After a little, the vehicle turned off, sounding its bell and causing a drably-clad group to scatter out of its path; Hubert forgot his pieties and chuckled at the sight. This was Hadrian VII Street, where some of the most magnificent houses in the city were to be found, and it was into the paved courtyard of one of them that he was shortly driven. There were stone pillars with a blue-painted pediment, an ornamental astrolabe on a bronze pedestal, a great many flowers and some clumps of strange tall grass. The driver helped Hubert down. He was strange too, tall and muscular in trim red-and-blue livery, but narrow-eyed and dark-complexioned; his straight black hair had a blue sheen on it. He said in a strange accent,
‘Please to mount the steps, young master, and to use the knocker on the door.’
‘Thank you.’
‘It’s nothing, young master.’
The man who opened the door, though older and not so strong-looking, might have been the driver’s brother, but Hubert had little time to consider him, because Cornelius van den Haag, hand outstretched, was striding across the lofty hall.
‘Welcome, Hubert! So they let you out, eh? Wonderful! Let me bring forward my wife, who says she must see for herself the person I talk of so incessantly—and my daughter Hilda.’
The New Englander had managed to indicate that formal bows were not called for, so Hubert just shook hands with Dame van den Haag, a pretty, dark-haired, smiling lady in a sober but rich-looking gown, and with Hilda, who was almost exactly as beautiful as he had hoped and almost persuaded himself not to expect. She had blue eyes like her father’s, a curved mouth and a very straight nose, and her hand was warm without being moist. Rather to his disappointment, she wore a green short frock cut high at the throat and made from something that could not be deerskin. But of course he was excited and happy, struck by the foreign way the New Englander family had come out into the hall to greet him instead of waiting while he was fetched in to them by a servant. It must be a result of being brought up in log cabins, and was very kind and undignified of them.
‘Does this contain what I hope it contains?’ asked van den Haag, taking the leather satchel that Hubert carried. ‘Good. But that will come later. We have a few minutes before the other guests arrive, so we can all become acquainted. Well, Hubert, this is our home. Do you like it?’
Hubert was not used to being asked if he liked things like homes, and had had no time to notice more about the room in which they now sat than that it was cool and dark after the sunlight and that it had Italian windows opening on to a garden. He looked hastily round in search of some object to praise, but saw only a painting of a bald man with eyeglasses and thick mustach who was evidently Joseph Rudyard Kipling, First Citizen 1914–18. He murmured a few words that depended more on their sound than on their sense before curiosity, all the stronger for being pent up, had its way.
‘Those men, sir, the one who drove me here and the one who let me in—what are they?’
Van den Haag said at once, ‘They’re Indians, Hubert. Descended from the folk who lived in the Americas before the white man came.’
‘I thought they rode horses and hunted buffaloes and lived in tents.’
‘They did at one time, or some of them did, but no longer. Now they work in the mills, in the fields, in the mines, in the fishing-fleet, and some as servants, like Samuel and Domingo whom you saw.’
‘Domingo—isn’t that an Italian name?’
‘Spanish, or Mexican more truly. Yes, they come to us from all over the continent and further, from Louisiana, Cuba, Florida, even from South America and New Muscovy.’
‘Why do they come from so far?’
‘For the good life we offer them, Hubert, so much better than they’ve known. And we pay their journey costs. It makes the other countries angry—they say we steal their best folk. Only last month, the Viceroy of Brazil issued a decree forbidding any further—’
‘My dear Cornelius,’ broke in Dame van den Haag, ‘you imagine that this is the House of Commissioners. Hubert is here to be entertained, not instructed.’
Her husband smiled. ‘He knows my weakness from our first meeting. I’m in England only since a year. Soon I expect to be able to speak of more things than my country and my countrymen. Yes, Hubert?’
‘Your indulgence for another question, sir, but I notice you say you’re in England since a year. That must be a New Englander expression, yes?’
So it was, by van den Haag’s account: one of a number of ways in which the speech of his nation had been affected by that of its French-speaking neighbour, Louisiana, whose Indians had turned out long ago to be peculiarly well fitted to serve as nursemaids to white children. Hubert was interested enough to hear this, but he had asked his question chiefly in order to help the talk follow the course it had been given. He knew that his host had started explaining about Indians in such detail not only because the subject was one of his favourites, but also in order to give him (Hubert) a chance to become accustomed to his unfamiliar situation. That was kind, and necessary too: it had been quite a shock to hear Dame van den Haag actually interrupting her husband in public, even though she had spoken amiably and he had taken no offence. No doubt that log-cabin upbringing had been at work again. What it might have done to somebody like Hilda was impossible to estimate. At the moment, her knees raised as she sat on a low stool, her glance neither seeking nor avoiding his, she seemed very much like most girls of her age, only more beautiful. But then she had not said anything yet.
Hubert tried to rectify this when the mention of languages led to a discussion of studies. Describing his own on request, he threw in several cunning phrases about different children liking different subjects, some not liking any at all, etc. To no avail: the man and his wife agreed with him, thought his studies remarkable for their scope and volume, declared that nothing of the sort would ever be attempted in their country; the daughter might have echoed all these sentiments inwardly, but all she did was sit as before and look several times at the toes of her slippers. So Hubert fell back on looking at her as often as he dared. Quite soon, he had decided that the best thing about her was the way her crisp dark hair grew out of and across her forehead, and the next best thing the tiny blue veins in her eyelids.
At about that time, he heard the front-door knocker, and the Indian who had opened to him brought in a series of other guests. Some were quite old and very serious, like bishops in lay dress; some were foreign, with French or Netherlander names and accents; some were children, and van den Haag brought each of them forward to Hubert, but did not indicate that he and they should move apart from their elders. That suited him; he stayed at Hilda’s side, and then, just after a pale, curly-haired little boy of about eight had been steered up to him and mercifully steered away again, she turned and looked straight at him for the first time.
He immediately said what he had had ready for the past ten minutes. ‘Do you like living in England, Hilda?’
‘Yes, I do. We were in Naples before, and it’s so hot and dirty there.’
Her voice was wonderfully hoarse, but he could not tell her that, so he said, what was true enough, ‘You speak just like an English person.’
‘Why not? I go to school in Coverley, and most of my friends are English.’
‘But you’ve been here only a year.’
‘That’s enough time. My ears are quick.’
Quick or not, they were thin and slightly pointed, and seemed to Hubert more intricate than most other folk’s ears. ‘Did you learn the language when you were in Naples?’
‘Yes, of course—some of it.’
‘Say something to me as they say it there.’ He was not making conversation: he wanted to hear how her voice sounded with foreign words. ‘Say, “I have a pretty blue frock just like this green one.”’
‘Oh, no.’
‘Please, it can’t be difficult.’
‘I don’t want to.’
He thought from her demeanour that his coaxing pleased her and that she meant to
yield to it in the end. ‘You’ve forgotten how to say it.’
‘Yes, I believe I have. Why oughtn’t I?’
‘If you’ve forgotten how they speak in Naples, you must surely have forgotten how they speak in New England. How the people there speak, not your father and mother.’
‘Trash, I remember well. We were home after we left Naples and before we came here.’
‘Then say something as they say it. Anything—whatever you choose.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘If you won’t say something, I shan’t believe you remember how to.’ The smile with which Hubert accompanied this had faded by half-way through.
‘Have you truly only ten years, young master?’
‘Eleven in July. But I’m—’
‘You don’t look ten or eleven,’ said Hilda van den Haag with her blue eyes wide open. ‘You look like a little man.’
‘Do I so?’ Hubert felt himself flush: in one sense he did not understand her, because in his world it was childish looks that were to be scorned; in another he understood well enough and to spare. Without any volition, he added, ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry, trash. How can you be sorry for what isn’t your blame? Now I go to help my mother.’
The help turned out to have to do with the big afternoon table that had been prepared, and in particular with attending to the wants of one or two of the younger children. As she did this, Hilda looked kind in a serious way, and sweet; perhaps she really was, thought Hubert, and tried to find justification for her harsh words to him just now. However she might appear, she must be shy; he had pressed her in a way most boys would not have resented, but a girl well might. He would find her again later and do what he could to make her like him; meanwhile, there was the table.
Here two maidservants stood, not dark of skin but recognizable as Indians by their eyes and hair. By a procedure unfamiliar to Hubert, guests were served with their preferences and carried their own filled plates and glasses to seats scattered round the room. The fare, once again, was strange: Hubert perforce went by appearance and found, on inquiry, that he had chosen pecan pie, molasses cookies and Mexican bridal cake, together with a cold drink called Calvina mint tea. All were delicious. He ate and drank in a chair near the Italian windows, next to a thin dark boy of twelve whose name was Louis, or Luis, and who, having soon established that Hubert had never visited Asia, told him in some detail about places in that continent. Hubert listened to quite a lot of this, though Louis seemed to have had the bad luck not to have come across much of interest on his travels, and, out of politeness towards his host, who glanced every so often in his direction, made a show of listening to it all. He was content: a careful survey had shown him earlier that there was no one present with the watchful yet withdrawn look he had come to recognize as the sign of a possible new friend or leader, and there was only one girl who appealed to him, and she was still looking after overgrown babies.
While the remains of the meal were being cleared, van den Haag came over. The boys got to their feet.
‘I see you two have found plenty to talk about. Good—it doesn’t always happen that way at these shows. Well now, if you’ll give us leave, Louis, I must take Hubert off. We have some preparations to make.’
‘Forgive me, sir,’ said Hubert a moment later, ‘but are you sure this is the right occasion? Your guests are here to enjoy the company and the—’
‘My guests will feel mightily balked if you don’t give them what I promised them, be assured of that.’
‘The young children won’t enjoy it, will they?’
‘Any child, young or not so young, who does not will be removed into the garden: I’ve given instructions. So . . .’
Van den Haag’s gesture indicated the piano-forte by which, having mounted a low dais at the far end of the room, they now stood. It was handsomely cased in rosewood; more important to Hubert, it was one of the new six-octave instruments by Satie of Paris. Master Morley would have approved, and perhaps shown some surprise.
‘This a very fine piece, sir.’
‘I’m glad you think well of it, Hubert.’ Van den Haag handed over the satchel Hubert had brought. ‘What’s your selection to be? You can hardly give us everything you have there.’
‘I thought you might advise me, sir.’
‘No, it must be what you prefer, my boy.’
‘Thank you, sir. Then . . . the little Mozart song, “L’alouette en haut”, the Schumann, “Nun muss ich fort”, and the Valeriani, “I miei sospiri”. A mixture of the . . .’
‘Of the familiar and the less familiar, just so. May I see the Mozart? Ah, of course, K.308b, the third of the set. I think I may be able to handle that. Yes, Hubert—you shouldn’t stare so, it isn’t very gladdening—I mean to accompany. I won’t disgrace you, I undertake.’
Hubert’s recital was a great success. He knew himself he had never sung better, and it was obvious to him why: he had never in the past had anybody to sing for as that afternoon he had Hilda. Yet Hilda was nowhere to be seen—perhaps she was hidden behind someone else, perhaps she was listening from outside the room. At the end of the Valeriani he bowed briefly three times, waited for the considerable applause to die away, thanked van den Haag for his accompaniments, which had indeed been deft for a dilettante, and stepped down from the dais to signal the end of his performance. There were many calls for an extra, but he knew from experience that the attention of an audience of this kind would not remain intact after fifteen minutes at the most. He received personal congratulations from a Polish dignitary, from a priest with a Scandinavian accent, from a member of the Royal Opera House Company, even from Louis; not from Hilda. Then suddenly he saw her in the sun at the threshold of the garden doorway, and without thinking started towards her. Van den Haag was quickly at his side.
‘Hubert will need to relax himself after his efforts, my dear. Will you kindly conduct him round the garden? And well-minded, nay?’
Two pairs of blue eyes looked into one another for a moment. Then the girl said,
‘Oh, best. Ya ya, paps.’
The garden was quite unlike the one behind the house in Tyburn Road. Except for two paved walks and a circular area partly surrounded by a clipped hedge of some yellowish shrub, it seemed almost wild, although there was colour enough. Hubert noticed a ground creeper with large purple-and-white flowers like inverted bells. He said, pointing,
‘Is that a plant from New England?’
‘Yes, I think so.’ Hilda spoke with encouraging friendliness. ‘Many of the plants here come from home.’
‘Did your father put it there? It must grow quickly.’
‘It was there when we came. My father says New Englanders are living here since over a hundred years. The first was a man called Jefferson Davis.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Hubert sagely, and added with as much conviction as he could muster, ‘This is a very pretty garden.’
‘Thank you. Did the folk enjoy your singing just then?’
‘I think so. Everybody was polite.’
In silence, the boy and girl crossed the circular space, which had nothing at its centre, and left it on the further side through a gap in the hedge. They were not the only two in the garden, but nobody else was near. Abruptly, and in a flat tone, Hilda said,
‘I didn’t hear it.’
‘Forgive me?’
‘I didn’t hear your singing. Well, I heard it in the distance, but I didn’t listen to it. One of the little children was unhappy, so I carried him out here and talked to him and told him stories and gave him flowers.’
They had reached what amounted to a small wood, mainly of young trees. One of them had suffered some minor malformation during growth such that, a yard or so from the ground, its trunk leaned over at almost forty-five degrees for another yard before resuming the vertical. Hilda went over to it, joined her hands round the inclined part and hung back at the length of her arms, looking up through the branches.
‘That was kin
d of you,’ said Hubert. ‘To look after the little child.’
‘It was nothing.’ She began rhythmically pulling her body up so as to touch the trunk with her chest, then lowering herself again. ‘Are you disappointed that I didn’t listen to your singing?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Why? Surely you can see why. Singing is what I do best. If you had listened to me, you might have begun to admire me, and after that you might have begun to like me.’
Without stopping her exercise, Hilda brought her head down and looked at him. He felt in himself a kind of tension he had not known before; it was touched with bewilderment and a vague but powerful longing. As abruptly as a moment earlier, but in a different voice, she said,
‘Copann a me, thart a precious honest cooly, hoke. Kisahkihitin.’
‘What? What do you say?’
‘That’s how the people talk in New England. See, I haven’t forgotten.’
‘But when I asked you before . . . What does it mean?’
‘That you’re honest.’
‘Thank you, but I understood that—it was all I did understand. But you said more than that. What was that last word? Was it a word?’
‘It was Indian. Now don’t ask more.’ She released the tree-trunk and stood facing him a yard away or less. ‘You don’t look like a little man. That was trash. You simply look more than ten years.’