第26章 CHAPTER THE FIRST(12)

"Yes, I am going on.Of course I'm going on.Thank you."He beckoned to the man who had held the horse and handed him half-a-crown.He glanced at Prothero as one might glance at a stranger.

"Check!" he said.The horse went on gravely.Benham lifted out his whip.He appeared to have clean forgotten Prothero.Perhaps presently he would miss him.He went on past Trinity, past the ruddy brick of St.John's.The curve of the street hid him from Prothero's eyes.

Prothero started in pursuit.He glimpsed the dog-cart turning into Bridge Street.He had an impression that Benham used the whip at the corner, and that the dog-cart went forward out of sight with a startled jerk.Prothero quickened his pace.

But when he got to the fork between the Huntingdon Road and the Cottenham Road, both roads were clear.

He spent some time in hesitation.Then he went along the Huntingdon Road until he came upon a road-mender, and learnt that Benham had passed that way."Going pretty fast ‘e was," said the road-mender, "and whipping ‘is ‘orse.Else you might ‘a thought ‘e was a boltin'

with ‘im." Prothero decided that if Benham came back at all he would return by way of Cottenham, and it was on the Cottenham Road that at last he encountered his friend again.

Benham was coming along at that good pace which all experienced horses when they are fairly turned back towards Cambridge display.

And there was something odd about Benham, as though he had a large circular halo with a thick rim.This, it seemed, had replaced his hat.He was certainly hatless.The warm light of the sinking sun shone upon the horse and upon Benham's erect figure and upon his face, and gleams of fire kept flashing from his head to this rim, like the gleam of drawn swords seen from afar.As he drew nearer this halo detached itself from him and became a wheel sticking up behind him.A large, clumsy-looking bicycle was attached to the dog-cart behind.The expression of Benham's golden face was still a stony expression; he regarded his friend with hard eyes.

"You all right, Benham?" cried Prothero, advancing into the road.

His eye examined the horse.It looked all right, if anything it was a trifle subdued; there was a little foam about its mouth, but not very much.

"Whoa!" said Benham, and the horse stopped."Are you coming up, Prothero?"Prothero clambered up beside him."I was anxious," he said.

"There was no need to be."

"You've broken your whip."

"Yes.It broke....GET up!"

They proceeded on their way to Cambridge.

"Something has happened to the wheel," said Prothero, trying to be at his ease.

"Merely a splinter or so.And a spoke perhaps.""And what is this behind?"

Benham made a half-turn of the head."It's a motor-bicycle."Prothero took in details.

"Some of it is missing."

"No, the front wheel is under the seat."

"Oh!"

"Did you find it?" Prothero asked, after an interval.

"You mean?"

"He ran into a motor-car--as I was passing.I was perhaps a little to blame.He asked me to bring his machine to Cambridge.He went on in the car....It is all perfectly simple."Prothero glanced at the splinters in the wheel with a renewed interest.

"Did your wheel get into it?" he asked.Benham affected not to hear.He was evidently in no mood for story-telling.

"Why did you get down, Prothero?" he asked abruptly, with the note of suppressed anger thickening his voice.

Prothero became vividly red."I don't know," he said, after an interval.

"I DO," said Benham, and they went on in a rich and active silence to Cambridge, and the bicycle repair shop in Bridge Street, and Trinity College.At the gate of Trinity Benham stopped, and conveyed rather by acts than words that Prothero was to descend.He got down meekly enough, although he felt that the return to Maltby's yard might have many points of interest.But the spirit had gone out of him.

12

For three days the two friends avoided each other, and then Prothero went to Benham's room.Benham was smoking cigarettes--Lady Marayne, in the first warmth of his filial devotion, had prohibited his pipe--and reading Webb's INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY."Hello!" he said coldly, scarcely looking up, and continued to read that absorbing work.

"I keep on thinking how I jumped down from that damned dog-cart,"said Prothero, without any preface.

"It didn't matter in the least," said Benham distantly.

"Oh! ROT," said Prothero."I behaved like a coward."Benham shut his book.

"Benham," said Prothero."You are right about aristocracy, and I am wrong.I've been thinking about it night and day."Benham betrayed no emotion.But his tone changed."Billy," he said, "there are cigarettes and whiskey in the corner.Don't make a fuss about a trifle.""No whiskey," said Billy, and lit a cigarette."And it isn't a trifle."He came to Benham's hearthrug."That business," he said, "has changed all my views.No--don't say something polite! I see that if one hasn't the habit of pride one is bound to get off a dogcart when it seems likely to smash.You have the habit of pride, and Ihaven't.So far as the habit of pride goes, I come over to the theory of aristocracy."Benham said nothing, but he put down Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and reached out for and got and lit a cigarette.

"I give up ‘Go as you please.' I give up the natural man.I admit training.I perceive I am lax and flabby, unguarded, I funk too much, I eat too much, and I drink too much.And, yet, what I have always liked in you, Benham, is just this--that you don't.""I do," said Benham.

"Do what?"

"Funk."

"Benham, I believe that naturally you funk as much as I do.You're more a thing of nerves than I am, far more.But you keep yourself up to the mark, and I have let myself get flabby.You're so right.

You're so utterly right.These last nights I've confessed it--aloud.I had an inkling of it--after that rag.But now it's as clear as daylight.I don't know if you mean to go on with me, after what's happened, but anyhow I want you to know, whether you end our friendship or not ""Billy, don't be an old ass," said Benham.