“I should hate it if she was really hurt,” he said anxiously. “I was responsible for her coming here in a way. It would be awful if she had really injured herself and couldn’t go back to work.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t bother,” Antony stifled a yawn and smiled in apology. “Lady Nelly would look after her. She is an angel, isn’t she? How did you find her after dinner?”
“Quite irresistible.” Eustace felt this was the right thing to say. “I’ll tell you all about it to-morrow.”
When Antony had gone, the thought of the invitation to Venice flooded Eustace with happiness. So overpowering was the sensation that he could hardly get undressed. Each garment as he shed it seemed to bring him nearer to his goal. But when he got into bed doubts began to rise. What would they say? What would Aunt Sarah say to a proposal that had so little the appearance of taking life seriously? And what would Hilda say—Hilda, who didn’t like to let a day pass without some effort that taxed her to the utmost? While he was lounging in a gondola, she would be bearding a Board of Directors.
‘But how did you come to injure your hands, Miss Cherrington?’
‘Oh, I did that at Anchorstone Hall. It was just a game, rather a rough game, too rough for my brother Eustace, so I played instead of him.’
‘But didn’t he attend to your hands afterwards?’
‘Oh no, he left that to Lady Nelly Staveley—a society woman. She did her best, of course, but it wasn’t the way a professional would have done it.’
‘We sincerely hope you’ll recover the use of, at any rate, one of your hands, Miss Cherrington—otherwise, of course, we shall be obliged——’
‘Oh, I’m sure I shall, if you give me time.’
Perhaps Hilda was still with Lady Nelly; perhaps Lady Nelly had gone down to the housekeeper’s room to find some lint. The passages would be in darkness; how would she find the way? The clock struck one. Hilda’ll be in her own room now, thought Eustace; I ought to go to her; I can soon put my clothes on, or just wear my dressing-gown. But I should look very funny if they caught me wandering about so late, striking matches and dropping the heads everywhere.
There were so many doors in the corridor, that was the trouble, and he had no idea which was Hilda’s. Ah, she would have left her shoes outside the door, her blue shoes; he would know them because he had helped her to choose them. But none of the doors had shoes outside, for this was a private house, and to put one’s shoes outside the door would be a social solecism. Still, he mustn’t give up the quest; he couldn’t rest till he had seen Hilda’s hands; he must try every door. But what would they say, what would Lady Staveley say, for instance, if he came creeping into her room? She would think he was mad, and scream, and raise the house, and perhaps he would spend the rest of the night in a dungeon, before being taken away the next morning under a guard. Never mind, he must find Hilda and ask if she was in great pain and tell her how sorry he was.
But surely these were Hilda’s shoes? She didn’t know the rule about not putting shoes outside your door. He would have to tell her some time. But perhaps no one had seen them except the servants, who would laugh a little, but not think seriously the worse of her.
The handle turned easily and noiselessly, and he went in.
But could this be Hilda’s room when Dick was sitting on the bed clad only in his pyjama trousers?
He rose from the bed and moved slowly towards Eustace, his eyes glittering in the moonlight.
‘I was expecting you,’ he said. ‘I knew you’d come sneaking in.’
‘I’m looking for Hilda,’ said Eustace wildly. ‘Haven’t you made a mistake? Isn’t this her room?’
‘It’s you who’ve made the mistake,’ said Dick, coming nearer....
Eustace woke with a start. There was a thin strip of sunlight on the wall and the birds were singing. Greatly relieved, he fell asleep again.
9. HILDA’S HANDS
AT THE stroke of nine Sir John Staveley laid his cap and stick on their accustomed chair in the Banqueting Hall. The room was empty, but a glance at the table showed him that someone had already breakfasted. He went to the great window and looked across the wide lawn. The heads of the rhododendrons and azaleas, white, crimson and orange, still looked heavy with sleep. Unconsciously making allowance for the ever-optimistic forecast of the amber-tinted glass, he knew that none the less this was going to be an exceptionally fine day.
Turning back, he went down the steps into the body of the Hall. Heaping his plate with bacon and eggs, he returned to the daïs and sat down. At that moment his wife came in.
“Good-morning, my dear.” He rose and kissed her. “Is this too substantial for you?”—he waved to the eggs and bacon.
“Yes, I think it is,” said Lady Staveley. “I’ll get something myself, if you don’t mind.”
“Quite a good game of bridge we had,” he remarked when she came back. “But it was a pity you didn’t return my heart lead.”
“I couldn’t know you had the Queen,” said Lady Staveley defensively.
“You must have known I had something, or I shouldn’t have declared an original No Trump.”
An expression of uneasy vagueness crossed Lady Staveley’s face. “I expect I was thinking about something else,” she said.
“Well, you shouldn’t have been. Bridge isn’t like a game. Monica wasn’t up to her usual form, either. Pity Dick doesn’t really care for bridge.”
Lady Staveley looked at the tell-tale crumbs.
“Has he been down already?”
“Somebody has—might have been anyone,” said Sir John, “when you fill the house with strangers.”
“You seemed to enjoy talking to Miss Cherrington at dinner last night,” said Lady Staveley.
Sir John sat up and took hold of the lapels of his coat, which was a Sunday version of his country wear, and hardly distinguishable from it.
“Striking-looking young woman, isn’t she? A bit shy to begin with, but she talked away all right about that hospital of hers. I nearly promised her a subscription.”
“Did she ask you for one?”
“Oh Lord, no; but it’s clear she’s going all out to make the thing a success. Doesn’t seem to care much about anything else—rather remarkable in a young girl, don’t you think?”
“She’s not so very young,” said Lady Staveley. “Her brother told me she was nearly four years older than he is.”
“What did you make of him?” Sir John’s nose wrinkled. “Bit namby-pamby, what?”
“He’s very easy to talk to,” Lady Staveley said. “We had quite a good gossip about books. He’s a little too eager to please for my taste. He seemed anxious about his sister—he kept looking across to see how she was getting on.”
“I don’t blame him,” said Sir John. “Good-looking girl like that.” He checked his laugh midway, and they were both silent for a moment. “I wonder what the others did with themselves after dinner,” he went on; and then, as the door opened, “Ah, here’s Anne, she can tell us.”
“What can I tell you?” inquired Anne, when she had greeted her parents.
“How you all occupied yourselves while we were playing bridge.”
“Well,” said Anne, from the chafing-dish, “I can’t tell you what Aunt Nelly and Mr. Cherrington did, because we left them sitting on the sofa.”
“I expect they had a heart-to-heart talk,” said Lady Staveley. “And what did you do?”
“Need you ask?” said Anne. “Dick made us play billiard-fives. Look at my hands.”
She held them up.
“Poor darling!”
“I don’t expect you were hitting the ball the right way,” said Sir John robustly. “If you hit with your hand flat, of course you’ll hurt yourself.”
“I don’t hit with my hand flat, Papa.”
“It’s a barbarous game, anyway, and ruinous to the table,” said Sir John. “Not that anyone plays billiards nowadays—too slow for ’em, I suppose. Who won?”
“Ant
ony and I, by a very short head,” said Anne. “Dick tried to cheat us of our victory, but he didn’t succeed.”
“I wish you wouldn’t say those things about Dick,” said his mother.
“It was only in fun.”
“I know, but strangers mightn’t understand.”
“You mean, they might understand.”
“Now, now,” said Sir John. “But how did Miss Cherrington shape?”
“I take it she played with Dick?” put in Lady Staveley.
“Well, my dear, who else could she have played with?”
“She played most valiantly,” said Anne. “I won’t say she played gracefully, or with style, or that Papa would have approved of the way she hit the ball. But she played as hard as she could all the time.”
“I thought she would.” Sir John looked pleased. “But didn’t Dick show her how to hold her hand?” he asked indignantly.
“Yes, he did, Papa, more than once; but strange as it may seem to you, it isn’t always easy to remember the first time you play. She knocked her hands about a good deal, I’m afraid, but she didn’t complain.”
“She’s used to rough work, I expect,” said Lady Staveley.
“Poor girl, I hope you gave her some stuff to put on her hands. Powdered alum’s the best. She ought to practise a bit this morning, gently I mean, just to harden them up and take the stiffness off.”
“I’m sure she won’t want to do anything of the kind, Papa. You really have the most surprising ideas of what people will want to do. I doubt if she’ll ever look at a billiard-table again.”
Lady Staveley’s face brightened a little.
“You don’t think she really enjoyed it?”
“I wouldn’t say that,” said Anne. “In fact, I think she enjoyed it more than any of us. But I don’t imagine she wants to do it all the time.”
“Monica could take her place this evening—that is, if Miss Cherrington plays bridge,” said Sir John thoughtfully. “Where is Monica, by the way? She always comes down so early.”
“She’s got a bit of a headache and is having breakfast in bed.”
“Monica? A headache?”
“Well, Papa, we all have headaches sometimes.”
“She didn’t have one last night.”
“How do you know? She may have been suffering agonies. I expect you were too busy playing bridge to notice.”
“I thought she looked a little tired,” said Lady Staveley.
“I never heard of Monica being tired,” said Sir John with an aggrieved air. “Perhaps Cherrington plays bridge? Though he doesn’t look as if he would.... And, of course, Antony doesn’t. He would have to stop talking.”
“We’ll arrange a rubber for you somehow, won’t we, Mama?” said Anne soothingly.
“Meanwhile, we’ve got to get through the day,” Sir John said, unappeased. “I suppose the Cherringtons will go to church? Or are they heathens?”
“Mr. Cherrington said he would like to walk along the sands to see the places where he and his sister used to play when they were children. He was so funny about it, he seemed to think it might be against the rules,” said Anne, smiling at the remembrance.
“Odd thing to want to do,” said Sir John.
Lady Staveley looked up.
“No, my dear, very natural. And, of course, he’d want his sister to go with him. They could do that in the afternoon. Perhaps they’d like to renew their recollections of the town and have tea there—we could send the car in to fetch them.”
Sir John’s eyes looked very blue under his sandy, wiry eyebrows.
“Mustn’t seem as if we wanted to get rid of ’em. Besides, we don’t know what plans Dick may have.”
“No, we don’t,” said Lady Staveley thoughtfully.
“Dick said something about asking them to stay till Tuesday,” Anne remarked.
“What, the whole boiling?” cried Sir John, aghast.
“No, Mr. Cherrington and his sister.”
“What on earth should we do with them?”
“People don’t always want things done to them, Papa.”
“We can ask them, of course, if Dick wishes it,” said Lady Staveley. “But I imagine that Miss Cherrington will have to return to her duties.”
“Pity for a pretty girl like that to be a hospital nurse,” said Sir John.
“Oh, they’re often pretty,” said Lady Staveley. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that.”
“She isn’t a hospital nurse,” said Anne. “She’s secretary to a Children’s Clinic. There’s a lot of difference.”
“I believe Anne likes the girl,” said Sir John.
“I don’t understand her,” said Anne. “She’s like no one I’ve ever met—I don’t mean in the social sense—in any sense. But I own I am intrigued by her. I don’t think she cares much about people, though.”
“What makes you think that?” Lady Staveley asked. “She’s rather farouche, of course, and a little, well, ungracious sometimes in her manner.”
“That’s partly shyness, Mama, and she may not approve of the way we live. But I don’t think she realises people much—I don’t think she knows what’s going on round her.”
“Well, what is going on round her?” demanded Sir John, his eyebrows betraying some impatience with Anne’s efforts to analyse Hilda’s character.
“Nothing, we hope, except the usual dull routine of an Anchorstone Saturday to Monday,” said Lady Staveley. “Ah, here’s Victor.”
Partly in order not to be late, partly in order to see Anchorstone Hall in the morning freshness that was breathing through his window, partly in the hope of stealing a march on the others, for he shrank from the thought of a crowded breakfast-table, Eustace hurried over his dressing. But his main object was to see Hilda and find out about the state of her hands before she got barricaded from him by the rest of the party. He was so used to talking to her alone that in the presence of other people he found nothing to say to her, and became painfully shy.
Outside in the quadrangle, under the blue clock which said twenty to nine, Eustace considered what would be the best moment to run the gauntlet of ladies returning from their baths and ladies’ maids (of whom he envisaged a great number) discreetly hurrying to and fro—at some point in which Hilda was. A cook in a white hat emerged from a door on the left of the Banqueting Hall, looked round, and retreated. Eustace sighed. There was so much to absorb, to get used to. Perhaps it would be best to eat first and act afterwards. He went towards the Banqueting Hall. Perhaps he would find Hilda there.
But she wasn’t. He had the sunny room to himself, and came out no nearer to the solution of his problem. Five minutes to nine seemed a particularly unpromising moment to go in search of Hilda —the very moment at which all bedroom doors would be flying open to discharge their occupants.
‘Good-morning, Mr. Cherrington. Can I help you? You look rather lost.’
‘Oh, I was just looking for my sister Hilda, she’s somewhere along here, you know.’
‘Well, don’t go in there, that’s Lady Staveley’s bath-room.’
‘What about this one?’
‘That’s my room, if you don’t mind.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I’ll try a little farther along. It is rather confusing, isn’t it, all these doors?’
‘I suppose it must be, the first time you come.... No, that’s no good, that’s a W.C.’
Eustace’s imaginary interlocutor began to laugh, not very pleasantly.
‘Oh dear, what a lot of mistakes I make.’
‘Yes, you haven’t been very lucky so far, have you? Try the passage on the right.’
If only Antony had been awake when he came down! But he was asleep in a great tornado of bed-clothes, beside his untasted tea, and Eustace hadn’t the heart to wake him.
The agitation of his thoughts had taken his steps through the gate in the railing and into the garden. He turned to the right, away from the Banqueting Hall. This was the new part, despised by Antony. What
rows of windows! Hilda must be behind one of them. If only he could transfer a thought to her, a hint that she should hang a towel out, as had once been done at Glamis Castle. But that wouldn’t make it much easier, inside, to find which room the towel belonged to. Eustace wondered if Anchorstone Hall was haunted, and if so, by what sort of ghost. Dick would certainly say it was, and invent a ghost on the spur of the moment. One couldn’t associate him with a ghost, he was too corporeal. Ghostly and bodily. Perhaps more easily with a devil?
Eustace followed the path to the right under some chestnuts. The path was not much used: it was earthy and dank; this was not the show side of the house, perhaps the chestnuts had been planted to hide it. Here the screen stopped; here the new part ended in a plain Georgian front which was perhaps the library. It was a relief, after the self-conscious Elizabethanism of the Victorian wing. Now came a bridge over the stream that fed the moat. The rivulet wandered away rather charmingly through banks of azaleas, as though it had finished its military service and returned to civil life.
A tubby boat of nondescript build, with the paint peeling off, was moored to the bank. Inside lay a paddle, and Eustace was tempted to embark and drift downstream on the bright, shallow water through the azaleas, until he came out into the open sea. A line from Emily Brontë slid into his mind: “Eternally, entirely free.” How soothing to be borne away, with no volition of his own, past gardens with trim lawns and brick embankments, past backyards with washing hanging from the line, through cornfields and allotments, under elders and alders—a landscape that alternated perpetually between the inhabited and the uninhabited, the desert and the sown. Now the stream is going faster; ahead, look, it divides—what is that noise, that deep, grinding noise? It must be a mill, a water-mill, and he hadn’t seen the danger in time; he was heading straight for the grim stone building, stretched across the stream, blank and windowless above, but below pierced with black, roundheaded holes where the mill-wheels turned. The boat would not answer to the paddle; it swung sideways and hastened to its doom. And suddenly Hilda was with him in the boat: they were together, like Tom and Maggie Tulliver in The Mill on the Floss.