Eustace’s heart went out to them all: this was what life should be, a symposium of well-wishers, positively, consciously, contagiously happy.
“I see too many,” he said, answering Mrs. Crankshaw’s implied question. “You would have to pick one out for me.”
“Nothing easier,” said Mrs. Crankshaw, with a promptness that took Eustace aback. “Here’s my niece, Mabel Cardew, a charming girl, I don’t think you’ve met her.”
Eustace didn’t take to Miss Cardew, who was inclined to wince and wriggle, but they exchanged almost passionate civilities.
“You see how easy it is,” said Mrs. Crankshaw, when her niece had sidled and chasséd away. “Now you must pick someone for Hilda, but I don’t believe there’s anyone good-looking enough for her. Ah, there she is.”
Following Mrs. Crankshaw’s quicker eye, Eustace espied Hilda. She was standing apart, talking to a rather dumpy, round-about lady with a square, strong face, whom Eustace presently recognised as Barbara’s late headmistress. The pair seemed to be outside the circle of enchantment, and to judge from their faces, to be discussing something alien to the spirit of a wedding feast.
“Men might be a little afraid of her,” said Mrs. Crankshaw; “she makes these boys look like babies. Not that she’s old.”
Eustace had a sudden vision of the sleek brown heads around him toddling on childish bodies and being lifted into prams.
“This marriage business is full of silliness and nonsense, isn’t it?” Mrs. Crankshaw went on, irrelevantly. “But it gets somewhere, and there is no other way of getting there.”
Once again Eustace was aware of the press of wine-warmed bodies around him, seductive, comfortable, if only kill-joy censors were silenced. Outside on the periphery, the mind and the will preserved their powers intact, and beauty shone like a vase of alabaster, untouched, not needing for its perfection any intoxication in the beholder’s eye or mind.
“What do you think?” said Mrs. Crankshaw. “Could we rope her in?”
Eustace held his lasso poised; the great noose slid through the air; in a moment his sister and the headmistress, clutching at each other, were dragged across the wooden floor into the heart of the rodeo.
“Shall I go across and try?” he said, and Mrs. Crankshaw smiled assent.
They each refused a glass of champagne.
“We were saying,” said Hilda, “how mistaken the Government’s education policy is. It ought to spend more on providing university scholarships for promising girls. I don’t mean girls like Barbara, of course, whose one idea, the moment they leave school, is to get married.” She looked round. “Where is she, by the way?”
Eustace could not see her either.
“I think they must have gone to change,” he said.
“To change?” echoed Hilda; “why should they do that?”
“Well, they can’t travel in those clothes,” said Eustace, smiling at the headmistress, whose clothes were quite suitable for travelling in. “You couldn’t even in yours, could you, Hilda?”
“You’re right,” said Hilda; “these bridesmaid’s dresses are most unserviceable. You won’t catch me wearing one again in a hurry. I like the violets, though.”
She bent down and raised the big dewy bunch to her face, and they seemed to become part of it.
“Don’t you like weddings?” said the headmistress.
“I loathe them,” said Hilda. “I don’t see the necessity for them —for all the fuss, I mean.”
“Perhaps you’ll feel differently about your own,” said the headmistress; “don’t you think she may, Mr. Cherrington?”
Eustace couldn’t think of a reply. Addressing the headmistress rather than Hilda, he said: “Won’t you come across and help me with the Crankshavians? They’re really very nice, but I feel shy of tackling them without support.”
“Nonsense,” said Hilda; “we saw him chattering away like anything, didn’t we, Miss Farrell? He loves the social round.”
“I think it would be an excellent idea,” replied the headmistress, giving a pat to her dress and a wrench to her hat. “Otherwise they’ll think us unsociable, standing here enjoying each other’s society like Beauty and the Beast.” She smiled up at Hilda as she spoke.
With no very clear idea of what would happen, Eustace convoyed them into the thickest of the press. To his embarrassment the crowd fell apart before them as though he was in charge of two dangerous wild animals; awe and admiration were registered, but no obvious wish to make contact with the newcomers.
Eustace had the feeling that they were making a cavalry charge, and would come out the other side victorious, unchallenged and untouched, the last thing he wanted. But a tall blond youth with a self-confident expression seemed inclined to stand his ground. Luckily Eustace remembered his name; introductions were effected; and the young man, to Eustace’s great surprise, seemed well supplied with information both as to Miss Farrell’s school and Hilda’s clinic. He was a little patronising and facetious about those institutions, and once or twice joined issue with the ladies on points which they could not help knowing more about than he, but he held his own, that was the main thing, and the encounter was by no means a failure. Having staged it, and trusting to Miss Farrell’s tact and experience to carry it through, Eustace, like Julius Cæsar, withdrew to another part of the field.
Here, flanked by the sandwiches and the pastry and the three hired waiters deftly pouring out of jugs and bottles and teapots, he was engaged by a dark, round-faced girl who questioned him vivaciously about his life in Oxford. Her interest was flattering, the questions were easy to answer. With the disengaged half of his attention, Eustace watched how Hilda was faring. Another man had joined the group round her; they were all talking with animation, no one seemed to be left out. He noticed how one or two more stragglers paused as though wondering whether to risk it, and gravitated towards her. The sight gave him a sense of inner harmony and self-congratulation; he felt he had helped to complete something. But before he had time to analyse his feelings further, a rush of cold air caught his back and he turned to see Barbara and Jimmy coming through the door. They looked different people in their going-away clothes, and their changed appearance changed the atmosphere of the gathering. The initiation over, they were no longer glorified by the nimbus of the wedding spirit, they were ordinary human beings with a train to catch. Less than ordinary, indeed, for with their glory they had shed their dignity; and hardly had they made their farewells when the wedding guests, who till lately had been gaping at them with real or pretended admiration, suddenly rounded on them with shrieks of tribal laughter, and set about making their exit as summary and ignominious as possible.
All the wedding party were outside the café now, swarming on the steps under the Elizabethan woodwork. Only a few yards away a sleek black Daimler hung with white ribbons waited at the kerb. Eustace found himself next to Aunt Sarah; almost involuntarily he took in his her passive, well-gloved hand. The mêlée surged in front of them. Fists raised in menace hurled handfuls of confetti as if they had been bombs. Barbara and Jimmy came stumbling and ducking down the steps towards the sanctuary of the car, whose door the chauffeur was holding open. They had outdistanced their tormentors and were well inside, when a figure ran forward, wild as a Bacchante, and launched a new attack through the window. Nor did the bombardment cease until their fingers fluttering farewells in the coloured shower, husband and wife drove off.
With a gesture of exhaustion and appeasement the figure lurched into the dull yellowish light of the December afternoon. Tears of laughter were running down her cheeks.
It was Hilda.
The episode was three months old, but in recollection it still gave Eustace a shock. He still could hardly believe that that wild-eyed, tear-stained, dishevelled woman was his sister Hilda.
Startled out of his reverie, he glanced at the clock. Past seven and he had done nothing about inspecting the arrangements for the dinner. Supervision was not Eustace’s strong point. C
onscientiously carried out, it meant criticism, and criticism practised by someone of a normally easy-going nature often unfairly gave the impression of fault-finding. Still, he must put in an appearance.
The steward, a wispy, sallow man with a wary eye, took him into a small room, leading off the dining-room and reserved for private dinner-parties. The table laid for twenty almost filled it. What a noise there would be later on, Eustace thought; the regular diners would probably send in protests. The table was decorated with freesias and jonquils; they had been arranged symmetrically rather than with inspiration—still, they had a festive air. Soon they would be stuffed in silken button-holes, and by the morning they would be withered; but they would not be alone in being the worse for wear.
Eustace sighed and took out of his pocket a plan of where the diners were to sit. Who should be neighbours was a problem, for not all the members of the Lauderdale were on good terms with each other. At the head of the table sat the President, with the distinguished visitor on his right. Next, as Secretary, came Eustace. Passing down the table, he slowly dealt out the name cards, wondering anew if B’s proximity to A would be held to atone for his proximity to C. Any disappointment on this score would be blamed on Eustace, but he thought he knew the internal politics of the society by this time; and if some blamed him, others would applaud his ingenious malice.
At last it was done. The steward reported everything in order; a dozen bottles of champagne were on ice, and more could be had. As Eustace listened to the man’s recital, he quickly became infected by its reassuring tone; nothing could possibly go wrong.
He returned to the smoking-room in a sanguine frame of mind and with a sense of duty done.
He had hardly got inside the door when he heard his name called. The inflection was unmistakable: it could only belong to Antony Lachish. He was sitting hunched up in a leather chair, his long, thin legs dangling over its arm.
“Eustace!” said Antony again, in a way that made more than one member give him an indignant, repressive look which, however, he did not notice. “Come and sit down. Where have you been? We all thought you were dead.”
He smiled suddenly with extraordinary sweetness, and Eustace pulled up a chair and set it at right angles to his. But this tactical manœuvre did not succeed, for the next moment Antony had whisked his legs over the other arm, and was looking at him across his shoulder.
“You never stay still a moment,” said Eustace.
Antony’s face took on an expression of such tortured self-criticism that Eustace could not help laughing.
“Do you think I’m frightfully restless?” Antony asked. “People say I am.” He still looked miserably worried.
“Of course not,” said Eustace soothingly. “Just mercurial.”
Antony’s face cleared instantly, and began to shine with self-satisfaction.
“That’s a much nicer word,” he said. “How kind and clever of you to think of it. I suppose my face does show my feelings too much?”
“I don’t think even you could feel as much as your face shows,” said Eustace.
“You don’t think me insincere?” The agonised look returned, then relaxed into the bewitching smile, as Antony said, “You couldn’t expect me to practise facial control when I see you after such a long separation. What have you been doing?”
“Well, working a little,” said Eustace.
“I knew it, I told them so. I was sure you weren’t angry with us. ‘He’s really working for us,’ I said. ‘As long as we can point to Eustace, we shan’t be sent down. On the contrary, we shall shine with reflected glory.’”
“You’re much more likely to get a First than I am,” said Eustace, who knew how little Antony’s airy manner corresponded either to his ambitions or his powers.
“Nonsense, I’ve no mental stamina, I’m quite hopeless. Gamma minus is my mark. Only yesterday my tutor said, ‘Lachish, your work is like summer lightning—an occasional flash, but miles away from the subject.’”
“Mine complained that I was always peering through the undergrowth,” said Eustace despondently.
“My spies report quite differently,” said Antony. “They speak of a certain First. They are beginning to take bets on it. When are you doing Schools?”
“A year next June.”
“Then you’ve no excuse for living like a hermit. We shall come and serenade you every night. Let’s begin your emancipation now. Let’s dine together.”
Eustace explained why he could not.
“But what is this Lauderdale Society?” asked Antony. “Describe it to me.”
“Well,” said Eustace, “it began long ago as a semi-political club with a Conservative background. Then the background faded away and the Lauder became a kind of dining club, a sort of protest against the plain living and high thinking of St. Joseph’s. The members threw their weight about and weren’t very popular with the College or with the Dons. In fact, there was talk of suppressing it. After the war the Lauder was revived, and somehow I became the Secretary; but it didn’t change its spots, the members still felt in honour bound to let the College know they felt superior to it, socially, intellectually, and in every way, and again, quite lately, there was a rumour that it was to be painlessly disbanded. That’s why we’re dining here; they won’t let us dine in College.
“Then I had the idea of asking someone down to address us on a serious subject, like the Future of the World—someone with a name, you know, so that we might look a little less irresponsible——”
Eustace paused. He felt his effort to justify the Lauderdale to Antony had sounded lame; how much better to have said boldly, “It exists to glorify the gilded youth of St. Joseph’s,” but he lacked the aplomb. It was in his nature to anticipate criticism, and in the moral sphere, the sphere where Eustace was most at home though least at ease, the Lauderdale was not easy to defend.
“I see,” said Antony. “I can’t picture you among these hawbucks, but I suppose it’s all right. Who are you getting down to improve your standing in the eyes of the Dons?”
“A rising young Conservative,” said Eustace. “Staveley, his name is, Richard Staveley. I trust you’ve heard of him?”
Antony’s mobile face ran through a number of expressions, of which surprise was the first and last.
“Dick Staveley?” he said. “Indeed I have; he’s a sort of cousin of mine, for one thing.”
“I met him once or twice,” said Eustace, “long, long ago when we lived at a little place called Anchorstone. I was nine then, and I suppose he was about sixteen. He rescued me once when I got lost in a wood playing hare and hounds.”
“He would,” said Antony. “He was always either rescuing or giving cause for rescue. But to think of your having known him! I can’t get over it.”
“I thought him fascinating,” said Eustace.
“Many people have. I didn’t know him then. I was only five, but I used to hear a lot about my extraordinary cousin who was always up to something.”
“What sort of things?” asked Eustace.
Antony thought a moment.
“Well, in those days it was schoolboys’ pranks—you know, going up to London, putting eggs in the masters’ hats, taking away something important just when it was most wanted—practical jokes with a sting in the tail.”
“I can see that he might have been like that,” said Eustace. “He played a practical joke on me once.”
“What kind?”
Eustace told Antony about the legacy.
“You got off lightly, I think. He never played one on me, because Mama never much liked going to Anchorstone. She went from a sense of duty, because of Cousin Edie. It was apt to be frightfully dull, you know, except for Dick’s booby-traps. Papa went because of the shooting. That was always good.”
“But isn’t the house lovely?” asked Eustace. “It seemed the most marvellous place to me. In those days my day-dreams were full of it.”
“Were they?” said Antony, with the rush of sympatheti
c interest in his voice from which some of his popularity sprang. “Well, I don’t wonder. It is a lovely house; at least, part of it is—the Jacobean part with the moat in front. Romantic, enchanted. Do you remember the helmets on the window-ledges? You could see them from outside. They weren’t arranged or grouped, they looked as if the knights had thrown them down, still warm from their hot heads, while they went to change into something more comfortable.”
“I never got near enough for that,” said Eustace. “I only went into the house once, in the dark.”
“You would go into the new part, I expect, where they mostly live—that’s nothing much, Victorian Gothic of the later Staveley epoch—quite hideous, really, but I doubt if they know it.”
“Don’t they care about the house, then?” asked Eustace. He couldn’t bear to think they didn’t.
“Oh yes, they’re devoted to it and intensely proud of it. Only they don’t discriminate very much; they wouldn’t think it was quite nice to.”
“Wasn’t there a sister called Anne?” Eustace asked.
“Yes, indeed. Poor Anne, a dear girl but dull. She never had a chance, you know. They dressed her in the most extraordinary way. At balls she could hardly bend for whalebone, she creaked all over. And her stiffness was infectious; even the most dashing young men turned into ramrods and icicles at the sight of her. It was terrible for her, terrible for everyone. She created a desert all round her. Cousin Edie was to blame in a way—but she got it from the Staveleys. They were proud of living in the last century—indeed, they were proud of everything, just of being themselves. One doesn’t quite know why.”
“Aren’t they a very old family?” asked Eustace, to whom the ancient lineage of the Staveleys had meant a great deal, though he was shy of admitting it.
Antony seemed surprised and slightly puzzled by this inquiry.
“Well, no older than many others. Everyone’s family’s old if you begin to look into it. I suppose you mean all that business about prancing on the foreshore and shooting an arrow into the sea? It does sound rather romantic, but I think it was all they were good for. They never did anything else very much. They were wonderfully undistinguished.”