He had been a boy reserved rather than florid in his acts and manners, a boy with a pale face, incorrigible hair and brown eyes that went dark and deep with excitement.Several times White had seen him excited, and when he was excited Benham was capable of tensely daring things.On one occasion he had insisted upon walking across a field in which was an aggressive bull.It had been put there to prevent the boys taking a short cut to the swimming place.
It had bellowed tremendously and finally charged him.He had dodged it and got away; at the time it had seemed an immense feat to White and the others who were safely up the field.He had walked to the fence, risking a second charge by his deliberation.Then he had sat on the fence and declared his intention of always crossing the field so long as the bull remained there.He had said this with white intensity, he had stopped abruptly in mid-sentence, and then suddenly he had dropped to the ground, clutched the fence, struggled with heaving shoulders, and been sick.
The combination of apparently stout heart and manifestly weak stomach had exercised the Minchinghampton intelligence profoundly.
On one or two other occasions Benham had shown courage of the same rather screwed-up sort.He showed it not only in physical but in mental things.A boy named Prothero set a fashion of religious discussion in the school, and Benham, after some self-examination, professed an atheistical republicanism rather in the manner of Shelley.This brought him into open conflict with Roddles, the History Master.Roddles had discovered these theological controversies in some mysterious way, and he took upon himself to talk at Benham and Prothero.He treated them to the common misapplication of that fool who "hath said in his heart there is no God." He did not perceive there was any difference between the fool who says a thing in his heart and one who says it in the dormitory.
He revived that delectable anecdote of the Eton boy who professed disbelief and was at once "soundly flogged" by his head master.
"Years afterwards that boy came back to thank ----""Gurr," said Prothero softly."STEW--ard!""Your turn next, Benham," whispered an orthodox controversialist.
"Good Lord! I'd like to see him," said Benham with a forced loudness that could scarcely be ignored.
The subsequent controversy led to an interview with the head.From it Benham emerged more whitely strung up than ever."He said he would certainly swish me if I deserved it, and I said I would certainly kill him if he did.""And then?"
"He told me to go away and think it over.Said he would preach about it next Sunday....Well, a swishing isn't a likely thing anyhow.But I would....There isn't a master here I'd stand a thrashing from--not one....And because I choose to say what Ithink!...I'd run amuck."
For a week or so the school was exhilarated by a vain and ill-concealed hope that the head might try it just to see if Benham would.It was tantalizingly within the bounds of possibility....
These incidents came back to White's mind as he turned over the newspapers in the upper drawer of the bureau.The drawer was labelled "Fear--the First Limitation," and the material in it was evidently designed for the opening volume of the great unfinished book.Indeed, a portion of it was already arranged and written up.
As White read through this manuscript he was reminded of a score of schoolboy discussions Benham and he and Prothero had had together.
Here was the same old toughness of mind, a kind of intellectual hardihood, that had sometimes shocked his schoolfellows.Benham had been one of those boys who do not originate ideas very freely, but who go out to them with a fierce sincerity.He believed and disbelieved with emphasis.Prothero had first set him doubting, but it was Benham's own temperament took him on to denial.His youthful atheism had been a matter for secret consternation in White.White did not believe very much in God even then, but this positive disbelieving frightened him.It was going too far.There had been a terrible moment in the dormitory, during a thunderstorm, a thunderstorm so vehement that it had awakened them all, when Latham, the humourist and a quietly devout boy, had suddenly challenged Benham to deny his Maker.
"NOW say you don't believe in God?"
Benham sat up in bed and repeated his negative faith, while little Hopkins, the Bishop's son, being less certain about the accuracy of Providence than His aim, edged as far as he could away from Benham's cubicle and rolled his head in his bedclothes.
"And anyhow," said Benham, when it was clear that he was not to be struck dead forthwith, "you show a poor idea of your God to think he'd kill a schoolboy for honest doubt.Even old Roddles--""I can't listen to you," cried Latham the humourist, "I can't listen to you.It's--HORRIBLE.""Well, who began it?" asked Benham.
A flash of lightning lit the dormitory and showed him to White white-faced and ablaze with excitement, sitting up with the bed-clothes about him."Oh WOW!" wailed the muffled voice of little Hopkins as the thunder burst like a giant pistol overhead, and he buried his head still deeper in the bedclothes and gave way to unappeasable grief.
Latham's voice came out of the darkness."This ATHEISM that you and Billy Prothero have brought into the school--"He started violently at another vivid flash, and every one remained silent, waiting for the thunder....
But White remembered no more of the controversy because he had made a frightful discovery that filled and blocked his mind.Every time the lightning flashed, there was a red light in Benham's eyes....
It was only three days after when Prothero discovered exactly the same phenomenon in the School House boothole and talked of cats and cattle, that White's confidence in their friend was partially restored....
4
