“If I miss another drive may I be—­lost for ever,” said Billy, with the utmost sincerity.  “Never more will I get down, Benham, wherever you may take me.  Short of muffing my fellowship I’m with you always. . . .  Will it be an American trotter?”

“It will be the rawest, gauntest, ungainliest brute that ever scared the motor-bicycles on the Northampton Road.  It will have the legs and stride of an ostrich.  It will throw its feet out like dealing cards.  It will lift its head and look the sun in the eye like a vulture.  It will have teeth like the English spinster in a French comic paper. . . .  And we will fly. . . .”

“I shall enjoy it very much,” said Prothero in a small voice after an interval for reflection.  “I wonder where we shall fly.  It will do us both a lot of good.  And I shall insure my life for a small amount in my mother’s interest. . . .  Benham, I think I will, after all, take a whiskey. . . .  Life is short. . . .”

He did so and Benham strolled to the window and stood looking out upon the great court.

“We might do something this afternoon,” said Benham.

“Splendid idea,” reflected Billy over his whiskey.  “Living hard and thinking hard.  A sort of Intelligentsia that is blooded. . . .  I shall, of course, come as far as I can with you.”

13

In one of the bureau drawers that White in this capacity of literary executor was examining, there were two documents that carried back right to these early days.  They were both products of this long wide undergraduate argumentation that had played so large a part in the making of Benham.  One recorded the phase of maximum opposition, and one was the outcome of the concluding approach of the antagonists.  They were debating club essays.  One had been read to a club in Pembroke, a club called the enquirers, of which White also had been a member, and as he turned it over he found the circumstances of its reading coming back to his memory.  He had been present, and Carnac’s share in the discussion with his shrill voice and stumpy gestures would alone have sufficed to have made it a memorable occasion.  The later one had been read to the daughter club of the enquirers, the social enquirers, in the year after White had gone down, and it was new to him.

Both these papers were folded flat and neatly docketed; they were rather yellow and a little dog-eared, and with the outer sheet pencilled over with puzzling or illegible scribblings, Benham’s memoranda for his reply.  White took the earlier essay in his hand.  At the head of the first page was written in large letters, “Go slowly, speak to the man at the back.”  It brought up memories of his own experiences, of rows of gaslit faces, and of a friendly helpful voice that said, “Speak up?”