Eustace and Hilda (27 page)

“Oh no,” said Eustace, “I'd forgotten about that,” and indeed, for the moment, he had. “But aren't you glad too?” he went on. “I mean, glad that I'm not going away.”

“But you are going away,” said Hilda. “You're going away to school. I'm not glad about that, and I don't suppose you are. Or are you?” she added menacingly.

A shadow flitted across Eustace's face.

“Of course not. But that isn't the same as going right away.”

“I never believed you were going right away, as you call it.”

“You did!”

“I didn't!”

“You did!”

“I didn't!”

“Well, why were you so angry just now?”

“That was because I thought.... Oh, I don't know what I thought.... Then those people came and interrupted everything.”

“Weren't you pleased?” asked Eustace, his eye brightening at the sight of the patch of sand, the magnificent disorder of which had been created to do him honour.

“Yes, in a way, but they did rather spoil our morning.”

“Didn't you enjoy talking to them?”

“We didn't talk at all. They talked all the time.”

This was nearly true. Eustace tried again. “Didn't you think Dick was nice?”

Hilda clasped her long thin hands together. “He's always like that, isn't he?”

“Well, we haven't seen him often. Didn't you think it was funny what he said about riding in a bath-chair and pretending to be Miss Fothergill?”

“I don't think he ought to have made jokes about her.”

“Well, perhaps not. Shall you go and see him when I'm at school, like he asked you to?”

“I expect he'll be at school too. Anyhow I shan't have time. I shall have to help with Barbara, and the housework, and learn French and drawing so as to be a governess later on.”

“A governess?” cried Eustace. “Whoever said you were going to be a governess?”

“Aunt Sarah told me months ago that I might have to be. I didn't tell you because I knew you wouldn't like it. Besides, I don't tell you everything.”

“I don't like it,” said Eustace. Primed as he was with happiness, invulnerable as it seemed to suffering, a pang shot through him. Hilda a governess! Of course she knew how to govern, he could testify to that. But without vanity he knew that when it came to governing he was an easy subject. Others might not be. Other children might be naughty and disobedient. At once he pictured Hilda's charges in a state of chronic insurrection. ‘Sit still, Tommy, and do your sums as I told you.' ‘I won't, Miss Cherrington.' ‘Alice, how often have I told you not to draw pictures of me in your geography book?' No answer: Alice goes on drawing. ‘Lady Evangeline,' (here Eustace's imagination took a sudden leap) ‘May I ask you to remember the rule. I before E except after C?' ‘You can ask me, Miss Cherrington, but I shan't pay any attention. After all, you're only a governess, and there are plenty more.' ‘Butler,' said the Marchioness, ‘ring the bell for Miss Cherrington. I'm afraid I shall have to dismiss her. You needn't order the trap. She can walk to the station.' Ring the bell, ring the bell! Why, that was what they said he, Eustace, would be doing. He would be ringing the bell for—what was it?—a something and bitters: and in another house, far away, beyond some mountains, perhaps, Hilda would be answering the bell, like a servant. A thought came to him.

“Do you think sixty-eight thousand pounds is a great deal of money?”

“They all talked as if it was,” replied Hilda in an indifferent tone.

“Gerald said it was only fifty-eight thousand.”

“Did he? There's not much difference, I shouldn't think.”

“I know that a thousand a year is a great deal of money,” Eustace persisted, feeling about in his mind for some way to interest Hilda in his financial prospects. “I once heard Daddy say of Mr. Clements, ‘Oh, Clements is at the top of the tree. He's very well off. I shouldn't be surprised if he had nearly a thousand a year.'”

“Mr. Clements has been in the office much longer than Daddy. Besides, he's quite old. Most people get richer as they get older.”

“Aren't children ever rich, then?”

“Hardly ever. Besides, it wouldn't be good for them.”

“But I am,” said Eustace. “They all said so. That's why they congratulated us and gave us three cheers.”

“It was you they were cheering,” said Hilda. “They only cheered me because I happened to be with you. I haven't got any of the money, and I shouldn't want it either.”

“Oh, but wouldn't you?” cried Eustace. Fearful of his plan miscarrying, he put into his voice all the persuasiveness that he could muster. “Think of the difference it would make. You wouldn't have to be a governess; you wouldn't have to do the housework, or any more than you wanted; you wouldn't have to bother about Barbara except to take her out sometimes for a drive or to the shops to buy toys for her.” Eustace paused and cast about for positive gratifications that might make money seem desirable to Hilda; he was handicapped because her whole attitude seemed to be stiff with rejection, and the only course that occurred to him was to credit her with a wish for luxuries which he would have wished for in her place.

“You could have all the clothes you wanted,” he began, “and you could have a horse like Nancy has to go riding with Dick Staveley.”

“I have all the clothes I need, thank you,” said Hilda. “And I don't want to go riding with Dick Staveley. I've told you that ever so often. And why she goes riding with him I don't know, because you can see he doesn't like her half as much as she likes him. I should have thought she would have more pride.”

“
Could
you see that?” asked Eustace, amazed at Hilda's insight.

“Of course you could if you had eyes,” said Hilda, “and weren't so silly about Nancy as you are. Anyhow, the horse isn't hers: it's one she hired from Craddock's—I know it, that bay mare with the white fetlock.”

Again Eustace was astonished by Hilda's powers of observation. But he was right in one thing: she had a passion for horses, although for some reason she took so much trouble to conceal it. And although her reception of his picture of her moneyed future was discouraging she had consented to argue about it, which was a hopeful sign.

“And then we could have a house together,” he urged. “And servants to wait on us, and ... and come when we rang the bell ...and we could stay in bed for breakfast, and have deck-chairs in the garden and lemonade when it was hot.”

Eustace recollected that Hilda had a weakness for fizzy lemonade. “And, of course, we should spend a good deal of the time abroad, at Homburg and Carlsbad ... I don't quite know what we should do there, but it would be nice to be abroad, wouldn't it? And we could go to other places. We might see Vesuvius in eruption or be in Lisbon when there was an earthquake.”

“I shouldn't want to do any of those things,” said Hilda. “They sound rather silly to me.”

She spoke in her far-away voice and Eustace realised that he had awoken the mood of self-dramatisation in which, picturing herself as something other than she was, she might be accessible to his proposals for her welfare. But he had never learned to reckon with the austerity of her nature, its manifestations were a continual surprise to him. She seemed to do disagreeable jobs because she liked doing them, not because they were milestones on the steep but shining pathway of self-sacrifice. A future that would be dark for him might be bright for her. Acting on a sudden inspiration he said:

“And you could go to school too if you liked.”

Eustace saw that he had scored a hit. Hilda's head sank backwards, and her long eyelids drooped over her eyes. Speaking in her deepest voice, she said, “What's the good of talking about it? Miss Fothergill didn't leave her money to me.”

“No,” said Eustace, “but,” he added triumphantly, “I can share it with you if you'll let me.”

“I won't.”

“You will.”

“I won't.”

“You will.”

“All right,” said Hilda. “Anything to keep you quiet.”

Soon they were deep in money matters. How much would they have? How long would it last?

“It depends whether Gerald was right or Dick,” said Eustace. “Gerald said fifty-eight thousand pounds and Dick said sixty-eight.”

“Perhaps they were both wrong,” said Hilda.

“Oh no, Dick couldn't be. He's got a lot of money himself. Nancy said so. Let's say sixty-eight thousand. Look, I'll write it on the sand with my spade.”

“It's vulgar to write things on the sand. Only common children do that.”

“Oh, it doesn't matter! Figures aren't the same as words. They couldn't be rude.”

The number 68,000 appeared in figures of imposing size.

“If we each had a thousand pounds a year, how many years would sixty-eight thousand last?”

“Divide by a thousand,” said Hilda.

“How do I do that?”

“You ought to know. Cut off three noughts.”

Eustace took his spade and unwillingly put a line through each of the last three figures, leaving the number 68 looking small, naked, and unimpressive.

“Sixty-eight years,” he said doubtfully. “How old would you be then, Hilda?”

“Add fourteen.”

Eustace put 14 under 68 and drew a line.

“That makes eighty-two. And how old should I be?”

“Subtract four from eighty-two. You're nearly four years younger than me.”

“What a lot of figures I'm making,” said Eustace, his lips following the motions of his spade. “That comes to seventy-eight. You would be eighty-two and I should be seventy-eight, or seventy-eight and a half. After that we shouldn't have any more money, should we?”

“We might be dead by then,” said Hilda.

“Oh no,” said Eustace, shocked. “I don't suppose so. At least I shouldn't.” He broke off, not wanting to suggest that Hilda might die first. “I mean,” he amended, “people do live to be ninety. But perhaps we should have saved something. We needn't spend exactly a thousand pounds every year. You could save out of your thousand, and perhaps I could save out of mine.”

Hilda rose from her rock, brushed herself cursorily, and moved across to examine Eustace's figures.

“You haven't made those eights very well,” she said. “You never could get them quite right. Now just make one for practice, and show me how you do it.”

Trying to hide his irritation, Eustace complied.

“You ought to go across first, instead of coming down. The rest of them seem to be all right.” With critical eyes she studied the figures, while Eustace, fearful of being detected in a mistake, grew first red and then pale. Suddenly Hilda burst out laughing. She laughed and laughed, throwing herself backwards and forwards. At last she said: “You'll have to do it all over again.”

“Oh, but why?” said Eustace. “I did exactly as you told me.”

“I know,” said Hilda, still overcome by amusement. “It was my fault really. I forgot you'd have to divide by two.”

“Divide what by two?” asked Eustace, now completely at sea. Mathematics had always been his weak subject, the only one, really, in which Hilda had the advantage over him. He felt flustered and disappointed. The calculation, which had been such fun, almost the only sum he had ever enjoyed doing, was ending, as so many sums did, in mortification and defeat.

“Now start again here,” said Hilda, inexorably leading him to a clean patch of sand. “Sixty-eight thousand, divided by a thousand, sixty-eight: that's right. Now you must divide sixty-eight by two to get the number of years.”

“But why?”

“Because there are two of us, silly.”

Still uncomprehending and indignant, Eustace did this piece of division in silence.

“Thirty-four,” said the sands.

“You see, the money will only last thirty-four years,” said Hilda kindly. “How old shall I be then?”

A pause while the spade made its incisions.

“Forty-eight.”

“Let me look at the eight. Yes, that's better. And how old will you be?”

“I can do that in my head,” said Eustace peevishly. “Forty-four.”

“You see what a difference there is?” said Hilda, still chuckling.

“Yes,” said Eustace. “We might be alive a long time after that.”

“But of course if we only had five hundred a year each—would you like to work that out?”

“No, thank you,” said Eustace sulkily.

“Do you know what the answer is?”

“I think I can guess.”

“What is it?”

“I'll tell you later on.”

“I want you to tell me now. Or would you rather I told you?”

“No. Yes, tell me if you want to.”

“I should be eighty-two and you seventy-eight, of course!”

Eustace shrank into himself and looked malignantly at Hilda. It was to have been such a grand moment, this dividing of the treasure; at the prospect his whole nature had put out flags and blossoms; and how they were torn, how they were withered! All the glorious experience of giving reduced to the dimensions of an arithmetic lesson, and a lesson in which he had signally failed to shine. His eyes filled with tears. He looked away from Hilda at the scratched and scribbled sand. What use was a fortune if it failed one at the age of forty-four? This morning, to Eustace under sentence of death, forty-four seemed unattainably far away. Now it was only just round the corner: he would be there in no time—and then misery, penury, the workhouse. And the alternative? Five hundred a year till he was seventy-eight. But what was five hundred a year to someone who could have had a thousand? Would his father have called Mr. Clements well off if a paltry five hundred a year was all Mr. Clements had to boast of? There was no point, no sense in having five hundred a year: it would command nobody's respect. It was sheer beggary. One might as well be without it.