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Updated: May 1, 2025
He decided to take the opportunity afforded by a visit of Sir Godfrey and Lady Marayne to the Blights, big iron people in the North of England of so austere a morality that even Benham was ignored by it. He announced his invasion in a little note to Mrs. Wilder.
For in these day-dreams he did seem to himself to be choosing among unlimited possibilities. Yet while he dreamt other influences were directing his movements. There were for instance his mother, Lady Marayne, who saw a very different London from what he did, and his mother Dame Nature, who cannot see London at all.
One never could be sure with Lady Marayne. It might be just that she did not understand the sort of man he was. And in that case ought he to maintain the smooth social surface unbroken by pretending as far as possible to be this kind of person, or ought he to make a sudden gap in it by telling his realities. He evaded the shooting question anyhow.
I have lived on scholarships since I was thirteen. And you see, Lady Marayne, Brixton is a poor hunting country." Lady Marayne felt she had unmasked Prothero almost indecently. Whatever happened there must be no pause. There must be no sign of a hitch. "But it's good at tennis," she said. "You DO play tennis, Mr. Prothero?" "I I gesticulate," said Prothero.
But Benham did not leave England again until he had had an encounter with Lady Marayne. The little lady came to her son in a state of extraordinary anger and distress. Never had she seemed quite so resolute nor quite so hopelessly dispersed and mixed.
It was all very well for him to be away when the child was coming, but now everything was different. Now he must stay by her. This time he argued no case. These issues he had settled for ever. Even an indignant dissertation from Lady Marayne, a dissertation that began with appeals and ended in taunts, did not move him. Behind these things now was India.
He scrambled in his mind for some remark that would avert this possibility. "Have you ever been in Russia?" he asked hastily. "It is the most wonderful country in Europe. I had an odd adventure near Kiev. During a pogrom." And he drowned the developing situation in a flood of description.... But it was not so easy to drown the little things that were presently thrown out by Lady Marayne.
Lady Marayne, still in flight from that pause, went off at a tangent. "Poff, my dear," she said, "I've had a diving-board put at the deep end of the pond." The remark hung unanswered for a moment. The transition had been too quick for Benham's state of mind. "Do you swim, Mr. Prothero?" the lady asked, though a moment before she had determined that she would never ask him a question again.
"Vaguely. But what has that to do with them?" "That man Morris." She stopped short, and Benham nodded for her to go on. "Her father," said Lady Marayne. "But who was Morris? Really, mother, I don't remember." "He was sentenced to seven years ten years I forget. He had done all sorts of dreadful things. He was a swindler.
He left it open for Lady Marayne and the venerable butler and Sir Godfrey and every one to suppose he just happened to be the sort of gentleman of leisure who doesn't shoot. He disavowed hunting, he made it appear he travelled when he travelled in directions other than Scotland. But the fourth question brought him to bay. He regarded his questioner with his small rufous eye.
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