THE COWARD
JIMBO, the old fox-terrier, suddenly appeared in the doorway, stood for a moment blinking with something of a surly air at the golden level sunlight that struck straight down upon him from the west, across the sloping park; then he wheezed once or twice, and with a long sigh lay down half across the threshold, his head on his paws, to watch for the return of the riders. He was aware that the dressing-bell would ring presently.
The view he looked upon is probably as well known to house-worshippers as any in England; for he lay in the central doorway of Medhurst. Before him, on an exact level with his nose, stretched the platform-like wide paved space, enclosed by the two wings and the front of the Caroline house, broken only by the carefully planted saxifrages and small weed-like plants that burst out of every line between the great grey stones, and ending in the low terrace approached by two or three steps from the drive. It was extraordinarily inconvenient, this separation of the main entrance from the drive, on wet nights; but this lordly indifference to comfort had something of dignity about it. (Besides, the door in the south wing could always be used, if the rain were very heavy.) For the rest, the house is almost pure Caroline, except for a few rooms in the south wing that are Tudor. It is of grey weather-stained stone, of an extremely correct and rich architecture, restrained and grave, except where, over Jimbo’s head, the lintel breaks out into triumphant and flamboyant carving—two griffins clawing at one another over the Medd shield, surmounted again by wreaths and lines vaguely suggestive of incoherent glory. To the north of the north wing stand the great stables, crowned by a turret where a bell rings out for the servants’ breakfast, dinner, and tea; to the south of the south wing, the laundry, buried in gloomy cypresses and resembling a small pagan temple.
Altogether it is a tremendous place, utterly complete in itself, with an immemorial air about it; the great oaks of the park seem, and indeed are, nouveaux riches, beside its splendid and silent aristocracy, for Medhurst has stood here, built and inhabited by Medds, pulled down and rebuilt by Medds again and again, centuries before these oaks were acorns. For, as Herald’s College knows very well, though the Medds never speak of it, it is reasonably probable that a Medd lived here—after what fashion archæological historians only can relate—long before Saxon blood became tainted and debased by Norman.
It is remarkable that they have never become peers (a baronetcy has always, of course, been out of the question); but the serious fact seems to be that they have consistently refused this honour. It is not likely that they would have accepted such a thing from the upstart Conqueror; and after such a refusal as this, any later acceptance was of course impossible. In Henry VIII’s reign they remained faithful to the old religion, and consequently in Elizabeth’s reign were one of the few families in whose house their sovereign did not sleep at least one night of her existence; in fact they went abroad at that time and produced a priest or two, prudently handing over their property to a Protestant second cousin, whose heir, very honourably, handed it back when Charles I came to the throne. And then, when danger seemed more or less over, Austin Medd, about the time of the Oates Plot, in which he seems to have believed, solemnly changed his religion with as much dignity as that with which his grandfather had maintained it on a certain famous occasion which it would be irrelevant to describe.
Now when a Medd has done a thing, deliberately and strongly, it naturally becomes impious for later Medds to question the propriety of his action; and from thenceforth two or three traditions—moral heirlooms, so to speak—have been handed down at Medhurst. The objective reality of the Oates Plot, the essential disloyalty of Catholicism, the sacrosanctity of the National Church as a constitutional fact—these things are not to be doubted by any who bears legitimately the name of Medd.
And so the great family has lived, coming down through the centuries solemnly and graciously, each generation rising among the associations of a house and tradition whose equal is scarcely to be found in England, and each generation passing away again with the same dignity, and ending down there in the Norman church at the foot of the park, where Medds have filled long since the vaults of the south chapel, among whose dusty rafters a hundred hatchments have hung and dropped to pieces again. In the village itself—Medhurst Village, jealously so called, lest the House should lose the honour of the original name—the Medds are treated with the same kind of inevitable respect and familiarity as that which kings and gods obtain from their subjects and worshippers. Dynasties rise and pass away again; but the Medds go on. There are various kinds of pride—the noisy pride of the self-made man, the eloquent pride of the enthusiast, the steady assertive pride of the sovereign—but there is no pride in the universe such as that of the Medds, dead silent, claiming nothing, yet certain of everything. They have produced soldiers, priests, judges, statesmen, bishops, clergymen, and the portraits of these worthies throng the hall and the parlours; they have consented to hold the Garter three times, and have, more recently, refused it twice; a Medd has governed a certain Dominion, under pressure, in spite of his commoner rank; they have spent two fortunes on kings; a Medd has, twice at least, turned the fortune of a battle on whose issue hung the possession of a crown; there are relics at Medhurst which I simply dare not describe, because I should be frankly disbelieved—relics whose mention does not occur in any guide-book. Yet all these things are, honestly, but as dust in the scale to the Medd mind, compared with the fact of legitimate Medd blood ... And, indeed, it is something to be proud of ...
The dressing-bell rang from the turret; and as if answer, a great cawing burst out of the high elms beyond the stables, as the rooks, settling for the night, rose and circled again, either as if taken by surprise, or, as seems more likely, following some immemorial ritual handed down to them through the mist of centuries. Then they settled again; and Jimbo, who had raised an enquiring face, dropped it once more upon his paws. This delay to return from the ride, seemed highly unusual; but it still remained his duty to be here until the soft thunder of hoofs sounded beyond the terrace. It was then his business to bark three or four times with closed eyes, then to waddle to the head of the steps, where he would wag his short tail as General Medd came up them; he would then accompany him to the door of the house, going immediately in front of him, slightly on the right side; enter the hall-door, go straight to the white mat before the hearth; and remain there till all came down and dinner was announced. Then, once more, he would precede the entire party into the dining-room.
He seemed to be dozing, not an eyebrow lifted each time that a sound came from the house behind. Finally, he lifted his head altogether as a tall woman came out, leaning on a stick.
“Well, where are they, Jimbo?” she said.
He grunted a little, and replaced his head on his paws.
She looked this way and that, and presently saw through the open bedroom window behind her an old face, wrinkled, and capped with white, smiling and nodding. She waved a hand.
“Not come home yet, Benty,” she cried.
The old nurse said something.
“Can’t hear,” she said again. “Never mind; they’ll be back soon.”
She was a very fine figure as she stood there in the level sunlight—close on fifty years old, but as upright as a girl. There was a little grey in her dark hair, and several lines in her clear face; her lips and brows were level and well-marked, and her eyes steady and kind. She was in black from head to foot, and she wore a single string of diamonds on her breast, and a small star in her hair. But she used a rubber-shod stick as she walked, and limped even with that, from the effect of an old fall out hunting ten or twelve years before.
Of course she could not for one instant compare with a Medd; but she came, for all that, from a quite respectable family in the next county, whose head had been ennobled a hundred and fifty years ago; and she had been chosen after a good deal of deliberation for John Medd, then of lieutenant’s rank, by his father, old John Austin Medd, who himself had left the army soon after the battle of Waterloo. Her father, Lord Debenham, had been perfectly satisfied with the arrangement—he had scarcely, indeed, with his great family of daughters, hoped for such an excellent alliance for Beatrice, his third; and so young Lady Beatrice had come with her small income, her nurse, Mrs. Bentham, and her quiet beauty, twenty-five years ago, to begin her education as a mother of Medds. She had borne four children, two sons and two daughters, of whom three remained alive, two sons and one daughter. She had educated them excellently, by means of governesses, until the boys went to school; and she had retained her daughter’s last governess—a poor relation of her own—as a companion ever since. She was a lady of an extraordinarily unobtrusive personality.
Miss Deverell, in fact, came out as the great lady stood there.
“Are they not come back yet?” she said, and so stood, fussing gently, and trying to look in the face of the setting sun.
“It’s twenty minutes to eight, yet. Ah! there they are.”
The soft thunder of hoofs, so familiar to her on these summer evenings, and so reminiscent of her own riding days, made itself audible somewhere round to the right from the direction of the long glade that ran up into the park; grew to a crescendo, and so, yet louder. A groom, whose waiting figure Lady Beatrice had made out two minutes before standing at the corner of the shrubbery, darted across the drive to be in readiness; and the next instant three or four riders came suddenly into sight, checked at the gravel, and then trotted on, vanishing again beneath the terrace at which they would dismount. Then, as the heads of two girls appeared above the level, again came the soft thunder, and two tall boys came at a gallop round the corner. The procession was closed by another groom running desperately from the stables to be in time.
“Well, my dears; you’re late.”
John Medd, coming up behind, preceded, according to etiquette, by Jimbo, who had duly uttered his ceremonial barks, took the question to himself.
“Val had a fall,” he said, “and we couldn’t catch Quentin.”
“Not hurt at all?” she asked, with just a shade of anxiety.
“Who? Val ... Strained a leg, I think; but he’s all right. We must hurry and dress. Now then, girls....”
And he drove them fussily and kindly before him into the house.
She still stood, waiting for her sons. Miss Deverell had hurried in after the girls, adjuring them from behind to make haste.
“Well, Val, had a fall?” asked his mother, looking at him as he came, limping a little, across the terrace.
He was a pleasant-looking boy, about sixteen; not handsome in any way, but with the long Medd face, with its slightly flattened profile and straight hair. He looked rather pale, and his mother noticed that he limped as he came. He stopped to beat off the dust from his knees, as he answered:
“Strained myself a bit, mother. It was simply ridiculous. Quentin simply bucked me off.”
“Well, have a hot bath to-night. I’ll get some stuff from Benty ... Well, Austin?”
Her elder son saluted her solemnly. He was a couple of years older than his brother; but absurdly like him.
“Yes, mother; Quentin bucked him off. It was scandalous. And we couldn’t catch the brute.” He had a slightly superior manner about him. (Val found it annoying sometimes, and said so.) She laughed.
“Well, go make haste and dress, my son. It’s ten to eight. We’ll hear about it at dinner.” She patted him on his shoulder as he went past her. She was extraordinarily proud of him, though she took great care not to show it.
She still stood an instant in the sunshine, till she heard the horses’ hoofs ring out on the stones of the stable yard; then, as the sun finally dipped beyond the hill and the grass grew shadowed, she turned and went in.
She sat a little apart after dinner, as her manner was, in the tall chair by the wide fire-place, gently embroidering a piece of appliqué work in a fashion which she believed herself to have invented, and looking up tranquilly from time to time. There was no need to talk much; the girls were at the piano, and her husband dozed unobtrusively opposite her, over a book dealing with Afghanistan from a military point of view.
It is worth while describing the place in which she sat, as this hall was, so to speak, the essential framework of that Medd spirit which she had learned so completely to live.
It was Caroline, not Tudor (as has been said), but it was none the worse for that; it was some sixty feet long by twenty wide, and the roof rose high and stately overhead. Opposite her was the gallery, where glimmered gilded organ-pipes among a riot of fat cherubs, resting on the great screen that shut off the approach to the dining-room at one end and the kitchens on the other. (She caught a glimpse of Val once or twice, leaning over the gallery, and nodded to him to come down and sit by her, but he seemed not to notice. She had learned well the supreme art of the mother of sons, and made no more of it.) The hall itself was panelled with dark Jacobean oak up some sixteen feet of its sides, lit by candles in sconces that projected below the cornice; and above, in a dignified row, hung the splendid collection of portraits, tilted slightly forward—that collection which is one of the first things for which the instructed sightseer asks. Between these, here and there, hung tattered colours; and, higher yet, the trophies of Royalist arms once worn by the Medhurst troop of horse at Naseby. (Hitherto the General had entirely refused to allow all these to be lighted by those shaded electric lamps just then coming into use.)
The floor of the hall was furnished extremely suitably. Against the walls stood, of course, the heavy shining tables and the stiff chairs of state; but the couches and the little dark tables and the deep leather chairs made the rest of it completely habitable. Great bowls of roses stood here and there—a delight to smell and sight; there were carpets, skins, standing candles, and all the other unnoticeable things that make the difference between comfort and bleakness. The tall windows still stood open to the summer air that breathed in, fragrant with the evergreen mignonette that bordered the narrow beds outside.
There then she sat, contented and soothed by that atmosphere to which she herself largely contributed—that atmosphere of dignity and comfort and, above all, of stately beauty. It had been compounded year by year, distilled, refined seventy times seven; and hung as heavy and as sweet and as delicate as that of the old pot-pourri in the great china jars on the side-tables....
Now and again she looked up at the girls. Her daughter May was accompanying now, while Gertie sang—Gertrude Marjoribanks that is, the friend her daughter had made out at Mentone last year.
The two girls looked charming—real jeunes filles—the one fair, as became a traditional Medd, the other startlingly dark, olive-skinned, and black eyed. The piano-playing of the second was really remarkable too, considering her age, in its extraordinary delicacy of feeling. It was her single accomplishment or, rather, it was the accomplishment into which she put all her energy; for she did other things sufficiently well: she rode, she talked a couple of languages besides her own, she sketched a little, and she was beginning to act. But her piano-playing was her real passion; she practised a couple of hours a day; she continually hung round the piano at odd times.
“Gertie,” said the great lady when the last rippling chord died on the upper octave, “Gertie, have you ever met Father Maple?”
“No; who is he?”
(To see this girl look up suddenly was a real pleasure. Her face was still alight with the pathos of the music.)
“He’s the Roman Catholic priest here. He’s a great musician, I believe.”
The girl got up and came round the piano.
“I think May told me about him. He’s quite old, isn’t he?”
The other smiled, as she fitted her needle into the stuff.
“He’s about fifty,” she said.
Gertie sat down, clasping her knees with her two slender hands. She still wore frocks above her ankles, and a thick pigtail of hair; but she had no trace of the adolescent clumsiness that May occasionally showed.
“Does he play, Lady Beatrice?”
“Oh! I think so. But he’s composer too, you know. Ecclesiastical music, I expect.”
Gertie said nothing. Ecclesiastical music seemed to her tiresome.
“We’ll ask him to dinner before you go. We’ll ask him when Professor Macintosh is here.”
Lady Beatrice laid her embroidery resolutely aside and reached for her stick.
“Well, my dears, bed. Where are the boys?”
Austin rose from a deep couch in the corner behind.
“Here, mother.”
“You’ve been asleep, my son.”
He shook his head.
“I’ve been listening to the music.”
“And Val?”
“Val went out ten minutes ago.”
Then the General opened his eyes with a start, and rose briskly from his chair as Miss Deverell began to clink about the bedroom candlesticks.
Austin went upstairs with his candle, whistling softly ten minutes later.
He had reached that age when it seemed to him proper to go in to the smoking-room and stand about for a few minutes while his father settled down to his cigar. He was going up to Cambridge in October, and until that event it had been decided that he was not to smoke. But it was necessary for him to begin to break the ice; and these holidays he had begun to visit the smoking-room, and, indeed, to keep himself a little ostentatiously to soda-water, at the great silver tray on which the tantalus and siphons stood. It all served as a kind of preface to the next Christmas holidays; when he would drink whisky and smoke cigarettes with his father.
The old nurse peeped through a baize-door at the head of the stairs.
“Well, Benty?” (Somehow everybody greeted her in genial fashion.)
“Master Val’s hurt himself,” she said. “I’m going to take him some liniment.”
Austin laughed.
“Take care he doesn’t drink it by mistake. Good night, Benty.”
He kissed her.
Austin was a nice boy; that must be understood; but he was just a little pompous. He had gone through his four years at Eton with credit, if not with distinction. He had always behaved himself well; he had played cricket for his house for the last two years; he had played football for the school three or four times; and during his last year he had hunted the beagles. He was so respectable that he had been permitted to rise to the dignity of sixth form, and for his last two halves to walk into chapel in stuck-up collar with his hands at his sides and his face deprived of all expression, in that stupendously august little procession that enters as the bell ceases. Finally, he had been elected to “Pop” last Easter, and had enjoyed the privilege of carrying a knotted cane on certain occasions, sitting on the wall in front of schoolyard during vacant hours on Sunday,[1] and of having his umbrella tightly rolled up.
[1] I note with regret that this privilege has recently been abolished by the present Headmaster.
All these distinctions had had their effect on him. They had rendered him pompous; and further, acting upon a character that was really blameless, they had even made him something of a prig. For, not only had he Eton on one side to foster self-respect, but he had Medhurst on the other, and the knowledge that he was the eldest son. And these two forces acting upon his high standard alternately had had their practically inevitable results. The consequence (that consequence at least which is of importance for the purpose of the story) was that he did not get on very well with Val, who, besides being his younger brother at Medhurst, had only reached the Upper Division at Eton, and was distinguished by no cap other than that of the Lower Boats. The brothers would scarcely have been human if their relations had been really cordial.
The two had their rooms here, in the north wing, communicating from the passage outside with the old nurseries where Mrs. Bentham, once the presiding deity of them, now reigned in splendour. The sitting-room common to them both was at the western end, and looked out three ways,—on to the front, on to the park, and on to the stable shrubbery; and their bedrooms adjoined—Austin’s immediately, with a communicating door, and Val’s next to it, down the passage. The whole floor of this wing was practically theirs, as the two other rooms in it were spare bedrooms, only used when the house was full.
These three rooms were exactly what might be expected. The sitting-room had been their school-room a few years ago, where a crushed tutor (who had since gained great distinction as a war-correspondent) had administered to the two boys the Latin Principia, Part I, and the works of Mr. Todhunter, so there still remained in it a big baize-clothed table, and three or four standing bookshelves, as well as a small hanging cupboard with glazed doors where little red-labelled bottles had stood, representing “chemistry.” But Temple Grove and Eton had transformed the rest. There was a row of caricatures from Vanity Fair upon one wall, a yellow-varnished cupboard with little drawers full of powdering butterflies and moths, with boxes on the top, made of a pithy-looking wood, in another corner; another wall was covered with photographs of groups by Hills and Saunders, with gay caps balanced upon the corners of the frames; and finally and most splendid of all, above the low glass upon the mantelpiece hung now the rules of “Pop” enclosed in light blue silk ribbon. There were also one or two minute silver cups standing upon blue velvet, beneath glass domes, recording the victories of J. A. Medd at fives. The curtains and furniture were of cheerful chintz; and a trophy of fencing-masks and foils filled the space between the west windows. These were Austin’s: Val had taken up the sport and dropped it again. Austin was too good for him altogether.
As Austin came in carrying his candle, still whistling gently, he expected to see Val in a deep chair. But there was no Val. He went through into his own room, and changed his dress-coat for a house-blazer of brilliant pink and white, and came out again; but there was still no Val.
“Val!”
There was no answer.
“Val!”
A door opened and Val came in, in shirt and trousers. He looked rather sulky, and limped as he came in.
“What’s up? Why the deuce are you yelling?”
Austin sniffed contemptuously.
“Lord!” he said, “I don’t want you. I didn’t know where you were.”
“I’m going to have a bath, if you want to know.”
“Oh, well, go on and have a bath, then. Jolly sociable, isn’t it?”
Val writhed his lips ironically. (This kind of thing was fairly common between the two.)
“If you want to know,” he said bitterly, “I’ve strained myself rather badly. That’s all.”
“Strained yourself! Why, good Lord, you only came down on your hands and feet, on the grass!”
“I’ve strained myself rather badly,” explained Val with deadly politeness. “I thought I’d said so. And I’m going to have a bath.”
Austin looked at him with eyelids deliberately half-lowered. Then he took up a “Badminton” volume in silence.
Val went out of the room and banged the door. Then his bedroom door also banged.
This kind of thing, as has been said, happened fairly frequently between these two brothers, and neither exactly knew why. Each would have said that it was the other’s fault. Austin thought Val impertinent and complacent and unsubmissive; and Val thought Austin overbearing and pompous. There were regular rules in the game, of course, and Rule 1 was that no engagement of arms must take place in the presence of anyone else. If relations were strained, the worst that was permitted in public was a deathly and polite silence. This one had been worked up ever since Val’s fall this afternoon. Austin had jeered delicately, and Val had excused himself. As a result, Austin had sat silent on a sofa after dinner, and Val had absented himself in the music-gallery, and had gone upstairs without wishing anyone good night. There were other rules as well. Another was that physical force must never under any circumstances be resorted to; no actual bodily struggle had taken place for the last six years, when Austin had attempted to apply a newly learned torture to Val, and Val had hit Austin as hard as he could on the chin. But any other weapon, except lying and complaining to the authorities, was permissible; and these included insults of almost any kind, though the more poignant were veiled under a deadly kind of courtesy. Such engagements as these would last perhaps a day or two; then a rapprochement was made by the one who happened to feel most generous at the moment, and peace returned.
Austin’s thoughts ran on, in spite of “Badminton,” for some while in the vein of the quarrel. He saw, once more, for the fiftieth time, with extraordinary clarity of vision, that he had tolerated this kind of thing much too long, and that the fact was that he was a great deal too condescending to this offensive young brother of his. Why, there were the rules of “Pop” hanging before his very eyes, to symbolise the enormous gulf that existed between himself and Val. Strictly speaking, he could cane Val, if he wished to—at least he could have caned him last half at Eton. Certainly it would not have been proper for him to do so, but the right had been there, and Val ought to be made to recognise it. Why, the young ass couldn’t even ride decently! He had been kicked off ignominiously, that very afternoon, by Quentin—Quentin, the most docile of cobs!—in the middle of a grass field. As for the strain, that was sheer nonsense. No one could possibly be strained by such a mild fall. It was all just an excuse to cover his own incompetence....
VAL was extraordinarily miserable the very instant he awoke next morning, and he awoke very early indeed, to find the room already grey with the dawn.
For the moment he did not know whence this misery came; it rushed on him and enveloped him, or, as psychologists would say, surged up from his subconscious self, almost before he was aware of anything else. He lay a minute or two collecting data. Then he perceived that the thing must be settled at once. He had a great deal to review and analyse, and he set about it immediately with that pitilessly strenuous and clear logic that offers itself at such wakeful hours—that logic that, at such times, escapes the control and the criticism of the wider reason.
I suppose that the storm had been gathering for the last year or two—ever since he had been called a “funk” openly and loudly in the middle of football. Of course he had repelled that accusation vehemently, and had, indeed, silenced criticism by his subsequent almost desperate play. A hint of it, however, reappeared a few months later, when, as it had appeared to him, he had avoided a fight with extreme dignity and self-restraint. And now, once again, the problem was presented.
The emotion of which he had been conscious when, after his fall, he had remounted to ride home, was one of a furious hatred against Quentin—not fear, he had told himself repeatedly during the ride and during his silences after dinner, but just hatred. He had even cut Quentin viciously with his whip once or twice to prove that to himself. It was ignominious to be kicked off Quentin. And this hatred had been succeeded by a sense of extreme relief as he dismounted at last and limped into the house. And then a still small voice had haunted him all the evening with the suggestion that he was really afraid of riding Quentin again, and that he was simulating a strain which was quite negligible in order to avoid doing so.
To the settling of this question, then, he arranged his mind. He turned over on to his back, feeling with a pang of pleasure that his left thigh was really stiff, clasped his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes.
The moment he really faced it, in the clear mental light that comes with the dawn, it seemed to him simply absurd ever to have suspected his own courage. Every single reasonable argument was against such a conclusion.
First, he had ridden Quentin for the last three years; he had had fall after fall, one or two of them really dangerous.... Why, he had actually been rolled on by the horse on one occasion when they had both come down together! And he had never before had the slightest hesitation in riding him again.
“What about that jumping?” whispered his inner monitor.
The jumping! Why, that had been absurd, he snapped back furiously. Austin, mounted on old Trumpeter, who had followed the hounds for years, had challenged Val, mounted on Quentin, who never yet had been known to jump anything higher than a sloped hurdle, to follow him over a low post and rails. Val, very properly, had refused; and Austin, on telling the story at dinner, had been rebuked by his father, who said that he ought to have known better than to have suggested such a thing for Quentin. Yes, said Val to himself now; he has been perfectly right.
“Was that the reason why you refused?”
Of course it was. He wasn’t going to risk Quentin over nonsense like that.
“Well then; what about that funking at Eton?”
He hadn’t funked. He had been hovering on the outside in order to get a run down. Besides, hadn’t he been applauded later for his pluck?
“Well then; come down to the present. Are you going to ride this evening?”
He would see, said Val. Certainly he wasn’t going to ride if his thigh was really strained. (He felt it gingerly.) What was the fun of that? Certainly he wasn’t going to ride simply to show himself that he wasn’t afraid. That would be a practical acknowledgment that he was. No, if the others rode, and his thigh was all right, and ... and he didn’t want to do anything else, of course he would ride just as usual. It was absurd even to think of himself as afraid. The fall yesterday was nothing at all, he had just been kicked off—certainly rather ridiculously—just because he wasn’t attending and hadn’t been expecting that sudden joyous up-kicking of heels as the horse felt the firm turf under him. Why, if he had been afraid, he would have shown fear then, wouldn’t he? He wouldn’t have mounted again so quickly, if there had been the slightest touch of funk about the affair.
“You’re ... you’re quite sure?”
Yes. Perfectly sure.... That was decided again. He would go to sleep. He unclasped his hands and turned over on his side, and instantly the voice began da capo.
“You’re ... you’re quite sure you’re not a funk?” ...
As the stable clock struck six he got up in despair, threw his legs over the side of the bed, entirely forgetful of the strained thigh (though he remembered it quickly five minutes later), and went to look for “Badminton” on riding. He remembered it was in the bookshelf on the left of the fire-place in the sitting-room. He was going to be entirely dispassionate about it, and just do what “Badminton” advised. That would settle once and for all whether he was a funk or not. If, under circumstances of a strained thigh and a triumphant horse, and ... and a faint, though really negligible feeling of apprehension, it said, Ride: he would ride that evening, anyhow, whether the others did or not. If not, not.
As he took down “Badminton,” after a glance round the room that looked simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar in this cold morning light, he noticed another book on riding, and took that down too; and half an hour later, perfectly reassured, he put both the books on the table by his bed, and went tranquilly to sleep. He had found that even a slight strain in ... in the lower part of the thigh ought not to be neglected, or serious mischief might result. He had dismissed as not in the least applicable to his case a little discussion on the curious fact that a fall, if it takes place slowly enough, and if the rider has plenty of time to consider it, will often produce such nervousness as that a really dangerous swift fall fails to effect. That was only in a footnote, and of course was unimportant.
It was at breakfast-time that the affairs of the day were arranged—usually towards the end, as by that time the whole party was arrived.
Very subtle laws seemed to govern the order and hour of these arrivals. Lady Beatrice was, as is proper, down first, and she could usually be observed from upper windows, five minutes before the gong sounded, dawdling gracefully on the terrace with her stick. (This was called “giving Jimbo a run,” and usually ended in Jimbo’s entire disappearance, by stages, in the direction of the stables, each protruding angle of balustrade and step and mounting-block having been carefully smelled en route.) Then she came indoors and made tea in an enormous silver teapot. Five minutes later the General came in, in tweeds, carrying the Westminster Gazette of the night before—tall, thin, hook-nosed, and fresh-faced. He kissed his wife and went to the sideboard, and this morning consulted her about a letter he had just opened, calling, on his return journey, for his tea. About five minutes later the girls appeared, apologising. (I forgot to say that Miss Deverell had been present throughout. She was always present at all engagements punctually, and was always forgotten, except when she suddenly made a small, shrewd, and often cynical remark, that made everyone wonder why they had not attended to her before. She sat on the General’s right hand, in black; and he always put her plate back on the sideboard with his own, and asked her whether he could give her any cold bird.)
At a quarter to ten Austin came down, silent and respectable, and slipped into the company unnoticed; he ate swiftly and unhesitatingly, and had finished before the others. Finally Val appeared between ten minutes and five minutes to ten, also silent, but with an air of slight irritability; he fumbled about between the dishes, and usually ate a good deal in the long run.
This morning he was later than usual, but he limped so noticeably that the General, who had glanced up at the clock, which began to strike ten at that moment, spared him and said nothing. Besides, he had something else to say.
“And what about plans for to-day?” said his wife. “Why, Val, are you limping?”
There was a murmur of remarks interrupting Val in his careful explanations, and it became plain that riding after tea would be arranged. It was too hot this morning; this afternoon the girls had promised to do something in the village.
“Then——” began the General.
“I don’t think I’ll ride to-day, mother,” observed Val, eating omelette composedly. “I’ve strained myself rather badly.”
“Is it bad, Val?” said his father.
“What about a doctor?” said his mother.
“No, not bad; but it hurts rather.... No, thanks. There’s no need for a doctor, unless——”
“Then——”
But again the General was interrupted.
“Doctors say it’s better to ride again at once,” put in May.
“Thanks very much,” remarked Val, with an altogether disproportionate bitterness. “But I’d rather not.”
The General flapped the table with an open letter. He had reached the limits of his patience.
“Boys,” he said, “I’ve got an invitation for you. And I think you’d better go. You must get your leg well, Val. It’s from the Merediths, and it’s to go to Switzerland for a fortnight.”
Austin looked up.
“When is it for, father?”
“First of September. It’ll just fit in before Val goes back to Eton. Eh?”
“Climbing?”
His father nodded.
“That’s it. I want you boys to learn. You’ll have plenty of time to get your things together.”
The girls broke out into exclamatory envy. May determined to talk to her mother afterwards.
“I had an uncle who was killed in Switzerland,” said Gertie tranquilly. “He was——”
“My dear!” put in May. “Don’t say such——”
“But I had! He fell two thousand feet.”
Val was conscious of a curious sense of relief, in spite of his reassurances to himself in his bedroom. It was scarcely more than a week to the first of September; and it was exceedingly likely that his strained leg would continue strained. Besides, even if it didn’t, it would surely be rash to risk straining it again just before going to Switzerland. And when he came back there would be Eton again.
Austin was asking for details, in that dispassionate and uninterested manner which superior young gentlemen of eighteen years think proper to assume. It appeared that the Riffel was the place; that “the Merediths” meant father and mother and a son; and that the son, aged twenty-two, was already a candidate for the Alpine Club.
Val listened. It seemed to him all very pleasant, and, somehow, appropriate that a new sport should present itself just at the moment when riding had begun to bore him. He had not an idea about climbing beyond what the smoking-room library told him; but he was quite confident, of course, that he would acquit himself creditably. It occurred to him as even possible that he might get level with Austin, towards whom he did not feel very favourably disposed this morning.
His father got up presently.
“You’ll see about boots and clothes,” he said to his wife. “And I’ll write to the Stores about the other things.”
“What things, father? Axes and ropes?” asked Val excitedly.
“Well—axes, at any rate.”
When Austin came upstairs ten minutes later to get “Badminton,” he was, very properly, annoyed to find Val already in the best chair, with the book on his knee. He searched, a little ostentatiously, through the shelves, as if unconscious of this, whistling in the manner that Val found peculiarly annoying, and proceeded further to turn over all the books on the table.
“Looking for anything?” asked Val at last, unable to bear it any longer.
“Yes, ‘Badminton.’ ... Oh! I see you’ve got it.”
“Didn’t you see I’d got it as soon as you came in?”
“Well, when you’ve quite done with it,” said Austin in a high voice, ignoring this pointed question, “perhaps I may have it. It happens to be my book.”
“It isn’t.”
“It is.”
Val, with an indulgent air, as if humouring a child, turned to the first page, while Austin smiled bitterly. Val’s face changed. He stood up abruptly and tossed the book on to the table.
“There’s your book,” he said, with elaborate sarcasm. “I didn’t know it was yours. I beg your pardon for using it.”
“Oh! you can keep it till you’ve done,” said Austin, his voice higher than ever. “I only wanted——”
“I wouldn’t deprive you of it for the world,” said Val, his face working with anger. “I’ll ... I’ll go and sit in the smoking-room. I don’t want to disturb you.”
He strode towards the door.
“Your leg seems better,” remarked Austin, outwardly still calm.
Val cast a glance of venom at his brother, and faced about.
“My dear chap,” he said, “you’d be howling in bed if you were me.”
Austin simulated a genial and indulgent smile with extraordinary success. A sound burst forth from Val’s mouth, which must be printed “Psha!” Then the door closed sharply.
It was really a bad day with Val. Boys of sixteen experience them sometimes, especially if their nervous centres are rather overstrung, and in such a state the faintest touch sets all a-jangle. He was so angry that he became completely and finally reassured as to his own courage. It seemed to him extraordinary that he had ever doubted it, and by noon he was almost determined to ride. But he saw this would never do, since it was conceded by all (as the theologians say), including himself, that the single reason for his not riding was his strained leg.
He spent the morning in a completely morbid manner, as his habit was at such times. He took a crutched stick, since his leg required it, and limped, even when he was entirely out of sight of the windows, out through the garden and into the woods. And there he sat down.
It was one of those breathless August days in which summer seems eternal and final. Every single, visible, living thing was at full stretch of its being. Over his head towered giant beeches, a world of greenery, with here and there a tiny patch of sky, blue and hot. About him was the bracken, every frond and vessel extended to bursting; beneath him the feathery moss. High up, somewhere in the motionless towers of leaf, meditated a wood-pigeon aloud, interrupting himself (as their manner is) as if startled at the beginning of a sentence. And the essence and significance of all was in the warm summer air—fragrant, translucent, a-sparkle with myriad lives, musical with ten thousand flies, as if a far-off pedal note began to speak.
Val had the vivid imagination which goes with such natures as his—an imagination that never grows weary of rehearsal; and in that realm, lulled externally by the perfect balance of life without him and within, leaning back at last on the bank as on a bed, with his hands clasped behind his head as usual, he began to construct the discomfiture of his brother.
His material, so to speak, consisted of two elements—Austin’s superiority, and Switzerland. He had caught on to the idea of climbing, and, as has been said, was convinced (as would be every wholesome boy of his age) that he would presently excel in this. It would be the one thing, he had determined, in which Austin would have to confess himself beaten. (He remembered, for his comfort, that Austin had once refused to follow him—some six years previously—along the ridged wall leading to the stable roof.)
Very well, then; that was settled.
Then he began to construct his scenes.
The earlier ones were almost vindictive. They represented Austin, a tiny figure, gazing up at him, pallid and apprehensive, as he rose swiftly in the air over the lip of an inconceivable precipice; Austin, with shaking hands, being pulled up by a rope, while he, Valentine, stood, detached and unperturbed, watching him from on high; Austin, collapsed and inert with terror, while he himself straddled, a second Napoleon, gazing out for succour from an inaccessible ledge. The final scene of the series was staged in the hotel dining-room, whose occupants rose to their feet and cheered as he, Valentine, with a stern, set face, strode in, with his paraphernalia jingling about him, after the conquest of a hitherto unclimbed peak.
He grew generous at last as he contemplated his future. Austin was no longer to collapse, but simply to remain mediocre, while bearded men, browned with sun and exposure, discussed the brilliant younger brother who had swept all before him. There was a final scene, which for an instant brought tears to his eyes and a lump to his throat, in which an explanation took place between the two: Austin, reverent and humble at last, was to grasp his hand and say that he had never understood or appreciated him; while he, magnanimous and conciliatory, was to remind the other that in lawn tennis, riding, and fencing—all manly sports—Austin was unquestionably the superior. (Gertie Marjoribanks, he settled parenthetically, was to be present at this interview.)
Indeed Val was not a fool. He had a nervous system, it must be remembered, and an imagination; and he was nearly seventeen years old.
He was silent at lunch; but no longer with irritation. It was rather a pregnant and a genial silence, warmed and perfumed by his imaginings. For to those who live largely in the imagination—who create rather than receive—reassurance, as well as apprehensiveness and depression, is always at their command. He had reconstructed his world now, by his earnest endeavours of the morning, and looked even upon Austin with benignity.
His geniality flowed out into words as he limped into the smoking-room afterwards and found Austin knocking the balls about.
“I’ll play you fifty up,” he said.
Austin nodded.
By the end of the game, which, although Austin won it by a final undeniable fluke, stood at “forty-eight all” before the balls, wandering about, happened to cannon, the two were talking freely again; and it was Switzerland of which they talked.
“Do tell me when you’ve done with ‘Badminton,’ ” said Val. “By the way, I’m beastly sorry about this morning. I really didn’t know it was yours, or I’d have asked you.”
“That’s all right,” murmured Austin, touched in spite of his dignity. “You can have it all to-day.” Val took his stick, helped himself to a leather couch, and curled upon it.
“Thanks awfully. I really do want to get an idea of the thing. Tom Meredith’s a regular pro., I believe.... I say, do you think we shall do the Matterhorn?”
“Matterhorn! Good Lord, no. Why——”
“I don’t see why we shouldn’t. Why, even ladies do it.”
There was a pause, while Austin made a careful stroke with the balls, and missed. He put his cue up.
“I’m going up. I’ll bring the book down if you like, if you’re lame.”
“Right. Thanks awfully.”
Tea was under the cedar in the eastern gardens, and about ten minutes past five there was still no Val. Austin shouted once or twice under the windows; and at last the other appeared, reading as he came, and carrying his crutched stick under his arm. He remembered, however, to use it coming down the steps from the house.
Conversation was extremely genial. Val now joined in it, now sat silent and smiling, with bright eyes. His imagination had been vividly inspired by his three hours’ reading; and he talked already familiarly of arêtes and chimneys and couloirs. May joined in enviously, with loud sighs; she had had her conversation, and it had proved unsatisfactory; the utmost she could get out of her mother was that if the Marjoribanks asked her for next year, and if there was nothing else particular to do, and if it was thought suitable when the time came—well, then perhaps she would be allowed to go. Meanwhile she was to remember that it was only natural that boys could do things that girls couldn’t.
Val stood, a little ostentatiously leaning on his stick, with a smiling melancholy to see the riders start. He even laid his stick aside to mount Gertie, who was riding Quentin to-day by her own special request. Then he observed the usual caperings of the horses as they set their feet on the springy grass on the other side of the drive, and presently saw them vanish one by one over the near sky-line, in a cloud of flying turfs. He noticed how extremely well Gertie sat the cob.
Then he went back again to “Badminton.”
THE dinner-party of which Lady Beatrice had spoken took place the night before the boys went abroad—if that can be called a dinner-party at which there are but two guests; and when Val came down, still rather out of breath with the desperation with which he had dressed, he found the two being entertained by the girls, while Austin looked picturesque on the hearth-rug. He said the proper things and retired to a window-seat.
Of the two there was no choice as to which was the most impassive. He had met Professor Macintosh once or twice before (the Professor was a college friend of his father’s, he knew), but his appearance never failed to strike awe into the beholder.