A sense of unworthiness stole over Eustace and came between him and the music. The heavenly dialogue seemed now to be couched in a foreign language: though he could still follow the sense, he no longer understood the words. Why not enjoy the beauty? Why try to relate it, competitively, to something in his own life? What had made Stephen dig up the question of his relationship with Hilda? To keep its meaning at full stretch was, he sometimes felt, a burden greater than he could bear. He tried to put her out of his mind and listen unhampered by the thought of her, but it didn’t do; something cold and set in his attitude resisted the music. He must humble himself and invite her back. He did so, the stiffness round his heart relaxed and melted and the music once more poured its ineffable message into his waiting ear. Only just in time; the two voices maintained their sublime colloquy for a bar or two more, and were silent.
“I could see you liked that,” said Stephen, “and I think Miss Hilda would have liked it too. In the third movement, which I’m just going to put on, I’m afraid you’ll have to face ordinary life again, and a moment comes, I must warn you (indeed it comes twice), when you both grow rather strident and shout defiance in unison, whether at each other, or at a third party, I leave you to decide.”
The music started off at Bach’s typical quick trot, a pace which, being uniform and neither fast nor slow, the pace of the mind rather than of the emotions, left Eustace respectful but unmoved. This was a case for understanding, not feeling, and he did not understand. But he was waiting with interest for the strident passage when the sound of shouting, that had been audible for some moments but had seemed part of the general noises of the street, suddenly localised itself under their window and seemed manifestly addressed to them.
“Hilliard!”
“Eustace!”
The names came up raggedly from below. Then someone called out, “We want Eustace.” Immediately four or five voices took up the refrain, and “We want Eustace,” chanted with a formidable and threatening accent on the last word, filled the air.
Stephen looked interrogatively at his guest.
“Shall we take no notice?”
“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be any good,” said Eustace. “They’ll have seen the lights. Ask them what they want me for, would you, Stephen?”
Stephen opened the window, letting in a rush of fresh air, and leaning out spoke in an impersonal and affronted tone, rather as one might address a gathering of footpads.
“They want you to go down to them,” he said, coming back and not trying to conceal the vexation in his voice.
“Who are they?” asked Eustace.
“I don’t know, but I should guess they come from Christ Church. I think it was Lakeland who spoke to me.” There was rancour in Stephen’s misrendering of the name.
“I thought I recognised his voice,” said Eustace. “It isn’t easy to mistake. Did they sound hostile?”
“No, just rather drunk.”
Eustace looked about him in perplexity, avoiding Stephen’s eye. It was a flattering summons, and Antony would be sober even if his friends were not. Suddenly the rhythmic scratching of the gramophone needle filled the room; during the interruption the Concerto had played itself out, without either of them noticing. Stephen walked across to the instrument, and with a gesture much brisker than was usual with him removed the record.
“But we heard the strident passage after all, didn’t we?” said Eustace ruefully.
Stephen said nothing, but immediately, like a commentary on Eustace’s words, the concerted demand “We want Eustace” again smote their ears.
“I think I’d better go down and placate them,” said Eustace uneasily. He rose, looking guilty and worried. “It’s been a lovely evening, Stephen, and I hate to break it up—but I think they would if I didn’t. I know them in that mood.”
Stephen didn’t seem to be open to good-byes.
“What about the work you were going to do?” he said.
Eustace glanced at the skull on the chimney-piece. It gave him an old-fashioned look, but could not tell him the time, and he had to fumble in rather an exposed manner for his watch which had slipped into a corner of his pocket as if ashamed of recording misspent hours.
“It’s only eleven—I shall just rush round and see them, and then dart back to Stubbs.”
“Well, well,” said Stephen, who seemed to have recovered his good humour, “if you must, you must, but I don’t think Miss Hilda’s blessing will go with you.” He stooped to pick up Eustace’s gown, which lay in a round heap in a corner like a black cat asleep. Relieved and grateful that his host now seemed accessible to farewell, Eustace took the garment from him.
“You will come and meet Hilda at lunch next Wednesday, won’t you?” he said. “She’ll be up for the day.”
“I shouldn’t dare,” said Stephen.
“Oh, do come. She’s lovely, as I told you, almost a great beauty. Everyone says so.”
Suddenly a terrific blare of “WE WANT EUSTACE” burst through the window, and even crept faintly up the stairs.
“Good-bye, Eustace,” said Stephen. “I mustn’t keep you from your friends.”
He shut the door, turned out the light, and sitting on the window-seat looked down into the street. He saw Eustace step on to the pavement, to be at once enveloped by scurrying, eddying figures whose wild cries suggested they might be going to tear him to pieces. His long scholar’s gown, among their short ones, made him look, to Stephen’s disenchanted eye, like an older crow mobbed by fledglings. When the uproar died down, he heard Lachish say, “Was it very awful of us, Eustace? You see, we did want you to come down.”
Stephen couldn’t catch Eustace’s reply, but it sounded conciliatory, even gratified. Soon the sound of voices faded away, in the direction of Carfax, except for an occasional high-pitched laugh or bass guffaw, and then the clocks of Oxford, striking eleven, drowned the last audible trace of Eustace and his rout.
Finding the air pleasant and not too cold, Stephen sat on at the window, and let the night stream over him. The High was almost empty now, and flooded with pale light against which the shadows showed dark as the black notes on a keyboard. While he watched, the moon swung clear of the crocketed spire of St. Mary’s, opposite. It was nearly full, and the white disc seemed to be peering at him. Lifting his face to its scrutiny, he stared back with a look as enigmatic as its own.
2. SCHERZO FOR TWELVE MATCHES
IT WAS seven o’clock, and Miss Cherrington was laying the table for their evening meal. Her hands, gracefully shaped but seamed from hard work and with the veins standing out, showed bluish against the table-cloth. Having laid two places, they paused in their to-and-fro movement and she raised her head.
An electric-light bulb hung over the table. Someone had draped the hard white shade with a petticoat of pink silk to save the eyes and spare the complexions of the diners; but Miss Cherrington, leaning forward, got the full glare on her upturned face. It revealed many things—abundant grey hair, pulled but not strained back, wrinkles on her brow and cheeks, a faded skin, tired eyes still startlingly blue, a prominent bony nose, and a mouth that self-discipline had forced into a straight line. She thought so intently that she might have been listening. Then, apparently unable to answer her own question, she opened the door and called up the staircase.
“Barbara!”
Unmistakable but not overpowering, bathroom noises, always a festive and reviving sound, trickled down into the little hall. There was no answer, and she called again.
The swishing ceased, and a voice that easily overcame the obstacles to audibility replied:
“What is it, Aunt Sarah?”
“Did Hilda tell you”—Miss Cherrington began in tones almost as loud as Barbara’s, but the effort to be unladylike was too much for her and she resumed her speaking voice—“what time she would be back?”
A moment’s silence was followed by a great parting of the waters and then by the opening of a door, and a figure, clad only in a bath
-towel, appeared at the head of the staircase.
“Oh!” Miss Cherrington’s exclamation conveyed a host of misgivings.
“Excuse my unconventional attire,” Barbara said, “and don’t be afraid, I shan’t catch cold. Hilda said she might be a bit late, but we weren’t to wait for her.”
“I’ll lay for three, then,” said Miss Cherrington.
“Yes, I should. If Jimmy blows in he’ll have had his supper. If not, he can go without.”
“Oh, is he coming?” asked Miss Cherrington rather helplessly, but there was no answer, only a whirl of the bath-towel, a flash of pink leg and a slam of the bath-room door.
Thoughtfully Miss Cherrington returned to the dining-room, laid another place, and then, after a moment’s hesitation and with the air of sacrificing her own to someone else’s sense of fitness, walked across to the tantalus on the sideboard. It had been one of Eustace’s presents to his father, and it always reminded her of him. She took out the square, sparkling, heavy bottle and held it to the light. Yes, there was just enough. She put it back.
Eustace had collected a number of small objects—bowls, boxes, cups, saucers, plates, glasses, vases, ladles, tea-caddies, all meant originally to hold something; empty and disused now, they still had to be cleaned and dusted. Miss Cherrington frowned. Some, like the tantalus, were presents from Eustace to his family. None of them cared much for bric-à-brac, and no one was quite sure which ornament belonged to whom; but the question of ownership arose, and was mildly discussed, when Eustace wanted to borrow a few for his room in Oxford. He said that some day they might appreciate startlingly in value; but Miss Cherrington was not convinced. Eustace had no sense of money: it had come to him too easily. There were the scholarships, of course, but then you won scholarships, you did not earn them. They were favours conferred by life on its favourites, of whom Eustace seemed to be one, and hardly more creditable than a prize won in a sweepstake. They kept him from coming to grips with life. And his taste for bric-à-brac, was not that another side of the same weakness: the wish to surround himself with objects which had outlived their usefulness, which were not co-operating, which led a privileged existence away from the hurly-burly, seeming indeed to condemn it—parasites tolerated for their looks?
It was only during the war that Eustace had begun to develop this tendency. His life in London had fostered it; but Miss Cherrington knew where he got it from: he got it years ago in Anchorstone, in the drawing-room of Laburnum Lodge—where, in fact, he got everything. She had disapproved of the shillings he won from Miss Fothergill at piquet; but little did she realise that they were to be the precursors of the legacy that had changed their lives. That was a prize indeed. Alfred had laughed at her when she begged him not to accept it; he even laughed, later on, when she begged him to remember that the money was not his. She had never understood why, at the time, everyone was so pleased, in a knowing, furtive fashion, as though at the birth of a baby—everyone, that is, except Miss Fothergill’s relations and her companion, whom Miss Cherrington was thankful she had never had to meet. After all, it was nothing to be proud of, this scoop from an old lady, who had had more than one stroke and perhaps hardly knew what she was doing. She had taken Eustace away from them, and put him on the wrong road, that was what she had done; she had given him ideas that would bear no fruit, Miss Cherrington was sure of it.
At this point her mind, as nearly always, refused to consider further the train of associations that the name of Eustace conjured up. She knew that they hid him from her, making her unfair to him. With an effort she turned her eyes from the little things that reminded her of him to the more substantial pieces of furniture that were of pre-Eustacian date. The chairs and the table and the curious sideboard might not be everybody’s taste, but they belonged to the period at which her own was formed, and at which her view of life took shape. There was nothing spurious in them, no suggestion of a bargain based on charm on the one side and ignorance on the other, which might turn out to be a bad one. Nor was there in Barbara, oddly as she behaved according to the standards of Miss Cherrington’s generation, nor in Hilda, oddly as she behaved according to any standards.
The world was a work-place to them, not a gaming-house.
She finished the laying of the table and went out to help Annie in the kitchen.
“I enjoyed that soup,” said Barbara as they were finishing the first course. “Did it come out of a tin?”
“Of course not,” said Aunt Sarah, “and I wish you wouldn’t talk about food. It’s a bad habit, and you know how I dislike it.” But there was no reproof in her voice, and the look she gave Barbara across the table was full of fondness. “Why did you put on that dress?” she continued. “Isn’t it rather—rather fly-away when we’re alone together?”
Barbara glanced from one plump shoulder to the other and then down to her waist-line which, following the strange fashion of that day, lay somewhere in her lap. When she looked up, her face, which had Eustace’s snubness of feature but cast in a more cheerful mould, showed a deeper shade of pink under her soft brown hair.
“Well, I’d had a bath, and then, you see, we’re not going to be alone. Hilda will be here any minute now, and Jimmy may be coming in after.”
“I do hope nothing’s happened to Hilda,” said Miss Cherrington, ignoring Barbara’s last remark.
“Oh no, why should it?” said Barbara. “She’s old enough to look after herself. Do you think she’s likely to be abducted?”
Miss Cherrington looked a little pained, and then, when the look was fading away, repeated it with interest as though to show it had been no accident.
“Do you think it was altogether wise to invite Mr. Crankshaw to come in just this evening?” she asked, fixing her eye rather sternly on the chicken which Annie had placed in front of her.
“I didn’t actually ask him,” said Barbara. “I gave him a general invitation, and this turned out to be the night he thought he could get away. He won’t mind Hilda being here, if that’s what you mean, and I should like him to meet her, though I can’t think what they’ll find to say to each other.”
Miss Cherrington, having completed her survey of the chicken, carved off a wing with professional skill and handed it to Barbara. She reserved a leg for herself.
“I didn’t mean that. I meant that Hilda might prefer to be alone with us, since she comes so seldom. She’s sure to have a lot to tell us about the clinic, and—and about Eustace too. It was a great thing for her to go down to Oxford to see him, busy as she is. She won’t find it so easy to talk freely in front of a stranger.”
Barbara took a large helping of bread sauce.
“She won’t mind. Everyone likes Jimmy. She’ll have plenty of time to talk before he comes, and then, if you still want to talk secrets, we can go into the drawing-room and light the gas-fire. Besides, he may not come. He’s working very hard just now.”
“How old did you say he was?” asked Miss Cherrington.
“Just twenty-one.”
“I thought you told me he was twenty-three.”
“That was someone else. You’re getting muddled.”
“It’s not to be wondered at if I am,” said Miss Cherrington. “Still, as long as you can keep their ages apart.... Mr. Crankshaw is the engineer, isn’t he?”
“Yes, but don’t say it as if he was an engine-driver. When he’s passed this exam. he’ll be able to put some letters after his name, four at least, not just B.A., like Eustace.”
“I wonder how Eustace is getting on with his work,” said Miss Cherrington. “He doesn’t have reports any longer, which is rather a pity. I’m not sure it was a sensible idea letting him go to Oxford. They seem to spend a good deal of their time playing about.”
“That’s what Jimmy says,” said Barbara. “Mind you, he doesn’t grudge it them; but he says he’s sure to get a job of some kind when he’s passed this exam., even if it’s only in a garage; but you can be a B.A. and nobody’s going to want you—it’s just an orname
nt.”
“Yes, and of course Eustace is a good deal older than the average undergraduate,” said Miss Cherrington. “He starts with a handicap. Listen! Wasn’t that the front-door bell?”
They listened, and a second buzz smote the stillness, so loud they both wondered how they could have been in doubt about the first.
“You go,” said Aunt Sarah. “I’ll put the chicken down by the fire. I quite forgot to. Annie will be keeping the soup hot in the kitchen.”
Barbara jumped up. Miss Cherrington heard the front door open, and the excited timbre of voices raised in greeting—a sound unlike any other sound. Low-pitched, warm, and resonant, Hilda’s tones mingled with Barbara’s insouciant chirpings like a ’cello with a flute. Miss Cherrington was glad that the sisters had plenty to say to each other, and said it with such eagerness. It was important with Hilda to be there when she arrived, and was still steaming with communicativeness. Barbara would talk at any time, but Hilda only under the stimulus of an occasion, and when she was excited. Conversation was a form of activity with her, not an automatic function.
It was past eight o’clock. Miss Cherrington earnestly hoped that Barbara’s engineer would be kept away by his work. According to Barbara, all her young men worked very hard; yet how often they found it possible to take an evening off.
The door opened and Hilda came in. Barbara came in too, but one did not notice that. Miss Cherrington rose and embraced her elder niece.
“How are you, Hilda?” Her voice left no doubt that she really wanted to know. “Have you had a tiring journey? Let me look at you.”
Eustace and Hilda Page 29