Everyone was thunderstruck to hear this, particularly Eustace, because Hilda had always had a special dislike for Gerald Steptoe, who was a sturdy, round-faced, knockabout boy with rather off-hand manners.
“I met him near the Post Office,” Hilda said, “and he took off his cap, so I had to speak to him, hadn’t I?”
Eustace said nothing. Half the boys in Anchorstone, which was only a small place, knew Hilda by sight and took their caps off when they passed her in the street, she was so pretty; and grown-up people used to stare at her, too, with a smile dawning on their faces. Eustace had often seen Gerald Steptoe take off his cap to Hilda, but she never spoke to him if she could help it, and would not let Eustace either.
Aunt Sarah knew this.
“You were quite right, Hilda. I don’t care much for Gerald Steptoe, but we don’t want to be rude to anyone, do we?”
Hilda looked doubtful.
“Well, you know he goes to a school near the one—St. Ninian’s —that you want to send Eustace to.”
“Want to! That’s good,” said Mr. Cherrington. “He is going, poor chap, on the seventeenth of January—that’s a month from to-day—aren’t you, Eustace? Now don’t you try to unsettle him, Hilda.”
Eustace looked nervously at Hilda and saw the tears standing in her eyes.
“Don’t say that to her, Alfred,” said Miss Cherrington. “You can see she minds much more than he does.”
Hilda didn’t try to hide her tears, as some girls would have; she just brushed them away and gave a loud sniff.
“It isn’t Eustace’s feelings I’m thinking about. If he wants to leave us all, let him. I’m thinking of his—his education.” She paused, and noticed that at the word education their faces grew grave. “Do you know what Gerald told me?”
“Well, what did he tell you?” asked Mr. Cherrington airily, but Hilda saw he wasn’t quite at his ease.
“He told me they didn’t teach the boys anything at St. Ninian’s,” said Hilda. “They just play games all the time. They’re very good at games, he said, better than his school—I can’t remember what it’s called.”
“St. Cyprian’s,” put in Eustace. Any reference to a school made him feel self-important.
“I knew it was another saint. But the boys at St. Ninian’s aren’t saints at all, Gerald said. They’re all the sons of rich swanky people who go there to do nothing. Gerald said that what they don’t know would fill books.”
There was a pause. No one spoke, and Mr. Cherrington and his sister exchanged uneasy glances.
“I expect he exaggerated, Hilda,” said Aunt Sarah. “Boys do exaggerate sometimes. It’s a way of showing off. I hope Eustace won’t learn to. As you know, Hilda, we went into the whole thing very thoroughly. We looked through twenty-nine prospectuses before we decided, and your father thought Mr. Waghorn a very gentlemanly, understanding sort of man.”
“The boys call him ‘Old Foghorn,’” said Hilda, and was rewarded by seeing Miss Cherrington stiffen in distaste. “And they imitate him blowing his nose, and take bets about how many times he’ll clear his throat during prayers. I don’t like having to tell you this,” she added virtuously, “but I thought I ought to.”
“What are bets, Daddy?” asked Eustace, hoping to lead the conversation into safer channels.
“Bets, my boy?” said Mr. Cherrington. “Well, if you think something will happen, and another fellow doesn’t, and you bet him sixpence that it will, then if it does he pays you sixpence, and if it doesn’t you pay him sixpence.”
Eustace was thinking that this was a very fair arrangement when Miss Cherrington said, “Please don’t say ‘you,’ Alfred, or Eustace might imagine that you were in the habit of making bets yourself.”
“Well——” began Mr. Cherrington.
“Betting is a very bad habit,” said Miss Cherrington firmly, “and I’m sorry to hear that the boys of St. Ninian’s practise it—if they do: again, Gerald may have been exaggerating, and it is quite usual, I imagine, for the boys of one school to run down another. But there is no reason that Eustace should learn to. To be exposed to temptation is one thing, to give way is another, and resistance to temptation is a valuable form of self-discipline.”
“Oh, but they don’t resist!” cried Hilda. “And Eustace wouldn’t either. You know how he likes to do the same as everyone else. And if any boy, especially any new boy, tries to be good and different from the rest they tease him and call him some horrid name (Gerald wouldn’t tell me what it was), and sometimes punch him, too.”
Eustace, who had always been told he must try to be good in all circumstances, turned rather pale and looked down at the floor.
“Now, now, Hilda,” said her father, impatiently. “You’ve said quite enough. You sound as if you didn’t want Eustace to go to school.”
But Hilda was unabashed. She knew she had made an impression on the grown-ups.
“Oh, it’s only that I want him to go to the right school, isn’t it, Aunt Sarah?” she said. “We shouldn’t like him to go to a school where he learned bad habits and—and nothing else, should we? He would be much better off as he is now, with you teaching him and me helping. Gerald said they really knew nothing; he said he knew more than the oldest boys at St. Ninian’s, and he’s only twelve.”
“But he does boast, doesn’t he?” put in Eustace timidly. “You used to say so yourself, Hilda.” Hilda had never had a good word for Gerald Steptoe before to-day.
“Oh, yes, you all boast,” said Hilda sweepingly. “But I don’t think he was boasting. I asked him how much he knew, and he said, The Kings and Queens of England, so I told him to repeat them and he broke down at Richard II. Eustace can say them perfectly, and he’s only ten, so you see for the next four years he wouldn’t be learning anything, he’d just be forgetting everything, wouldn’t he, Aunt Sarah? Don’t let him go, I’m sure it would be a mistake.”
Minney, Barbara’s nurse, came bustling in. She was rather short and had soft hair and gentle eyes. “Excuse me, Miss Cherrington,” she said, “but it’s Master Eustace’s bedtime.”
Eustace said good-night. Hilda walked with him to the door and when they were just outside she said in a whisper:
“I think I shall be able to persuade them.”
“But I think I want to go, Hilda!” muttered Eustace.
“It isn’t what you want, it’s what’s good for you,” exclaimed Hilda, looking at him with affectionate fierceness. As she turned the handle of the drawing-room door she overheard her father saying to Miss Cherrington: “I shouldn’t pay too much attention to all that, Sarah. If the boy didn’t want to go it would be different. As the money’s his, he ought to be allowed to please himself. But he’ll be all right, you’ll see.”
The days passed and Hilda wept in secret. Sometimes she wept openly, for she knew how it hurt Eustace to see her cry. When he asked her why she was crying she wouldn’t tell him at first, but just shook her head. Later on she said, “You know quite well: why do you ask me?” and, of course, Eustace did know. It made him unhappy to know he was making her unhappy and besides, as the time to leave home drew nearer, he became much less sure that he liked the prospect. Hilda saw that he was weakening and she played upon his fears and gave him Eric or Little by Little as a Christmas present, to warn him of what he might expect when he went to school. Eustace read it and was extremely worried; he didn’t see how he could possibly succeed where a boy as clever, and handsome, and good as Eric had been before he went to school, had failed. But it did not make him want to turn back, for he now felt that if school was going to be an unpleasant business, all the more must he go through with it—especially as it was going to be unpleasant for him, and not for anyone else; which would have been an excuse for backing out. “You see it won’t really matter,” he explained to Hilda, “they can’t kill me—Daddy said so—and he said they don’t even roast boys at preparatory schools, only at public schools, and I shan’t be going to a public school for a long time, if ever. I e
xpect they will just do a few things to me like pulling my hair and twisting my arm and perhaps kicking me a little, but I shan’t really mind that. It was much worse all that time after Miss Fothergill died, because then I didn’t know what was going to happen and now I do know, so I shall be prepared.” Hilda was nonplussed by this argument, all the more so because it was she who had told Eustace that it was always good for you to do something you didn’t like. “You say so now,” she said, “but you won’t say so on the seventeenth of January.” And when Eustace said nothing but only looked rather sad and worried she burst into tears. “You’re so selfish,” she sobbed. “You only think about being good—as if that mattered—you don’t think about me at all. I shan’t eat or drink anything while you are away, and I shall probably die.”
Eustace was growing older and he did not really believe that Hilda would do this, but the sight of her unhappiness and the tears (which sometimes started to her eyes unbidden the moment he came into the room where she was) distressed him very much. Already, he thought, she was growing thinner, there were hollows in her cheeks, she was silent, or spoke in snatches, very fast and with far more vehemence and emphasis than the occasion called for; she came in late for meals and never apologised, she had never been interested in clothes, but now she was positively untidy. The grown-ups, to his surprise, did not seem to notice.
He felt he must consult someone and thought at once of Minney, because she was the easiest to talk to. But he knew she would counsel patience; that was her idea, that people would come to themselves if they were left alone. Action was needed and she wouldn’t take any action. Besides, Hilda had outgrown Minney’s influence; Minney wasn’t drastic enough to cut any ice with her. Aunt Sarah would be far more helpful because she understood Hilda. But she didn’t understand Eustace and would make him feel that he was making a fuss about nothing, or if he did manage to persuade her that Hilda was unhappy she would somehow lay the blame on him. There remained his father. Eustace was nervous of consulting his father, because he never knew what mood he would find him in. Mr. Cherrington could be very jolly and treat Eustace almost as an equal; then something Eustace said would upset him and he would get angry and make Eustace wish he had never spoken. But since Miss Fothergill’s death his attitude to Eustace had changed. His outbursts of irritation were much less frequent and he often asked Eustace his opinion and drew him out and made him feel more self-confident. It all depended on finding him in a good mood.
Of late Mr. Cherrington had taken to drinking a whisky and soda and smoking a cigar when he came back from his office in Ousemouth; this was at about six o’clock, and he was always alone then, in the drawing-room, because Miss Cherrington did not approve of this new habit. When he had finished she would go in and throw open the windows, but she never went in while he was there.
Eustace found him with his feet up enveloped in the fumes of whisky and cigar smoke, which seemed to Eustace the very being and breath of manliness. Mr. Cherrington stirred. The fragrant cloud rolled away and his face grew more distinct.
“Hullo,” he said, “here’s the Wild Man.” The Wild Man from Borneo was in those days an object of affection with the general public. “Sit down and make yourself comfortable. Now, what can I do for you?”
The arm-chair was too big for Eustace: his feet hardly touched the floor.
“It’s about Hilda,” he said.
“Well, Hilda’s a nice girl, what about her?” said Mr. Cherrington, his voice still jovial. Eustace hesitated and then said with a rush:
“You see, she doesn’t want me to go to school.”
Mr. Cherrington frowned, and sipped at his glass.
“I know, we’ve heard her more than once on that subject. She thinks you’ll get into all sorts of bad ways.” His voice sharpened; it was too bad that his quiet hour should be interrupted by these nursery politics. “Have you been putting your heads together? Have you come to tell me you don’t want to go either?”
Eustace’s face showed the alarm he felt at his father’s change of tone.
“Oh, no, Daddy. At least—well—I...”
“You don’t want to go. That’s clear,” his father snapped.
“Yes, I do. But you see...” Eustace searched for a form of words which wouldn’t lay the blame too much on Hilda and at the same time excuse him for seeming to shelter behind her. “You see, though she’s older than me she’s only a girl and she doesn’t understand that men have to do certain things”—Mr. Cherrington smiled, and Eustace took heart—“well, like going to school.”
“Girls go to school, too,” Mr. Cherrington said. Eustace tried to meet this argument. “Yes, but it’s not the same for them. You see, girls are always nice to each other; why, they always call each other by their Christian names even when they’re at school. Fancy that! And they never bet or” (Eustace looked nervously at the whisky decanter) “or drink, or use bad language, or kick each other, or roast each other in front of a slow fire.” Thinking of the things that girls did not do to each other, Eustace began to grow quite pale.
“All the better for them, then,” said Mr. Cherrington robustly. “School seems to be the place for girls. But what’s all this leading you to?”
“I don’t mind about those things,” said Eustace eagerly. “I ... I should quite enjoy them. And I shouldn’t even mind, well, you know, not being so good for a change, if it was only for a time. But Hilda thinks it might make me ill as well. Of course, she’s quite mistaken, but she says she’ll miss me so much and worry about me, that she’ll never have a peaceful moment, and she’ll lose her appetite and perhaps pine away and...” He paused, unable to complete the picture. “She doesn’t know I’m telling you all this, and she wouldn’t like me to, and at school they would say it was telling tales, but I’m not at school yet, am I? Only I felt I must tell you because then perhaps you’d say I’d better not go to school, though I hope you won’t.”
Exhausted by the effort of saying so many things that should (he felt) have remained locked in his bosom, and dreading an angry reply, Eustace closed his eyes. When he opened them his father was standing up with his back to the fireplace. He took the cigar from his mouth and puffed out an expanding cone of rich blue smoke.
“Thanks, old chap,” he said. “I’m very glad you told me, and I’m not going to say you shan’t go to school. Miss Fothergill left you the money for that purpose, so we chose the best school we could find; and why Hilda should want to put her oar in I can’t imagine—at least, I can, but I call it confounded cheek. The very idea!” his father went on, working himself up and looking at Eustace as fiercely as if it was his fault, while Eustace trembled to hear Hilda criticised. “What she needs is to go to school herself. Yes, that’s what she needs.” He took a good swig at the whisky, his eyes brightened and his voice dropped. “Now I’m going to tell you something, Eustace, only you must keep it under your hat.”
“Under my hat?” repeated Eustace, mystified. “My hat’s in the hall. Shall I go and get it?”
His father laughed. “No, I mean you must keep it to yourself. You mustn’t tell anyone, because nothing’s decided yet.”
“Shall I cross my heart and swear?” asked Eustace anxiously. “Of course, I’d rather not.”
“You can do anything you like with yourself as long as you don’t tell Hilda,” his father remarked, “but just see the door’s shut.”
Eustace tiptoed to the door and cautiously turned the handle several times, after each turn giving the handle a strong but surreptitious tug. Coming back still more stealthily, he whispered, “It’s quite shut.”
“Very well, then,” said Mr. Cherrington. “Now give me your best ear.”
“My best ear, Daddy?” said Eustace, turning his head from side to side. “Oh, I see!” and he gave a loud laugh which he immediately stifled. “You just want me to listen carefully.”
“You’ve hit it,” and between the blue, fragrant puffs Mr. Cherrington began to outline his plan for Hilda.
&nb
sp; While his father was speaking Eustace’s face grew grave, and every now and then he nodded judicially. Though his feet still swung clear of the floor, to be taken into his father’s confidence seemed to add inches to his stature.
“Well, old man, that’s what I wanted to tell you,” said his father at length. “Only you mustn’t let on, see? Mum’s the word.”
“Wild horses won’t drag it out of me, Daddy,” said Eustace earnestly.
“Well, don’t you let them try. By the way, I hear your friend Dick Staveley’s back.”
Eustace started. The expression of an elder statesman faded from his face and he suddenly looked younger than his years.
“Oh, is he? I expect he’s just home for the holidays.”
“No, he’s home for some time, he’s cramming for Oxford or something.”
“Cramming?” repeated Eustace. His mind suddenly received a most disagreeable impression of Dick, his hero, transformed into a turkey strutting and gobbling round a farmyard.
“Being coached for the ‘Varsity. It may happen to you one day. Somebody told me they’d seen him, and I thought you might be interested. You liked him, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yes,” said Eustace. Intoxicating visions began to rise, only to be expelled by the turn events had taken. “But it doesn’t make much difference now, does it? I mean, I shouldn’t be able to go there, even if he asked me.”
Meanwhile, Hilda on her side had not been idle. She turned over in her mind every stratagem and device she could think of that might keep Eustace at home. Since the evening when she so successfully launched her bombshell about the unsatisfactory state of education and morals at St. Ninian’s, she felt she had been losing ground. Eustace did not respond, as he once used to, to the threat of terrors to come; he professed to be quite pleased at the thought of being torn limb from limb by older, stronger boys. She didn’t believe he was really unmoved by such a prospect, but he successfully pretended to be. When she said that it would make her ill he seemed to care a great deal more; for several days he looked as sad as she did, and he constantly, and rather tiresomely, begged her to eat more—requests which Hilda received with a droop of her long, heavy eyelids and a sad shake of her beautiful head. But lately Eustace hadn’t seemed to care so much. When Christmas came he suddenly discovered the fun of pulling crackers. Before this year he wouldn’t even stay in the room if crackers were going off; but now he revelled in them and made almost as much noise as they did, and his father even persuaded him to grasp the naked strip of cardboard with the explosive in the middle, which stung your fingers and made even grown-ups pull faces. Crackers bored Hilda; the loudest report did not make her change her expression, and she would have liked to tell Eustace how silly he looked as, with an air of triumph, he clasped the smoking fragment; but she hadn’t the heart to. He might be at school already, his behaviour was so unbridled. And he had a new way of looking at her, not unkind or cross or disobedient, but as if he was a gardener tending a flower and watching to see how it was going to turn out. This was a reversal of their rôles; she felt as though a geranium had risen from its bed and was bending over her with a watering-can.