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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
- Sprache: Englisch
In Robert Hugh Benson's compelling novel, The Coward, readers are immersed in a rich tapestry of moral conflict, psychological introspection, and the struggle for redemption. Set against the backdrop of early 20th-century England, the narrative follows the life of a tormented protagonist who grapples with themes of fear and cowardice in the face of duty and societal expectations. Through its nuanced character development and evocative prose, Benson skillfully interrogates the human condition, presenting a vivid portrayal of internal strife that resonates within the literary context of the period, particularly in its exploration of faith versus doubt. Robert Hugh Benson, an Anglican priest and a prominent member of the literary scene of his time, brings his profound insights into spiritual struggle and moral philosophy to The Coward. Having experienced the complexities of faith firsthand, his writings often reflect a deep engagement with the theological dilemmas of his era. His own journey'—marked by a transition from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism'—provides a rich foundation for the exploration of inner conflict and personal courage that permeates this work. This novel is highly recommended for readers seeking a thought-provoking exploration of human psychology and moral ambiguity. Benson's ability to weave philosophical questions into gripping narrative ensures that The Coward will not only entertain but also stimulate profound reflection on the nature of bravery and the human spirit. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Coward
Table of Contents
Introduction
At its core, The Coward interrogates the tension between the courage society applauds and the fidelity of spirit that often goes unseen, tracing how fear, honor, duty, and self-knowledge collide within a single life, how reputation can harden into a verdict, and how the name we give an act—bravery or cowardice—can obscure the quieter moral truth that underlies it, shaping destinies as surely as any outward feat; in unfolding that paradox, the book invites readers to consider whether the hardest victories are those won not in public contest but in the hidden arena of conscience.
The Coward is a work of fiction by Robert Hugh Benson, an English priest-novelist writing in the early twentieth century. Emerging from the Edwardian milieu, his fiction often explores the pressures of conscience within social and spiritual frameworks. While this book is best approached without preconceptions about its plot, it belongs to the broad current of psychological and moral narratives characteristic of the period. Readers can expect the hallmarks of Benson’s era: measured prose, close attention to interior states, and a concern with the ethical texture of ordinary life. Within that context, the novel examines character under strain rather than spectacle.
Without venturing into spoilers, the premise centers on a figure whose encounter with fear becomes a crucible for identity. The social label implied by the title hovers over the story as a provocation and a judgment, shaping how others look on and how the protagonist looks within. Events arise that test resolve, compel choices, and reveal the gap between public perception and private truth. Rather than hinge on elaborate twists, the narrative builds tension through moral stakes and psychological clarity, asking readers to inhabit the discomfort of uncertainty and the risk of being misread when motives cannot be neatly displayed.
The book offers a quiet, insistent intensity. Benson’s style is reflective without lapsing into abstraction, attentive to gesture, conversation, and the small inflections by which a conscience declares itself. The voice is lucid and disciplined, favoring clean lines over ornament, so that the drama gathers from the friction of values rather than from sensational turns. Scenes are constructed to foreground choice and consequence, letting silence and hesitation carry as much weight as action. The mood is contemplative but never inert, propelled by the knowledge that even modest decisions may carry irrevocable implications for honor, loyalty, and the integrity of the self.
Several themes resonate throughout. Courage is treated not as a single act but as a habit of being, complicated by fear’s many faces—prudence, weakness, humility, or refusal. Honor and reputation are weighed against integrity, probing how public narratives can flatten the layered motives that shape conduct. Conscience is given careful scrutiny, including the costs of fidelity when compliance would be easier. While the book need not be read as a theological tract, it reflects the ethical seriousness associated with Benson’s wider work, where responsibility to others, and to an inner law, sharpens into a question that cannot be deferred without consequence.
For contemporary readers, its concerns feel strikingly current. The sway of public opinion, the speed with which labels adhere, and the anxiety of being misjudged all mirror today’s pressures—social, professional, and digital. The novel invites reflection on the difference between courage that announces itself and courage that simply endures, between self-protection and honest prudence, between harm avoided and duty evaded. It also offers a humane look at fear as a universal companion rather than a moral defect, asking how compassion and accountability might be held together when weakness shows itself and when the easy verdict would be the most unjust.
Reading The Coward is less like watching a duel and more like listening to a conscience find its voice under questioning. It promises an experience that is intimate, deliberate, and ethically charged, rewarding attention to nuance over noise. Those who appreciate character-driven fiction will find a study of motive and choice that resists simple resolutions while remaining deeply accessible. Entering without plot foreknowledge amplifies its effect, because the book’s power lies in how it gradually teaches you what, exactly, is at stake. In doing so, it restores to the word courage a depth too often lost in the glare of applause.
Synopsis
The Coward follows a young Englishman formed by family expectation and social codes that prize bravery and public service. The narrative opens with his schooling, where discipline and competition shape his sense of self. He learns to maintain an agreeable surface, yet a tendency toward anxiety and self-doubt colors his interior life. Early scenes emphasize atmosphere and routine, establishing a world in which courage is measured by decisive action and visible sacrifice. Against this backdrop, the protagonist’s hesitations, however slight, register as failures in a culture that notices them. The result is a quiet tension between public appearance and private fear.
As he moves from school into early adulthood, a seemingly minor crisis exposes his reluctance to take risks. The incident is neither melodramatic nor trivial; it is the sort of moment in which bystanders later decide who acted well. Rumors circulate, drawing a sharp line between those who admire boldness and those who judge caution harshly. The label that attaches to him is painfully simple, and he feels its limitations at once. He measures his response in the austere mirror of public opinion and finds it wanting. The novel tracks how a single episode can shape a reputation and haunt daily choices.
Family conversations, friendships, and a tentative courtship sketch the social framework through which he must navigate. Older relatives counsel duty; contemporaries value daring; a thoughtful mentor quietly asks what honesty demands. The protagonist seeks to compensate for perceived weakness by cultivating polish, reliability, and hard work. Yet the narrative repeatedly returns to the gap between intention and act. Faith and conscience enter the story not as pious decoration but as tools for scrutiny, offering language for fear and obligation. The book renders these pressures without caricature, showing how affection, ambition, and custom together set the stage for a larger test.
Opportunities for service and recognition appear: a possible commission, a political apprenticeship, philanthropic work under respectable patronage. Each pathway offers status and safety in varying degrees. He chooses a role that promises usefulness while minimizing exposure to sudden danger. A friend, bolder by temperament, serves as a foil, raising uncomfortable questions about what bravery requires. Conversations about risk and honor, though courteous, trace a widening fault line in the protagonist’s self-understanding. Scenes of routine labor and public ceremony underscore how easily habit can shield from decisive demands. The plot advances by tightening this net of expectations around him, preparing a harder trial.
Midway through the narrative, an unforeseen emergency echoes the earlier, smaller crisis. It is public enough to be witnessed and private enough to pierce his self-protective habits. For a moment he hesitates, and consequences flow outward—to colleagues, to family, to strangers whose names he may never learn. The social aftermath is brisk and unforgiving: gossip, distance, well-meant advice. He withdraws, confronting an interior ledger that no spectator can read. Rather than defending himself, he begins to examine motive and fear with new candor. The book’s pacing slows here, lingering on inward scrutiny as the foundation for whatever may come next.
Seeking steadiness rather than acclaim, he undertakes deliberate, modest disciplines. Physical routines offer structure; quiet service to those in need tests intention without spectacle. A spiritual adviser—neither indulgent nor severe—invites him to define courage less as sudden heroics than as faithful adherence to known duty. He learns to separate the feeling of fear from the choice to act, a distinction that reduces shame without excusing evasion. The narrative emphasizes incremental growth over dramatic conversion, showing how small fidelities form character. Relationships recalibrate as he practices plain speech, accepts limits, and prepares—without announcing it—for another moment of irrevocable decision.
The final act gathers these threads into a single crisis that cannot be postponed or delegated. It involves risk to others and calls for a visible, costly choice. The scene is rendered through practical details and compressed interior dialogue, keeping attention on what the protagonist will do rather than how he wishes to appear. Past failures and recent efforts converge, offering him a chance to act in line with the standard he has been learning to name. The novel maintains narrative restraint at this juncture, withholding grand gestures and easy vindication. What matters is the integrity of the response rather than its spectacle.
After the crisis, the book traces consequences in measured tones. Public judgments arrive quickly, but the protagonist’s own assessment moves more slowly, informed by habit, counsel, and a clearer estimate of himself. Some relationships deepen, others cool; professional prospects shift; the earlier label is reconsidered, though not simply erased. The resolution avoids sentimentality, suggesting that courage and cowardice rarely present themselves in pure forms. By attending to interior freedom rather than reputation, the story reframes what vindication means. The ending honors the cost of growth and the limits of self-knowledge, leaving the reader with a credible portrait of moral steadiness.
Across its arc, The Coward examines how fear, honor, and conscience interact within a society that rewards outward bravery. It argues, through narrative rather than thesis, that courage is not the absence of fear but fidelity to truth and duty, even when no audience approves. The book’s structure—early formation, public misstep, searching self-scrutiny, disciplined practice, and a final test—mirrors a plausible path of moral development. Without polemic, it questions inherited codes that conflate noise with nerve. The result is a concise, psychologically attentive story whose message is hopeful but sober: integrity is built patiently, proved under pressure, and measured inwardly.
Historical Context
Robert Hugh Benson’s The Coward is set against the late Victorian and early Edwardian milieu in England, roughly the 1890s through the years before the First World War. The social geography is recognizably British—public schools, parish houses, officers’ messes, and drawing rooms in London and the Home Counties—where a rigid code of honor governed male behavior. Industrial modernity, mass journalism, and imperial anxieties were remaking society, while Anglican and Catholic communities jostled for influence in education and morals. The narrative world presumes an audience steeped in the language of duty, shame, and conscience, reflecting a time when personal courage was measured within tight-knit class and ecclesiastical hierarchies.
One key background is the Anglican–Catholic realignment flowing from the Oxford Movement (begun 1833 with John Keble’s Assize Sermon) and the conversions of figures like John Henry Newman (1845) and later Henry Edward Manning. By 1903, Benson himself converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, entering a community still marked by post-Emancipation suspicion yet experiencing a vigorous revival in London, Oxford, and at the Birmingham Oratory. Historically, this movement reframed English debates on authority, conscience, and sanctity. The book’s probing of fear, moral obligation, and the price of fidelity mirrors the era’s tensions over spiritual allegiance and the costs of defying social expectations.
Victorian–Edwardian Britain cultivated a code of manliness through public schools and “muscular Christianity.” Thomas Arnold’s reforms at Rugby (1828–1842) and the popularizing of the schoolboy ideal in Thomas Hughes’s Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857) and Charles Kingsley’s writings linked athletic discipline, stoicism, and faith. School cadet corps proliferated after 1860; the Haldane Reforms (1907–1908) formalized the Officers’ Training Corps, entwining elite education and military leadership. This ethos celebrated the “stiff upper lip” and shamed visible fear as a moral failing. The Coward engages that culture by dramatizing the line between prudence and timidity, showing how reputation, chapel sermons, and peers’ judgments could define courage as conformity, and cowardice as any deviation from the dominant code.
The Second Boer War (1899–1902) profoundly shaped British discussions of bravery and moral responsibility. Major engagements—Spion Kop (January 1900), the sieges of Ladysmith and Mafeking (relieved in May 1900)—and a brutal guerrilla phase under Lords Roberts and Kitchener exposed logistical strain and ethical controversy. The use of concentration camps for Boer civilians, investigated after Emily Hobhouse’s 1901 report and the Fawcett Commission, led to some 26,000 deaths, mainly women and children. Court-martials, such as the 1902 execution of “Breaker” Morant and others in the British Empire forces, fed debates about discipline versus justice. The book reflects the war’s moral ambiguities, probing whether courage is battlefield valor alone or also the capacity to resist wrongful orders and public clamor.
Domestic reform and class tension formed another decisive context. The 1902 Education Act (Balfour) centralized schooling and bolstered denominational institutions, angering Nonconformists and sharpening church–state disputes. The Liberal landslide of 1906 ushered in social legislation: David Lloyd George’s “People’s Budget” (1909) and the National Insurance Act (1911), amid the constitutional crisis that yielded the Parliament Act (1911) curbing the House of Lords. These measures reoriented duty from private charity to collective provision. The book’s preoccupation with honor and shame intersects with these shifts, suggesting how class expectations, clerical authority, and civic responsibility could brand caution as cowardice or recast solidarity as moral courage.
Within the Catholic Church, the Modernist Crisis climaxed under Pope Pius X with Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907) and the Anti-Modernist Oath (1910). Biblical criticism, historical consciousness, and new philosophies were scrutinized as threats to doctrine. In England, bishops, religious houses, and seminaries navigated vigilance and scholarship, while converts like Benson wrote apologetics in a charged intellectual climate. Historically, this policing of thought spotlighted fear—of error, scandal, and loss of faith. The Coward echoes such pressures, presenting conscience under surveillance and portraying how timidity may masquerade as orthodoxy, while true courage can consist in admitting doubt and acting with integrity.
Contemporary science reframed fear through diagnoses like neurasthenia (George M. Beard, 1869) and degeneration theory (Max Nordau, 1892), while criminologists such as Cesare Lombroso (L’uomo delinquente, 1876) mapped “types” of deviance. British medical journals debated hysteria, phobias, and the physiology of stress, anticipating “shell shock” (term popularized in 1915 by Charles S. Myers). These currents complicated moralistic labels by offering medical accounts of panic and paralysis. The book’s scrutiny of inward dread resonates with this shift, contrasting pastoral exhortations to bravery with emerging therapeutic perspectives, and asking whether society punishes symptoms of distress by calling them vice, thereby deepening the suffering they cause.
As social and political critique, the book exposes the coercive edge of the honor culture that fused school, barracks, and parish. It challenges a hierarchy in which class and ecclesiastical standing dictate reputations for courage, and it interrogates militarist rhetoric that equates obedience with virtue while sidelining conscience. By staging fear as a universal human ordeal rather than a defect of breeding, it rebukes punitive judgments that stigmatized weakness in the Boer War era and beyond. In an England recasting duty through welfare and religious controversy, The Coward insists that moral courage lies in truth-telling, compassionate judgment, and resistance to unjust communal pressures.
The Coward
PART I
THE COWARD
CHAPTER I
(I)
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[1], 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[2], 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 ...
(II)
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.
(III)
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[3] 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.
(IV)
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....
CHAPTER II
(I)
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[4]?”
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[5]” 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.
(II)
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.
