She thought he was dead, but Eustace was not dead, and even as she looked at him he stirred and opened his eyes. “Oh, Hilda,” he murmured, “you’re better. I’m so glad—I—” He drifted off again. She knelt beside him and loosened his collar, got his hand away from the spokes and began to chafe his wrists. One of his wrists was spotted with blood where the spoke had bitten into it. He opened his eyes again and saw, not only Hilda but several other people whom she hadn’t noticed, standing round, looking very tall and solemn. The colour came back into his face and he sat up. “How stupid of me,” he said, “I must have fainted.” Seeing he was better, the onlookers began to tell each other to come away, but one man stayed behind and asked Hilda if he could do anything. Hilda asked him to help her to put Eustace into the bath-chair. “Yes,” he said, “but first I’ll take it away from where it is; it’ll be over the cliff in a moment. You might have had a nasty accident.”
One of the spectators who was moving away from the spot, believing himself to be out of earshot, said to his companion, “I saw it all happen, and it didn’t look like an accident.”
Eustace heard the words but was too dazed to take in their meaning; he sat looking about him in a shy and happy confusion, while the stranger pulled the bath-chair back into safety. He put his hands under Eustace’s shoulders, Hilda linked hers beneath his knees, and together they lifted him into the chair.
“Shall I push him for you, Madam?” said the man, who seemed loath to go away.
“Oh no, thank you,” said Hilda, “I’m sure I can manage.”
But the man was insistent.
“All right, you can take him for a start,” she said, a trifle ungraciously, “but you must let me have him when I tell you.”
“You can put your hand between mine, just to steady him,” the man said, leaving a space on the bar for Hilda’s hand.
Still feeling dizzy, but always automatically alert to Hilda’s relations with other people, Eustace was surprised to hear her say, “That’s very kind of you.”
When they reached the wall of the preparatory school she dismissed her escort, who departed with many protestations and hat held high. Feeling weak all over, she took the handle and was just able to pull the bath-chair up the slope.
Watching from a window, Minney saw them come back.
f20. EUSTACE AND HILDA
THE TWO recovering invalids had their supper downstairs, though Minney had done her utmost to persuade them to go to bed. “And I do wish you’d let me ring up Dr. Speedwell,” she said. “Mr. Eustace isn’t looking any too grand, and besides, think how pleased he’ll be to see you, Miss Hilda, walking about and looking just like anybody else. Why, it’s only fair to him, I say, to show him how he’s cured you. Those doctors in London couldn’t. It’s like a miracle.”
“Oh, don’t let’s have him, Minney,” pleaded Eustace. “Let’s be as we are for this evening. It’s such more fun, just the three of us. I can see him to-morrow if you think I ought to.”
“Well, we don’t want him fainting here, do we, Miss Hilda?”
The tiny frown that had furrowed Hilda’s brow while her face was clamped in illness had not yet straightened out.
“I don’t need the doctor,” she said, “and I don’t think Eustace does.”
Eustace glanced at her uneasily, troubled by something in her tone.
“Very well, then, but it’s lucky Miss Hilda is better, because Mr. Crankshaw isn’t coming back to-night—not that he’ll be wanted, I’m sure—and I wouldn’t trust Mr. Eustace to carry her upstairs.”
“Wouldn’t you, Minney?” asked Hilda. “Why not?”
“No, I wouldn’t, not as he is now. He might drop you. Now you both go into the drawing-room while I wash up, and I’ll come and tell you when it’s time to go to bed. No sitting up late, mind.”
Eustace opened the door for Hilda and followed her into the drawing-room. How well she graced the uncomfortable high-backed chair! She had only to move to give him happiness. Tired as he was, only just afloat on the sea of consciousness, he asked nothing better than to sit and look at her. But she was not looking at him. She was staring at the fire which Minney had lighted for them, and which burnt, as always, under protest.
“Was it an accident?” she said at length, still without looking at him.
“Was what an accident, darling?” asked Eustace, his heart and mind engaged in the play of Hilda’s fingers, clenching and unclenching in her lap.
“Didn’t you hear what the man said?”
She could curl her little finger right up.
“What man, Hilda dear?”
“The man on the cliffs.”
Her foot was swivelling round on her ankle, this way and that, in an impatient circle, and under the thin stuff of her shoe each of her toes seemed to have a life of its own.
“Do you mean the one who helped us?”
“No, another man.”
Eustace looked blank. “I’m afraid I wasn’t taking much notice.”
“He said he’d seen it all, and he didn’t think it was an accident,” said Hilda.
Eustace moved his head about in a gesture she remembered well.
“What did he think it was?”
“He thought you did it on purpose.”
There was no sound in the room save the angry sputtering of the fire. Eustace’s mind spun and rattled like a pianola record when you wind it back.
“Well, I did, in a way.”
Hilda stiffened, so that for a moment Eustace thought the paralysis had taken hold of her again.
“Then you were trying to push me over.”
Eustace stared at her with his mouth open and the colour left his face.
“I don’t altogether blame you,” said Hilda, “only I wonder you didn’t do it at night, when there was no one about.”
“Oh!”
Eustace grasped the hard, knobbly arms of the chair and summoned all his faculties, sounding a bugle in his mind to rally the last stragglers. “No, no,” he said, starting up and sinking back again. “You mustn’t think that, Hilda, you mustn’t! Please don’t, Hilda! It would kill me if you thought that. No, no, believe me, it was an experiment. Dr. Speedwell said a shock might cure you. He’ll tell you so himself. You must believe me, Hilda! I should have explained everything, only I didn’t seem to get the chance at supper, with Minney there. Please, please believe me! It was the only way I could think of, and I couldn’t tell you before-hand, I couldn’t give you any warning, you must see that, or it wouldn’t have been a shock.”
He tried to explain his plan to her in detail, growing more and more incoherent. “And then I began to feel faint; but I thought I should have just time to do it, and I knew that if I didn’t do it then, I never should, and then you would never get better. You are better now, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Hilda sombrely. “I suppose I am.”
Her thoughts felt strange to her; never very accessible, they had circled so long in her mind without the outlet of speech that they had worn a groove there, a deep trench not easily penetrated from without.
Eustace looked at her beseechingly.
“Say something, Hilda. I can’t bear it when you sit so still. You can speak now. Please say something. I can’t say any more.”
“What am I to say?” Hilda spoke slowly as if her tongue was still rusty. “I must believe you, of course.” She looked at him inquiringly, as if begging him to give her the power to believe. “It was all so strange,” she went on dreamily. “After the first moment, I wasn’t afraid of the fall. I’ve a good head for heights. Highcross Hill is high. Then I saw your foot. But it began before that.”
Her mind seemed to be unwinding, losing its coiled tightness.
“What he said was almost the first thing I heard—I shouldn’t have taken so much notice. I’ve been a burden to you, Eustace. I know that. If I’d been able to move, well, even enough to have poured myself out a glass of medicine, I wouldn’t have been a burden to you any more.?
??
“Oh, Hilda, what are you saying?” Eustace cried. “You couldn’t speak before, and now you can, you want to break my heart. I can see you don’t believe me. What can I do to convince you?”
She stared at him with a heavy vacancy.
“I wouldn’t have talked to you as I did if I’d meant to—to hurt you,” he said. “And as you said, Hilda, if I’d wanted to do what you think, I could have done it at night.”
His myriad-pointed misery, like a file, scraped the skin of his mind for new methods of persuasion, but his rasped and bleeding consciousness could only speak its pain. Desperately he returned to the old arguments, but they lit no light in her sullen face which, to his horror, was beginning to take on the fixed, unnatural expression of her illness. He flung out his hands and as they dropped to his sides they struck against something hard. The wedges. For the sake of something to do he took them out and held them balanced on his palms like weights, eyeing Hilda as David might have eyed Goliath.
Hilda returned his look. “What have you got there?” she said. Loaded with suspicion, her voice dropped to a whisper. “You’re frightening me. I don’t feel safe. What have you got there, Eustace?”
Suddenly Eustace’s mind was flooded with light.
“The wedges! the wedges!” he shouted, getting up and stand-ing over Hilda and thrusting the lumps of granite in her face. “The wedges I always took with me, in case—in case something happened, and the bath-chair ran away. That was why I kept them, to put under the wheels. You must have seen my pockets bulging,” he said, glaring down at her. “Didn’t you see them bulge,” he demanded, “every night I came to take you out?”
“Yes, I did,” said Hilda in a low, uncertain voice. “I wondered why you looked like that.”
“Take them! take them!” shouted Eustace, putting the wedges into Hilda’s wondering hands. “Look at them! Feel how heavy they are! They’ve worn out my pockets,” he grumbled, his voice querulous as well as angry. “Look, they’re full of holes.” He pulled the dirty grey pockets out, and showed Hilda the jagged tear in each. “They’ve been mended twice, but they won’t hold anything except these big stones. All my money falls out. Minney’s always on to me about them. She knows! She can tell you! I’ll call her!”
He went to the door, and was fumbling with the knob when he heard Hilda’s voice. “No, don’t, Eustace. Come back.”
It was her old voice, the voice he knew. Reluctantly, still glaring at her, he sat down in the chair again.
She got up quietly and put the wedges on the table by his side.
“Thank you, Eustace,” she said.
He looked at her again. The strain and strangeness had gone out of her face. He hardly dare believe it, but it seemed as though what his arguments could not bring about, his anger had. His anger, and the wedges—those concrete testimonies to his innocence.
Timidly he smiled at her and she smiled back, and they stayed so for a moment, exploring each other’s faces with their smiles.
“Why did you put on the Fortuny frock to-day?” Eustace said. “You look so lovely in it.”
The blue and silver of the dress seemed to have woven their own moonlight round her.
“I don’t quite know,” said Hilda. “It was something to do with Barbara. I was so glad about her, and then I had a vague feeling I didn’t want to be outdone by her. Such nonsense.” She smiled at him almost shyly. “But I can’t quite explain—I felt so many things when I was sitting apart, locked up in myself. You were very good to me, Eustace.”
“Oh no, I wasn’t,” said Eustace, horrified. “I could have done much more.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
“Yes, I could.”
“Tell me how.” Her eyes challenged him in the old way. “You can’t.”
Gratefully, Eustace gave up trying. But he was feeling misty again. It seemed as though his nerves, which had seen him through a crisis, failed him in a calm.
“What you said to me on the cliff,” said Hilda, “broke some skin that was forming over me. Then ... I couldn’t help it, the skin closed again and I was underneath it. I’ve had an awful time, Eustace; I can’t tell you how I’ve suffered.”
“I can guess,” said Eustace rashly.
“No, you can’t, you can’t.” A far-away tone crept into Hilda’s voice. With her eyes half closed and her chin slightly up, she looked like the goddess of self-pity. “No one can.”
Thoughtfully she smoothed out the folds of her dress, making the moonlight and the clouds change places with each other.
“Dick’s message interested and touched me,” she said carelessly. “Poor boy, such a good fellow in his way. Perhaps I was rather hard on him.” Eustace gazed at her in bewilderment. “But he was cruel to me, very cruel. And you were cruel too, Eustace. You helped him.”
Eustace’s much-tried heart turned over. Was he to go through all this again—Sisyphus resuming his stone?
“Oh, Hilda,” he began, “I—”
“Yes, you did, you put me into his clutches. But I forgive you, and I forgive him too. Only,” she added, “I shan’t be caught that way again.”
“No, indeed,” said Eustace.
“I shall have a great deal to do,” said Hilda, her voice suddenly becoming sharp and business-like. “I must lose no time in taking up the reins at the clinic. Heaven knows what they will have been doing there while I’ve been away. I must get in touch with them at once. Perhaps I’d better have Stephen Hilliard down to arrange the preliminaries. I’ll write to him to-morrow.”
“Yes, that’s a good plan,” said Eustace.
“He’s a sensible, practical man—a man you can trust,” said Hilda. “And, I think I may say, devoted to my interests. Dick wasn’t. He—he put himself first.”
“Yes,” Eustace said.
“That’s why I never felt he was a good influence for you, Eustace,” Hilda went on, frankly but firmly, and with a look that was at once mild and severe. “The kind of life he led—the kind of life they all led—was no good to you. Nor to me, perhaps; but I’m made of much stronger stuff than you are, and I learn by experience. I don’t ask what you did in Venice, but what have you been doing, Eustace, all the time since you came back?”
“Well,” said Eustace, trying not to feel guilty, “I’ve been working, you know, reading the set books. Of course I didn’t quite know what I should be doing—I mean—” His voice died away.
“You didn’t know? But surely you knew the Oxford term began in October? You’d better hurry up, or we shall be having more trouble from them about those scholarships.”
“Yes, Hilda, I’ll write to-morrow.”
“I should write to-night; no good putting things off. The sooner we all get back to normal, the better. And by the way,” she said, “you’re not very well, are you? You need a good overhaul. I’ll arrange with one of our doctors—a man I can trust. Speedwell has a pleasant bedside manner, but he doesn’t know much. Remind me about that, Eustace.”
“Yes, Hilda, I will; but I don’t think it’s really necessary. I’ve been much better—all this bicycling does me good.”
“In moderation, I dare say. But you didn’t look very well this evening, lying on the ground with your legs stretched out.”
“I’m afraid I must have looked rather a sight.”
“It wasn’t only that. Oh, Eustace, you must be careful, you are so precious to me; I don’t believe you realise how precious you are.”
“And you to me, Hilda darling.”
“No, not in the same way—not in the same way. You had Miss Fothergill, and now your friend Lady Nelly, and I don’t know how many more. You collect friends like you do paper-weights. But I only have you. I feel jealous sometimes.”
“But, Hilda—”
“Don’t argue, it is so. And if anything happened to you, I don’t know what would become of me. You must look after yourself.” Tears stood in her eyes.
Eustace was too deeply moved to speak.
??
?But you must work hard too,” she went on. “We can’t have you loafing about. Did you say something about a book?”
“Yes,” said Eustace eagerly. “It’s going to be published. I—”
“I shall read it with great interest,” said Hilda. “But writing novels isn’t a life’s work. You’ll have to do more than that, and better than that, if I am to be as proud of you as I want to be.”
“Still, it’s something, isn’t it?” protested Eustace. “Even if I did nothing else, people will remember me by that.”
Hilda gave a great yawn that rippled through all her pleats; when she had enjoyed it to the full, she shook with laughter.
“You do look so solemn sitting in that chair,” she said, “and talking about being remembered. I shall remember you all right, don’t you worry.”
The door opened and Minney tiptoed in, with the nervous, self-conscious, but resolute air of someone coming late into church.
“I’ve come to pack you both off to bed,” she said. “You’ll be sitting up here all night at this rate.”
“Oh, Minney, we were enjoying ourselves so much,” said Eustace.
“Well, bed’s a good place,” said Minney. “You’ll enjoy yourselves there too.”
“Really, Minney, what a thing to say,” said Hilda, laughing again till the tears came into her eyes. Minney couldn’t see anything funny in what she had said, and Eustace was amazed, for this was a Hilda he did not know. Still laughing, she looked from Minney’s blank face to Eustace’s cautiously smiling one.
“Oh, well,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “But Eustace can’t go to bed: he’s got to stay up and write a letter.”