Read Eustace and Hilda Page 62


  “Found someone you know?” inquired Jasper.

  Eustace explained that he remembered the name—it was such an odd one—but could not fit it to anyone he knew. All the way to the Lido his memory struggled to give up its burden, until at last his fear of a scolding for lateness drove the problem from his mind.

  Lady Nelly never had scolded him, nor did she now. Beyond giving him an absent smile, she hardly noticed his arrival, so deeply engaged was she with a young Italian, a stranger to Eustace, who had joined her party. He was very handsome, in a dark, aquiline way; his eyes could melt as well as burn, and he had a beautiful figure—one of the few Eustace had seen which justified the management’s little-observed decree that the Grotto Restaurant was only open to people in bathing-suits. Count Andrea di Monfalcone was his name. “But you can call him Andy,” said Lady Nelly, and the young man bowed his permission.

  Eustace took his coat off to appease the pagan spirit of the Grotto, and asked Lady Morecambe how she had spent the morning.

  She was wearing a kind of dressing-gown over her bathing-suit, and like all her clothes, it not only fitted the occasion, but made one feel the occasion had been created to fit it.

  “Well,” she said, “first we played tennis and then we bathed and then we sun-bathed, and after luncheon I guess we’re going to sleep. What did you do?”

  Eustace explained what his morning had been, without, however, making any reference to the watches, which were ticking all over him like tell-tale hearts.

  “I do look forward to reading that book, Harry,” Lady Morecambe said. “Do you know,” she went on, turning to Eustace, “you are the very first author I’ve ever met—well, not that I’ve ever met, but that I’ve ever been a house-guest with.”

  “Don’t say that, he’ll wonder where you have been brought up,” said Lord Morecambe. Sitting opposite the Count, and in flannels, not a bathing-suit, he looked very English. “How do you know he is an author, anyway? We’ve only his word for it.”

  “Why, Harry Morecambe,” said Lady Morecambe, on a rising inflection, “you’ve only got to look at him. You can see the thoughts simply steaming in his brain.”

  Lord Morecambe fixed his eye on Eustace. “He looks rather hot, poor chap. But if I wore as many clothes as he does, you’d see the thoughts sizzling in my brain too.”

  But Lady Morecambe held her ground. “Oh no, I shouldn’t. I know you think that we Americans can’t tell one Englishman from another, but you’re wrong. The moment I saw Eustace I said to myself, ‘Héloise, that’s a remarkable young man, and in days to come you’ll be proud to say you met him staying with Lady Nelly Staveley in Venice.’”

  “You didn’t say so at the time,” said Lord Morecambe.

  “Do you think I should want to make him uncomfortable? I only say so now because some of you like to pretend he isn’t an author. When you look out of this cave what do you see, Harry?”

  Lord Morecambe considered. “I don’t see very much. I see lots of sand, and some people sitting under an umbrella playing bridge and getting rather cross over it, and a middle-aged woman doing her face, and two, no three, old buffers covering themselves with sand to look like castles, and a long line of bathing-huts that spoil the view——”

  “And what do you see, Eustace?” Lady Morecambe demanded, and while Eustace was wondering what he did see, she went on, “Of course, I don’t know how he’d put it, but he sees those boatmen in their cute pink shirts and big straw hats, and the fishing-boats with rust-coloured sails, and the little waves following each other as flat and shallow as the steps of the Salute, and the bony sea-horses like chessmen, and the darling little crabs that the poor people eat, and those swell sea-anemones——”

  “He couldn’t possibly see a sea-anemone from here,” objected Lord Morecambe, almost sneezing over the words. “Besides, they’ve all died from the drains. You’ll be saying he can see a shrimp next.”

  “Well, I dare say he can,” Lady Morecambe retorted. “A poet’s eye isn’t limited the way yours and mine are.”

  Enchanted by her vision of his vision, Eustace tried to see if the two tallied. But he couldn’t compare them, for he found himself on another shore, fenced off from the land by a high red cliff. This shore was not meant for lounging on, it was dun-coloured, shining with wet, and scoured by stiff breezes challenging the blood. There, fastened to a sleek green boulder, half in and half out of the water, the lovely milk-pale sea-anemone was devouring its prey. Only Hilda could stop the massacre and he called her, but she did not come; she lingered beside their pond, because of something he had left undone, something she would have to scold him for later. At last she came and saw the shrimp’s sad plight, wedged in the anemone’s cruel mouth. Hilda knew how to bring good out of evil; with Eustace holding her ankles she sprawled across the rock and drew the shrimp out of the honey-coloured maw. But too late; the shrimp was dead and the anemone was terribly injured, oozing through its own lips like something that had been run over.

  Eustace blamed Hilda and called her a murderer—Hilda a murderer, who had been like a mother to him as they all said, and Stephen agreed, though he put it differently. “You are her creation, Eustace. She is the author of your slim gilt soul.”

  Eustace shook his head till it rattled. As in a kaleidoscope the pattern changed, and he saw again the golden air, the deep blue of the sea, the pale blue of the sky, the sands bleached almost to whiteness, spheres of colour as various but harmonious as a cluster of balloons on a string.

  Lord Morecambe was saying, “It’s about time we settled this business of Eustace being an author. He’ll start giving himself airs and that would never do. I’ll appeal to our hostess. Nelly!”

  But for once Lady Nelly was too much engrossed in a particular conversation to be aware of remoter claims on her attention.

  “Easing up to that foreign body!” muttered Lord Morecambe, for the table was a long one. “Nelly!” he called again.

  This time she heard him and looked up, inquiry dawning on her face. “Yes, Harry?”

  “Forgive my stentorian shouts, but this is most important. We want a ruling. Is Eustace writing a book, or isn’t he? He told Héloise he is, but we don’t trust him.”

  “Of course he is,” said Lady Nelly. “My best friends all write books.”

  Eustace got very red.

  “That counts me out,” said Lord Morecambe. “Héloise, where’s my pen?”

  “An author? That is most interesting,” said the Count, giving Eustace a courteous but slightly sceptical look. “I too should like to write a book. But in Italy there is so much life we do not find a great deal of time for reading. I should not like to write a book that nobody read. Unless it was going to be a success I should not attempt it.”

  “That’s frank, anyhow,” said Lord Morecambe. “Eustace here’s quite different; he just writes for the love of the thing.”

  The Count’s expression changed.

  “Ah, love!” he said, lightly but significantly. “I could write more easily for love. But love for someone, some person. In love I should find my inspiration.”

  “I’m afraid we can’t help you there,” Lord Morecambe said.

  Lady Nelly’s rising was the signal for a general fumbling dive for bags, tennis racquets, and other beach accoutrements. Her Italian guests were effusive in their thanks, and Eustace heard her say to the Count, as he bent over her hand, “Well, some evening about six, then; don’t forget.”

  Half-right across the sands, the last in its row, Lady Nelly’s capanna awaited them. The little parterre in front was gay with coloured sunshades, deck-chairs, mattresses, and cushions. As they stumbled out of the Grotto the patient ardour of the day, like a dog’s welcome that warms with waiting, gave them its canicular salute.

  Hilda was back at the clinic: that was the main fact that emerged from Aunt Sarah’s letter.

  I don’t think she was quite fit to go [Miss Cherrington had written]. She hadn’t got her appetite back, or her
spirits. But she had set her heart on going, and the doctor thought it would do her less harm to stay at home, fretting. Two or three times she went up to London in the evening to dine with friends, and seemed quite excited by the prospect. I noticed that she seemed more tired and restless when she got back, but I couldn’t persuade her not to go again. As you know, she never cared for needlework or housework, she only did them from a sense of duty, and she regards incessant reading, as I’m afraid I do, as a waste of time. The only recreation she allows herself is a game of Patience. I see no great harm in this, and got two new packs for her from Parfitts’ (which she thought rather extravagant of me), as her own were rather worn. I found them the next morning where I had left them, on the table by her bed, unused. Mr. Hilliard came in one evening and showed her two or three kinds she did not know, but she didn’t seem able to remember them after he had gone. So perhaps Highcross is the best place for her; and of course she can have first-rate medical attention there. The doctors think it is some kind of nervous strain due to overwork. I hope they may be right. Hilda never spares herself or takes a holiday, and the heat, too, has been particularly trying this August. I suppose you are having it much hotter in Venice, but it’s different if you have to work. When do you think of coming back to us, I wonder? There is no need, of course, but we shall all be glad to see you. Hilda spoke of you several times, and we were amused by your picture in the paper, especially Barbara. Someone told me this Lady Nelly used to be rather a fast woman, but I never listen to gossip.

  Isn’t it a surprise that Barbara and Jimmy have taken our old house at Anchorstone? Dear Barbara has not been quite well, but I think she would wish to tell you about that herself. She is such a gay, brave young person, bless her. I only wish that Hilda could take illness in the same contented spirit—but of course her case is different. She had the childish ailments that you all had, but I don’t remember her having any other complaint, and she is apt to be impatient with herself and others....

  There was still another letter. This was a post indeed.

  My Dear Eustace,

  How goes the beach-combing? Needless to say we have all seen THE picture—‘the speaking likeness,’ as it’s now generally called. You always liked looking up to something, didn’t you? There was a time when I flattered myself.... But those days are long since past. From your present altitude I must be quite invisible, a mite on a discarded cheese, a weevil in the loaf the girl trod on. How you must adore the Excelsior Hotel, your spiritual home.

  Twisting himself round on his elbow, Eustace considered the Excelsior. It impended over him, a vast grand-stand in the Moorish style. But Stephen was wrong. To anyone acquainted with even the shade of Whaplode, these architectural excesses could only be distasteful; and Stephen’s gibe no longer hurt him. He got up to pull his mattress farther under the shadow of the orange umbrella, and then returned to Stephen’s letter.

  Well, after this envious exordium I will proceed to business, for in business even a cat can look at a king. I am now established in a humble way, in the basement, so to speak, of Hilliard, Lampeter and Hilliard, and in normal times I keep what they call office hours. But in August business is not very brisk, so last Thursday I took ‘the afternoon off’ (this phrase will mean nothing to you, whose life is one long holiday), and having taken what might be called the necessary precautions, I went to see your sister at Highcross Hill.

  I had a special reason for going. The last time I saw her, which was at Willesden, she was not very well, but she did not want you to know, because she thought you might be worried about her. I assured her that you wouldn’t be, and that you only worried about matters that were on your conscience, and she was not likely to be there! But all the same, she wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s nothing to bother about,” she said more than once. I said in that case there was no harm in telling you, but she wouldn’t be convinced.

  On Thursday, however, she said she was so much better she didn’t mind your knowing. To be frank, I didn’t think her looking well, she has got rather thin. We didn’t have tea in her room—she said it was too untidy. I gather there had been changes of staff, so I helped her to clear a space among the periodicals on the table in the waiting-room. Afterwards she took me for a look round. The extension isn’t finished yet; she told me that while she was away the workmen adopted what are called “go slow” methods; still, you can see that some progress has been made. Not so with her new acquisition, Naboth’s Vineyard. The place has not been touched; it’s overgrown with weeds. She told me she hadn’t realised that fruit trees couldn’t be planted in the summer.

  I touched on the financial side, and here again she said she had been meeting with difficulties. The directors hadn’t liked her taking such a long rest, although it was under doctor’s orders; and nothing had gone right while she was away —she kept returning to that.

  In spite of these set-backs she spoke several times—though in very vague terms—of some new project which would need, I gathered, a considerable capital outlay; she admitted that her interest began to flag unless some new development was being contemplated. Perhaps over-bold, I urged her to recover her losses and consolidate her gains; but I am afraid my warning may have fallen on deaf ears, as they say. She confessed that at the moment she couldn’t muster the energy to carry out a new scheme, but felt that to set one on foot would act as a kind of tonic to her—a dangerous state of mind, I thought.

  I can’t pretend that she was at the top of her form. Before I left she went to her room and brought down some Patience cards Miss Cherrington had given her, and asked me if I would show her again a new Patience I had tried to teach her at Willesden—quite a simple one, really, much simpler than many that she plays, called the Clock. We did it two or three times, and she said, “I think I’ve got the hang of it now, but I dare say I shall forget when you go away.” I said I was in no hurry to go, and should be pleased to teach her Patience now or at any time. At that she smiled rather sadly, and asked me when I thought you would be back. “I can’t expect to hear from him often, because I never write to him.” “But surely,” I said, “he’s written to you?” She said, oh yes, you had written to ask her to send you some money. I said I hoped she kept a tight hand on the purse strings, and she said it was nothing, only fifty pounds.

  Now, Eustace, I don’t want to be tiresome and a kill-joy, and you will say (in the manner of Cicero’s opponents) that I’ve told you the Moral Law no longer runs, so undermined has it been by the popular interpretation put on the theories of Darwin and Marx and Freud. But that was before I was a lawyer, and above all, before I was your lawyer.

  Rather than risk the charge of inconsistency, I now appeal, not to your conscience—for I distrust its workings and always have—but to a faculty you’ve never, if I may say so, treated as a social equal: I mean your sense of proportion. Don’t spend all the money that Miss Fothergill (blessed be her name) bequeathed you on antimacassars of Venetian point lace for your Aunt Sarah, who won’t appreciate them, or on Murano glass negroes for Mrs. Crankshaw, who’ll only break them. And as to Hilda, the best present you could give her would be yourself, and bis dat qui cito dat.

  I call her by her Christian name because her letter saying she could see me on Thursday was signed Hilda tout court. Perhaps this was an oversight, and she thought she was writing to someone else. I have not dared to try the effect of the naked nomination (to quote your friend Sir Thomas Browne) on her. But when she saw me off she said “Good-bye, Stephen,” almost as naturally as I say “Good-bye, Eustace.”

  Yours affectionately,

  S.H.

  “Good news?” asked Lady Nelly, looking up from her book.

  “Well, not altogether. It’s about my sister Hilda.”

  Lady Nelly put the book down, and turned on Eustace the dark glasses which somehow didn’t disfigure her, for they were like shadows of her eyes.

  “I hope your sister isn’t ill.”

  “Oh no, she isn’t really ill, but she’s had a k
ind of nervous attack. The doctors” (Eustace’s use of the plural suggested an army of medical attendants) “don’t seem to know what it is.”

  “She seemed the incarnation of health,” mused Lady Nelly. “It made one feel well to look at her. But women have these little upsets. Being a man, you wouldn’t know about them.”

  At once Eustace felt easier in his mind about Hilda.

  “Women don’t always sail on an even keel,” Lady Nelly went on. “You’ll learn that, Eustace. Little things, trifles light as air”—she waved her hand—“upset us. Sometimes we have headaches, sometimes we cry, and don’t ourselves know the reason. Men wouldn’t really want us to be different, or perhaps we should be.”

  “Could you have a bilious attack?” asked Eustace dubiously.

  “Oh, easily. Don’t worry about your sister, Eustace, I’m sure it’s only some feminine fussation. Perhaps she’s been going about too much with my naughty nephew Dick. That might easily lead to a bilious attack.”

  Eustace remembered the champagne at the Ritz; but he had never been certain it was Hilda Lord Morecambe saw.

  “They don’t mention Dick,” said Eustace.

  Lady Nelly smiled. “I dare say not. Don’t you sometimes not mention someone?”

  “I often mention you, I’m afraid,” Eustace said.

  “I ought to feel flattered, I do feel flattered. But if you told me you had never mentioned me to anyone, I should feel flattered too, in a different way. We are always looking for excuses to feel flattered. Am I telling you too many secrets about us?”

  Eustace wondered if Dick often mentioned Hilda’s name.

  ‘A very beautiful girl I know called Hilda Cherrington.’ ‘Hilda Cherrington, a perfect stunner. You must meet her, old boy.’ Or again: ‘Who was that lovely girl I saw you with last night, Dick? Who was she, you naughty old man?’ ‘Oh, just a friend.’ ‘Who was the charmer you were giving champagne to at the Ritz, Dick? Come on, out with it.’ Silence; or perhaps a word and a blow. Which line of action would Hilda think the more flattering?