Her philosophical moments were perhaps the most baffling of all.

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.