Chapter VIII

(i)

** V OU see I just hadn't the head for it," explained Val for the tenth time — this time to his mother — with an air of mingled ease and humility that increased on every occasion. " Arm-strong said " — (and there followed da capo the Tale of the Green- faced Officer.)

Home-coming had not been the triumph that Val had expected; and what triumph there was rested wholly upon Austin, who had, actually, climbed the Matterhorn and acquitted himself with credit. The brothers had not talked much one to the other on the way: Val had read Tauchnitz volumes a great deal with a studiously interested air; and Austin had spent most of his time in low-voiced conversation with Tom. At Dover they had parted from the Merediths, and thenceforward the silence between the two had been even more marked. And now they were at home again, eating a late supper. Their mother and May sat with them in the dining-room, listening to the tale of adventure; the General and Miss Deverell, it was understood, were playing backgammon in the hall. Gertie, Val had learned within ten minutes of his arrival, without mentioning her name, had gone home a week earlier, after all.

" Poor boy! " said Lady Beatrice. " Hard lines," said May.

"Tell us about the Matterhorn," said Lady Beatrice, turning to Austin.

It was really rather trying for Val to have to sit through the next twenty minutes. Austin became unusually excited — he had eaten and drunk well — and before long was piling a salt-cellar on to a silver mug and a pepper-pot on to the salt-cellar in order to make absolutely clear the nature of the performance he had achieved. It was up this slope that the work had been hardest; it was round this corner that the wind had suddenly met them; it was from the angle of the salt-cellar nearest to May that they had seen the clouds clear and Zermatt show itself like a group of pebbles on a billiard-table. Then, as the party approached the final summit, Austin demonstrated too vividly, and the entire Matterhorn fell on to the tablecloth, pouring salt in one direction and pepper in the other. Val emitted a single syllable of bitter merriment and Austin glanced up at him, frowning.

" I see perfectly," cried Lady Beatrice, with an excellent enthusiasm. " No; don't bother to put them up again: that's one of the Queen Anne salts, you know."

"Well, you see, don't you?" said Austin. "It was round that curve I was just touching that the last slope lies. Then you only have a couple of hundred yards, and you're at the top."

" Oh, how gorgeous! " sighed May, who had sat propping her chin on her hands and staring fascinated. "Oh, Val; if only you'd been there too!"

Val put his last piece of pudding into his mouth and said nothing.

" What's that, Austin? " cried May again, as the elder boy, after fumbling in his breast pocket, brought out two flat, grey pebbles and laid them solemnly on the cloth.

" These are the two stones I've got left from the top of the Matterhorn," he said impressively. " May, would you like one? or would you have it, mother?"

" Let May have it," said his mother, smiling.

"Oh, Austin! Really?"

Austin with a tremendous air pushed over the larger of the two stones toward his sister.

" Take it, May," he said.

Val felt his heart growing, apparently, more and more contracted during all this. It was far more trying even than he had anticipated, to assist at these grave ceremonies and descriptions. He had, with eager prudence, established first his own impeccability: and he had made it so clear to everyone else that nothing except an unfortunate physical defect had stood between him and the summit of the Matterhorn, that he was really almost beginning to believe it himself. But this hero-worship seemed to him intolerable. He was absolutely certain that Austin had not really the same climbing powers and general fortitude as himself — there was the serac incident to prove it; and it appeared to him that he was very deeply misunderstood....

" I say, Austin; do you remember the time I got into such a row on the glacier? "

" What was that? " asked May eagerly.

Val emptied his glass.

" Oh! nothing much. We were out on the glacier; and while the others were putting on the rope I went on ahead. My word! Old Arm-strong did let me have it! "

" Was it dangerous? "

" It didn't seem to me so. Armstrong seemed to think it was.... Yes: I suppose it was, rather. It was the top of an ice-peak, you know, — on the glacier; with crevasses all round."

Austin laughed sardonically. Val went on superbly:

"Of course I oughtn't to have done it. I was awfully ashamed of myself afterwards. But I didn't know it was dangerous at the time, I suppose." '

"Oh, Val!" cried May.

" Well, if you boys have finished, let's go and tell your father all about it," said Lady Beatrice, reaching for her stick. " He'll want to hear."

Val sat apart a little, while the entire story was told again, edited for fathers. Names of peaks, for example, had to be mentioned with some particularity; and the kindness of Mr. and Mrs. Meredith had to be referred to once or twice. (It is quite extraordinarily instructive to hear the same story recounted to a father and a mother respectively.) But Val felt more content, at least superficially. He had drawn general attention to himself just now in the dining-room, and had established a reputation for individual daring, to compensate for his physical weakness.

The General leaned back from his backgammon board to listen. Both boys had to talk, but Austin presently held the field, and the ascent of the Matterhorn was once more exhaustively described, from the start made at the Schwarz-See to the return to the Riffelhorn the following evening. Austin rolled out with great fluency the names of the principal peaks that could be viewed from the summit....

" And you, Val," said the old gentleman presently. " I don't understand why you didn't go too."

Val licked his lips for another effort.

" I found I had a bad head, father," he said. " I couldn't be sure of myself. Mr. Armstrong advised me not to go; he said he knew a man once, who had the V.C., who - — "

" Pooh! That's nothing. You could have got over it."

"Well, I thought it better to do what Arm-strong "

:( Yes, yes," said his father, with a touch of impatience.

''l Val wanted to go very much," said Austin generously, " but we all — I mean the Merediths and Armstrong and the Ratcliffes all thought it would be better not."

The General was silent.

" Well, you've had a good time, boys, haven't you? That's right," he said suddenly. " Miss Deverell, I think we must leave the game for tonight. It's getting late."

Val preceded Austin upstairs, once more trembling with resentment and shame. His father had taken so exactly the wrong line and thrown him again on guard. If only the boy could have produced the conviction in everyone else that he had behaved on the whole with a right prudence and with no lack of courage, it would have been so infinitely easier to have established that conviction in himself too. Yet his anger partly reassured him as well; it was so necessary to ward off external attacks that at present he had no energy to turn inwards and learn what he really himself believed.

As he came into his room, an old figure in cap and apron straightened itself from over the fire.

" Eh-h! " she cried, with upraised hands.

Val kissed the old nurse mechanically.

" I've been warming your pyjamas," proceeded Benty, " and to-morrow morning I'm coming in to know what you'll take with you to Eton."

"Oh! I can't be bothered," snapped Val.

"But you go on Friday afternoon!" exclaimed Benty in dismay.

" Pack what you like. I don't care. I must go to bed. I'm tired."

Benty regarded him a moment in deep disappointment. She had expected him to be so pleased to see her; and she had rehearsed to herself with such expectancy the solemn consultation that would take place next morning, as to whether the old yellow socks were to go in his portmanteau as well as the new blue ones, and as to whether Master Val wouldn't let her order him a dozen new shirts — the cuffs of the old ones were beginning to fray. She had looked them all over in her room this afternoon.

" Then I must speak to your mamma," she said at last, with a distinct and unusual lack of tact.

"Don't bother me, Benty," said Val, sitting heavily down on his bed and beginning to untie his shoes. " Can't you see I'm dog-tired? "

Then her dignity melted.

" Eh! then; go to bed, like a good boy."

" Good night, Benty."

He lifted his face to kiss her.

Just before he got into bed he remembered he hadn't got a book to read, so he put on his slippers and went out into the sitting-room. As he knelt by the low bookcase Austin came in.

"Hullo!" said Austin.

"Hullo!" said Val.

Austin pottered about for a few minutes, setting a couple of guide-books to Switzerland in his own private shelf, opening a couple of letters that were lying on his table, warming his hands at the fire, and finally placing with an exaggerated care (as Val, pretending to look for a book, noticed perfectly well), his grey stone from the top of the Matterhorn under a glasscase that already sheltered a fives cup.

" I say, Val."

" Well."

" I've put my stone here. Don't move it, will you? I'm going to label it to-morrow."

" I don't want to move it," snapped Val.

Austin preserved an offensive silence. Presently he took off his shoes, sat down in an easy chair, and prepared to read.

" Good night," he said, as Val went to the door at last with a suitable book. (It dealt neither with riding nor climbing.)

" 'Night," grunted Val, shutting the door upon the word.

" Sulky brute," murmured Austin to himself aloud for his own satisfaction.

Austin was marvellously well pleased with himself to-night. He had come back, after a really notable achievement, considering his few years and his short experience, and had found himself entirely appreciated. His mother had been attentive and admirative; May had been ecstatic; his father 4 had been attentive and even respectful. Above all, Val had been obliged definitely to take second place. Of course it was only right that he should do so, but Val did not appear usually over-ready to recognise the obligation. But now there was no doubt at all about it, Austin had climbed the Matterhorn; Val had not And Austin understood perfectly the desperate wriggle Val had made to get back into the middle of the stage by his reference to the serac incident, and that he knew, and that Austin himself knew, and that Val knew that Austin knew that it had not been really successful. Everyone knew the name of the Matter-horn; the serac had none to be known. Besides, obviously, Val's treasury of self-respect must have run pretty low if he was forced to draw upon a discreditable incident to restore his credit.

No, the thing was settled now. He had scored one; he had acted like a real elder brother; he had done what the younger could not; and he had actually been so evidently in advance as to be able to afford a generous remark just now, down in the hall.

So Austin sat and read, till his toes tingled and his head swam with sleep. Then he proceeded to his bedroom with the air of Tired Warrior, and went solemnly to bed.

(m)

Twenty minutes later the door of Val's room opened cautiously. Nothing else happened at all for a full twenty seconds. Then, without a sound, Val himself, in blue pyjamas and with bare feet, with a candle in his hand, appeared rigid as a ghost, listening. No sound at all met his ears. Then he advanced down the passage, stopping to listen at Austin's door and to peer for any sign of light. Then once more he advanced, pushed open the door of the sitting-room, and went in, still with a noiseless and rigid carriage. He had come to look again at the grey stone under the glass dome: nothing else.

The moment he had seen it downstairs in the dining-room, he had perceived that it would become for him a symbol for ever. It was an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual disgrace. He hated with an extraordinary intensity of feeling, even while he adored it. It had actually lain on the summit of the Matterhorn and had been borne thence by human hands; but the hatefulness of it lay in the fact that it had been his brother's hands, when it might have been his own. If anyone else had brought it down he would have asked for a splinter from it. Since it was Austin he would have wished to annihilate it. An added touch of bitterness lay in Austin's not confiding in him before that there was such a stone in existence. They had talked together of many things since the ascent; yet Austin had for the first time produced it at the dramatic moment in the dining-room when the Family incense was going up in fragrance about the hero.... It was intolerable. Yet he must look at it again.

There, then, it lay, leaning on the blue velvet and just touching the silver cup. It was a split-looking fragment that had scaled off from its parent rock: it was grey in colour, with sparkling points in it, as of mica or quartz. It must have lain there on the stormy top from the earliest dawn of time -rent, perhaps, centuries ago, from the mass of which it had once formed a part, by the stroke of lightning.

He stared at it, fascinated....

Ah! if it had been his own; and it might have been. Already, since he had seen it an hour ago, he had made his supposititious plans. He would have mounted it on a wooden pedestal, with a small brass plate let into it, protected by a glass dome, and... and presented the whole affair to Gertie, with a few properly self -depreciatory remarks. He moved the candle this way and that, and the sparkling surface rippled with points of light as the flame moved.

Then he thought he must touch and hold the hateful, admirable thing.

Very carefully he set the bell-glass on one side, putting his candle in a safe place, and took up the stone. He felt its texture, its sharp edges, its angles. It weighed perhaps three or four ounces, no more.

Then he began to dream again. The dying fire was pleasant to his legs; the woolly matter to his bare feet. And he began to picture again exactly the sort of mounting he would have had made for it — just an unpolished block of old oak, appropriate to the age and rugged history of the stone; a light blue velvet socket and fringe to the stand; and a small brass plate, inscribed "V. M. to G. M."— no more. G. M. would have had it on her writing-table, always; it would have been a reminder to her of the prowess and gallantry of V. M.

Ah! and it was not hers, and never could be. It was the property of Austin — his property by every claim, the pledge of his courage and fortitude; and Austin lay snoring next door, to awake again to-morrow to his inalienable rights over it.

Val's eyes wandered round the room. Those cups on the mantelpiece were Austin's; those hare-pads and masks on the brown shields were his; this copy of Pop Rules in light blue ribbon was his. And now this eloquent piece of stone was his. And Val?... Well, that single cup was his on the corner of the group by Hills and Saunders, and the small silver egg-cup under glass on the top of the bureau was his — he had won it as junior partner in house-fives two years ago. And that was absolutely all, of everything that mattered.

He stared down at the scrap of stone again, miserable and depressed. Why should Austin have everything, and he nothing? — everything, down even to this final symbol of the elder brother's fortitude and the younger's weakness? And it might have been his... it might have been his.

Then with a sudden spasm of rage he dashed the stone into the sofa-cushions, and stood trembling.