This was not at all what Eustace had bargained for. His newly found firmness of purpose began to ooze out of him. Still, the pleasures of vindictiveness, once tasted, are not easily put aside.
“Should you mind being a governess very much?” he asked. It occurred to him that she genuinely might not mind.
“I dare say I shouldn’t really,” said Hilda. “It would depend what the children were like. They might not be so easy to manage as you are. Of course I’d rather go to school, but as you won’t be here in any case, it doesn’t matter much what I do.”
Eustace had to admit to himself that this was a handsome speech, and the more he thought about it the handsomer it seemed. Revenge died in his heart and was replaced by a glow of another kind. He looked at Hilda. Poised, doubtless, over another superlative eight, she stood with her back to him; on her worn blue dress where she had been sitting on the rock were seaweed and the stains of seaweed. The sight touched him as he was always touched when her habitual command over circumstances showed signs of breaking down. The taste of pride was sour in his mouth. He must make her a peace offer.
“Let me see if I can do an eight like one of yours,” he said placatingly.
Assuming her air of judgement Hilda watched him do it.
“Not at all bad,” she pronounced. “You’re improving.”
The stretch of sand on which they stood now bore the appearance of a gigantic ledger, but towards the middle there was still a space left, a vacant lot shaped like a shield, which challenged Eustace’s feeling for symmetry and completeness. “I’m going to draw something,” he announced. He moved over to the virgin patch and began to make a design on it. After a minute or two’s work he drew back and studied the result, sucking his lower lip.
“What’s that?” asked Hilda.
“You’ll see in a moment.”
He returned to his sketch and added a few lines.
“I still don’t see what it is,” said Hilda.
“It’s meant to be a heart. A heart isn’t very easy to draw.”
“And what’s that sticking through it?”
“That’s an arrow. Look, I’ll put some more feathers on its tail.” Eustace got to work again and the tail was soon almost as long as the shaft and the head combined. “Now I’ll just make its point a little sharper.”
“I shouldn’t touch it any more if I were you,” said Hilda, proffering the advice given to so many artists. “You’re making the lines too thick. A heart doesn’t have all those rough edges.”
“It might be bleeding, from the arrow. I’ll put in a few drops of blood falling from the tip and making a little pool.” Formed of small round particles rising to a peak in the middle, the pool of blood looked far from fluid.
“Those drops look more like money than blood,” said Hilda.
“They might be money as well as blood—blood-money,” said Eustace, trying to defend his draughtsmanship. “There is such a thing, isn’t there?”
“Yes, it’s what you pay for freedom if you’re held in bondage,” Hilda told him.
Eustace turned this over in his mind. “I don’t think I want that. Blood looks better than money in a picture because it’s a prettier colour. I never saw a picture with money in it.”
“You haven’t seen all the pictures there are,” said Hilda. “There might be one of the thirty pieces of silver.”
“No, because Judas kept them in a bag so they shouldn’t be seen,” said Eustace glibly. This was one of those border-line remarks which he sometimes allowed himself when in a sanguine mood. The statement couldn’t be disproved, so it wouldn’t count as a lie even if he wasn’t sure it was true.
“But have you ever seen a picture with blood in it?” asked Hilda.
“Oh yes,” said Eustace. “Bible pictures are often bloody.” He felt there was something wrong with this as soon as he said it, and Hilda left him in no doubt.
“Daddy told you not to use that word,” she cautioned him. “It’s wicked and besides you might get taken up.”
“I meant blood-stained,” said Eustace hastily, and hoping the alternative had not jumped into his mind too late to avert the sin of blasphemy. Crime was much less heinous. “Only here, in this picture,” he hurried on, as though by changing the subject he might conceal his slip from powers less vigilant than Hilda, “I haven’t made the drops run into each other properly. I’ll put in some more. There, that’s better. But wait, I haven’t finished yet.”
He walked backwards and fixed on the diagram a scowl of terrifying ferocity. “I think this is how I’ll do it. Don’t look for a minute. Shut your eyes.”
Obediently Hilda screwed her eyes up. A long time seemed to pass. At length she heard Eustace’s voice say, “You can look now.” This is what she saw:
“You understand what it means, don’t you?” asked Eustace anxiously.
“Yes, I suppose I do. Thank you, Eustace.”
“That’s the right sign for pounds, isn’t it, an L with a cross?”
“It ought to have two, but one does almost as well.”
Eustace felt pleased at being so nearly right.
“I had to make the arrow-head pointing at you,” he said, “because, you see, it was going that way already, and I couldn’t alter it. And of course it’s bringing you the money. But it won’t hurt you, at least I hope not, although I drew it at a venture. I don’t think it will, do you? You see, it isn’t touching you.”
“A sand-arrow couldn’t hurt me, silly,” said Hilda. “Besides, it’s crooked. But I don’t think Aunt Sarah would like us to write our names up anywhere. She’s always been strict about that.”
Eustace looked troubled.
“I know what I’ll do. I’ll rub out all of our names except the capital letters.” He scrabbled on the sand with his foot. “Now it just says E to H.”
Thus edited, the diagram looked at once intimate and anonymous.
“Which of our hearts is it?” asked Hilda, after giving Eustace time to admire the beauty of his handiwork.
“Well, I meant it to belong to both of us,” said Eustace, “I ought to have drawn two, perhaps, but I didn’t quite know how to make them fit. If you like you can imagine another heart at the back of this one, exactly the same size. It would be there though you couldn’t see it. Then the arrow would go through both and then of course they would be joined for ever. Unless you would rather think of us as just having one heart, as I meant before.”
“I think there had better be two,” said Hilda, “because your heart is weaker than mine. I mean, you strained it once, didn’t you?—and they might not beat quite together.”
“Very well,” said Eustace. “I’ll make a shadow here to show there’s something behind.” He took up his spade.
“Now the heart looks as if it had grown a beard,” said Hilda, laughing. “It’s getting old, I’m afraid. How about the time? Oh, Eustace, it’s one o’clock already. We must hurry. You won’t be able to count the steps.” They set off towards the cliffs.
“Let’s stay here just a minute,” panted Eustace as they reached the summit. “I want to get my breath and I want to see what’s happened while we were coming up.”
They paused, ignoring the stale challenge of the automatic machines, and clasped the railings with which the cliff, at this point, had been prudently fortified. How comforting, after all their tremors and uncertainties, was the feel of the concrete under their feet and the iron between their hands. They had to cling on, or the wind, shooting up the cliff with hollow thuds and mighty buffets, might have blown them over. Hilda’s head over-topped the railings but Eustace still had to peer through. Putting on their watch-dog faces they scanned the rock-strewn shore. From here the waves looked disappointingly small, but every now and then the wind-whipped sea shivered darkly over its whole expanse. It was coming in with a vengeance; like many other creeping things it made more headway when one’s back was turned.
“Look, Hilda,” cried Eustace, “it’s all covered up! All the
bit that the horses kicked up has gone, and our hearts have gone too! You wouldn’t know we had ever been there. It’s just as though nothing had happened all the morning—the longest morning we ever spent on the sands!”
“There’s still a bit of the pond left that we didn’t finish,” said Hilda, “and our footmarks coming away from it.”
“They’ll soon be gone too,” said Eustace.
“Now don’t stand staring any longer,” said Hilda. “We ought to be home by now. Come on, let’s run.”
They started off, and Eustace was soon left behind.
“Don’t go quite so fast, please, Hilda,” he called after her. “I can’t keep up with you.”
He made the appeal for form’s sake, not expecting her to heed it; but to his surprise he saw her slow down and then stop. When he came up with her she held out her hand and said a little self-consciously:
“Let’s pretend we’re having a three-legged race.”
Overjoyed, Eustace took her hand and they stood looking at each other inquiringly, as if they had just met for the first time, fellow-competitors measuring each other’s strength.
“Who would it be against?” Eustace asked.
Hilda dropped his hand and thought a moment. She was never quick at choosing players to fill imaginary rôles.
“Well, the Steptoes perhaps. They always want taking down a peg. But anyone you like, really. The whole world.”
At the ring of this comprehensive challenge Eustace seemed to see cohorts of competitors swarming on the cliff and overflowing into the Square. Many of them, in flagrant disregard of the rules of the race, were mounted on horses.
“What will the prize be, if we win?” he asked.
“Of course we shall win,” said Hilda. “Won’t that be enough for you? You think too much about prizes. Prizes are only for games.”
“But isn’t this a game?” said Eustace, who always dreaded the moment when practice ended and performance began.
“You can think so if you like,” said Hilda. “I shall pretend it’s real.... Now where’s my handkerchief?”
She brought it out of her pocket, fingered it for a moment, then stuffed it hastily back, but not before Eustace had noticed how sodden and crumpled it was.
“I’m afraid mine’s too small,” she said. “Give me yours if you haven’t lost it. You don’t mind if it gets pulled about a bit, do you? It isn’t one of your best.”
Protesting that he didn’t mind, Eustace aligned his foot with Hilda’s. Sinking on to one knee she passed the handkerchief round their ankles.
“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.
HILDA’S LETTER
IT 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 ruefull
y but dutifully answered:
“Snips and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails
And that’s what they are made of.”
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!”
Eustace and Hilda Page 22