Amanda's people were so easy and intelligent and friendly, and Benham after his thirty hours of silence so freshly ready for human association, that in a very little while he could have imagined he had known and trusted this household for years. He had never met such people before, and yet there was something about them that seemed familiar—and then it occurred to him that something of their easy-going freedom was to be found in Russian novels. A photographic enlargement of somebody with a vegetarian expression of face and a special kind of slouch hat gave the atmosphere a flavour of Socialism, and a press and tools and stamps and pigments on an oak table in the corner suggested some such socialistic art as bookbinding. They were clearly 'advanced' people. And Amanda was tremendously important to them, she was their light, their pride, their most living thing. They focussed on her. When he talked to them all in general he talked to her in particular. He felt that some introduction of himself was due to these welcoming people. He tried to give it mixed with an itinerary and a sketch of his experiences. He praised the heather country and Harting Coombe and the Hartings. He told them that London had suddenly become intolerable—"In the spring sunshine."
"You live in London?" said Mrs. Wilder.
Yes. And he had wanted to think things out. In London one could do no thinking—
"Here we do nothing else," said Amanda.
"Except dog-fights," said the elder cousin.
"I thought I would just wander and think and sleep in the open air. Have you ever tried to sleep in the open air?"
"In the summer we all do," said the younger cousin. "Amanda makes us. We go out on to the little lawn at the back."
"You see Amanda has some friends at Limpsfield. And there they all go out and camp and sleep in the woods."
"Of course," reflected Mrs. Wilder, "in April it must be different."
"It IS different," said Benham with feeling; "the night comes five hours too soon. And it comes wet." He described his experiences and his flight to Shere and the kindly landlord and the cup of coffee. "And after that I thought with a vengeance."
"Do you write things?" asked Amanda abruptly, and it seemed to him with a note of hope.
"No. No, it was just a private puzzle. It was something I couldn't get straight."
"And you have got it straight?" asked Amanda.
"I think so."
"You were making up your mind about something?"
"Amanda DEAR!" cried her mother.
"Oh! I don't mind telling you," said Benham.
They seemed such unusual people that he was moved to unusual confidences. They had that effect one gets at times with strangers freshly met as though they were not really in the world. And there was something about Amanda that made him want to explain himself to her completely.
"What I wanted to think about was what I should do with my life."
"Haven't you any WORK—?" asked the elder cousin.
"None that I'm obliged to do."
"That's where a man has the advantage," said Amanda with the tone of profound reflection. "You can choose. And what are you going to do with your life?"
"Amanda," her mother protested, "really you mustn't!"
"I'm going round the world to think about it," Benham told her.
"I'd give my soul to travel," said Amanda.
She addressed her remark to the salad in front of her.
"But have you no ties?" asked Mrs. Wilder.
"None that hold me," said Benham. "I'm one of those unfortunates who needn't do anything at all. I'm independent. You see my riddles. East and west and north and south, it's all my way for the taking. There's not an indication."
"If I were you," said Amanda, and reflected. Then she half turned herself to him. "I should go first to India," she said, "and I should shoot, one, two, three, yes, three tigers. And then I would see Farukhabad Sikri—I was reading in a book about it yesterday—where the jungle grows in the palaces; and then I would go right up the Himalayas, and then, then I would have a walking tour in Japan, and then I would sail in a sailing ship down to Borneo and Java and set myself up as a Ranee—... And then I would think what I would do next."
"All alone, Amanda?" asked Mrs. Wilder.
"Only when I shoot tigers. You and mother should certainly come to Japan."
"But Mr. Benham perhaps doesn't intend to shoot tigers, Amanda?" said Amanda's mother.
"Not at once. My way will be a little different. I think I shall go first through Germany. And then down to Constantinople. And then I've some idea of getting across Asia Minor and Persia to India. That would take some time. One must ride."
"Asia Minor ought to be fun," said Amanda. "But I should prefer India because of the tigers. It would be so jolly to begin with the tigers right away."
"It is the towns and governments and peoples I want to see rather than tigers," said Benham. "Tigers if they are in the programme. But I want to find out about—other things."
"Don't you think there's something to be found out at home?" said the elder cousin, blushing very brightly and speaking with the effort of one who speaks for conscience' sake.
"Betty's a Socialist," Amanda said to Benham with a suspicion of apology.
"Well, we're all rather that," Mrs. Wilder protested.
"If you are free, if you are independent, then don't you owe something to the workers?" Betty went on, getting graver and redder with each word.
"It's just because of that," said Benham, "that I am going round the world."
3
He was as free with these odd people as if he had been talking to Prothero. They were—alert. And he had been alone and silent and full of thinking for two clear days. He tried to explain why he found Socialism at once obvious and inadequate....
Presently the supper things got themselves put away and the talk moved into a smaller room with several armchairs and a fire. Mrs. Wilder and the cousins and Amanda each smoked a cigarette as if it were symbolical, and they were joined by a grave grey-bearded man with a hyphenated name and slightly Socratic manner, dressed in a very blue linen shirt and collar, a very woolly mustard-coloured suit and loose tie, and manifestly devoted to one of those branches of exemplary domestic decoration that grow upon Socialist soil in England. He joined Betty in the opinion that the duty of a free and wealthy young man was to remain in England and give himself to democratic Socialism and the abolition of "profiteering." "Consider that chair," he said. But Benham had little feeling for the craftsmanship of chairs.
Under cross-examination Mr. Rathbone-Sanders became entangled and prophetic. It was evident he had never thought out his "democratic," he had rested in some vague tangle of idealism from which Benham now set himself with the zeal of a specialist to rout him. Such an argument sprang up as one meets with rarely beyond the happy undergraduate's range. Everybody lived in the discussion, even Amanda's mother listened visibly. Betty said she herself was certainly democratic and Mrs. Wilder had always thought herself to be so, and outside the circle round the fire Amanda hovered impatiently, not quite sure of her side as yet, but eager to come down with emphasis at the first flash of intimation.
She came down vehemently on Benham's.