第52章 CHAPTER THE THIRD(8)

"One has to know SOMETHING of the people to whom one commits oneself, surely.""They are decent people; they are well-behaved people.""Oh!--I'll behave well.Don't think I'll disgrace your casual acquaintances.But who they are, what they are, I WILL know...."On that point Lady Marayne was to score beyond her utmost expectations.

"Come round," she said over the telephone, two mornings later.

"I've something to tell you."

She was so triumphant that she was sorry for him.When it came to telling him, she failed from her fierceness.

"Poff, my little son," she said, "I'm so sorry I hardly know how to tell you.Poff, I'm sorry.I have to tell you--and it's utterly beastly.""But what?" he asked.

"These people are dreadful people."

"But how?"

"You've heard of the great Kent and Eastern Bank smash and the Marlborough Building Society frauds eight or nine years ago?""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.And when he went out of the dock into the waiting-room-- He had a signet ring with prussic acid in it--...""I remember now," he said.

A silence fell between them.

Benham stood quite motionless on the hearthrug and stared very hard at the little volume of Henley's poetry that lay upon the table.

He cleared his throat presently.

"You can't go and see them then," he said."After all--since I am going abroad so soon--...It doesn't so very much matter."10

To Benham it did not seem to be of the slightest importance that Amanda's father was a convicted swindler who had committed suicide.

Never was a resolved and conscious aristocrat so free from the hereditary delusion.Good parents, he was convinced, are only an advantage in so far as they have made you good stuff, and bad parents are no discredit to a son or daughter of good quality.

Conceivably he had a bias against too close an examination of origins, and he held that the honour of the children should atone for the sins of the fathers and the questionable achievements of any intervening testator.Not half a dozen rich and established families in all England could stand even the most conventional inquiry into the foundations of their pride, and only a universal amnesty could prevent ridiculous distinctions.But he brought no accusation of inconsistency agt of you I knew that...."They embraced--alertly furtive.

Then they stood a little apart.Some one was coming towards them.

Amanda's bearing changed swiftly.She put up her little face to his, confidently and intimately.

"Don't TELL any one," she whispered eagerly shaking his arm to emphasize her words."Don't tell any one--not yet.Not for a few days...."She pushed him from her quickly as the shadowy form of Betty appeared in a little path between the artichokes and raspberry canes.

"Listening to the nightingales?" cried Betty.

"Yes, aren't they?" said Amanda inconsecutively.

"That's our very own nightingale!" cried Betty advancing."Do you hear it, Mr.Benham? No, not that one.That is a quite inferior bird that performs in the vicarage trees...."11

When a man has found and won his mate then the best traditions demainst his mother.She looked at things with a lighter logic and a kind of genius for the acceptance of superficial values.She was condoned and forgiven, a rescued lamb, re-established, notoriously bright and nice, and the Morrises were damned.That was their status, exclusion, damnation, as fixed as colour in Georgia or caste in Bengal.But if his mother's mind worked in that way there was no reason why his should.So far as he was concerned, he told himself, it did not matter whether Amanda was the daughter of a swindler or the daughter of a god.He had no doubt that she herself had the spirit and quality of divinity.He had seen it.

So there was nothing for it in the failure of his mother's civilities but to increase his own.He would go down to Harting and take his leave of these amiable outcasts himself.With a certain effusion.He would do this soon because he was now within sight of the beginning of his world tour.He had made his plans and prepared most of his equipment.Little remained to do but the release of Merkle, the wrappering and locking up of Finacue Street, which could await him indefinitely, and the buying of tickets.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.He parted from his mother on Friday afternoon; she was already, he perceived, a little reconciled to his project of going abroad; and contrived his arrival at South Harting for that sunset hour which was for his imagination the natural halo of Amanda.

"I'm going round the world," he told them simply."I may be away for two years, and I thought I would like to see you all again before I started."That was quite the way they did things.

The supper-party included Mr.Rathbone-Sanders, who displayed a curious tendency to drift in between Benham and Amanda, a literary youth with a Byronic visage, very dark curly hair, and a number of extraordinarily mature chins, a girl-friend of Betty's who had cycled down from London, and who it appeared maintained herself at large in London by drawing for advertisements, and a silent colourless friend of Mr.Rathbone-Sanders.The talk lit by Amanda's enthusiasm circled actively round Benham's expedition.It was clear that the idea of giving some years to thinking out one's possible work in the world was for some reason that remained obscure highly irritating to both Mr.Rathbone-Sanders and the Byronic youth.