第20章 CHAPTER THE FIRST(6)

Billy Prothero became the symbol in the mind of Lady Marayne for all that disappointed her in Benham.He had to become the symbol, because she could not think of complicated or abstract things, she had to make things personal, and he was the only personality available.She fretted over his existence for some days therefore (once she awakened and thought about him in the night), and then suddenly she determined to grasp her nettle.She decided to seize and obliterate this Prothero.He must come to Chexington and be thoroughly and conclusively led on, examined, ransacked, shown up, and disposed of for ever.At once.She was not quite clear how she meant to do this, but she was quite resolved that it had to be done.

Anything is better than inaction.

There was a little difficulty about dates and engagements, but he came, and through the season of expectation Benham, who was now for the first time in contact with the feminine nature, was delighted at the apparent change to cordiality.So that he talked of Billy to his mother much more than he had ever done before.

Billy had been his particular friend at Minchinghampton, at least during the closing two years of his school life.Billy had fallen into friendship with Benham, as some of us fall in love, quite suddenly, when he saw Benham get down from the fence and be sick after his encounter with the bull.Already Billy was excited by admiration, but it was the incongruity of the sickness conquered him.He went back to the school with his hands more than usually in his pockets, and no eyes for anything but this remarkable strung-up fellow-creature.He felt he had never observed Benham before, and he was astonished that he had not done so.

Billy Prothero was a sturdy sort of boy, generously wanting in good looks.His hair was rough, and his complexion muddy, and he walked about with his hands in his pockets, long flexible lips protruded in a whistle, and a rather shapeless nose well up to show he didn't care.Providence had sought to console him by giving him a keen eye for the absurdity of other people.He had a suggestive tongue, and he professed and practised cowardice to the scandal of all his acquaintances.He was said never to wash behind his ears, but this report wronged him.There had been a time when he did not do so, but his mother had won him to a promise, and now that operation was often the sum of his simple hasty toilet.His desire to associate himself with Benham was so strong that it triumphed over a defensive reserve.It enabled him to detect accessible moments, do inobtrusive friendly services, and above all amuse his quarry.He not only amused Benham, he stimulated him.They came to do quite a number of things together.In the language of schoolboy stories they became "inseparables."Prothero's first desire, so soon as they were on a footing that enabled him to formulate desires, was to know exactly what Benham thought he was up to in crossing a field with a bull in it instead of going round, and by the time he began to understand that, he had conceived an affection for him that was to last a lifetime.

"I wasn't going to be bullied by a beast," said Benham.

"Suppose it had been an elephant?" Prothero cried...."A mad elephant?...A pack of wolves?"Benham was too honest not to see that he was entangled."Well, suppose in YOUR case it had been a wild cat?...A fierce mastiff?...A mastiff?...A terrier?...A lap dog?""Yes, but my case is that there are limits."Benham was impatient at the idea of limits.With a faintly malicious pleasure Prothero lugged him back to that idea.

"We both admit there are limits," Prothero concluded."But between the absolutely impossible and the altogether possible there's the region of risk.You think a man ought to take that risk--" He reflected."I think--no--I think NOT.""If he feels afraid," cried Benham, seeing his one point."If he feels afraid.Then he ought to take it...."After a digestive interval, Prothero asked, "WHY? Why should he?"The discussion of that momentous question, that Why? which Benham perhaps might never have dared ask himself, and which Prothero perhaps might never have attempted to anit one afternoon in a way that permitted no high dismissal of their doubts."You can't build your honour on fudge, Benham.Like committing sacrilege--in order to buy a cloth for the altar."By that Benham was slipped from the recognized code and launched upon speculations which became the magnificent research.

It was not only in complexion and stature and ways of thinking that Billy and Benham contrasted.Benham inclined a little to eloquence, he liked very clean hands, he had a dread of ridiculous outlines.

Prothero lapsed readily into ostentatious slovenliness, when his hands were dirty he pitied them sooner than scrubbed them, he would have worn an overcoat with one tail torn off rather than have gone cold.Moreover, Prothero had an earthy liking for animals, he could stroke and tickle strange cats until they wanted to leave father and mother and all earthly possessions and follow after him, and he mortgaged a term's pocket money and bought and kept a small terrier in the school house against all law and tradition, under the baseless pretence that it was a stray animal of unknown origin.

Benham, on the other hand, was shy with small animals and faintly hostile to big ones.Beasts he thought were just beasts.And Prothero had a gift for caricature, while Benham's aptitude was for music.