The advent of his boy had been a tremendous event in the reverend gentleman's life.It is not improbable that his disposition to monopolize the pride of this event contributed to the ultimate disruption of his family.It left so few initiatives within the home to his wife.He had been an early victim to that wave of philoprogenitive and educational enthusiasm which distinguished the closing decade of the nineteenth century.He was full of plans in those days for the education of his boy, and the thought of the youngster played a large part in the series of complicated emotional crises with which he celebrated the departure of his wife, crises in which a number of old school and college friends very generously assisted--spending weekends at Seagate for this purpose, and mingling tobacco, impassioned handclasps and suchlike consolation with much patient sympathetic listening to his carefully balanced analysis of his feelings.He declared that his son was now his one living purpose in life, and he sketched out a scheme of moral and intellectual training that he subsequently embodied in five very stimulating and intimate articles for the SCHOOL WORLD, but never put into more than partial operation.
"I have read my father's articles upon this subject," wrote Benham, "and I am still perplexed to measure just what I owe to him.Did he ever attempt this moral training he contemplated so freely? I don't think he did.I know now, I knew then, that he had something in his mind....There were one or two special walks we had together, he invited me to accompany him with a certain portentousness, and we would go out pregnantly making superficial remarks about the school cricket and return, discussing botany, with nothing said.
"His heart failed him.
"Once or twice, too, he seemed to be reaching out at me from the school pulpit.
"I think that my father did manage to convey to me his belief that there were these fine things, honour, high aims, nobilities.If Idid not get this belief from him then I do not know how I got it.
But it was as if he hinted at a treasure that had got very dusty in an attic, a treasure which he hadn't himself been able to spend...."The father who had intended to mould his son ended by watching him grow, not always with sympathy or understanding.He was an overworked man assailed by many futile anxieties.One sees him striding about the establishment with his gown streaming out behind him urging on the groundsman or the gardener, or dignified, expounding the particular advantages of Seagate to enquiring parents, one sees him unnaturally cheerful and facetious at the midday dinner table, one imagines him keeping up high aspirations in a rather too hastily scribbled sermon in the school pulpit, or keeping up an enthusiasm for beautiful language in a badly-prepared lesson on Virgil, or expressing unreal indignation and unjustifiably exalted sentiments to evil doers, and one realizes his disadvantage against the quiet youngster whose retentive memory was storing up all these impressions for an ultimate judgment, and one understands, too, a certain relief that mingled with his undeniable emotion when at last the time came for young Benham, "the one living purpose" of his life, to be off to Minchinghampton and the next step in the mysterious ascent of the English educational system.
Three times at least, and with an increased interval, the father wrote fine fatherly letters that would have stood the test of publication.Then his communications became comparatively hurried and matter-of-fact.His boy's return home for the holidays was always rather a stirring time for his private feelings, but he became more and more inexpressive.He would sometimes lay a hand on those growing shoulders and then withdraw it.They felt braced-up shoulders, stiffly inflexible or--they would wince.And when one has let the habit of indefinite feelings grow upon one, what is there left to say? If one did say anything one might be asked questions....
One or two of the long vacations they spent abroad together.The last of these occasions followed Benham's convalescence at Montana and his struggle with the Bisse; the two went to Zermatt and did several peaks and crossed the Theodule, and it was clear that their joint expeditions were a strain upon both of them.The father thought the son reckless, unskilful, and impatient; the son found the father's insistence upon guides, ropes, precautions, the recognized way, the highest point and back again before you get a chill, and talk about it sagely but very, very modestly over pipes, tiresome.He wanted to wander in deserts of ice and see over the mountains, and discover what it is to be benighted on a precipice.
And gradually he was becoming familiar with his father's repertory of Greek quotations.There was no breach between them, but each knew that holiday was the last they would ever spend together....
The court had given the custody of young William Porphyry into his father's hands, but by a generous concession it was arranged that his mother should have him to see her for an hour or so five times a year.The Nolan legacy, however, coming upon the top of this, introduced a peculiar complication that provided much work for tactful intermediaries, and gave great and increasing scope for painful delicacies on the part of Mr.Benham as the boy grew up.
"I see," said the father over his study pipe and with his glasses fixed on remote distances above the head of the current sympathizer, "I see more and more clearly that the tale of my sacrifices is not yet at an end....In many respects he is like her....Quick.
Too quick....He must choose.But I know his choice.Yes, yes,--I'm not blind.She's worked upon him....I have done what I could to bring out the manhood in him.Perhaps it will bear the strain....It will be a wrench, old man--God knows."He did his very best to make it a wrench.
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