“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