Look, here’s the Benji one; the good, the quiet, gentle one; the one that never gave a thought of trouble, Benji.
Her Benji! The one that came after disfavour, after remorse; that came with tears, with thank God, charged-with-meaning tears. The littlest one. The one that was so tiny wee beside the big and sturdy others. Her last one! Her Benji!
Look, there he is. Always so quiet, gentle, good. Always, though snubbed, so passionately fond of Doda. Look, there he is. He’s at Milchester, in his spectacles, the darling! He’s always in his books. He isn’t good at games. He does so well at school. Oh, isn’t Harry proud of him and fond of him! Oh, doesn’t Harry often sigh and wish he could have gone to Tidborough to win those prizes and those honours there. But Tidborough’s closed to Harry, Harry says. Look, there goes Benji! It’s 1919. He’s sixteen. It’s Speech Day at Milchester. He’s in the Sixth. He’s won all those prizes. She’s holding two and Harry’s holding three, and there he goes to take the Heriot Gold Medal. All the great hall is simply cheering Benji! The Head is saying that he’s the youngest boy that’s ever won the Heriot. Look, there’s the Bishop handing it, and shaking Benji by the hand, and patting Benji on the back, and saying something to him. You can’t possibly hear what it is, every one is cheering so. Look, here he comes with the medal, in his spectacles, the darling! She can scarcely see, her eyes are brimming so. Harry’s quite shameless. Harry’s got tears standing on his cheeks and he’s set down the prizes and is stretching both his hands out to the boy. Feel, that’s his hand—her Benji’s hand—snuggled a moment in hers, and then he turns to his father and is eagerly whispering to his father, his spectacles rubbing his father’s head, the darling! He’s more demonstrative to his father than he is to her. She feels it rather sometimes. He’s awfully sweet to her, but, you can’t help noticing it, it’s more his gracious manner than the outpouring she’d give anything to have. It’s funny how he always seems the tiniest atom strange with her as if he didn’t know her very well or hadn’t known her very long. It sometimes pains a little. He’s different with his father. He loves being with his father. And doesn’t Harry love having the boy with him! Harry idolises the boy. Of course Huggo is Harry’s eldest, and whatever Huggo’s disappointments, these men—at least these perfect Harry type of men—have for their eldest boy within their hearts a place no other child can quite exactly fill. There’s some especial yearning that the eldest seems to call. There’s some incorporation of the father’s self, there’s some reflection that he sees, there’s some communion that he seems to find, that makes “My eldest son” a thing apart. But, with that reservation, and that’s ingrained in men, it’s Benji that’s the world to Harry. He’s going to Ox-ford. He’s going to have the Bar career that Huggo wouldn’t take. But Harry thinks there’s some especial wonders going to come to Benji. He says the boy’s a dreamer. He says the boy’s a thinker. “Benji’s got something rare about him, Rosalie,” he says. “That boy’s got a mark on him that genius has. You wait and see, old lady. It’s Benji’s going to make the old name shine!” Strike on!
It is odd, sad, significant, that there is scarcely a picture that shows together those three children, or even two of them. It’s 1921 now and drawing very close to Finis; but always the old detachment, the seeming want of mutual love, appears to hold the three apart. Doda is sometimes glimpsed, no more, with Benji, always putting off or chilling off her brother for her friends; sometimes she’s seen with Huggo, meeting him and he her, more like an acquaintance of their sets than like fruit of the same parents; familiar, apparently, with one another’s lives: referring to places of amusement by both frequented, as had been done, in instance, on that night of Huggo’s announcement of his marriage when with a note that rung sinister he had bantered Doda and she had turned and run upstairs. But no more than that. The children seem to have no mutual love. They’re different.
It’s 1921. Huggo was scarcely ever seen now. He had married in haste and had in haste repented. He also had played a trick, involving a sum of money, on his father. His wife, as it appeared, had been met at some dancing club and the brief courtship had continued anywhere but at her home. Of her home Huggo knew only what she told him; and what she told him was only what she could invent. She was then, at their first meeting, in the uniform of a war service corps to which she belonged. She said her father was a clergyman.
“A clergyman’s daughter!” cried Huggo bitterly, acquainting Rosalie only three months after his marriage of his marriage’s failure. “A clergyman’s daughter! That’s what they all say—those! Wasn’t I a fool to be caught out by that! Oh, wasn’t I a fool! If you want to know what she really was, she was a teashop waitress, in the city somewhere. If you want to know what her reverend father in the country was, is, he doesn’t live in the country; he lives in Holloway, and he doesn’t live in a rectory in Holloway, he lives in a baker’s shop. That’s what he is, a baker! That’s what I’ve done for myself, married a waitress! Yes, and then you, you and father, when she comes whining here and complains I ill-treat her and keep her without money, you two take her part and send her back to me with your championship and get me here to pijaw me about my duty to my pretty young wife! Well, now you know, now you know, and you can tell father what my pretty young wife is—how she deceived me. Deceived me! Now you know.”
Rosalie said, “Huggo, you deceived her.”
Huggo had been leaving and now very violently went. “That’s your tone, is it? I might have known! That’s all you can say, is it? To see me ruin my life and then reproach me! Ruin my life! It’s not I that’s ruined my life. It’s you. There, now I’ve told you! I can see things now. What sort of a chance have I ever had? What sort of a home have I ever had? Have I ever had a mother? When I was a kid did I ever have a mother like other kids have? I can see things now. A mother! I can’t ever remember a time when I wasn’t in the charge of some servant or governess or other. You said this afternoon before father that I didn’t love you. Did you ever teach me to love you? By God, I can’t remember it. By God, I can’t.”
Strike on!
Also that trick, touching a sum of money, upon his father. When he first made known his marriage, and it was obvious he must have his way and be set up to start in life, he had also, as he had said, the chance of a lucrative business. It was the kind of thing he liked. It was the kind of thing he was keen on. It was a motor-car business. There was a little syndicate that was putting a new car on the market. They’d got works, just outside London somewhere. They’d got show-rooms in the West End. And they’d got an absolutely first-class article. That chap Telfer was one of the directors; a first-class chap called Turner was another; they’d let him in for eight thousand pounds and he’d be absolutely set up for life and be pulling in an immense fortune in no time. You will, won’t you, father?