He did look through it enough to see that it was undesirable that he should understand too explicitly, and, anyhow, he was manifestly very well off indeed, and the circumstances of the case, even as he understood them, would have made any businesslike book-keeping ungracious.  The bankers submitted the corroborating account of securities, and he found himself possessed of his unconditional six thousand a year, with, as she put it, “the world at his feet.”  On the whole it seemed more wonderful to him now than when he had first heard of it.  He kissed her and thanked her, and left the portfolio open for Merkle’s entirely honest and respectful but very exact inspection, and walked back with her to Desborough Street, and all the while he was craving to ask the one tremendous question he knew he would never ask, which was just how exactly this beneficent Nolan came in. . . .

Once or twice in the small hours, and on a number of other occasions, this unspeakable riddle assumed a portentous predominance in his mind.  He was forced back upon his inner consciousness for its consideration.  He could discuss it with nobody else, because that would have been discussing his mother.

Probably most young men who find themselves with riches at large in the world have some such perplexity as this mixed in with the gift.  Such men as the Cecils perhaps not, because they are in the order of things, the rich young Jews perhaps not, because acquisition is their principle, but for most other intelligent inheritors there must be this twinge of conscientious doubt.  “Why particularly am I picked out for so tremendous an advantage?” If the riddle is not Nolan, then it is rent, or it is the social mischief of the business, or the particular speculative Coup that established their fortune.

“PECUNIA non OLET,” Benham wrote, “and it is just as well.  Or the west-ends of the world would reek with deodorizers.  Restitution is inconceivable; how and to whom?  And in the meanwhile here we are lifted up by our advantage to a fantastic appearance of opportunity.  Whether the world looks to us or not to do tremendous things, it ought to look to us.  And above all we ought to look to ourselves.  RICHESSE oblige.”

3

It is not to be supposed that Benham came to town only with a general theory of aristocracy.  He had made plans for a career.  Indeed, he had plans for several careers.  None of them when brought into contrast with the great spectacle of London retained all the attractiveness that had saturated them at their inception.

They were all more or less political careers.  Whatever a democratic man may be, Prothero and he had decided that an aristocratic man is a public man.  He is made and protected in what he is by laws and the state and his honour goes out to the state.  The aristocrat has no right to be a voluptuary or a mere artist or a respectable nonentity, or any such purely personal things.  Responsibility for the aim and ordering of the world is demanded from him as imperatively as courage.