第62章 CHAPTER THE FOURTH(7)

"No, you don't," said Benham presently, and again their career became erratic for a time as after a slight struggle he replaced the apron over the knees of the deposed driver.It had been furtively released.After that Benham kept an eye on it that might have been better devoted to the road.

The road went down in a series of curves and corners.Now and then there were pacific interludes when it might have been almost any road.Then, again, it became specifically an Italian mountain road.

Now and then only a row of all too infrequent granite stumps separated them from a sheer precipice.Some of the corners were miraculous, and once they had a wheel in a ditch for a time, they shaved the parapet of a bridge over a gorge and they drove a cyclist into a patch of maize, they narrowly missed a goat and jumped three gullies, thrice the horse stumbled and was jerked up in time, there were sickening moments, and withal they got down to Piedimulera unbroken and unspilt.It helped perhaps that the brake, with its handle like a barrel organ, had been screwed up before Benham took control.And when they were fairly on the level outside the town Benham suddenly pulled up, relinquished the driving into the proper hands and came into the carriage with Amanda.

"Safe now," he said compactly.

The driver appeared to be murmuring prayers very softly as he examined the brake.

Amanda was struggling with profound problems."Why didn't you drive down in the first place?" she asked."Without going back.""The landlord annoyed me," he said."I had to go back....Iwish I had kicked him.Hairy beast! If anything had happened, you see, he would have had his mean money.I couldn't bear to leave him.""And why didn't you let HIM drive?" She indicated the driver by a motion of the head.

"I was angry," said Benham."I was angry at the whole thing.""Still--"

"You see I think I did that because he might have jumped off if Ihadn't been up there to prevent him--I mean if we had had a smash.

I didn't want him to get out of it."

"But you too--"

"You see I was angry...."

"It's been as good as a switchback," said Amanda after reflection.

"But weren't you a little careless about me, Cheetah?""I never thought of you," said Benham, and then as if he felt that inadequate: "You see--I was so annoyed.It's odd at times how annoyed one gets.Suddenly when that horse shied I realized what a beastly business life was--as those brutes up there live it.I want to clear out the whole hot, dirty, little aimless nest of them....""No, I'm sure," he repeated after a pause as though he had been digesting something "I wasn't thinking about you at all."4

The suppression of his discovery that his honeymoon was not in the least the great journey of world exploration he had intended, but merely an impulsive pleasure hunt, was by no means the only obscured and repudiated conflict that disturbed the mind and broke out upon the behaviour of Benham.Beneath that issue he was keeping down a far more intimate conflict.It was in those lower, still less recognized depths that the volcanic fire arose and the earthquakes gathered strength.The Amanda he had loved, the Amanda of the gallant stride and fluttering skirt was with him still, she marched rejoicing over the passes, and a dearer Amanda, a soft whispering creature with dusky hair, who took possession of him when she chose, a soft creature who was nevertheless a fierce creature, was also interwoven with his life.But-- But there was now also a multitude of other Amandas who had this in common that they roused him to opposition, that they crossed his moods and jarred upon his spirit.

And particularly there was the Conquering Amanda not so much proud of her beauty as eager to test it, so that she was not unmindful of the stir she made in hotel lounges, nor of the magic that may shine memorably through the most commonplace incidental conversation.

This Amanda was only too manifestly pleased to think that she made peasant lovers discontented and hotel porters unmercenary; she let her light shine before men.We lovers, who had deemed our own subjugation a profound privilege, love not this further expansiveness of our lady's empire.But Benham knew that no aristocrat can be jealous; jealousy he held to be the vice of the hovel and farmstead and suburban villa, and at an enormous expenditure of will he ignored Amanda's waving flags and roving glances.So, too, he denied that Amanda who was sharp and shrewd about money matters, that flash of an Amanda who was greedy for presents and possessions, that restless Amanda who fretted at any cessation of excitement, and that darkly thoughtful Amanda whom chance observations and questions showed to be still considering an account she had to settle with Lady Marayne.He resisted these impressions, he shut them out of his mind, but still they worked into his thoughts, and presently he could find himself asking, even as he and she went in step striding side by side through the red-scarred pinewoods in the most perfect outward harmony, whether after all he was so happily mated as he declared himself to be a score of times a day, whether he wasn't catching glimpses of reality through a veil of delusion that grew thinner and thinner and might leave him disillusioned in the face of a relationship--Sometimes a man may be struck by a thought as though he had been struck in the face, and when the name of Mrs.Skelmersdale came into his head, he glanced at his wife by his side as if it were something that she might well have heard.Was this indeed the same thing as that? Wonderful, fresh as the day of Creation, clean as flame, yet the same! Was Amanda indeed the sister of Mrs.Skelmersdale--wrought of clean fire, but her sister?...