The Research Magnificent | Page 5

wore his manifest imperfections turned
up about him like an overcoat in bitter wind. He was content to be inexplicable. His
thoughts led him to the conviction that this magnificent research could not be, any more
than any other research can be, a solitary enterprise, but he delayed expression; in a
mighty writing and stowing away of these papers he found a relief from the unpleasant
urgency to confess and explain himself prematurely. So that White, though he knew
Benham with the intimacy of an old schoolfellow who had renewed his friendship, and
had shared his last days and been a witness of his death, read the sheets of manuscript
often with surprise and with a sense of added elucidation.
And, being also a trained maker of books, White as he read was more and more distressed
that an accumulation so interesting should be so entirely unshaped for publication. "But
this will never make a book," said White with a note of personal grievance. His hasty
promise in their last moments together had bound him, it seemed, to a task he now found
impossible. He would have to work upon it tremendously; and even then he did not see
how it could be done.
This collection of papers was not a story, not an essay, not a confession, not a diary. It
was--nothing definable. It went into no conceivable covers. It was just, White decided, a
proliferation. A vast proliferation. It wanted even a title. There were signs that Benham
had intended to call it THE ARISTOCRATIC LIFE, and that he had tried at some other
time the title of AN ESSAY ON ARISTOCRACY. Moreover, it would seem that towards
the end he had been disposed to drop the word "aristocratic" altogether, and adopt some
such phrase as THE LARGER LIFE. Once it was LIFE SET FREE. He had fallen away
more and more from nearly everything that one associates with aristocracy--at the end
only its ideals of fearlessness and generosity remained.
Of all these titles THE ARISTOCRATIC LIFE seemed at first most like a clue to White.
Benham's erratic movements, his sudden impulses, his angers, his unaccountable
patiences, his journeys to strange places, and his lapses into what had seemed to be pure
adventurousness, could all be put into system with that. Before White had turned over
three pages of the great fascicle of manuscript that was called Book Two, he had found
the word "Bushido" written with a particularly flourishing capital letter and twice
repeated. "That was inevitable," said White with the comforting regret one feels for a
friend's banalities. "And it dates . . . [unreadable] this was early. . . ."
"Modern aristocracy, the new aristocracy," he read presently, "has still to be discovered
and understood. This is the necessary next step for mankind. As far as possible I will
discover and understand it, and as far as I know it I will be it. This is the essential
disposition of my mind. God knows I have appetites and sloths and habits and
blindnesses, but so far as it is in my power to release myself I will escape to this. . . ."

3
White sat far into the night and for several nights turning over papers and rummaging in
untidy drawers. Memories came back to him of his dead friend and pieced themselves
together with other memories and joined on to scraps in this writing. Bold yet convincing
guesses began to leap across the gaps. A story shaped itself. . . .
The story began with the schoolfellow he had known at Minchinghampton School.
Benham had come up from his father's preparatory school at Seagate. 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