, who now seemed separated from him by an unbridgeable gulf. Antony was there too, talking with immense animation to Lady Staveley, his elbow stuck out in the attitude of the fisherman in
The Boyhood of Raleigh
. As she warmed to the fire of his discourse, Eustace could see the family likeness. Sir John, talking to Lady Nelly, frowned occasionally, and drew back his head like an offended tortoise, as though to escape the impact of Antony's volubility.

“Tea, Mr. Cherrington, or iced coffee?”

“Oh, tea, thank you,” said Eustace.

“I never drink tea if there's iced coffee,” remarked Victor Trumpington.

Eustace wondered if this was a challenge. Victor's face was perfectly impassive; he seemed too indolent to change his expression. Eustace started out with the intention of liking everyone, and regarded failure as his fault, not theirs. It might be true, as Stephen had more than once told him, that he had the instincts of an accompanist, and did not know what people were really like. But this did not seem the moment to change his social technique.

“I imagine that coffee keeps me awake,” he said placatingly.

“Well, you can't always be asleep,” said Victor Trumpington in his lazy voice.

Eustace could think of no suitable riposte, and was relieved when Anne, handing Eustace his tea, said:

“That doesn't come well from you, Victor. You're a regular dormouse.”

“I certainly sleep more than Dick does,” Victor remarked. “He seems to me to be awake half the night.”

“Oh, he's always kept very late hours,” said Anne.

“And early ones too.”

“Yes, he's got too much energy. I wish I had. More coffee, Victor?”

“Thanks. But doesn't this political business absorb some of it?”

“It seemed to, for a time. What do you think, Monica?”

Eustace looked at Monica. She had a large face, inclined to redness, a decided nose, gooseberry-green eyes that looked small between eyelids heavy from headache, and a halo of wiry hair the colour of dried hay. The whole effect was too vital and good-natured to be unpleasing, but Eustace missed the look of serenity she had worn the night before.

“I don't think he quite knows what he wants,” she said. “I shouldn't be surprised if he went back to Irak after all. In fact, he told me he might.”

“How terrible for those poor Arabs,” drawled Victor. “Excuse me, Anne, but you know what I mean, he must give them no peace. Physical jerks before breakfast and all tents neatly folded by nightfall.”

“I think he finds their way of life more to his taste than ours,” said Anne. “Freer, you know.”

“What do Arab women do?” asked Victor. “We never seem to hear about them. There must be some. I fancy they're always being abducted; but what do they do between-times? Sit in their tents mending their yashmaks?”

“Dick says it's a man's country,” said Monica. “The women don't count for much. He gave me some reports to read on that very question, and asked me to look up some facts for him in London; but we haven't had a moment to go over them.”

“Isn't it about time they were back?” said Victor. He made a movement to consult his watch, but finding that it was hidden under his sleeve, desisted. “How long do these joy-rides usually last?”

Involuntarily Anne looked at Monica.

“Not more than a couple of hours, generally,” she said. Since they had begun to talk about Dick she had recovered some of her lost liveliness. “He usually goes on for about half an hour after one has asked him to turn round—do you find that?”

“He certainly has no mercy,” said Anne. “But then, I don't enjoy flying as you do.”

“Yes, I love it,” said Monica, and added vaguely, “in ordinary circumstances.”

Eustace got the impression that they all looked away from him, as though he were to blame for Monica's missing her ride. Lady Nelly was right: there had been disappointment.

“Will they land on Palmer's Plot?” asked Victor.

“Dairy Haye's a better pitch,
I
think.”

“Dick says it's too bumpy.”

“Why not the Old Meadow, then?”

“Not long enough.”

Lost among these allusions to places he did not know, which were household words and landmarks to the others, Eustace let his eyes slide from face to face, like a dog that waits to hear its name called.

“Either there or in the Forty Acre,” Monica was saying. “But that's further away, and Dick hates walking. I often tease him about it. He's so energetic in most ways, but he'd take a car to go a hundred yards. I remember——” She stopped.

“Did I hear you say the Forty Acre?” Sir John called out from the other table. “He'd better not try to land there—it's full of cows.”

“Wouldn't they be in the cow-shed by this time?” said Eustace, anxious to pull his weight in the conversation.

His contribution fell flat, but Victor said:

“It would take more than a cow to upset an aeroplane, surely.”

“I wasn't thinking of the aeroplane, I was thinking of the cows,” said Sir John, “and the compensation we should have to pay.”

“Oh, Papa, what a heartless speech,” said Anne. “Here we are trying not to worry, and Mr. Cherrington has hardly touched his tea, and you talk about casualties to cows as if nothing else mattered.”

“You're not really worried, are you?” said Sir John. “It's six o'clock. Yes, I suppose they ought to be back.” He paused, and for the first time a tremor of anxiety made itself felt in the room.

“I've known him often come back later than this,” said Monica.

“What's that? What's that?” asked Sir John, who was apt to become deaf when preoccupied.

“Monica said she's often known Dick come back later than this,” repeated Anne, raising her voice, and Monica reddened slightly.

“Pity you couldn't go too, Monica,” said Sir John, “just to remind him of the time. He wouldn't be so unpunctual with you, I dare say.”

Across the silver tea-kettle Lady Staveley's straight gaze telegraphed a warning. Trying to repair his blunder Sir John floundered more deeply. “Miss... Miss...” He groped for the name.

“Cherrington, my dear,” prompted his wife.

“Of course—how stupid of me. Miss Cherrington doesn't know Dick's habits as well as Monica does.”

No one found anything to say to this. Eustace felt himself the object of resentful thoughts, and suddenly realised how little he must mean to most of these people who had never seen him before and probably did not want to see him again. In spite of their friendly manner they had a common life behind park walls and ring fences which he did not share. They were withdrawing from him, all of them, even Lady Nelly, even Antony, and looking down at him from upper windows, belonging to bedrooms he could not trace, as he stood alone in the courtyard, with his luggage beside him. He was alone, Hilda was not with him, and for a frightening moment he saw himself as something alien and inimical, a noxious little creature from outside who had crept into this ancient and guarded enclosure to do it harm.

“Perhaps Miss Cherrington's sense of time is just as good as Monica's,” said Victor Trumpington in his flat voice. “What do you think, Cherrington?”

Eustace started.

“Hilda's absolutely punctual as a rule,” he told them earnestly. “She has to be, you know, at the clinic.” He paused, to let the empressement with which he always mentioned the word ‘clinic' have its effect. But this time they did not respond, and he went on quickly, “But sometimes she forgets about time altogether, much more than I should.”

“Let's hope this isn't one of those times,” said Victor lazily. “Shall we go out and scan the sky-line?”

Everyone agreed that this would be a good idea, and they drifted away from the tea-tables. Isolated among the sofas, Eustace involuntarily waited for Antony; but he had attached himself to Lady Nelly, and Eustace, almost with a pang, saw them turn to each other gladly, like the old friends that they were.

The party followed each other through the iron gateway and past the ruined chapel up an incline overlooking the lawn, to a point where only roofs and chimneys stood between them and the horizon.

“That's where they'd be coming from,” said Monica. “At least, if Dick's gone the way he usually goes.”

Their eyes followed the line of her arm into the cloudless sky, but not a speck rewarded their scrutiny, and disappointment dulled the faces which had been alight with eagerness and hope.

“What are we all standing here for?” said Sir John, testily. “Looking for them won't bring them. There's nothing to worry about; they've probably come down somewhere and are having tea.” He spoke as though to convince himself, and for a moment Eustace wondered if he were not more worried than any of them. “Why don't you four go and play lawn-tennis?” he went on almost irritably, turning to Anne, who was standing with Monica and Victor and Eustace in an uneasy bunch. “The court's there, and nobody ever uses it.”

Anne looked interrogatively at her companions, who hastily nodded. Even Eustace nodded. His host's displeasure was more to be dreaded than his doctor's.