“I’m very well, Aunt Sarah, thank you,” said Hilda. “You know I’m never tired.”
For a moment she stood, almost posed, with the smile of welcome on her face, as though to satisfy her aunt’s demand for scrutiny. The scent of the damp night air came with her. Little drops of moisture on her fur collar caught the light and glistened like dew. There were drops on her hair too, and her face, shadowed by the soft wings of the collar, glowed with freshness. She was like a night-blooming cactus surprised in the act of flowering. Then, as though unaware of the poetry of her appearance, she pulled off her coat with a vigorous gesture and threw it on a chair, where in a moment her hat joined it.
“I ought to have done that outside,” she said, “but I couldn’t wait.”
Now it could be seen that the foliage of the flower was extremely severe. Starting from an almost masculine white collar and a black tie descended a coat and skirt of navy-blue serge which had the intimidating effect of a uniform without actually being one. In obedience to the uniform idea, though in defiance of fashion, the waist-line of this garment was more or less in the right place; so that when Hilda put her hands up to pat her hair and again when she stretched her arm out to pull a chair from the table, the lovely lines of her figure were at once revealed; and the movements themselves were so graceful that Miss Cherrington and Barbara, who knew them by heart, watched without speaking.
“Well,” she said, sitting down. “I have had a busy day.”
“I expect you have,” said Barbara. “I expect you kept other people busy, too.”
Hilda stared at her. “Other people?” she said, in a puzzled way, and as though the words meant nothing to her.
“Yes, other people,” persisted Barbara. “Porters, bus-conductors, taxi-drivers, Eustace, and so on. Other people.”
“Oh, I see what you mean,” said Hilda, and as light dawned on her she laughed one of her rare laughs. It was quite a performance, Hilda’s laugh, a small seizure, not loud or raucous, but spectacular and transforming, a visitation of the god of mirth which demanded the attention of her whole being. Recovering, she said with tears in her eyes, “Yes, I suppose I did make some of them run about a bit.”
“Let’s hear it all,” said Barbara, and Aunt Sarah nodded.
“Oh, there’s not a great deal to tell, really.” As Hilda dived into her thoughts you could almost see them eluding her, hiding in the recesses of her mind and seeming far less interesting than they had a moment since. “I left Highcross about eight o’clock——”
“Did you leave it in good hands?” asked Barbara.
Hilda looked at her, but this time she did not laugh.
“The new Matron seems capable,” she said. “I hope she is. We went to enough trouble choosing her. Anyhow, if anything goes wrong, they have my address. Then I did some things in London—I got some gloves——”
“What sort of gloves?” asked Barbara.
“Cotton gloves. Not for me, for the children.” Without noticing Barbara’s look of disappointment, Hilda went on, “And some scrubbing-brushes and a new vacuum-cleaner.”
“Can’t you leave that sort of thing to the housekeeper or whoever it is?” asked Barbara.
“Barbara, dear, I wish you wouldn’t always interrupt,” said Aunt Sarah.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” said Hilda. “No, people make such a mess of the things you leave to them that in the end you save time by doing them yourself.... Well, I did that, and got to Oxford about half-past twelve. I was going to take a taxi, but when I asked the fare the man was so extortionate and then so surly that I decided to walk. However, it isn’t far to Beaumont Street. Eustace isn’t in College now, you know; they’ve turned him out.”
“How monstrous of them!” cried Barbara. “Is it like being sent down?”
“Of course not. But with all these men coming back from the Army, and the normal quota of Freshmen up as well, they’re crowded out, and naturally they prefer to send the older undergraduates into lodgings and have the younger ones in College, where they can keep an eye on them.”
“I should have thought the older ones really wanted keeping an eye on more,” observed Barbara.
Hilda looked surprised. “Would you? I should have thought they would need less supervision as they grow older.”
“It depends on a good many things, I expect,” said Miss Cherrington. “Personally, I’m rather sorry that Eustace has been left so much to his own devices, but I dare say I’m wrong.”
“I’m not sure that you are,” said Hilda darkly.
“What are his rooms like?” asked Barbara.
“Well, the sitting-room is airy and sunny, and larger than necessary, I thought, but his bedroom is a poky little hole, and I doubt if any sanitary inspector would pass it. I said to Eustace, ‘Why didn’t you find some lodgings where the bedroom and the sitting-room were the same size?’” Hilda’s voice grew warm with recognition of the reasonableness of this arrangement.
“What did he say?” asked Barbara.
“That he needed a large sitting-room because friends often dropped in, and that these were the only lodgings he could find that had a large room and were at all central.”
“Eustace always liked a good address,” said Barbara.
“Yes, and he pays a good price—three pounds a week. I said, ‘Why not go farther out, where you could still have a big room and it wouldn’t cost so much?’ He said, ‘Because then my friends wouldn’t drop in.’ I said, ‘But do you want them to? Surely they must be a nuisance when you’re working? Isn’t it rather awkward having to tell them to go away?’ He said, ‘Oh, I never do that. They might not come again.’”
“Good old Eustace!” exclaimed Barbara. “Did anyone drop in while you were there, Hilda?”
“Nobody dropped in, but a friend of Eustace’s came for lunch.”
“What was he like?” asked Barbara.
In the pause that followed, a quickening of interest made itself felt in the room.
“Well,” said Hilda at last, “I’m not very good at describing men.”
“I dare say I do notice more about men than you do,” said Barbara complacently. “Was he very posh and all that? Most of Eustace’s friends are.”
“It wasn’t the thing I noticed about him,” said Hilda. “He was very well dressed—much better than Eustace, who looked like a rag-bag (I brought back some of his clothes with me for you to mend, Barbara)—and he had rather a courtly way of talking. At first I thought him extremely affected and wondered if he wasn’t making fun of me.”
“Oh, surely not!” cried Barbara.
“I don’t think he was. But he said he was afraid of meeting me. You know the way some of Eustace’s friends talk—such torrents of nonsense you can’t make out what they mean (Eustace has fallen into the way of it too, I told him about it afterwards). This man didn’t quite do that. He asked me a great many questions about the clinic—very silly, some of them were, such as whether the girls were allowed to make up, and whether they mentioned me in their prayers, but he seemed to be really interested. He told Eustace he ought to try to be more like me. He was always teasing Eustace.”
“He sounds quite an interesting man,” said Miss Cherrington, who had been following Hilda’s narrative with close attention.
“I gather you didn’t find him altogether revolting,” said Barbara. “What was his name?”
“Hilliard—Stephen Hilliard. Eustace called him Stephen—apparently Christian names are the custom in their set. It seems rather childish to me. He told me he was going to be a solicitor in his father’s firm, and he said, ‘I hope to have the pleasure of defending you against the cripples, or else,’ and he made me a bow, ‘of defending the cripples against you.’ Eustace looked rather nervous when he said that, but of course I didn’t mind. Then Eustace made him talk a little about himself and his experiences in the war. He did very well and got the M.C. He said that civilian life was really more dangerous, and that I deserved the V.C. for what I was doin
g; but of course he didn’t mean that.”
“He may have,” said Barbara; “it isn’t easy to tell what men mean.”
“When he was going away he said, ‘Were only cripples allowed into the clinic, or might he come and see me?’ and I said, ‘Certainly,’ and I told him not to come on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Friday, because then I shouldn’t be able to see him, but that any other day would do, if he let me know well in advance.”
“I think you might have been more welcoming,” Barbara protested.
“No, Hilda was quite right,” said Miss Cherrington. “A serious-minded man, such as Mr. Hilliard seems to be, would respect her all the more for not wanting to waste his time or hers.”
At this moment the coffee appeared, and while Annie was handing it round, they were all three silent, pursuing their several speculations.
“You never told us what Eustace gave you to eat,” said Barbara suddenly.
Hilda showed signs of impatience.
“You would want to know a thing like that. I can’t remember—oh yes, I can, because Eustace kept apologising and saying we should have a better lunch at Ste—Mr. Hilliard’s. Dressed crab was the first course, and then meringues, and then cheese and coffee.”
“How delicious,” sighed Barbara defiantly.
“It sounds rather expensive and unsatisfying,” said Miss Cherrington. “I should have thought a simpler meal would have been more in keeping with the occasion.”
“And we had some white wine. That was quite unnecessary, because Eustace knows I don’t touch it, and Mr. Hilliard only drank a glass to keep him company. And we had some sherry before lunch.”
Miss Cherrington knitted her brows.
“Not a very good foundation for a hard afternoon’s work,” she said.
“That’s what I thought,” said Hilda. “Indeed, I said so, and Mr. Hilliard agreed with me. Eustace said he usually went for a walk in the afternoon, but that afternoon, by a piece of bad luck, he had to go to a lecture, or a tutorial, at three, and would I mind amusing myself for an hour. I said of course not, and then, as it was still some time before three, we had a talk.”
Hilda paused.
“I’d noticed that Eustace looked a little worried, and when I challenged him he told me why. He said the College authorities wanted him to give up his scholarship.”
“What on earth for?” demanded Barbara, pouring herself out another cup of coffee.
“Well, they said that St. Joseph’s is a poor college, and they knew that Eustace had money of his own, and that it was only fair to undergraduates who really needed help that those who could afford to should waive their scholarships.”
“I never heard anything so monstrous,” cried Barbara.
“No, I see their point,” said Miss Cherrington. “Hard-working boys from poor homes should certainly have priority.”
“That’s what Eustace thought,” said Hilda, “but I didn’t agree with him. You know how apt he is to see things from someone else’s point of view. It’s partly laziness, because he doesn’t like to make a fuss, and partly a morbid feeling that merely by asserting your rights you put yourself in the wrong. He doesn’t really believe that justice could be on his side, which is as stupid as thinking you are always in the right, and much less human. I urged Eustace to stand up to them and refuse to resign the scholarship—after all, it’s worth a hundred a year. But he said he couldn’t do that, it would look so bad—you know how appearances weigh with him. So when he had gone, I went and called on the Master of St. Joseph’s.”
Barbara and her aunt exchanged horrified glances.
The Master of St. Joseph’s was a well-known figure, not only in Oxford, but in the world outside; perhaps even more venerated there than in Oxford. The newspapers quoted him in their sayings of the week; his lightest word had weight. In a representative list of prominent Englishmen his name was sure of a place. To call on him without an appointment, to call on him at all, seemed to Miss Cherrington, and even to Barbara, an act of incredible audacity.
“Did you tell Eustace you were going to call on him?” asked Barbara.
Hilda looked at her in surprise.
“No, of course I didn’t, because he would have tried to stop me. You know how it is with Eustace, you always have to act for him. Well, I went to the Porter’s Lodge and asked where Dr. Gregory lived. The man stared at me (I wish people wouldn’t) and then took me through a quadrangle and left me at the door. By a piece of luck I had a card with the address of the clinic on it; I gave that to the butler, and he came back and said the Master would be pleased to see me.”
Hilda did not appreciate the dramatic effect of her pause, but both her listeners hung on her lips.
“It was lucky I had the card,” Hilda went on, “because, you see, he thought I had come to see him about the clinic. ‘It’s the oddest thing, Miss Cherrington,’ he said, ‘but only five minutes before you came I was reading the article in the Clarion.’ When I looked blank, he said, ‘Haven’t you seen it?’ And then I remembered that last week a reporter did come to the clinic, and I showed him round and told him what we were doing. I explained that I don’t get much time to read the papers, and anyhow I had started out before they came. So he showed me the article, and obligingly cut it out for me to take away. I read it in the train. Some of it is rubbish, but not all, and of course it helps.”
“Can we see it?” asked Miss Cherrington.
“Of course,” said Hilda. She looked in her bag and brought out a newspaper cutting about ten inches long. “But first let me tell you what happened. He was very pleasant, and said he would be only too glad to do anything he could to help such a splendid cause, and that he would certainly mention us in a speech he was going to make in London on Child Welfare. Of course, he still thought I had come to see him about the clinic. Then I explained, and it was a little bit awkward, that I had really come to speak to him about Eustace. Then his manner changed, and he got up and stood with his back to the fire. But I wasn’t to be put off, and told him what Eustace’s financial position really was, and how he would have been twice as well off if he hadn’t given me half the money he inherited from Miss Fothergill, and it was that money that had put the clinic on its feet. I told him I had spent two thousand pounds on building the new wing and was shortly going to spend another thousand; and I said that if they took away Eustace’s scholarship, I should feel in honour bound to reimburse him out of the salary I get as Secretary.”
“Would you really?” asked Barbara.
“I might.”
“What did he say to that?”
“He smiled and said, ‘I see you are trying to blackmail us, Miss Cherrington.’ Then I got rather annoyed, and said that in any case it wasn’t fair to expect Eustace to forfeit his scholarship. He had worked very hard for it; whatever people say I know he did, because he was ill afterwards, you remember—and to take it away would be a breach of contract. ‘We aren’t going to take it away, Miss Cherrington,’ the Master said, ‘we’re going to invite him to waive the emoluments. He will still enjoy the distinction.’
“I said that made no difference; everyone knew that Eustace could win a scholarship if he tried; the point is, he did try; for two or three years he was stuffed with facts like a prize pig on the understanding, on the understanding, that if he was successful he would have a hundred a year for three years. Do you imagine, I said, he would have done all that, and injured his health, if he had known that in the end he might have to hand the scholarship over to someone else?”
Hilda’s voice rose, her eyes flashed, and she stared as indignantly at her sister and her aunt as if they had been taking Dr. Gregory’s part.
“Don’t look at us like that, it isn’t our fault,” exclaimed Barbara. “What did he say then?”
“He said again, they were not going to take it away, they were merely going to ask Eustace, as a favour, for the good of the College, and perhaps almost as a public duty, to let some younger, poorer man have the benefit
of a University education.
“You think he was right?” Hilda went on, for Miss Cherrington had nodded approval of the Master’s argument. “Well, I don’t. I said, ‘If you put it like that to him, he’s sure to say yes. Eustace can always be parted from anything, he hasn’t the energy to defend himself, or the wish. But you talk about blackmail. That’s blackmail, if you like, to appeal to a person’s good nature to do something which is contrary both to their interests and their rights!’”
Hilda spoke with much warmth and in the ringing tones she must have used to Dr. Gregory. There was something hypnotic about her. She tilted her head back as though she was addressing someone who stood over her, and Miss Cherrington and Barbara both felt as if the room they were sitting in had changed to a much larger one in which Hilda, flushed and vehement, was haranguing a distinguished elderly gentleman. To Miss Cherrington his face was a blur, but Barbara, who read the picture papers, could see it distinctly, the strong bony features, the prominent nose, the eyes deep-set under thick black eyebrows, the rebellious grey hair which was never worn twice alike, and yet was the most characteristic thing about him.
As though aware that they were evoking the scene, Hilda went on: “Then he said ‘Come here a moment,’ and he took me to an oriel window raised on some steps at the end of the room, with a seat round it, looking on to the College garden. We sat down and he said, ‘Isn’t that a charming view? I hope you have a nice one from your room in the clinic?’ And when I said I didn’t get much time for looking out of the window, he smiled and said, ‘Now, I’ll make a bargain with you. It isn’t my affair really, but I’ll advise them to tell your brother we won’t rob him this time, if you in your turn will do something for us.’ I said the clinic was full and we had a waiting list, but he said ‘Oh no, it’s not that. It’s just to tell your brother that we’re very pleased to have him here, but that at the same time we do expect a good deal from our scholars, both while they are at St. Joseph’s and afterwards. We see in his work signs of the quality that gained him the scholarship, but he doesn’t seem to be developing, if you understand me—he retains his literary graces and the decorative instinct which made his papers pleasant to read, but he hasn’t improved on that. He’s interested in what he can make of a subject rather than in the subject itself. I’m not simply repeating my colleagues’ opinion; I know, because he comes to me for Political Science. He wants to make the hour pass agreeably for both of us—and I admit he generally succeeds. In fact, that seems to be his policy in life—to make the time pass agreeably, and not only for himself, but for a large—an increasingly large—number of people. The hour he spends with me is only an hour like the others. His work is a means to that end—he’s too conscientious really to scamp it, but he never loses himself in it, he’s too anxious to bring it out palatable and nicely served. Now that’s not what we want here, especially from our scholars; we want good, hard, spade-work. This is a kitchen-garden, not a flower-garden.
Eustace and Hilda Page 30