Читать книгу The Coward - Robert Hugh Benson - Страница 7

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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.