Читать книгу The Coward - Robert Hugh Benson - Страница 9

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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....