Eustace and Hilda

by L. P. Hartley

  “You tell him, Dick,” said Nancy.

  Dick Staveley braced himself, power and authority descended on him, and for the first time Eustace realised that he was once more in the presence of his hero.

  “Here, come a bit nearer,” Dick commanded.

  Eustace edged his way cautiously towards the towering rampart of tossing heads, shining eyes, and hoofs that pawed the sand.

  Dick bent towards him.

  “You’ve come into a fortune,” he said.

  “A fortune?” repeated Eustace.

  “You’ll have to explain, Dick,” Anne said. “He doesn’t know what a fortune is.”

  “Oh yes I do,” exclaimed Eustace; “it’s a great deal of money.”

  “Quite right. Well, somebody’s left you a great deal of money.”

  “But who left it to me?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  Eustace shook his head.

  “Just look at him,” said Dick. “He doesn’t know who left it to him, and he can’t guess. He has such masses of friends waiting to die and leave him their money that he simply doesn’t know who it is. We don’t have friends like that, do we, Anne? Our friends never die and if they did they wouldn’t leave us anything. I want to know how Eustace manages it. I expect he murders them.”

  “But I haven’t any friends,” cried Eustace.

  “Well, one less now, of course. It was very suspicious, you know, the way she died. She was quite well in the morning. She called on her lawyer and said to him: ‘Just get out some stamps and sealing-wax and red tape, and so on, because I’m going to change my will. I’m going to leave all my money to a young friend of mine, who is coming to tea with me this afternoon.’ Well, you went and we know what happened. It did seem rather odd.”

  “Miss Fothergill?” gasped Eustace. “Do you mean Miss Fothergill?”

  “You’ve got it.” Dick began to clap, and they all joined in, while Eustace, possessed by emotions so unrecognisable that he did not know whether they were painful or delicious, stared blankly at Dick’s laughing face.

  “You don’t look very pleased,” said Dick at length.

  “Oh, but I am,” said Eustace. “I was just wondering what Hilda would think.” He turned to his sister as he spoke.

  “Well, and what does Miss Cherrington think?” asked Dick, and as plainly as if it had been yesterday instead of a year ago Eustace remembered the coaxing voice in which Dick used to speak to Hilda.

  “I think it’s very nice for Eustace,” she said, speaking expressionlessly, as if mesmerised. “I hope it won’t make any difference to him—I mean,” she corrected herself. “I hope it won’t make him any different.”

  “Oh, but it will!” Nancy’s clear voice rang out in mockery and triumph. “For one thing, he’s going away to school.”

  Going away, going away: so that was what going away meant: not what he thought it did.

  As their dread meaning evaporated, the words seemed to shrink and dwindle, from the capital letters of a capital sentence to the smallest of common type. Utterly insignificant, they now carried hardly any meaning at all, and the thing in Eustace that had been swelling like a tumour shrank and dwindled with them. But the word ‘school’ still meant something; it conjured up a picture of the brown prison-house sidling up to Cambo like a big boy preparing to kick a small one.

  “Not Mr. Johnson’s?” he said.

  “Oh no,” said Nancy. “Not a potty little school like that. Why, tradesmen’s sons go there. No, a school in the South of England.”

  Nancy’s tone established for ever in Eustace’s mind a conviction of the social superiority of the South over all parts of England, particularly East Anglia.

  “St. Ninian’s at Broadstairs it’s to be, I’m told,” said Gerald. “Not half a bad place. Some very decent fellows go there, very decent. We played their second eleven at cricket this summer. We drove over from St. Swithin’s in a brake, and they gave us a jolly good feed. St. Swithin’s is in Cliftonville, you know. Of course, that’s different from Margate. No trippers or anything of that sort.”

  “Is it at all like Anchorstone?” Eustace asked. “Are there any rocks?”

  “I dare say there are, but you couldn’t jump on them, you know. No one does. They wouldn’t let you, and besides you wouldn’t want to. It’s a kids’ game.”

  Eustace felt as if the landscape of his life was streaming by him while he, perilously balanced on a small white stone in the midst of the flux, searched in vain for some landmark which would confirm his sense of the stability of existence.

  “You’ll like it at St. Ninian’s,” Dick Staveley said. “It was my pri. too.”

  Eustace looked puzzled.

  “My private school, I mean. You don’t stay there after you’re fourteen. Then you go to a public school.”

  “And then to the ’Varsity,” said Nancy.

  “But when shall I begin to work?” asked Eustace. “I mean, when shall I start to earn my living?”

  “Oh, you won’t ever have to do that, will he, Dick?” said Nancy. “You’ll be like Dick, you won’t have to work, you’ll be much too rich. You’ll live at home and play golf, or shoot, or hunt, or something like that, and the rest of the time you’ll spend abroad, at Homburg or Carlsbad or one of those places.”

  The landscape was now flashing by at a speed that left Eustace no time to sort out his impressions. But Nancy’s picture of a future exempt from toil and effort was one he never forgot.

  “But will Daddy have to work?” he asked.

  “Well, we really hadn’t thought about that, had we? Yes, I expect so. The money doesn’t belong to him. It’s yours, or will be when you’re twenty-one. I expect he’ll come and spend his holidays with you if you ask him, and don’t happen to be abroad.”

  Eustace considered this. “And Hilda——” he began. There was a pause, and no one spoke. Eustace looked at Hilda. Her cheeks were still damp with the tears she had shed a little while ago. Surely they ought to be dry now. Once or twice she looked round with an uneasy movement of her head, but her eyes, he could see, did not meet the eight pairs of eyes that looked down at her. She began to scrape the sand off her shoes with the edge of her spade.

  “Miss Cherrington’s face is her fortune,” said Dick Staveley, and Eustace thought he had never heard such a beautiful compliment. “She’ll find something to do while Eustace is away. We’ll find something for her to do, won’t we, Anne?” he said, turning to the lady on his right. “I want you to meet Miss Cherrington. I’ve told you about her.” Very gently he took hold of Anne’s bridle-rein and they moved a step or two nearer to Hilda. “This is my sister Anne, and this is Miss Cherrington, whom everyone else calls Hilda. Two such charming girls. I’m sure you’ll like each other.” He smiled with his eyes, and his sister bent her head and smiled too.

  “Good old Hilda!” cried Nancy tolerantly.

  “Well, not too good, I hope,” said Dick. “But, you see, she’s always had to look after Eustace. He’s such a handful!” Dick Staveley smiled at Eustace, the smile of one man to another; his horse, with the white star on its forehead, tossed its head and had to be admonished by its rider. Infected by its restiveness the others, too, began to squirm and fidget and eye each other inquiringly, and it was some moments before order was restored.

  Leaning on her spade, Hilda looked up unwillingly at Dick, and their eyes met for the first time.

  “I shall have to look after Eustace when he comes back for the holidays,” she said. “I dare say he’ll need me more than ever.” She glanced at Eustace doubtfully. “School may not be altogether good for him,” she added, almost hopefully.

  “I don’t suppose it will be,” said Dick lightly. “You couldn’t expect that, could you, Anne?”

  “I don’t think it’s doing you very much good,” said his sister.

  “Well, perhaps I was hopeless from the start. But it’s never too late to mend, is it, Hilda?” he said. “Now that you’ve made such a good job
of Eustace, you must come and try your hand on me. Don’t you think so, Anne?”

  Anne gave Hilda a considering look.

  “We should love to see you, of course,” she said. “But you needn’t pay any attention to him, he likes to tease.”

  “But I want her to pay attention to me,” cried Dick, appealing to the company in general. “You never did, Anne, you neglected me shamefully. You weren’t a true sister to me. You’re eighteen now, and what have you ever done for me? And Hilda’s only—only how old?”

  “She’s nearly fourteen,” said Eustace, as Hilda did not speak.

  “Nearly fourteen, that’s only thirteen, and yet, thanks to the way she trained Eustace, he’s now a rich man with thousands of pounds in the bank.”

  “Fifty-eight thousand,” said Gerald Steptoe solemnly. “Daddy told me.”

  “But I didn’t do it,” said Hilda. “It wasn’t my fault. I just told Eustace he must speak to Miss Fothergill, and not mind her being old and ugly. That was all I did.”

  “But it was quite enough,” Dick Staveley said. “Anne and I often used to pass Miss Fothergill when we were riding on the cliffs. And Anne could see that she was old and ugly just as well as Hilda could. But she never said, ‘Now, Dick, just get off a minute and be polite to poor Miss Fothergill.’”

  “You wouldn’t, if I had,” said his sister.

  “How do you know? I might, and then perhaps she would have left her money to me. It all came from having Hilda as a sister. Did Nancy ever tell you to speak to Miss Fothergill, Gerald?”

  “Good Lord, no. We used to run a mile when we saw her.”

  “There you are, you see. You sisters simply don’t know your job. There was sixty-eight thousand pounds for the asking and neither of you would take the trouble to say, ‘Dick—or Gerald—I can spare you for a moment from my side, in fact I’m longing to see the back of you—just run over and talk to that ugly old lady. I know she’s half paralysed, and whistles when she speaks, and her hands aren’t very nice to look at, being rather like a lion’s, but you’ll find it well worth while.’”

  They all laughed, and the gay, happy sound was caught by the wind that played in their bright hair.

  “But Hilda knows what’s good for a chap, and that’s why Eustace is going to spend the rest of his life in comfort, not sweating in banks, or offices, or chambers, but just lying about on deck-chairs and ringing the bell when he wants anything.”

  “Just like Miss Fothergill,” said Nancy. “We often saw Eustace going to Laburnum Lodge and Daddy laid a bet with Mother that she would leave him something. ‘Depend upon it, he doesn’t go there for nothing,’ Daddy used to say. ‘That boy’s got his head screwed on.’”

  “She always did give me tea,” said Eustace, “but I never asked for it. I just happened to be there at the time.”

  Nancy laughed.

  “We aren’t blaming you, Eustace. Now, tell me one thing: is it true she was really a witch?”

  “A witch?”

  “Well, everybody said so. They said she had a broomstick and flew out on it at night. I expect she kept it in the umbrella-stand in the hall.”

  “I never saw it, Nancy,” said Eustace seriously.

  “But she had a stick, hadn’t she?”

  “Yes, but for walking with.”

  “Would you know a broomstick if you saw one?”

  “I’m not sure that I should.”

  “Well, I bet you she had one. And everyone said that she cast spells.”

  “I don’t think she did.”

  “Well, didn’t she cast one on you? Wasn’t that partly why you were always going there?”

  Eustace tried to see his friendship with Miss Fothergill in terms of a spell. It would explain a great deal, of course. But surely witches were wicked? Miss Fothergill represented the good; and in all his dealings with her he had had one aim, to increase the volume of good surrounding Eustace Cherrington and radiating from him over the whole world. It had been quite pleasant, of course, but then good things could be pleasant, once you had got over your initial distaste for them. They made you feel good, and a witch could never do that.

  “Witches have familiars, you know,” Nancy went on. “Do you know what a familiar is?”

  Eustace shook his head.

  “They’re little boys generally, quite nice little boys to begin with. That’s why the witch likes them. She has to look about very carefully to find the right kind: she might find one on the cliffs, of course. You see, most boys are so selfish, like Gerald: they wouldn’t be any good to a witch, because she couldn’t make them do what she wanted them to do.”

  “What would she want them to do?”

  “Oh, fetch and carry, you know, and run about after her, and pick up her purse, and read aloud to her, and play cards with her, and forfeits, and give her kisses.”

  “How did you know that?” cried Eustace, scarlet.

  “A little bird told me. And all the time he thinks he is being very kind, but it’s really the witch who is putting a spell on him. And then in the end, you see, she gets possession of his soul, and it becomes as thin as paper and she slips it under her pillow every night when she goes to bed. But of course he doesn’t know anything about that. He imagines he still has his soul and it’s the same size as usual. And then she dies and leaves him a fortune to show that she has paid for his soul and it really is hers. He never gets it back, poor little boy!”

  Eustace stared at her fascinated. The wind had put a delicate flush upon her milky skin; a mischievous gleam was in her eyes; to the onset of the wind and the restless movements of the horse her slight figure yielded itself in a hundred attitudes of grace. Into Eustace’s heart stole a sensation of exquisite sweetness; he remembered when he had last felt it—at the dancing class, on the afternoon when she rejected all his rivals and danced with him and for him. She had spoken of a spell—well, wasn’t this one?

  “I believe you’re a witch,” he said with a boldness that surprised him.

  “I may be,” said Nancy, appearing to welcome this vile charge, “but if I am it doesn’t mean that I want to have anything to do with a familiar who has belonged to another witch. He would be secondhand, you see.”

  She turned away pensively and looked across the head of her brother’s horse at Dick.

  “Don’t listen to her, Eustace,” Dick said. “She’s been reading something in a book, you know, and she doesn’t quite understand it—all that about familiars and souls, I mean. I’m sure your soul is as good as hers any day—I don’t think she has one. Now Hilda”—his voice changed—“she has a soul, of course.”

  Eustace, still with his eyes on Nancy’s face, saw it harden slightly. “What a pity there isn’t a Mr. Fothergill, eh, Eustace?” Dick went on, speaking to Eustace but looking at Hilda. “Do you think if I got into a bath-chair, and made Gerald here push it along the cliffs, you could order Hilda to come and talk to me and have tea with me and—and all the rest of it? Do you think you could?”

  “Well,” said Eustace, “perhaps if you were really ill.... But I don’t think you ever would be.”

  “No, I’m afraid not; too healthy. All the same I shall try it. One day you’ll be out walking and you’ll notice something crawling along in the distance and when you come up to it this is what you’ll see”—and leaning forward on the horse he clenched his hands and curved his shoulders, as though his body had contracted to meet a sudden pain, and dropping his right eye and twisting up the corner of his mouth, he managed to force his face into a hideous resemblance to Miss Fothergill’s.

  Even Eustace laughed.

  “You’d be like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood,” he exclaimed.

  “Yes, and Eustace would have to come and kill me. But he wouldn’t, he’d be too lazy by that time. He’d just ring for another sherry and bitters and say, ‘Poor Hilda, I always knew she’d get into trouble!’”

  “I shouldn’t,” said Eustace indignantly. “I should——” He stopped and lo
oked helplessly at the towering horses, and at Dick who reminded him of the picture of a centaur.

  “There, I knew it,” Dick Staveley cried triumphantly, “he wouldn’t do anything. He would allow his sister to be eaten and not bother to avenge her. That’s what comes of having money. All the same, it’s very nice to have it.” He looked at his watch. “By Jove, it’s half-past twelve. We must be getting along. Do we separate here, Nancy?”

  “I think we’ve just time to go back by Old Anchorstone with you,” said Nancy.

  Dick caught his sister’s eye.

  “Excellent, as long as it doesn’t make you late. But before we go let’s give them both three cheers.” His face turned serious, his voice resonant with command. “Three cheers for Hilda and Eustace, coupled with the name of Miss Janet Fothergill. Now all together. Hip-hip-hooray!”

  “Hip-hip-hooray!”

  “Hip-hip-hooray!”

  Three times the sound rose and fell. Thin and light, it soon mingled with the greedy cries of the seagulls or was snatched out of earshot by the wind; but its quality was unique and unmistakable. Eustace had never heard cheering before but at once he recognised what it meant and his heart expanded and glowed. Four people all wishing him well, all cheering him to the skies!

  It was a glorious moment. Noticing that Dick and Gerald had taken their caps off, he took off his hat too, and waved it with a proud and gallant air. Startled, the horses sidled and pranced, and seemed to bow to each other; they made a ripple of movement, upwards, downwards, sideways, and their riders moved sometimes in time with their rhythm, sometimes against it, as though they too had the freedom of the wind and sky. Laughing and self-conscious and a little sheepish, they turned to each other, and then, still with the same half-apologetic look, to Eustace and Hilda. “Good-bye, good-bye, good luck!” their voices sang.

  There was a convulsive stir among the horses; a swinging of heads, a dipping of hindquarters; in a moment sand flew up from thudding hoofs, and they were off. Still waving his hat, Eustace watched them out of sight.

  15. ONE HEART OR TWO