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- Herausgeber: DigiCat
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Coward," Robert Hugh Benson intricately explores the themes of courage and moral conflict through the lens of a protagonist who grapples with societal expectations and personal fears. The narrative unfolds with a poignant psychological depth, marked by Benson's adept use of introspective dialogue and vivid imagery. Set against the backdrop of early 20th-century societal norms, the novel critically examines the dichotomy between public persona and private truth, challenging the very essence of what it means to be brave. Robert Hugh Benson, a notable figure of the early 1900s, was deeply influenced by his Anglican upbringing and later conversion to Roman Catholicism, experiences that often permeated his literary works. His background as a priest and his interactions with contemporaneous social issues inform the moral dilemmas faced by his characters. Benson's keen perception of human frailty is evident, rendering "The Coward" both a personal and a universal narrative that reflects the complexities of faith and identity. I highly recommend "The Coward" for readers seeking a profound exploration of fear and integrity. Benson's compelling storytelling and masterful character development invite readers to reflect on their own values, making this novel an essential read for those interested in moral philosophy and the human condition.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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The Coward
Table of Contents
Introduction
Fear rarely announces itself as fear; it often disguises itself as prudence, loyalty, or good sense, until a single choice reveals what the soul has been avoiding. Robert Hugh Benson’s The Coward turns on that pressure point, where self-protection collides with the demand to act, speak, or stand. Its central tension is not simply whether a character can be brave, but what bravery means when every available path carries a cost. The novel invites readers to watch courage being tested in ordinary circumstances that slowly become morally decisive, and to recognize how easily comfort can become captivity.
Benson, a Catholic novelist and essayist active in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, wrote fiction that frequently probes conscience, belief, and social pressure. The Coward belongs to that tradition of psychologically attentive, morally serious novel-writing associated with the early modern English-language novel, where ethical drama unfolds through character and conversation more than spectacle. While specific publication details and the precise setting vary by edition and are not asserted here, the book reads as a product of its era’s concerns with respectability, duty, and the inner life. Its world feels recognizably shaped by established institutions and public expectations.
At its outset, The Coward presents a protagonist whose sense of safety depends on careful choices, cautious speech, and an instinct to avoid conflict. Benson frames this disposition not as caricature but as something understandable, even sympathetic, because it is rooted in the desire to keep life manageable and relationships intact. The narrative then places that temperament under strain as circumstances demand clarity where ambiguity once sufficed. Readers can expect a premise built around the slow tightening of moral stakes, where apparently minor decisions accumulate weight. The setup is designed to keep attention on motive, intention, and the gradual narrowing of escape routes.
The reading experience is governed by Benson’s characteristic seriousness of tone and his interest in interior movement: hesitation, rationalization, remorse, and sudden insight. The voice tends toward measured narration that takes ideas and emotions seriously without turning the novel into a treatise. Rather than relying on plot twists, the book generates momentum through scrutiny of thought and the social consequences of conviction. That emphasis can feel quietly intense, because it turns everyday exchanges into arenas of judgment. The atmosphere is reflective and at times austere, yet it remains novelistic in its attention to relationships, reputation, and the practical costs of being truthful.
One of the book’s most enduring themes is the psychology of avoidance, especially the way fear can be explained into virtue until it hardens into habit. Benson examines how a person may sincerely want to do right while also wanting never to suffer for it, and how that contradiction erodes integrity. Closely related is the theme of responsibility: the recognition that inaction is itself a form of action, with effects that reach beyond the self. The Coward also explores the social mechanics that reward compliance and punish dissent, making courage less a single heroic moment than a sustained refusal to participate in comforting falsehoods.
Another major concern is the formation of conscience and the struggle to align private belief with public life. Benson’s fiction often treats faith and morality as lived realities that shape decisions, not merely as background decoration, and The Coward continues that focus by asking what it means to be consistent. The novel’s title points to a judgment, but the narrative’s interest lies in how that judgment is arrived at and whether it can be resisted. Questions of confession, self-knowledge, and the longing to be at peace are treated as spiritual as well as psychological problems, with the self as both witness and defendant.
The Coward still matters because its portrait of fear is not tied to a single historical crisis; it addresses a pattern that persists wherever social belonging depends on silence. Contemporary readers will recognize the pressures to maintain a curated identity, to avoid controversy, and to treat moral discomfort as a signal to retreat. Benson’s novel offers a counter-reading of that instinct, suggesting that the costs of evasion accumulate until they shape character and community alike. Without sensationalism, it makes the case that courage is often quiet, relational, and costly, and that choosing it is a way of reclaiming agency from fear.
Synopsis
I can’t provide a reliable synopsis of The Coward by Robert Hugh Benson without risking invention, because I don’t have enough verifiable information about this specific work’s plot, characters, or structure in my current sources. Benson wrote multiple novels and stories, and works with similar or overlapping themes and titles are sometimes confused across editions and catalogs. To follow your requirements—especially “do not invent facts,” “omit anything uncertain,” and “follow the work’s narrative flow”—I would need an authoritative text or summary to anchor the account.
If you can share a brief excerpt (for example, the first few pages), a table of contents, a back-cover blurb, or a linkable public-domain edition you’re using, I can produce the requested seven-paragraph synopsis while staying spoiler-safe and faithful to the narrative sequence. Alternatively, if you provide the publication year, publisher, or the names of the main characters, I can use those identifiers to disambiguate the exact The Coward you mean and then write a compact synopsis that highlights the central conflict and key developments without revealing major turns.
As it stands, any attempt to summarize would require guessing about the protagonist’s circumstances, the nature of the “cowardice” implied by the title, and the setting and supporting cast—elements that are essential to an accurate, neutral synopsis. Those guesses would violate your instruction to use only verifiable details. The safest course is to pause until there is sufficient source material to confirm the book’s narrative arc, focal characters, and the pivotal events that shape the story’s movement and themes.
Once you provide a dependable reference, I will structure the synopsis into exactly seven paragraphs of roughly 90–110 words each, maintaining a formal, continuous tone and tracking the story’s progression from initial situation, through rising complications, to the late-stage turning points—without disclosing the decisive outcomes. I will also ensure that each paragraph advances the narrative rather than offering general commentary, while still drawing out the recurring questions and tensions that motivate the characters’ choices and relationships.
I will also keep the synopsis neutral in evaluation and avoid direct quotations, as requested. Where the story involves moral, religious, or psychological ideas—areas Benson often engages—I will describe them in terms of how they function within the plot and character dynamics rather than asserting interpretations not supported by the text. Any contextual mention (such as publication circumstances) will be limited to what is directly verifiable from the edition or bibliographic data you provide.
To make the result maximally useful, you can tell me whether you want the synopsis to be based strictly on the narrative events, or whether you also want light attention to the book’s thematic through-line (for example, how fear, conscience, social pressure, or duty are tested across the plot), still without revealing final resolutions. I can also tailor the “broader significance” closing paragraph to the kind of resonance you mean—literary, ethical, or historical—so long as it remains grounded in the work and does not introduce uncertain claims.
Share the source details, and I will deliver the full seven-paragraph synopsis in valid JSON exactly as specified. If you paste even a short outline of chapter events, I can rewrite it into a compact, coherent synopsis with the right pacing, emphasizing pivotal developments while keeping major twists and conclusions spoiler-light and preserving the work’s central conflicts and questions. Until then, providing the requested synopsis would not be accurate or safe under your stated constraints.
Historical Context
Robert Hugh Benson’s The Coward is best situated in early twentieth-century Britain, when questions of national duty, masculinity, and personal conscience were sharpened by rapid political and social change. Benson (1871–1914) wrote during the last decade of the Edwardian period, an era marked by imperial confidence alongside domestic anxiety about social reform and military preparedness. The novel’s concerns align with contemporary public debate in England about courage and civic responsibility, themes frequently framed through military language even outside wartime. Benson’s clerical background also places moral judgment and interior struggle within a recognizably Christian ethical vocabulary.
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The Coward belongs to a literary moment when British fiction often examined the pressures of respectability and the moral consequences of public reputation. Late Victorian and Edwardian novelists worked in a culture shaped by expanding mass journalism, increased literacy, and a commercial publishing market that rewarded topical themes. Public schools, universities, and professional institutions promoted ideals of self-control and “character,” commonly linked to national strength. Such values, though not uniform across classes, strongly influenced how bravery and failure were discussed. Benson’s narrative emphasis on social judgment reflects this environment of scrutiny and the expectation of visible moral steadiness.
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The years before the First World War were also conditioned by recent conflicts, especially the Second Boer War (1899–1902). That war provoked controversy over military leadership, the use of concentration camps for civilians, and Britain’s physical fitness for imperial conflict. The ensuing “national efficiency” movement encouraged training, discipline, and preparedness, while volunteer organizations and discussions of compulsory service gained traction. In this climate, the idea of cowardice carried political weight, touching fears of national decline and individual inadequacy. A novel centered on courage could therefore resonate with readers attuned to debates about readiness, sacrifice, and civic obligation.
paragraphs
Religious and intellectual change provided another key backdrop. Britain in Benson’s lifetime saw intensified argument over biblical criticism, Darwinian evolution, and the authority of established churches. The Church of England remained a central institution, but it faced internal divisions and external skepticism. Benson himself moved from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism, being received into the Catholic Church in 1903 and ordained a Catholic priest in 1904. Catholicism in Britain was legally secure after nineteenth-century emancipation but still socially contested in many circles. Benson’s fiction often treated conscience, confession, and moral agency with the seriousness of a priest-writer addressing modern doubt.
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The Coward
PART I
THE COWARD
CHAPTER I
(I)
JIMBO, the old fox-terrier, suddenly appeared[1q] 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[1], 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[2] 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[3], 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 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[2q] 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.
