"I couldn"t get a trotter," said Benham.
"I thought I would try this sort of thing before I tried a trotter," he added.
And then suddenly came disaster.
There was a butcher"s cart on the right, and Benham, mistrusting the intelligence of his steed, insisted upon an excessive amplitude of clearance. He did not reckon with the hand-barrow on his left, piled up with dirty plates from the lunch of Trinity Hall. It had been left there; its custodian was away upon some mysterious errand. Heaven knows why Trinity Hall exhibited the treasures of its crockery thus stained and deified in the Cambridge streets. But it did--for Benham"s and Prothero"s undoing. Prothero saw the great wheel over which he was poised entangle itself with the little wheel of the barrow. "G.o.d!"
he whispered, and craned, fascinated. The little wheel was manifestly intrigued beyond all self-control by the great wheel; it clung to it, it went before it, heedless of the barrow, of which it was an inseparable part. The barrow came about with an appearance of unwillingness, it locked against the great wheel; it reared itself towards Prothero and began, smash, smash, smash, to shed its higher plates. It was clear that Benham was grappling with a crisis upon a basis of inadequate experience. A number of people shouted haphazard things. Then, too late, the barrow had persuaded the little wheel to give up its fancy for the great wheel, and there was an enormous crash.
"Whoa!" cried Benham. "Whoa!" but also, unfortunately, he sawed hard at the horse"s mouth.
The animal, being in some perplexity, danced a little in the narrow street, and then it had come about and it was backing, backing, on the narrow pavement and towards the plate-gla.s.s window of a book and newspaper shop. Benham tugged at its mouth much harder than ever.
Prothero saw the window bending under the pressure of the wheel. A sense of the profound seriousness of life and of the folly of this expedition came upon him. With extreme nimbleness he got down just as the window burst. It went with an explosion like a pistol shot, and then a clatter of falling gla.s.s. People sprang, it seemed, from nowhere, and jostled about Prothero, so that he became a peripheral figure in the discussion.
He perceived that a man in a green ap.r.o.n was holding the horse, and that various people were engaged in simultaneous conversation with Benham, who with a pale serenity of face and an awful calm of manner, dealt with each of them in turn.
"I"m sorry," he was saying. "Somebody ought to have been in charge of the barrow. Here are my cards. I am ready to pay for any damage....
"The barrow ought not to have been there....
"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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing. 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. "h.e.l.lo!" he said coldly, scarcely looking up, and continued to read that absorbing work.
"I keep on thinking how I jumped down from that d.a.m.ned 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."