to her the long sessions of beer and tobacco and high thinking that went on in Prothero’s rooms into the small hours.  A certain Gothic greyness and flatness and muddiness through which the Cambridge spirit struggles to its destiny, he concealed from her.  What remained to tell was—­attenuated.  He could not romance.  So she tried to fill in his jejune outlines.  She tried to inspire a son who seemed most unaccountably up to nothing.

“You must make good friends,” she said.  “Isn’t young Lord Breeze at your college?  His mother the other day told me he was.  And Sir Freddy Quenton’s boy.  And there are both the young Baptons at Cambridge.”

He knew one of the Baptons.

“Poff,” she said suddenly, “has it ever occurred to you what you are going to do afterwards.  Do you know you are going to be quite well off?”

Benham looked up with a faint embarrassment.  “My father said something.  He was rather vague.  It wasn’t his affair—­that kind of thing.”

“You will be quite well off,” she repeated, without any complicating particulars.  “You will be so well off that it will be possible for you to do anything almost that you like in the world.  Nothing will tie you.  Nothing. . . .”

“But—­how well off?”

“You will have several thousands a year.”

“Thousands?”

“Yes.  Why not?”

“But—­Mother, this is rather astounding. . . .  Does this mean there are estates somewhere, responsibilities?”

“It is just money.  Investments.”

“You know, I’ve imagined—.  I’ve thought always I should have to do something.”

“You must do something, Poff.  But it needn’t be for a living.  The world is yours without that.  And so you see you’ve got to make plans.  You’ve got to know the sort of people who’ll have things in their hands.  You’ve got to keep out of—­holes and corners.  You’ve got to think of Parliament and abroad.  There’s the army, there’s diplomacy.  There’s the Empire.  You can be a Cecil Rhodes if you like.  You can be a Winston. . . .”

5

Perhaps it was only the innate eagerness of Lady Marayne which made her feel disappointed in her son’s outlook upon life.  He did not choose among his glittering possibilities, he did not say what he was going to be, proconsul, ambassador, statesman, for days.  And he talked vaguely of wanting to do something fine, but all in a fog.  A boy of nearly nineteen ought to have at least the beginnings of savoir Faire.

Was he in the right set?  Was he indeed in the right college?  Trinity, by his account, seemed a huge featureless place—­and might he not conceivably be lost in it?  In those big crowds one had to insist upon oneself.  Poff never insisted upon himself—­except quite at the wrong moment.  And there was this Billy Prothero.  Billy!  Like a goat or something.  People called William don’t get their Christian name insisted upon unless they are vulnerable somewhere.  Any form of William stamps a weakness, Willie, Willy, Will, Billy, Bill; it’s a fearful handle for one’s friends.  At any rate Poff had escaped that.  But this Prothero!