The father who had intended to mould his son ended by watching him grow, not always with sympathy or understanding.  He was an overworked man assailed by many futile anxieties.  One sees him striding about the establishment with his gown streaming out behind him urging on the groundsman or the gardener, or dignified, expounding the particular advantages of Seagate to enquiring parents, one sees him unnaturally cheerful and facetious at the midday dinner table, one imagines him keeping up high aspirations in a rather too hastily scribbled sermon in the school pulpit, or keeping up an enthusiasm for beautiful language in a badly-prepared lesson on Virgil, or expressing unreal indignation and unjustifiably exalted sentiments to evil doers, and one realizes his disadvantage against the quiet youngster whose retentive memory was storing up all these impressions for an ultimate judgment, and one understands, too, a certain relief that mingled with his undeniable emotion when at last the time came for young Benham, “the one living purpose” of his life, to be off to Minchinghampton and the next step in the mysterious ascent of the English educational system.

Three times at least, and with an increased interval, the father wrote fine fatherly letters that would have stood the test of publication.  Then his communications became comparatively hurried and matter-of-fact.  His boy’s return home for the holidays was always rather a stirring time for his private feelings, but he became more and more inexpressive.  He would sometimes lay a hand on those growing shoulders and then withdraw it.  They felt braced-up shoulders, stiffly inflexible or—­they would wince.  And when one has let the habit of indefinite feelings grow upon one, what is there left to say?  If one did say anything one might be asked questions. . . .

One or two of the long vacations they spent abroad together.  The last of these occasions followed Benham’s convalescence at Montana and his struggle with the Bisse; the two went to Zermatt and did several peaks and crossed the Theodule, and it was clear that their joint expeditions were a strain upon both of them.  The father thought the son reckless, unskilful, and impatient; the son found the father’s insistence upon guides, ropes, precautions, the recognized way, the highest point and back again before you get a chill, and talk about it sagely but very, very modestly over pipes, tiresome.  He wanted to wander in deserts of ice and see over the mountains, and discover what it is to be benighted on a precipice.  And gradually he was becoming familiar with his father’s repertory of Greek quotations.  There was no breach between them, but each knew that holiday was the last they would ever spend together. . . .

The court had given the custody of young William Porphyry into his father’s hands, but by a generous concession it was arranged that his mother should have him to see her for an hour or so five times a year.  The Nolan legacy, however, coming upon the top of this, introduced a peculiar complication that provided much work for tactful intermediaries, and gave great and increasing scope for painful delicacies on the part of Mr. Benham as the boy grew up.