"Well, what am I to do, Prothero?"
"Does all THIS belong to you?"
"No, this is my mother"s."
"G.o.dfather too?"
"I"ve not thought.... I suppose so. Or her own."
Prothero meditated.
"THIS life," he said at last, "this large expensiveness--..."
He left his criticism unfinished.
"I agree. It suits my mother somehow. I can"t understand her living in any other way. But--for me...."
"What can one do with several thousands a year?"
Prothero"s interest in this question presently swamped his petty personal resentments. "I suppose," he said, "one might have rather a lark with money like that. One would be free to go anywhere. To set all sorts of things going.... It"s clear you can"t sell all you have and give it to the poor. That is pauperization nowadays. You might run a tremendously revolutionary paper. A real upsetting paper. How many thousands is it?"
"I don"t know. SOME."
Prothero"s interest was growing as he faced the possibilities.
"I"ve dreamt of a paper," he said, "a paper that should tell the brute truth about things."
"I don"t know that I"m particularly built to be a journalist," Benham objected.
"You"re not," said Billy.... "You might go into Parliament as a perfectly independent member.... Only you wouldn"t get in...."
"I"m not a speaker," said Benham.
"Of course," said Billy, "if you don"t decide on a game, you"ll just go on like this. You"ll fall into a groove, you"ll--you"ll hunt. You"ll go to Scotland for the grouse."
For the moment Prothero had no further suggestions.
Benham waited for a second or so before he broached his own idea.
"Why, first of all, at any rate, Billy, shouldn"t one use one"s money to make the best of oneself? To learn things that men without money and leisure find it difficult to learn? By an accident, however unjust it is, one is in the position of a leader and a privileged person. Why not do one"s best to give value as that?"
"Benham, that"s the thin end of aristocracy!"
"Why not?"
"I hate aristocracy. For you it means doing what you like. While you are energetic you will kick about and then you will come back to this."
"That"s one"s own look-out," said Benham, after reflection.
"No, it"s bound to happen."
Benham retreated a little from the immediate question.
"Well, we can"t suddenly at a blow change the world. If it isn"t to be plutocracy to-day it has to be aristocracy."
Prothero frowned over this, and then he made a sweeping proposition.
"YOU CANNOT HAVE ARISTOCRACY," he said, "BECAUSE, YOU SEE--ALL MEN ARE RIDICULOUS. Democracy has to fight its way out from under plutocracy.
There is nothing else to be done."
"But a man in my position--?"
"It"s a ridiculous position. You may try to escape being ridiculous. You won"t succeed."
It seemed to Benham for a moment as though Prothero had got to the bottom of the question, and then he perceived that he had only got to the bottom of himself. Benham was pacing the floor.
He turned at the open window, held out a long forefinger, and uttered his countervailing faith.
"Even if he is ridiculous, Prothero, a man may still be an aristocrat. A man may anyhow be as much of an aristocrat as he can be."
Prothero reflected. "No," he said, "it sounds all right, but it"s wrong.
I hate all these advantages and differences and distinctions. A man"s a man. What you say sounds well, but it"s the beginning of pretension, of pride--"
He stopped short.
"Better, pride than dishonour," said Benham, "better the pretentious life than the sordid life. What else is there?"
"A life isn"t necessarily sordid because it isn"t pretentious," said Prothero, his voice betraying a defensive disposition.
"But a life with a large income MUST be sordid unless it makes some sort of attempt to be fine...."
9
By transitions that were as natural as they were complicated and untraceable Prothero found his visit to Chexington developing into a tangle of discussions that all ultimately resolved themselves into an antagonism of the democratic and the aristocratic idea. And his part was, he found, to be the exponent of the democratic idea. The next day he came down early, his talk with Benham still running through his head, and after a turn or so in the garden he was attracted to the front door by a sound of voices, and found Lady Marayne had been up still earlier and was dismounting from a large effective black horse. This extorted an unwilling admiration from him. She greeted him very pleasantly and made a kind of introduction of her steed. There had been trouble at a gate, he was a young horse and fidgeted at gates; the dispute was still bright in her. Benham she declared was still in bed. "Wait till I have a mount for him." She reappeared fitfully in the breakfast-room, and then he was left to Benham until just before lunch. They read and afterwards, as the summer day grew hot, they swam in the nude pond. She joined them in the water, splashing about in a costume of some elaboration and being very careful not to wet her hair. Then she came and sat with them on the seat under the big cedar and talked with them in a wrap that was pretty rather than prudish and entirely unmotherly. And she began a fresh attack upon him by asking him if he wasn"t a Socialist and whether he didn"t want to pull down Chexington and grow potatoes all over the park.
This struck Prothero as an inadequate statement of the Socialist project and he made an unsuccessful attempt to get it amended.
The engagement thus opened was renewed with great energy at lunch.
Sir G.o.dfrey had returned to London and the inmost aspect of his fellow-creatures, but the party of three was supplemented by a vague young lady from the village and an alert agent from the neighbouring Tentington estate who had intentions about a cottage. Lady Marayne insisted upon regarding Socialism as a proposal to reinaugurate the first French Revolution, as an inversion of society so that it would be bottom upward, as an attack upon rule, order, direction. "And what good are all these proposals? If you had the poor dear king beheaded, you"d only get a Napoleon. If you divided all the property up between everybody, you"d have rich and poor again in a year."
Billy perceived no way of explaining away this version of his Socialism that would not involve uncivil contradictions--and n.o.body ever contradicted Lady Marayne.
"But, Lady Marayne, don"t you think there is a lot of disorder and injustice in the world?" he protested.
"There would be ever so much more if your Socialists had their way."