"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 I
did 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.