17

In November, after an adventure in the trader’s quarter of Kieff which had brought him within an inch of death, and because an emotional wave had swept across him and across his correspondence with Amanda, Benham went back suddenly to England and her.  He wanted very greatly to see her and also he wanted to make certain arrangements about his property.  He returned by way of Hungary, and sent telegrams like shouts of excitement whenever the train stopped for a sufficient time.  “Old Leopard, I am coming, I am coming,” he telegraphed, announcing his coming for the fourth time.  It was to be the briefest of visits, very passionate, the mutual refreshment of two noble lovers, and then he was returning to Russia again.

Amanda was at Chexington, and there he found her installed in the utmost dignity of expectant maternity.  Like many other people he had been a little disposed to regard the bearing of children as a common human experience; at Chexington he came to think of it as a rare and sacramental function.  Amanda had become very beautiful in quiet, grey, dove-like tones; her sun-touched, boy’s complexion had given way to a soft glow of the utmost loveliness, her brisk little neck that had always reminded him of the stalk of a flower was now softened and rounded; her eyes were tender, and she moved about the place in the manner of one who is vowed to a great sacrifice.  She dominated the scene, and Lady Marayne, with a certain astonishment in her eyes and a smouldering disposition to irony, was the half-sympathetic, half-resentful priestess of her daughter-in-law’s unparalleled immolation.  The motif of motherhood was everywhere, and at his bedside he found—­it had been put there for him by Amanda—­among much other exaltation of woman’s mission, that most wonderful of all philoprogenitive stories, Hudson’s Crystal age.

Everybody at Chexington had an air of being grouped about the impending fact.  An epidemic of internal troubles, it is true, kept Sir Godfrey in the depths of London society, but to make up for his absence Mrs. Morris had taken a little cottage down by the river and the Wilder girls were with her, both afire with fine and subtle feelings and both, it seemed, and more particularly Betty, prepared to be keenly critical of Benham’s attitude.

He did a little miss his cue in these exaltations, because he had returned in a rather different vein of exaltation.

In missing it he was assisted by Amanda herself, who had at moments an effect upon him of a priestess confidentially disrobed.  It was as if she put aside for him something official, something sincerely maintained, necessary, but at times a little irksome.  It was as if she was glad to take him into her confidence and unbend.  Within the pre-natal Amanda an impish Amanda still lingered.

There were aspects of Amanda that it was manifest dear Betty must never know. . . .