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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage, by H. G. Wells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Marriage
+
+Author: H. G. Wells
+
+Release Date: February 20, 2011 [EBook #35338]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eleni Christofaki, Juliet Sutherland and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  |=================================================|
+  | MR. WELLS HAS ALSO WRITTEN                      |
+  | The following Novels:                           |
+  |                                                 |
+  | TONO BUNGAY                                     |
+  | LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM                           |
+  | KIPPS     ANN VERONICA                          |
+  | THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY                        |
+  | and THE NEW MACHIAVELLI                         |
+  |                                                 |
+  | Numerous short stories now published            |
+  | in a single volume under the title.             |
+  |     THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND                    |
+  |                                                 |
+  | The following fantastic Romances:               |
+  |                                                 |
+  | THE TIME MACHINE                                |
+  | THE WONDERFUL VISIT                             |
+  | THE INVISIBLE MAN                               |
+  | THE WAR OF THE WORLDS                           |
+  | THE SEA LADY                                    |
+  | IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET                        |
+  | THE SLEEPER AWAKES                              |
+  | THE FOOD OF THE GODS                            |
+  | THE WAR IN THE AIR                              |
+  | THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON                       |
+  | and THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU                 |
+  |                                                 |
+  | And a series of books upon social and political |
+  | questions of which                              |
+  |                                                 |
+  | A MODERN UTOPIA                                 |
+  | FIRST AND LAST THINGS (RELIGION)                |
+  | NEW WORLDS FOR OLD                              |
+  | THE FUTURE IN AMERICA                           |
+  | and ANTICIPATIONS                               |
+  | are the chief.                                  |
+  |=================================================|
+
+
+
+
+  MARRIAGE
+
+  BY
+
+  H. G. WELLS
+
+  "And the Poor Dears haven't the shadow of a doubt they will live
+  happily ever afterwards."--_From a Private Letter_.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  NEW YORK
+  DUFFIELD & COMPANY
+  1912
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1912
+  DUFFIELD & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+  _FRATERNALLY
+       TO
+  ARNOLD BENNETT_
+
+
+
+
+    BOOK THE FIRST
+    MARJORIE MARRIES
+
+
+
+
+MARRIAGE
+
+CHAPTER THE FIRST
+
+A DAY WITH THE POPES
+
+
+§ 1
+
+An extremely pretty girl occupied a second-class compartment in one of
+those trains which percolate through the rural tranquillities of middle
+England from Ganford in Oxfordshire to Rumbold Junction in Kent. She was
+going to join her family at Buryhamstreet after a visit to some
+Gloucestershire friends. Her father, Mr. Pope, once a leader in the
+coach-building world and now by retirement a gentleman, had taken the
+Buryhamstreet vicarage furnished for two months (beginning on the
+fifteenth of July) at his maximum summer rental of seven guineas a week.
+His daughter was on her way to this retreat.
+
+At first she had been an animated traveller, erect and keenly regardful
+of every detail upon the platforms of the stations at which her
+conveyance lingered, but the tedium of the journey and the warmth of the
+sunny afternoon had relaxed her pose by imperceptible degrees, and she
+sat now comfortably in the corner, with her neat toes upon the seat
+before her, ready to drop them primly at the first sign of a
+fellow-traveller. Her expression lapsed more and more towards an almost
+somnolent reverie. She wished she had not taken a second-class ticket,
+because then she might have afforded a cup of tea at Reading, and so
+fortified herself against this insinuating indolence.
+
+She was travelling second class, instead of third as she ought to have
+done, through one of those lapses so inevitable to young people in her
+position. The two Carmel boys and a cousin, two greyhounds and a chow
+had come to see her off; they had made a brilliant and prosperous group
+on the platform and extorted the manifest admiration of two youthful
+porters, and it had been altogether too much for Marjorie Pope to admit
+it was the family custom--except when her father's nerves had to be
+considered--to go third class. So she had made a hasty calculation--she
+knew her balance to a penny because of the recent tipping--and found it
+would just run to it. Fourpence remained,--and there would be a porter
+at Buryhamstreet!
+
+Her mother had said: "You will have Ample." Well, opinions of amplitude
+vary. With numerous details fresh in her mind, Marjorie decided it would
+be wiser to avoid financial discussion during her first few days at
+Buryhamstreet.
+
+There was much in Marjorie's equipment in the key of travelling second
+class at the sacrifice of afternoon tea. There was, for example, a
+certain quiet goodness of style about her clothes, though the skirt
+betrayed age, and an entire absence of style about her luggage, which
+was all in the compartment with her, and which consisted of a distended
+hold-all, a very good tennis racquet in a stretcher, a portmanteau of
+cheap white basketwork held together by straps, and a very new,
+expensive-looking and meretricious dressing-bag of imitation morocco,
+which had been one of her chief financial errors at Oxbridge. The
+collection was eloquent indeed of incompatible standards....
+
+Marjorie had a chin that was small in size if resolute in form, and a
+mouth that was not noticeably soft and weak because it was conspicuously
+soft and pretty. Her nose was delicately aquiline and very subtly and
+finely modelled, and she looked out upon the world with steady,
+grey-blue eyes beneath broad, level brows that contradicted in a large
+measure the hint of weakness below. She had an abundance of copper-red
+hair, which flowed back very prettily from her broad, low forehead and
+over her delicate ears, and she had that warm-tinted clear skin that
+goes so well with reddish hair. She had a very dainty neck, and the long
+slender lines of her body were full of the promise of a riper beauty.
+She had the good open shoulders of a tennis-player and a swimmer. Some
+day she was to be a tall, ruddy, beautiful woman. She wore simple
+clothes of silvery grey and soft green, and about her waist was a belt
+of grey leather in which there now wilted two creamy-petalled roses.
+
+That was the visible Marjorie. Somewhere out of time and space was an
+invisible Marjorie who looked out on the world with those steady eyes,
+and smiled or drooped with the soft red lips, and dreamt, and wondered,
+and desired.
+
+
+§ 2
+
+What a queer thing the invisible human being would appear if, by some
+discovery as yet inconceivable, some spiritual X-ray photography, we
+could flash it into sight! Long ago I read a book called "Soul Shapes"
+that was full of ingenious ideas, but I doubt very much if the thing so
+revealed would have any shape, any abiding solid outline at all. It is
+something more fluctuating and discursive than that--at any rate, for
+every one young enough not to have set and hardened. Things come into
+it and become it, things drift out of it and cease to be it, things turn
+upside down in it and change and colour and dissolve, and grow and eddy
+about and blend into each other. One might figure it, I suppose, as a
+preposterous jumble animated by a will; a floundering disconnectedness
+through which an old hump of impulse rises and thrusts unaccountably; a
+river beast of purpose wallowing in a back eddy of mud and weeds and
+floating objects and creatures drowned. Now the sunshine of gladness
+makes it all vivid, now it is sombre and grimly insistent under the sky
+of some darkling mood, now an emotional gale sweeps across it and it is
+one confused agitation....
+
+And surely these invisible selves of men were never so jumbled, so
+crowded, complicated, and stirred about as they are at the present time.
+Once I am told they had a sort of order, were sphered in religious
+beliefs, crystal clear, were arranged in a cosmogony that fitted them as
+hand fits glove, were separated by definite standards of right and wrong
+which presented life as planned in all its essential aspects from the
+cradle to the grave. Things are so no longer. That sphere is broken for
+most of us; even if it is tied about and mended again, it is burst like
+a seed case; things have fallen out and things have fallen in....
+
+Can I convey in any measure how it was with Marjorie?
+
+What was her religion?
+
+In college forms and returns, and suchlike documents, she would describe
+herself as "Church of England." She had been baptized according to the
+usages of that body, but she had hitherto evaded confirmation into it,
+and although it is a large, wealthy, and powerful organization with
+many minds to serve it, it had never succeeded in getting into her quick
+and apprehensive intelligence any lucid and persuasive conception of
+what it considered God and the universe were up to with her. It had
+failed to catch her attention and state itself to her. A number of
+humorous and other writers and the general trend of talk around her, and
+perhaps her own shrewd little observation of superficial things, had, on
+the other hand, created a fairly definite belief in her that it wasn't
+as a matter of fact up to very much at all, that what it said wasn't
+said with that absolute honesty which is a logical necessity in every
+religious authority, and that its hierarchy had all sorts of political
+and social considerations confusing its treatment of her immortal
+soul....
+
+Marjorie followed her father in abstaining from church. He too professed
+himself "Church of England," but he was, if we are to set aside merely
+superficial classifications, an irascible atheist with a respect for
+usage and Good Taste, and an abject fear of the disapproval of other
+gentlemen of his class. For the rest he secretly disliked clergymen on
+account of the peculiarity of their collars, and a certain influence
+they had with women. When Marjorie at the age of fourteen had displayed
+a hankering after ecclesiastical ceremony and emotional religion, he had
+declared: "We don't want any of _that_ nonsense," and sent her into the
+country to a farm where there were young calves and a bottle-fed lamb
+and kittens. At times her mother went to church and displayed
+considerable orthodoxy and punctilio, at times the good lady didn't, and
+at times she thought in a broad-minded way that there was a Lot in
+Christian Science, and subjected herself to the ministrations of an
+American named Silas Root. But his ministrations were too expensive for
+continuous use, and so the old faith did not lose its hold upon the
+family altogether.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At school Marjorie had been taught what I may best describe as Muffled
+Christianity--a temperate and discreet system designed primarily not to
+irritate parents, in which the painful symbol of the crucifixion and the
+riddle of what Salvation was to save her from, and, indeed, the coarser
+aspects of religion generally, were entirely subordinate to images of
+amiable perambulations, and a rich mist of finer feelings. She had been
+shielded, not only from arguments against her religion, but from
+arguments for it--the two things go together--and I do not think it was
+particularly her fault if she was now growing up like the great majority
+of respectable English people, with her religious faculty as it were,
+artificially faded, and an acquired disposition to regard any
+speculation of why she was, and whence and whither, as rather foolish,
+not very important, and in the very worst possible taste.
+
+And so, the crystal globe being broken which once held souls together,
+you may expect to find her a little dispersed and inconsistent in her
+motives, and with none of that assurance a simpler age possessed of the
+exact specification of goodness or badness, the exact delimitation of
+right and wrong. Indeed, she did not live in a world of right and wrong,
+or anything so stern; "horrid" and "jolly" had replaced these archaic
+orientations. In a world where a mercantile gentility has conquered
+passion and God is neither blasphemed nor adored, there necessarily
+arises this generation of young people, a little perplexed, indeed, and
+with a sense of something missing, but feeling their way inevitably at
+last to the great releasing question, "Then why shouldn't we have a
+good time?"
+
+Yet there was something in Marjorie, as in most human beings, that
+demanded some general idea, some aim, to hold her life together. A girl
+upon the borders of her set at college was fond of the phrase "living
+for the moment," and Marjorie associated with it the speaker's lax
+mouth, sloe-like eyes, soft, quick-flushing, boneless face, and a habit
+of squawking and bouncing in a forced and graceless manner. Marjorie's
+natural disposition was to deal with life in a steadier spirit than
+that. Yet all sorts of powers and forces were at work in her, some
+exalted, some elvish, some vulgar, some subtle. She felt keenly and
+desired strongly, and in effect she came perhaps nearer the realization
+of that offending phrase than its original exponent. She had a clean
+intensity of feeling that made her delight in a thousand various things,
+in sunlight and textures, and the vividly quick acts of animals, in
+landscape, and the beauty of other girls, in wit, and people's voices,
+and good strong reasoning, and the desire and skill of art. She had a
+clear, rapid memory that made her excel perhaps a little too easily at
+school and college, an eagerness of sympathetic interest that won people
+very quickly and led to disappointments, and a very strong sense of the
+primary importance of Miss Marjorie Pope in the world. And when any very
+definite dream of what she would like to be and what she would like to
+do, such as being the principal of a ladies' college, or the first woman
+member of Parliament, or the wife of a barbaric chief in Borneo, or a
+great explorer, or the wife of a millionaire and a great social leader,
+or George Sand, or Saint Teresa, had had possession of her imagination
+for a few weeks, an entirely contrasted and equally attractive dream
+would presently arise beside it and compete with it and replace it. It
+wasn't so much that she turned against the old one as that she was
+attracted by the new, and she forgot the old dream rather than abandoned
+it, simply because she was only one person, and hadn't therefore the
+possibility of realizing both.
+
+In certain types Marjorie's impressionability aroused a passion of
+proselytism. People of the most diverse kinds sought to influence her,
+and they invariably did so. Quite a number of people, including her
+mother and the principal of her college, believed themselves to be the
+leading influence in her life. And this was particularly the case with
+her aunt Plessington. Her aunt Plessington was devoted to social and
+political work of an austere and aggressive sort (in which Mr.
+Plessington participated); she was childless, and had a Movement of her
+own, the Good Habits Movement, a progressive movement of the utmost
+scope and benevolence which aimed at extensive interferences with the
+food and domestic intimacies of the more defenceless lower classes by
+means ultimately of legislation, and she had Marjorie up to see her,
+took her for long walks while she influenced with earnestness and
+vigour, and at times had an air of bequeathing her mantle, movement and
+everything, quite definitely to her "little Madge." She spoke of
+training her niece to succeed her, and bought all the novels of Mrs.
+Humphry Ward for her as they appeared, in the hope of quickening in her
+that flame of politico-social ambition, that insatiable craving for
+dinner-parties with important guests, which is so distinctive of the
+more influential variety of English womanhood. It was due rather to her
+own habit of monologue than to any reserve on the part of Marjorie that
+she entertained the belief that her niece was entirely acquiescent in
+these projects. They went into Marjorie's mind and passed. For nearly a
+week, it is true, she had dramatized herself as the angel and
+inspiration of some great modern statesman, but this had been ousted by
+a far more insistent dream, begotten by a picture she had seen in some
+exhibition, of a life of careless savagery, whose central and constantly
+recurrent incident was the riding of barebacked horses out of
+deep-shadowed forest into a foamy sunlit sea--in a costume that would
+certainly have struck Aunt Plessington as a mistake.
+
+If you could have seen Marjorie in her railway compartment, with the
+sunshine, sunshine mottled by the dirty window, tangled in her hair and
+creeping to and fro over her face as the train followed the curves of
+the line, you would certainly have agreed with me that she was pretty,
+and you might even have thought her beautiful. But it was necessary to
+fall in love with Marjorie before you could find her absolutely
+beautiful. You might have speculated just what business was going on
+behind those drowsily thoughtful eyes. If you are--as people
+say--"Victorian," you might even have whispered "Day Dreams," at the
+sight of her....
+
+She _was_ dreaming, and in a sense she was thinking of beautiful things.
+But only mediately. She was thinking how very much she would enjoy
+spending freely and vigorously, quite a considerable amount of
+money,--heaps of money.
+
+You see, the Carmels, with whom she had just been staying, were
+shockingly well off. They had two motor cars with them in the country,
+and the boys had the use of the second one as though it was just an old
+bicycle. Marjorie had had a cheap white dinner-dress, made the year
+before by a Chelsea French girl, a happy find of her mother's, and it
+was shapely and simple and not at all bad, and she had worn her green
+beads and her Egyptian necklace of jade; but Kitty Carmel and her sister
+had had a new costume nearly every night, and pretty bracelets, and
+rubies, big pearls, and woven gold, and half a score of delightful and
+precious things for neck and hair. Everything in the place was bright
+and good and abundant, the servants were easy and well-mannered, without
+a trace of hurry or resentment, and one didn't have to be sharp about
+the eggs and things at breakfast in the morning, or go without. All
+through the day, and even when they had gone to bathe from the smart
+little white and green shed on the upper lake, Marjorie had been made to
+feel the insufficiency of her equipment. Kitty Carmel, being twenty-one,
+possessed her own cheque-book and had accounts running at half a dozen
+West-end shops; and both sisters had furnished their own rooms according
+to their taste, with a sense of obvious effect that had set Marjorie
+speculating just how a room might be done by a girl with a real eye for
+colour and a real brain behind it....
+
+The train slowed down for the seventeenth time. Marjorie looked up and
+read "Buryhamstreet."
+
+
+§ 3
+
+Her reverie vanished, and by a complex but almost instantaneous movement
+she had her basket off the rack and the carriage door open. She became
+teeming anticipations. There, advancing in a string, were Daffy, her
+elder sister, Theodore, her younger brother, and the dog Toupee. Sydney
+and Rom hadn't come. Daffy was not copper red like her sister, but
+really quite coarsely red-haired; she was bigger than Marjorie, and with
+irregular teeth instead of Marjorie's neat row; she confessed them in a
+broad simple smile of welcome. Theodore was hatless, rustily
+fuzzy-headed, and now a wealth of quasi-humorous gesture. The dog Toupee
+was straining at a leash, and doing its best in a yapping, confused
+manner, to welcome the wrong people by getting its lead round their
+legs.
+
+"Toupee!" cried Marjorie, waving the basket. "Toupee!"
+
+They all called it Toupee because it was like one, but the name was
+forbidden in her father's hearing. Her father had decided that the
+proper name for a family dog in England is Towser, and did his utmost to
+suppress a sobriquet that was at once unprecedented and not in the best
+possible taste. Which was why the whole family, with the exception of
+Mrs. Pope, of course, stuck to Toupee....
+
+Marjorie flashed a second's contrast with the Carmel splendours.
+
+"Hullo, old Daffy. What's it like?" she asked, handing out the basket as
+her sister came up.
+
+"It's a lark," said Daffy. "Where's the dressing-bag?"
+
+"Thoddy," said Marjorie, following up the dressing-bag with the
+hold-all. "Lend a hand."
+
+"Stow it, Toupee," said Theodore, and caught the hold-all in time.
+
+In another moment Marjorie was out of the train, had done the swift
+kissing proper to the occasion, and rolled a hand over Toupee's
+head--Toupee, who, after a passionate lunge at a particularly savoury
+drover from the next compartment, was now frantically trying to indicate
+that Marjorie was the one human being he had ever cared for. Brother and
+sister were both sketching out the state of affairs at Buryhamstreet
+Vicarage in rapid competitive jerks, each eager to tell things
+first--and the whole party moved confusedly towards the station exit.
+Things pelted into Marjorie's mind.
+
+"We've got an old donkey-cart. I thought we shouldn't get here--ever....
+Madge, we can go up the church tower whenever we like, only old Daffy
+won't let me shin up the flagstaff. It's _perfectly_ safe--you couldn't
+fall off if you tried.... Had positively to get out at the level
+crossing and _pull_ him over.... There's a sort of moat in the
+garden.... You never saw such furniture, Madge! And the study! It's hung
+with texts, and stuffed with books about the Scarlet Woman.... Piano's
+rather good, it's a Broadwood.... The Dad's got a war on about the
+tennis net. Oh, frightful! You'll see. It won't keep up. He's had a
+letter kept waiting by the _Times_ for a fortnight, and it's a terror at
+breakfast. Says the motor people have used influence to silence him.
+Says that's a game two can play at.... Old Sid got herself upset
+stuffing windfalls. Rather a sell for old Sid, considering how refined
+she's getting...."
+
+There was a brief lull as the party got into the waiting governess cart.
+Toupee, after a preliminary refusal to enter, made a determined attempt
+on the best seat, from which he would be able to bark in a persistent,
+official manner at anything that passed. That suppressed, and Theodore's
+proposal to drive refused, they were able to start, and attention was
+concentrated upon Daffy's negotiation of the station approach. Marjorie
+turned on her brother with a smile of warm affection.
+
+"How are you, old Theodore?"
+
+"I'm all right, old Madge."
+
+"Mummy?"
+
+"Every one's all right," said Theodore; "if it wasn't for that damned
+infernal net----"
+
+"Ssssh!" cried both sisters together.
+
+"_He_ says it," said Theodore.
+
+Both sisters conveyed a grave and relentless disapproval.
+
+"Pretty bit of road," said Marjorie. "I like that little house at the
+corner."
+
+A pause and the eyes of the sisters met.
+
+"_He's_ here," said Daffy.
+
+Marjorie affected ignorance.
+
+"Who's here?"
+
+"_Il vostro senior Miraculoso_."
+
+"Just as though a fellow couldn't understand your kiddy little Italian,"
+said Theodore, pulling Toupee's ear.
+
+"Oh well, I thought he might be," said Marjorie, regardless of her
+brother.
+
+"Oh!" said Daffy. "I didn't know----"
+
+Both sisters looked at each other, and then both glanced at Theodore. He
+met Marjorie's eyes with a grimace of profound solemnity.
+
+"Little brothers," he said, "shouldn't know. Just as though they didn't!
+Rot! But let's change the subject, my dears, all the same. Lemme see.
+There are a new sort of flea on Toupee, Madge, that he gets from the
+hens."
+
+"_Is_ a new sort," corrected Daffy. "He's horrider than ever, Madge. He
+leaves his soap in soak now to make us think he has used it. This is the
+village High Street. Isn't it jolly?"
+
+"Corners don't _bite_ people," said Theodore, with a critical eye to the
+driving.
+
+Marjorie surveyed the High Street, while Daffy devoted a few moments to
+Theodore.
+
+The particular success of the village was its brace of chestnut trees
+which, with that noble disregard of triteness which is one of the charms
+of villages the whole world over, shadowed the village smithy. On either
+side of the roadway between it and the paths was a careless width of
+vivid grass protected by white posts, which gave way to admit a generous
+access on either hand to a jolly public house, leering over red blinds,
+and swinging a painted sign against its competitor. Several of the
+cottages had real thatch and most had porches; they had creepers nailed
+to their faces, and their gardens, crowded now with flowers, marigolds,
+begonias, snapdragon, delphiniums, white foxgloves, and monkshood,
+seemed almost too good to be true. The doctor's house was pleasantly
+Georgian, and the village shop, which was also a post and telegraph
+office, lay back with a slight air of repletion, keeping its bulging
+double shop-windows wide open in a manifest attempt not to fall asleep.
+Two score of shock-headed boys and pinafored girls were drilling upon a
+bald space of ground before the village school, and near by, the
+national emotion at the ever-memorable Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria
+had evoked an artistic drinking-fountain of grey stone. Beyond the
+subsequent green--there were the correctest geese thereon--the village
+narrowed almost to a normal road again, and then, recalling itself with
+a start, lifted a little to the churchyard wall about the grey and ample
+church. "It's just like all the villages that ever were," said Marjorie,
+and gave a cry of delight when Daffy, pointing to the white gate between
+two elm trees that led to the vicarage, remarked: "That's us."
+
+In confirmation of which statement, Sydney and Rom, the two sisters next
+in succession to Marjorie, and with a strong tendency to be twins in
+spite of the year between them, appeared in a state of vociferous
+incivility opening the way for the donkey-carriage. Sydney was Sydney,
+and Rom was just short for Romola--one of her mother's favourite
+heroines in fiction.
+
+"Old Madge," they said; and then throwing respect to the winds, "Old
+Gargoo!" which was Marjorie's forbidden nickname, and short for gargoyle
+(though surely only Victorian Gothic, ever produced a gargoyle that had
+the remotest right to be associated with the neat brightness of
+Marjorie's face).
+
+She overlooked the offence, and the pseudo-twins boarded the cart from
+behind, whereupon the already overburthened donkey, being old and in a
+manner wise, quickened his pace for the house to get the whole thing
+over.
+
+"It's really an avenue," said Daffy; but Marjorie, with her mind strung
+up to the Carmel standards, couldn't agree. It was like calling a row of
+boy-scouts Potsdam grenadiers. The trees were at irregular distances, of
+various ages, and mostly on one side. Still it was a shady, pleasant
+approach.
+
+And the vicarage was truly very interesting and amusing. To these
+Londoners accustomed to live in a state of compression, elbows
+practically touching, in a tall, narrow fore-and-aft stucco house, all
+window and staircase, in a despondent Brompton square, there was an
+effect of maundering freedom about the place, of enlargement almost to
+the pitch of adventure and sunlight to the pitch of intoxication. The
+house itself was long and low, as if a London house holidaying in the
+country had flung itself asprawl; it had two disconnected and roomy
+staircases, and when it had exhausted itself completely as a house, it
+turned to the right and began again as rambling, empty stables, coach
+house, cart sheds, men's bedrooms up ladders, and outhouses of the most
+various kinds. On one hand was a neglected orchard, in the front of the
+house was a bald, worried-looking lawn area capable of simultaneous
+tennis and croquet, and at the other side a copious and confused
+vegetable and flower garden full of roses, honesty, hollyhocks, and
+suchlike herbaceous biennials and perennials, lapsed at last into
+shrubbery, where a sickle-shaped, weedy lagoon of uncertain aims, which
+had evidently, as a rustic bridge and a weeping willow confessed,
+aspired to be an "ornamental water," declined at last to ducks. And
+there was access to the church, and the key of the church tower, and one
+went across the corner of the lawn, and by a little iron gate into the
+churchyard to decipher inscriptions, as if the tombs of all
+Buryhamstreet were no more than a part of the accommodation relinquished
+by the vicar's household.
+
+Marjorie was hurried over the chief points of all this at a breakneck
+pace by Sydney and Rom, and when Sydney was called away to the horrors
+of practice--for Sydney in spite of considerable reluctance was destined
+by her father to be "the musical one"--Rom developed a copious
+affection, due apparently to some occult ćsthetic influence in
+Marjorie's silvery-grey and green, and led her into the unlocked vestry,
+and there prayed in a whisper that she might be given "one good hug,
+just _one_"--and so they came out with their arms about each other very
+affectionately to visit the lagoon again. And then Rom remembered that
+Marjorie hadn't seen either the walnut-tree in the orchard, or the hen
+with nine chicks....
+
+Somewhere among all these interests came tea and Mrs. Pope.
+
+Mrs. Pope kissed her daughter with an air of having really wanted to
+kiss her half an hour ago, but of having been distracted since. She was
+a fine-featured, anxious-looking little woman, with a close resemblance
+to all her children, in spite of the fact that they were markedly
+dissimilar one to the other, except only that they took their ruddy
+colourings from their father. She was dressed in a neat blue dress that
+had perhaps been hurriedly chosen, and her method of doing her hair was
+a manifest compromise between duty and pleasure. She embarked at once
+upon an exposition of the bedroom arrangements, which evidently involved
+difficult issues. Marjorie was to share a room with Daffy--that was the
+gist of it--as the only other available apartment, originally promised
+to Marjorie, had been secured by Mr. Pope for what he called his
+"matutinal ablutions, _videlicet_ tub."
+
+"Then, when your Aunt Plessington comes, you won't have to move," said
+Mrs. Pope with an air of a special concession. "Your father's looking
+forward to seeing you, but he mustn't be disturbed just yet. He's in the
+vicar's study. He's had his tea in there. He's writing a letter to the
+_Times_ answering something they said in a leader, and also a private
+note calling attention to their delay in printing his previous
+communication, and he wants to be delicately ironical without being in
+any way offensive. He wants to hint without actually threatening that
+very probably he will go over to the _Spectator_ altogether if they do
+not become more attentive. The _Times_ used to print his letters
+punctually, but latterly these automobile people seem to have got hold
+of it.... He has the window on the lawn open, so that I think, perhaps,
+we'd better not stay out here--for fear our voices might disturb him."
+
+"Better get right round the other side of the church," said Daffy.
+
+"He'd hear far less of us if we went indoors," said Mrs. Pope.
+
+
+§ 4
+
+The vicarage seemed tight packed with human interest for Marjorie and
+her mother and sisters. Going over houses is one of the amusements
+proper to her sex, and she and all three sisters and her mother, as soon
+as they had finished an inaudible tea, went to see the bedroom she was
+to share with Daffy, and then examined, carefully and in order, the
+furniture and decoration of the other bedrooms, went through the rooms
+downstairs, always excepting and avoiding very carefully and closing as
+many doors as possible on, and hushing their voices whenever they
+approached the study in which her father was being delicately ironical
+without being offensive to the _Times_. None of them had seen any of the
+vicarage people at all--Mr. Pope had come on a bicycle and managed all
+the negotiations--and it was curious to speculate about the individuals
+whose personalities pervaded the worn and faded furnishings of the
+place.
+
+The Popes' keen-eyed inspection came at times, I think, dangerously near
+prying. The ideals of decoration and interests of the vanished family
+were so absolutely dissimilar to the London standards as to arouse a
+sort of astonished wonder in their minds. Some of the things they
+decided were perfectly hideous, some quaint, some were simply and weakly
+silly. Everything was different from Hartstone Square. Daffy was perhaps
+more inclined to contempt, and Mrs. Pope to refined amusement and witty
+appreciation than Marjorie. Marjorie felt there was something in these
+people that she didn't begin to understand, she needed some missing
+clue that would unlock the secret of their confused peculiarity. She was
+one of those people who have an almost instinctive turn for decoration
+in costume and furniture; she had already had a taste of how to do
+things in arranging her rooms at Bennett College, Oxbridge, where also
+she was in great demand among the richer girls as an adviser. She knew
+what it was to try and fail as well as to try and succeed, and these
+people, she felt, hadn't tried for anything she comprehended. She
+couldn't quite see why it was that there was at the same time an attempt
+at ornament and a disregard of beauty, she couldn't quite do as her
+mother did and dismiss it as an absurdity and have done with it. She
+couldn't understand, too, why everything should be as if it were faded
+and weakened from something originally bright and clear.
+
+All the rooms were thick with queer little objects that indicated a
+quite beaver-like industry in the production of "work." There were
+embroidered covers for nearly every article on the wash-hand-stand, and
+mats of wool and crochet wherever anything stood on anything; there were
+"tidies" everywhere, and odd little brackets covered with gilded and
+varnished fir cones and bearing framed photographs and little jars and
+all sorts of colourless, dusty little objects, and everywhere on the
+walls tacks sustained crossed fans with badly painted flowers or
+transfer pictures. There was a jar on the bedroom mantel covered with
+varnished postage stamps and containing grey-haired dried grasses. There
+seemed to be a moral element in all this, for in the room Sydney shared
+with Rom there was a decorative piece of lettering which declared that--
+
+    "Something attempted, something done,
+    Has earned a night's repose."
+
+There were a great number of texts that set Marjorie's mind stirring
+dimly with intimations of a missed significance. Over her own bed,
+within the lattice of an Oxford frame, was the photograph of a picture
+of an extremely composed young woman in a trailing robe, clinging to the
+Rock of Ages in the midst of histrionically aggressive waves, and she
+had a feeling, rather than a thought, that perhaps for all the oddity of
+the presentation it did convey something acutely desirable, that she
+herself had had moods when she would have found something very
+comforting in just such an impassioned grip. And on a framed,
+floriferous card, these incomprehensible words:
+
+    |================================|
+    |THY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR ME. |
+    |================================|
+
+seemed to be saying something to her tantalizingly just outside her
+range of apprehension.
+
+Did all these things light up somehow to those dispossessed people--from
+some angle she didn't attain? Were they living and moving realities when
+those others were at home again?
+
+The drawing-room had no texts; it was altogether more pretentious and
+less haunted by the faint and faded flavour of religion that pervaded
+the bedrooms. It had, however, evidences of travel in Switzerland and
+the Mediterranean. There was a piano in black and gold, a little out of
+tune, and surmounted by a Benares brass jar, enveloping a scarlet
+geranium in a pot. There was a Japanese screen of gold wrought upon
+black, that screened nothing. There was a framed chromo-lithograph of
+Jerusalem hot in the sunset, and another of Jerusalem cold under a
+sub-tropical moon, and there were gourds, roses of Jericho, sandalwood
+rosaries and kindred trash from the Holy Land in no little profusion
+upon a what-not. Such books as the room had contained had been arranged
+as symmetrically as possible about a large, pink-shaded lamp upon the
+claret-coloured cloth of a round table, and were to be replaced, Mrs.
+Pope said, at their departure. At present they were piled on a
+side-table. The girls had been through them all, and were ready with the
+choicer morsels for Marjorie's amusement. There was "Black Beauty," the
+sympathetic story of a soundly Anglican horse, and a large Bible
+extra-illustrated with photographs of every well-known scriptural
+picture from Michael Angelo to Doré, and a book of injunctions to young
+ladies upon their behaviour and deportment that Rom and Sydney found
+particularly entertaining. Marjorie discovered that Sydney had picked up
+a new favourite phrase. "I'm afraid we're all dreadfully cynical," said
+Sydney, several times.
+
+A more advanced note was struck by a copy of "Aurora Leigh," richly
+underlined in pencil, but with exclamation marks at some of the bolder
+passages....
+
+And presently, still avoiding the open study window very elaborately,
+this little group of twentieth century people went again into the
+church--the church whose foundations were laid in A.D. 912--foundations
+of rubble and cement that included flat Roman bricks from a still
+remoter basilica. Their voices dropped instinctively, as they came into
+its shaded quiet from the exterior sunshine. Marjorie went a little
+apart and sat in a pew that gave her a glimpse of the one good
+stained-glass window. Rom followed her, and perceiving her mood to be
+restful, sat a yard away. Syd began a whispered dispute with her mother
+whether it wasn't possible to try the organ, and whether Theodore might
+not be bribed to blow. Daffy discovered relics of a lepers' squint and a
+holy-water stoup, and then went to scrutinize the lettering of the ten
+commandments of the Mosaic law that shone black and red on gold on
+either side of the I.H.S. monogram behind the white-clothed communion
+table that had once been the altar. Upon a notice board hung about the
+waist of the portly pulpit were the numbers of hymns that had been sung
+three days ago. The sound Protestantism of the vicar had banished
+superfluous crosses from the building; the Bible reposed upon the wings
+of a great brass eagle; shining blue and crimson in the window, Saint
+Christopher carried his Lord. What a harmonized synthesis of conflicts a
+country church presents! What invisible mysteries of filiation spread
+between these ancient ornaments and symbols and the new young minds from
+the whirlpool of the town that looked upon them now with such bright,
+keen eyes, wondering a little, feeling a little, missing so much?
+
+It was all so very cool and quiet now--with something of the immobile
+serenity of death.
+
+
+§ 5
+
+When Mr. Pope had finished his letter to the _Times_, he got out of the
+window of the study, treading on a flower-bed as he did so--he was the
+sort of man who treads on flower-beds--partly with the purpose of
+reading his composition aloud to as many members of his family as he
+could assemble for the purpose, and so giving them a chance of
+appreciating the nuances of his irony more fully than if they saw it
+just in cold print without the advantage of his intonation, and partly
+with the belated idea of welcoming Marjorie. The law presented a rather
+discouraging desolation. Then he became aware that the church tower
+frothed with his daughters. In view of his need of an audience, he
+decided after a brief doubt that their presence there was
+unobjectionable, and waved his MS. amiably. Marjorie flapped a
+handkerchief in reply....
+
+The subsequent hour was just the sort of hour that gave Mr. Pope an
+almost meteorological importance to his family. He began with an
+amiability that had no fault, except, perhaps, that it was a little
+forced after the epistolary strain in the study, and his welcome to
+Marjorie was more than cordial. "Well, little Madge-cat!" he said,
+giving her an affectionate but sound and heavy thump on the left
+shoulder-blade, "got a kiss for the old daddy?"
+
+Marjorie submitted a cheek.
+
+"That's right," said Mr. Pope; "and now I just want you all to advise
+me----"
+
+He led the way to a group of wicker garden chairs. "You're coming,
+mummy?" he said, and seated himself comfortably and drew out a spectacle
+case, while his family grouped itself dutifully. It made a charming
+little picture of a Man and his Womankind. "I don't often flatter
+myself," he said, "but this time I think I've been neat--neat's the word
+for it."
+
+He cleared his throat, put on his spectacles, and emitted a long, flat
+preliminary note, rather like the sound of a child's trumpet. "Er--'Dear
+Sir!'"
+
+"Rom," said Mrs. Pope, "don't creak your chair."
+
+"It's Daffy, mother," said Rom.
+
+"Oh, _Rom!_" said Daffy.
+
+Mr. Pope paused, and looked with a warning eye over his left
+spectacle-glass at Rom.
+
+"Don't creak your chair, Rom," he said, "when your mother tells you."
+
+"I was _not_ creaking my chair," said Rom.
+
+"I heard it," said Mr. Pope, suavely.
+
+"It was Daffy."
+
+"Your mother does not think so," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Oh, all right! I'll sit on the ground," said Rom, crimson to the roots
+of her hair.
+
+"Me too," said Daffy. "I'd rather."
+
+Mr. Pope watched the transfer gravely. Then he readjusted his glasses,
+cleared his throat again, trumpeted, and began. "Er--'Dear Sir,'"
+
+"Oughtn't it to be simply 'Sir,' father, for an editor?" said Marjorie.
+
+"Perhaps I didn't explain, Marjorie," said her father, with the calm of
+great self-restraint, and dabbing his left hand on the manuscript in his
+right, "that this is a _private_ letter--a private letter."
+
+"I didn't understand," said Marjorie.
+
+"It would have been evident as I went on," said Mr. Pope, and prepared
+to read again.
+
+This time he was allowed to proceed, but the interruptions had ruffled
+him, and the gentle stresses that should have lifted the subtleties of
+his irony into prominence missed the words, and he had to go back and do
+his sentences again. Then Rom suddenly, horribly, uncontrollably, was
+seized with hiccups. At the second hiccup Mr. Pope paused, and looked
+very hard at his daughter with magnified eyes; as he was about to
+resume, the third burst its way through the unhappy child's utmost
+effort.
+
+Mr. Pope rose with an awful resignation. "That's enough," he said. He
+regarded the pseudo-twin vindictively. "You haven't the self-control of
+a child of six," he said. Then very touchingly to Mrs. Pope: "Mummy,
+shall we try a game of tennis with the New Generation?"
+
+"Can't you read it after supper?" asked Mrs. Pope.
+
+"It must go by the eight o'clock post," said Mr. Pope, putting the
+masterpiece into his breast pocket, the little masterpiece that would
+now perhaps never be read aloud to any human being. "Daffy, dear, do you
+mind going in for the racquets and balls?"
+
+The social atmosphere was now sultry, and overcast, and Mr. Pope's
+decision to spend the interval before Daffy returned in seeing whether
+he couldn't do something to the net, which was certainly very
+unsatisfactory, did not improve matters. Then, unhappily, Marjorie, who
+had got rather keen upon tennis at the Carmels', claimed her father's
+first two services as faults, contrary to the etiquette of the family.
+It happened that Mr. Pope had a really very good, hard, difficult,
+smart-looking serve, whose only defect was that it always went either
+too far or else into the net, and so a feeling had been fostered and
+established by his wife that, on the whole, it was advisable to regard
+the former variety as a legitimate extension of a father's authority.
+Naturally, therefore, Mr. Pope was nettled at Marjorie's ruling, and his
+irritation increased when his next two services to Daffy perished in the
+net. ("Damn that net! Puts one's eye out.") Then Marjorie gave him an
+unexpected soft return which he somehow muffed, and then Daffy just
+dropped a return over the top of the net. (Love-game.) It was then
+Marjorie's turn to serve, which she did with a new twist acquired from
+the eldest Carmel boy that struck Mr. Pope as un-English. "Go on," he
+said concisely. "Fifteen love."
+
+She was gentle with her mother and they got their first rally, and when
+it was over Mr. Pope had to explain to Marjorie that if she returned
+right up into his corner of the court he would have to run backwards
+very fast and might fall over down the silly slope at that end. She
+would have to consider him and the court. One didn't get everything out
+of a game by playing merely to win. She said "All right, Daddy," rather
+off-handedly, and immediately served to him again, and he, taken a
+little unawares, hit the ball with the edge of his racquet and sent it
+out, and then he changed racquets with Daffy--it seemed he had known all
+along she had taken his, but he had preferred to say nothing--uttered a
+word of advice to his wife just on her stroke, and she, failing to grasp
+his intention as quickly as she ought to have done, left the score
+forty-fifteen. He felt better when he returned Marjorie's serve, and
+then before she could control herself she repeated her new unpleasant
+trick of playing into the corner again, whereupon, leaping back with an
+agility that would have shamed many a younger man, Mr. Pope came upon
+disaster. He went spinning down the treacherous slope behind, twisted
+his ankle painfully and collapsed against the iron railings of the
+shrubbery. It was too much, and he lost control of himself. His
+daughters had one instant's glimpse of the linguistic possibilities of a
+strong man's agony. "I told her," he went on as if he had said nothing.
+"_Tennis!_"
+
+For a second perhaps he seemed to hesitate upon a course of action. Then
+as if by a great effort he took his coat from the net post and addressed
+himself houseward, incarnate Grand Dudgeon--limping.
+
+"Had enough of it, Mummy," he said, and added some happily inaudible
+comment on Marjorie's new style of play.
+
+The evening's exercise was at an end.
+
+The three ladies regarded one another in silence for some moments.
+
+"I will take in the racquets, dear," said Mrs. Pope.
+
+"I think the other ball is at your end," said Daffy....
+
+The apparatus put away, Marjorie and her sister strolled thoughtfully
+away from the house.
+
+"There's croquet here too," said Daffy. "We've not had the things out
+yet!"....
+
+"He'll play, I suppose."
+
+"He wants to play."...
+
+"Of course," said Marjorie after a long pause, "there's no _reasoning_
+with Dad!"
+
+
+§ 6
+
+Character is one of England's noblest and most deliberate products, but
+some Englishmen have it to excess. Mr. Pope had.
+
+He was one of that large and representative class which imparts a
+dignity to national commerce by inheriting big businesses from its
+ancestors. He was a coach-builder by birth, and a gentleman by education
+and training. He had been to City Merchant's and Cambridge.
+
+Throughout the earlier half of the nineteenth century the Popes had been
+the princes of the coach-building world. Mr. Pope's great-grandfather
+had been a North London wheelwright of conspicuous dexterity and
+integrity, who had founded the family business; his son, Mr. Pope's
+grandfather, had made that business the occupation of his life and
+brought it to the pinnacle of pre-eminence; his son, who was Marjorie's
+grandfather, had displayed a lesser enthusiasm, left the house at the
+works for a home ten miles away and sent a second son into the Church.
+It was in the days of the third Pope that the business ceased to expand,
+and began to suffer severely from the competition of an enterprising
+person who had originally supplied the firm with varnish, gradually
+picked up the trade in most other materials and accessories needed in
+coach-building, and passed on by almost imperceptible stages to
+delivering the article complete--dispensing at last altogether with the
+intervention of Pope and Son--to the customer. Marjorie's father had
+succeeded in the fulness of time to the inheritance this insurgent had
+damaged.
+
+Mr. Pope was a man of firm and resentful temper, with an admiration for
+Cato, Brutus, Cincinnatus, Cromwell, Washington, and the sterner heroes
+generally, and by nature a little ill-used and offended at things. He
+suffered from indigestion and extreme irritability. He found himself in
+control of a business where more flexible virtues were needed. The Popes
+based their fame on a heavy, proud type of vehicle, which the increasing
+luxury and triviality of the age tended to replace by lighter forms of
+carriage, carriages with diminutive and apologetic names. As these
+lighter forms were not only lighter but less expensive, Mr. Pope with a
+pathetic confidence in the loyalty of the better class of West End
+customer, determined to "make a stand" against them. He was the sort of
+man to whom making a stand is in itself a sombre joy. If he had had to
+choose his pose for a portrait, he would certainly have decided to have
+one foot advanced, the other planted like a British oak behind, the arms
+folded and the brows corrugated,--making a stand.
+
+Unhappily the stars in their courses and the general improvement of
+roads throughout the country fought against him. The lighter carriages,
+and especially the lighter carriages of that varnish-selling firm, which
+was now absorbing businesses right and left, prevailed over Mr. Pope's
+resistance. For crossing a mountain pass or fording a river, for driving
+over the scene of a recent earthquake or following a retreating army,
+for being run away with by frantic horses or crushing a personal enemy,
+there can be no doubt the Pope carriages remained to the very last the
+best possible ones and fully worth the inflexible price demanded.
+Unhappily all carriages in a civilization essentially decadent are not
+subjected to these tests, and the manufactures of his rivals were not
+only much cheaper, but had a sort of meretricious smartness, a
+disingenuous elasticity, above all a levity, hateful indeed to the
+spirit of Mr. Pope yet attractive to the wanton customer. Business
+dwindled. Nevertheless the habitual element in the good class customer
+did keep things going, albeit on a shrinking scale, until Mr. Pope came
+to the unfortunate decision that he would make a stand against
+automobiles. He regarded them as an intrusive nuisance which had to be
+seen only to be disowned by the landed gentry of England. Rather than
+build a car he said he would go out of business. He went out of
+business. Within five years of this determination he sold out the name,
+good will, and other vestiges of his concern to a mysterious buyer who
+turned out to be no more than an agent for these persistently expanding
+varnish makers, and he retired with a genuine grievance upon the family
+accumulations--chiefly in Consols and Home Railways.
+
+He refused however to regard his defeat as final, put great faith in the
+approaching exhaustion of the petrol supply, and talked in a manner that
+should have made the Automobile Association uneasy, of devoting the
+rest of his days to the purification of England from these aggressive
+mechanisms. "It was a mistake," he said, "to let them in." He became
+more frequent at his excellent West End club, and directed a certain
+portion of his capital to largely indecisive but on the whole
+unprofitable speculations in South African and South American
+enterprises. He mingled a little in affairs. He was a tough conventional
+speaker, rich in established phrases and never abashed by hearing
+himself say commonplace things, and in addition to his campaign against
+automobiles he found time to engage also in quasi-political activities,
+taking chairs, saying a few words and so on, cherishing a fluctuating
+hope that his eloquence might ultimately win him an invitation to
+contest a constituency in the interests of reaction and the sounder
+elements in the Liberal party.
+
+He had a public-spirited side, and he was particularly attracted by that
+mass of modern legislative proposals which aims at a more systematic
+control of the lives of lower class persons for their own good by their
+betters. Indeed, in the first enthusiasm of his proprietorship of the
+Pope works at East Purblow, he had organized one of those benevolent
+industrial experiments that are now so common. He felt strongly against
+the drink evil, that is to say, the unrestricted liberty of common
+people to drink what they prefer, and he was acutely impressed by the
+fact that working-class families do not spend their money in the way
+that seems most desirable to upper middle-class critics. Accordingly he
+did his best to replace the dangerous freedoms of money by that ideal of
+the social reformer, Payment in Kind. To use his invariable phrase, the
+East Purblow experiment did "no mean service" to the cause of social
+reform. Unhappily it came to an end through a prosecution under the
+Truck Act, that blot upon the Statute Book, designed, it would appear,
+even deliberately to vitiate man's benevolent control of his fellow man.
+The lessons to be drawn from that experience, however, grew if anything
+with the years. He rarely spoke without an allusion to it, and it was
+quite remarkable how readily it could be adapted to illuminate a hundred
+different issues in the hospitable columns of the _Spectator_....
+
+
+§ 7
+
+At seven o'clock Marjorie found herself upstairs changing into her
+apple-green frock. She had had a good refreshing wash in cold soft
+water, and it was pleasant to change into thinner silk stockings and
+dainty satin slippers and let down and at last brush her hair and dress
+loiteringly after the fatigues of her journey and the activities of her
+arrival. She looked out on the big church and the big trees behind it
+against the golden quiet of a summer evening with extreme approval.
+
+"I suppose those birds are rooks," she said.
+
+But Daffy had gone to see that the pseudo-twins had done themselves
+justice in their muslin frocks and pink sashes; they were apt to be a
+little sketchy with their less accessible buttons.
+
+Marjorie became aware of two gentlemen with her mother on the lawn
+below.
+
+One was her almost affianced lover, Will Magnet, the humorous writer.
+She had been doing her best not to think about him all day, but now he
+became an unavoidable central fact. She regarded him with an almost
+perplexed scrutiny, and wondered vividly why she had been so excited and
+pleased by his attentions during the previous summer.
+
+Mr. Magnet was one of those quiet, deliberately unassuming people who do
+not even attempt to be beautiful. Not for him was it to pretend, but to
+prick the bladder of pretence. He was a fairish man of forty, pale, with
+a large protuberant, observant grey eye--I speak particularly of the
+left--and a face of quiet animation warily alert for the wit's
+opportunity. His nose and chin were pointed, and his lips thin and
+quaintly pressed together. He was dressed in grey, with a low-collared
+silken shirt showing a thin neck, and a flowing black tie, and he
+carried a grey felt hat in his joined hands behind his back. She could
+hear the insinuating cadences of his voice as he talked in her mother's
+ear. The other gentleman, silent on her mother's right, must, she knew,
+be Mr. Wintersloan, whom Mr. Magnet had proposed to bring over. His
+dress betrayed that modest gaiety of disposition becoming in an artist,
+and indeed he was one of Mr. Magnet's favourite illustrators. He was in
+a dark bluish-grey suit; a black tie that was quite unusually broad went
+twice around his neck before succumbing to the bow, and his waistcoat
+appeared to be of some gaily-patterned orange silk. Marjorie's eyes
+returned to Mr. Magnet. Hitherto she had never had an opportunity of
+remarking that his hair was more than a little attenuated towards the
+crown. It was funny how his tie came out under his chin to the right.
+
+What an odd thing men's dress had become, she thought. Why did they wear
+those ridiculous collars and ties? Why didn't they always dress in
+flannels and look as fine and slender and active as the elder Carmel boy
+for example? Mr. Magnet couldn't be such an ill-shaped man. Why didn't
+every one dress to be just as beautiful and splendid as
+possible?--instead of wearing queer things!
+
+"Coming down?" said Daffy, a vision of sulphur-yellow, appearing in the
+doorway.
+
+"Let _them_ go first," said Marjorie, with a finer sense of effect. "And
+Theodore. We don't want to make part of a comic entry with Theodore,
+Daffy."
+
+Accordingly, the two sisters watched discreetly--they had to be wary on
+account of Mr. Magnet's increasingly frequent glances at the
+windows--and when at last all the rest of the family had appeared below,
+they decided their cue had come. Mr. Pope strolled into the group, with
+no trace of his recent debacle except a slight limp. He was wearing a
+jacket of damson-coloured velvet, which he affected in the country, and
+all traces of his Grand Dudgeon were gone. But then he rarely had Grand
+Dudgeon except in the sanctities of family life, and hardly ever when
+any other man was about.
+
+"Well," his daughters heard him say, with a witty allusiveness that was
+difficult to follow, "so the Magnet has come to the Mountain again--eh?"
+
+"Come on, Madge," said Daffy, and the two sisters emerged harmoniously
+together from the house.
+
+It would have been manifest to a meaner capacity than any present that
+evening that Mr. Magnet regarded Marjorie with a distinguished
+significance. He had two eyes, but he had that mysterious quality so
+frequently associated with a bluish-grey iris which gives the effect of
+looking hard with one large orb, a sort of grey searchlight effect, and
+he used this eye ray now to convey a respectful but firm admiration in
+the most unequivocal manner. He saluted Daffy courteously, and then
+allowed himself to retain Marjorie's hand for just a second longer than
+was necessary as he said--very simply--"I am very pleased indeed to meet
+you again--very."
+
+A slight embarrassment fell between them.
+
+"You are staying near here, Mr. Magnet?"
+
+"At the inn," said Mr. Magnet, and then, "I chose it because it would be
+near you."
+
+His eye pressed upon her again for a moment.
+
+"Is it comfortable?" said Marjorie.
+
+"So charmingly simple," said Mr. Magnet. "I love it."
+
+A tinkling bell announced the preparedness of supper, and roused the
+others to the consciousness that they were silently watching Mr. Magnet
+and Marjorie.
+
+"It's quite a simple farmhouse supper," said Mrs. Pope.
+
+
+§ 8
+
+There were ducks, green peas, and adolescent new potatoes for supper,
+and afterwards stewed fruit and cream and junket and cheese, bottled
+beer, Gilbey's Burgundy, and home-made lemonade. Mrs. Pope carved,
+because Mr. Pope splashed too much, and bones upset him and made him
+want to show up chicken in the _Times_. So he sat at the other end and
+rallied his guests while Mrs. Pope distributed the viands. He showed not
+a trace of his recent umbrage. Theodore sat between Daffy and his mother
+because of his table manners, and Marjorie was on her father's right
+hand and next to Mr. Wintersloan, while Mr. Magnet was in the middle of
+the table on the opposite side in a position convenient for looking at
+her. Both maids waited.
+
+The presence of Magnet invariably stirred the latent humorist in Mr.
+Pope. He felt that he who talks to humorists should himself be humorous,
+and it was his private persuasion that with more attention he might have
+been, to use a favourite form of expression, "no mean jester." Quite a
+lot of little things of his were cherished as "Good" both by himself
+and, with occasional inaccuracies, by Mrs. Pope. He opened out now in a
+strain of rich allusiveness.
+
+"What will you drink, Mr. Wintersloan?" he said. "Wine of the country,
+yclept beer, red wine from France, or my wife's potent brew from the
+golden lemon?"
+
+Mr. Wintersloan thought he would take Burgundy. Mr. Magnet preferred
+beer.
+
+    "I've heard there's iron in the Beer,
+    And I believe it,"
+
+misquoted Mr. Pope, and nodded as it were to the marker to score. "Daffy
+and Marjorie are still in the lemonade stage. Will you take a little
+Burgundy to-night, Mummy?"
+
+Mrs. Pope decided she would, and was inspired to ask Mr. Wintersloan if
+he had been in that part of the country before. Topography ensued. Mr.
+Wintersloan had a style of his own, and spoke of the Buryhamstreet
+district as a "pooty little country--pooty little hills, with a swirl in
+them."
+
+This pleased Daffy and Marjorie, and their eyes met for a moment.
+
+Then Mr. Magnet, with a ray full on Marjorie, said he had always been
+fond of Surrey. "I think if ever I made a home in the country I should
+like it to be here."
+
+Mr. Wintersloan said Surrey would tire him, it was too bossy and curly,
+too flocculent; he would prefer to look on broader, simpler lines, with
+just a sudden catch in the breath in them--if you understand me?
+
+Marjorie did, and said so.
+
+"A sob--such as you get at the break of a pinewood on a hill."
+
+This baffled Mr. Pope, but Marjorie took it. "Or the short dry cough of
+a cliff," she said.
+
+"Exactly," said Mr. Wintersloan, and having turned a little deliberate
+close-lipped smile on her for a moment, resumed his wing.
+
+"So long as a landscape doesn't _sneeze_" said Mr. Magnet, in that
+irresistible dry way of his, and Rom and Sydney, at any rate, choked.
+
+"Now is the hour when Landscapes yawn," mused Mr. Pope, coming in all
+right at the end.
+
+Then Mrs. Pope asked Mr. Wintersloan, about his route to Buryhamstreet,
+and then Mr. Pope asked Mr. Magnet whether he was playing at a new work
+or working at a new play.
+
+Mr. Magnet said he was dreaming over a play. He wanted to bring out the
+more serious side of his humour, go a little deeper into things than he
+had hitherto done.
+
+"Mingling smiles and tears," said Mr. Pope approvingly.
+
+Mr. Magnet said very quietly that all true humour did that.
+
+Then Mrs. Pope asked what the play was to be about, and Mr. Magnet, who
+seemed disinclined to give an answer, turned the subject by saying he
+had to prepare an address on humour for the next dinner of the
+_Literati_. "It's to be a humourist's dinner, and they've made me the
+guest of the evening--by way of a joke to begin with," he said with that
+dry smile again.
+
+Mrs. Pope said he shouldn't say things like that. She then said "Syd!"
+quietly but sharply to Sydney, who was making a disdainful, squinting
+face at Theodore, and told the parlourmaid to clear the plates for
+sweets. Mr. Magnet professed great horror of public speaking. He said
+that whenever he rose to make an after-dinner speech all the ices he had
+ever eaten seemed to come out of the past, and sit on his backbone.
+
+The talk centered for awhile on Mr. Magnet's address, and apropos of
+Tests of Humour Mr. Pope, who in his way was "no mean raconteur,"
+related the story of the man who took the salad dressing with his hand,
+and when his host asked why he did that, replied: "Oh! I thought it was
+spinach!"
+
+"Many people," added Mr. Pope, "wouldn't see the point of that. And if
+they don't see the point they can't--and the more they try the less they
+do."
+
+All four girls hoped secretly and not too confidently that their
+laughter had not sounded hollow.
+
+And then for a time the men told stories as they came into their heads
+in an easy, irresponsible way. Mr. Magnet spoke of the humour of the
+omnibus-driver who always dangled and twiddled his badge "by way of a
+joke" when he passed the conductor whose father had been hanged, and Mr.
+Pope, perhaps, a little irrelevantly, told the story of the little boy
+who was asked his father's last words, and said "mother was with him to
+the end," which particularly amused Mrs. Pope. Mr. Wintersloan gave the
+story of the woman who was taking her son to the hospital with his head
+jammed into a saucepan, and explained to the other people in the
+omnibus: "You see, what makes it so annoying, it's me only saucepan!"
+Then they came back to the Sense of Humour with the dentist who shouted
+with laughter, and when asked the reason by his patient, choked out:
+"Wrong tooth!" and then Mr. Pope reminded them of the heartless husband
+who, suddenly informed that his mother-in-law was dead, exclaimed "Oh,
+don't make me laugh, please, I've got a split lip...."
+
+
+§ 9
+
+The conversation assumed a less anecdotal quality with the removal to
+the drawing-room. On Mr. Magnet's initiative the gentlemen followed the
+ladies almost immediately, and it was Mr. Magnet who remembered that
+Marjorie could sing.
+
+Both the elder sisters indeed had sweet clear voices, and they had
+learnt a number of those jolly songs the English made before the dull
+Hanoverians came. Syd accompanied, and Rom sat back in the low chair in
+the corner and fell deeply in love with Mr. Wintersloan. The three
+musicians in their green and sulphur-yellow and white made a pretty
+group in the light of the shaded lamp against the black and gold
+Broadwood, the tawdry screen, its pattern thin glittering upon darkness,
+and the deep shadows behind. Marjorie loved singing, and forgot herself
+as she sang.
+
+    "I love, and he loves me again,
+      Yet dare I not tell who;
+    For if the nymphs should know my swain,
+      I fear they'd love him too,"
+
+she sang, and Mr. Magnet could not conceal the intensity of his
+admiration.
+
+Mr. Pope had fallen into a pleasant musing; several other ripe old
+yarns, dear delicious old things, had come into his mind that he felt he
+might presently recall when this unavoidable display of accomplishments
+was overpast, and it was with one of them almost on his lips that he
+glanced across at his guest. He was surprised to see Mr. Magnet's face
+transfigured. He was sitting forward, looking up at Marjorie, and he had
+caught something of the expression of those blessed boys who froth at
+the feet of an Assumption. For an instant Mr. Pope did not understand.
+
+Then he understood. It was Marjorie! He had a twinge of surprise, and
+glanced at his own daughter as though he had never seen her before. He
+perceived in a flash for the first time that this troublesome, clever,
+disrespectful child was tall and shapely and sweet, and indeed quite a
+beautiful young woman. He forgot his anecdotes. His being was suffused
+with pride and responsibility and the sense of virtue rewarded. He did
+not reflect for a moment that Marjorie embodied in almost equal
+proportions the very best points in his mother and his mother-in-law,
+and avoided his own more salient characteristics with so neat a
+dexterity that from top to toe, except for the one matter of colour, not
+only did she not resemble him but she scarcely even alluded to him. He
+thought simply that she was his daughter, that she derived from him,
+that her beauty was his. She was the outcome of his meritorious
+preparations. He recalled all the moments when he had been kind and
+indulgent to her, all the bills he had paid for her; all the stresses
+and trials of the coach-building collapse, all the fluctuations of his
+speculative adventures, became things he had faced patiently and
+valiantly for her sake. He forgot the endless times when he had been
+viciously cross with her, all the times when he had pished and tushed
+and sworn in her hearing. He had on provocation and in spite of her
+mother's protests slapped her pretty vigorously, but such things are
+better forgotten; nor did he recall how bitterly he had opposed the
+college education which had made her now so clear in eye and thought,
+nor the frightful shindy, only three months since, about that identical
+green dress in which she now stood delightful. He forgot these petty
+details, as an idealist should. There she was, his daughter. An immense
+benevolence irradiated his soul--for Marjorie--for Magnet. His eyes were
+suffused with a not ignoble tenderness. The man, he knew, was worth at
+least thirty-five thousand pounds, a discussion of investments had made
+that clear, and he must be making at least five thousand a year! A
+beautiful girl, a worthy man! A good fellow, a sound good fellow, a
+careful fellow too--as these fellows went!
+
+Old Daddy would lose his treasure of course.
+
+Well, a father must learn resignation, and he for one would not stand in
+the way of his girl's happiness. A day would come when, very beautifully
+and tenderly, he would hand her over to Magnet, his favourite daughter
+to his trusted friend. "Well, my boy, there's no one in all the
+world----" he would begin.
+
+It would be a touching parting. "Don't forget your old father, Maggots,"
+he would say. At such a moment that quaint nickname would surely not be
+resented....
+
+He reflected how much he had always preferred Marjorie to Daffy. She was
+brighter--more like him. Daffy was unresponsive, with a touch of
+bitterness under her tongue....
+
+He was already dreaming he was a widower, rather infirm, the object of
+Magnet's and Marjorie's devoted care, when the song ceased, and the wife
+he had for the purpose of reveries just consigned so carelessly to the
+cemetery proposed that they should have a little game that every one
+could play at. A number of pencils and slips of paper appeared in her
+hands. She did not want the girls to exhaust their repertory on this
+first occasion--and besides, Mr. Pope liked games in which one did
+things with pencils and strips of paper. Mr. Magnet wished the singing
+to go on, he said, but he was overruled.
+
+So for a time every one played a little game in which Mr. Pope was
+particularly proficient. Indeed, it was rare that any one won but Mr.
+Pope. It was called "The Great Departed," and it had such considerable
+educational value that all the children had to play at it whenever he
+wished.
+
+It was played in this manner; one of the pseudo twins opened a book and
+dabbed a finger on the page, and read out the letter immediately at the
+tip of her finger, then all of them began to write as hard as they
+could, writing down the names of every great person they could think of,
+whose name began with that letter. At the end of five minutes Mr. Pope
+said Stop! and then began to read his list out, beginning with the first
+name. Everybody who had that name crossed it out and scored one, and
+after his list was exhausted all the surviving names on the next list
+were read over in the same way, and so on. The names had to be the names
+of dead celebrated people, only one monarch of the same name of the same
+dynasty was allowed, and Mr. Pope adjudicated on all doubtful cases. It
+was great fun.
+
+The first two games were won as usual by Mr. Pope, and then Mr.
+Wintersloan, who had been a little distraught in his manner, brightened
+up and scribbled furiously.
+
+The letter was _D_, and after Mr. Pope had rehearsed a tale of nine and
+twenty names, Mr. Wintersloan read out his list in that curious voice of
+his which suggested nothing so much as some mobile drink glucking out of
+the neck of a bottle held upside down.
+
+"Dahl," he began.
+
+"Who was Dahl?" asked Mr. Pope.
+
+"'Vented dahlias," said Mr. Wintersloan, with a sigh. "Danton."
+
+"Forgot him," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Davis."
+
+"Davis?"
+
+"Davis Straits. Doe."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"John Doe, Richard Roe."
+
+"Legal fiction, I'm afraid," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Dam," said Mr. Wintersloan, and added after a slight pause: "Anthony
+van."
+
+Mr. Pope made an interrogative noise.
+
+"Painter--eighteenth century--Dutch. Dam, Jan van, his son. Dam,
+Frederich van. Dam, Wilhelm van. Dam, Diedrich van. Dam, Wilhelmina,
+wood engraver, gifted woman. Diehl."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Painter--dead--famous. See Düsseldorf. It's all painters now--all
+guaranteed dead, all good men. Deeds of Norfolk, the aquarellist,
+Denton, Dibbs."
+
+"Er?" said Mr. Pope.
+
+"The Warwick Claude, _you_ know. Died 1823."
+
+"Dickson, Dunting, John Dickery. Peter Dickery, William Dock--I beg your
+pardon?"
+
+Mr. Pope was making a protesting gesture, but Mr. Wintersloan's bearing
+was invincible, and he proceeded.
+
+In the end he emerged triumphant with forty-nine names, mostly painters
+for whose fame he answered, but whose reputations were certainly new to
+every one else present. "I can go on like that," said Mr. Wintersloan,
+"with any letter," and turned that hard little smile full on Marjorie.
+"I didn't see how to do it at first. I just cast about. But I know a
+frightful lot of painters. No end. Shall we try again?"
+
+Marjorie glanced at her father. Mr. Wintersloan's methods were all too
+evident to her. A curious feeling pervaded the room that Mr. Pope didn't
+think Mr. Wintersloan's conduct honourable, and that he might even go
+some way towards saying so.
+
+So Mrs. Pope became very brisk and stirring, and said she thought that
+now perhaps a charade would be more amusing. It didn't do to keep on at
+a game too long. She asked Rom and Daphne and Theodore and Mr.
+Wintersloan to go out, and they all agreed readily, particularly Rom.
+"Come on!" said Rom to Mr. Wintersloan. Everybody else shifted into an
+audience-like group between the piano and the what-not. Mr. Magnet sat
+at Marjorie's feet, while Syd played a kind of voluntary, and Mr. Pope
+leant back in his chair, with his brows knit and lips moving, trying to
+remember something.
+
+The charade _was_ very amusing. The word was Catarrh, and Mr.
+Wintersloan, as the patient in the last act being given gruel, surpassed
+even the children's very high expectations. Rom, as his nurse, couldn't
+keep her hands off him. Then the younger people kissed round and were
+packed off to bed, and the rest of the party went to the door upon the
+lawn and admired the night. It was a glorious summer night, deep blue,
+and rimmed warmly by the afterglow, moonless, and with a few big
+lamp-like stars above the black still shapes of trees.
+
+Mrs. Pope said they would all accompany their guests to the gate at the
+end of the avenue--in spite of the cockchafers.
+
+Mr. Pope's ankle, however, excused him; the cordiality of his parting
+from Mr. Wintersloan seemed a trifle forced, and he limped thoughtfully
+and a little sombrely towards the study to see if he could find an
+Encyclopćdia or some such book of reference that would give the names of
+the lesser lights of Dutch, Italian, and English painting during the
+last two centuries.
+
+He felt that Mr. Wintersloan had established an extraordinarily bad
+precedent.
+
+
+§ 10
+
+Marjorie discovered that she and Mr. Magnet had fallen a little behind
+the others. She would have quickened her pace, but Mr. Magnet stopped
+short and said: "Marjorie!"
+
+"When I saw you standing there and singing," said Mr. Magnet, and was
+short of breath for a moment.
+
+Marjorie's natural gift for interruption failed her altogether.
+
+"I felt I would rather be able to call you mine--than win an empire."
+
+The pause seemed to lengthen, between them, and Marjorie's remark when
+she made it at last struck her even as she made it as being but poorly
+conceived. She had some weak idea of being self-depreciatory.
+
+"I think you had better win an empire, Mr. Magnet," she said meekly.
+
+Then, before anything more was possible, they had come up to Daffy and
+Mr. Wintersloan and her mother at the gate....
+
+As they returned Mrs. Pope was loud in the praises of Will Magnet. She
+had a little clear-cut voice, very carefully and very skilfully
+controlled, and she dilated on his modesty, his quiet helpfulness at
+table, his ready presence of mind. She pointed out instances of those
+admirable traits, incidents small in themselves but charming in their
+implications. When somebody wanted junket, he had made no fuss, he had
+just helped them to junket. "So modest and unassuming," sang Mrs. Pope.
+"You'd never dream he was quite rich and famous. Yet every book he
+writes is translated into Russian and German and all sorts of languages.
+I suppose he's almost the greatest humorist we have. That play of his;
+what is it called?--_Our Owd Woman_--has been performed nearly twelve
+hundred times! I think that is the most wonderful of gifts. Think of the
+people it has made happy."
+
+The conversation was mainly monologue. Both Marjorie and Daffy were
+unusually thoughtful.
+
+
+§ 11
+
+Marjorie ended the long day in a worldly mood.
+
+"Penny for your thoughts," said Daffy abruptly, brushing the long
+firelit rapids of her hair.
+
+"Not for sale," said Marjorie, and roused herself. "I've had a long
+day."
+
+"It's always just the time I particularly wish I was a man," she
+remarked after a brief return to meditation. "Fancy, no hair-pins, no
+brushing, no tie-up to get lost about, no strings. I suppose they
+haven't strings?"
+
+"They haven't," said Daffy with conviction.
+
+She met Marjorie's interrogative eye. "Father would swear at them," she
+explained. "He'd naturally tie himself up--and we should hear of it."
+
+"I didn't think of that," said Marjorie, and stuck out her chin upon her
+fists. "Sound induction."
+
+She forgot this transitory curiosity.
+
+"Suppose one had a maid, Daffy--a real maid ... a maid who mended your
+things ... did your hair while you read...."
+
+"Oh! here goes," and she stood up and grappled with the task of
+undressing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SECOND
+
+THE TWO PROPOSALS OF MR. MAGNET
+
+
+§ 1
+
+It was presently quite evident to Marjorie that Mr. Magnet intended to
+propose marriage to her, and she did not even know whether she wanted
+him to do so.
+
+She had met him first the previous summer while she had been staying
+with the Petley-Cresthams at High Windower, and it had been evident that
+he found her extremely attractive. She had never had a real grown man at
+her feet before, and she had found it amazingly entertaining. She had
+gone for a walk with him the morning before she came away--a frank and
+ingenuous proceeding that made Mrs. Petley-Crestham say the girl knew
+what she was about, and she had certainly coquetted with him in an
+extraordinary manner at golf-croquet. After that Oxbridge had swallowed
+her up, and though he had called once on her mother while Marjorie was
+in London during the Christmas vacation, he hadn't seen her again. He
+had written--which was exciting--a long friendly humorous letter about
+nothing in particular, with an air of its being quite the correct thing
+for him to do, and she had answered, and there had been other exchanges.
+But all sorts of things had happened in the interval, and Marjorie had
+let him get into quite a back place in her thoughts--the fact that he
+was a member of her father's club had seemed somehow to remove him from
+a great range of possibilities--until a drift in her mother's talk
+towards him and a letter from him with an indefinable change in tone
+towards intimacy, had restored him to importance. Now here he was in the
+foreground of her world again, evidently more ardent than ever, and with
+a portentous air of being about to do something decisive at the very
+first opportunity. What was he going to do? What had her mother been
+hinting at? And what, in fact, did the whole thing amount to?
+
+Marjorie was beginning to realize that this was going to be a very
+serious affair indeed for her--and that she was totally unprepared to
+meet it.
+
+It had been very amusing, very amusing indeed, at the Petley-Cresthams',
+but there were moments now when she felt towards Mr. Magnet exactly as
+she would have felt if he had been one of the Oxbridge tradesmen
+hovering about her with a "little account," full of apparently
+exaggerated items....
+
+Her thoughts and feelings were all in confusion about this business. Her
+mind was full of scraps, every sort of idea, every sort of attitude
+contributed something to that Twentieth Century jumble. For example, and
+so far as its value went among motives, it was by no means a trivial
+consideration; she wanted a proposal for its own sake. Daffy had had a
+proposal last year, and although it wasn't any sort of eligible
+proposal, still there it was, and she had given herself tremendous airs.
+But Marjorie would certainly have preferred some lighter kind of
+proposal than that which now threatened her. She felt that behind Mr.
+Magnet were sanctions; that she wasn't free to deal with this proposal
+as she liked. He was at Buryhamstreet almost with the air of being her
+parents' guest.
+
+Less clear and more instinctive than her desire for a proposal was her
+inclination to see just all that Mr. Magnet was disposed to do, and hear
+all that he was disposed to say. She was curious. He didn't behave in
+the least as she had expected a lover to behave. But then none of the
+boys, the "others" with whom she had at times stretched a hand towards
+the hem of emotion, had ever done that. She had an obscure feeling that
+perhaps presently Mr. Magnet must light up, be stirred and stirring.
+Even now his voice changed very interestingly when he was alone with
+her. His breath seemed to go--as though something had pricked his lung.
+If it hadn't been for that new, disconcerting realization of an official
+pressure behind him, I think she would have been quite ready to
+experiment extensively with his emotions....
+
+But she perceived as she lay awake next morning that she wasn't free for
+experiments any longer. What she might say or do now would be taken up
+very conclusively. And she had no idea what she wanted to say or do.
+
+Marriage regarded in the abstract--that is to say, with Mr. Magnet out
+of focus--was by no means an unattractive proposal to her. It was very
+much at the back of Marjorie's mind that after Oxbridge, unless she was
+prepared to face a very serious row indeed and go to teach in a
+school--and she didn't feel any call whatever to teach in a school--she
+would probably have to return to Hartstone Square and share Daffy's room
+again, and assist in the old collective, wearisome task of propitiating
+her father. The freedoms of Oxbridge had enlarged her imagination until
+that seemed an almost unendurably irksome prospect. She had tasted life
+as it could be in her father's absence, and she was beginning to realize
+just what an impossible person he was. Marriage was escape from all
+that; it meant not only respectful parents but a house of her very own,
+furniture of her choice, great freedom of movement, an authority, an
+importance. She had seen what it meant to be a prosperously married
+young woman in the person of one or two resplendent old girls revisiting
+Bennett College, scattering invitations, offering protections and
+opportunities....
+
+Of course there is love.
+
+Marjorie told herself, as she had been trained to tell herself, to be
+sensible, but something within her repeated: _there is love_.
+
+Of course she liked Mr. Magnet. She really did like Mr. Magnet very
+much. She had had her girlish dreams, had fallen in love with pictures
+of men and actors and a music master and a man who used to ride by as
+she went to school; but wasn't this desolating desire for
+self-abandonment rather silly?--something that one left behind with much
+else when it came to putting up one's hair and sensible living,
+something to blush secretly about and hide from every eye?
+
+Among other discrepant views that lived together in her mind as cats and
+rats and parrots and squirrels and so forth used to live together in
+those Happy Family cages unseemly men in less well-regulated days were
+wont to steer about our streets, was one instilled by quite a large
+proportion of the novels she had read, that a girl was a sort of
+self-giving prize for high moral worth. Mr. Magnet she knew was good,
+was kind, was brave with that truer courage, moral courage, which goes
+with his type of physique; he was modest, unassuming, well off and
+famous, and very much in love with her. His True Self, as Mrs. Pope had
+pointed out several times, must be really very beautiful, and in some
+odd way a line of Shakespeare had washed up in her consciousness as
+being somehow effectual on his behalf:
+
+    "Love looks not with the eye but with the mind."
+
+She felt she ought to look with the mind. Nice people surely never
+looked in any other way. It seemed from this angle almost her duty to
+love him....
+
+Perhaps she did love him, and mistook the symptoms. She did her best to
+mistake the symptoms. But if she did truly love him, would it seem so
+queer and important and antagonistic as it did that his hair was rather
+thin upon the crown of his head?
+
+She wished she hadn't looked down on him....
+
+Poor Marjorie! She was doing her best to be sensible, and she felt
+herself adrift above a clamorous abyss of feared and forbidden thoughts.
+Down there she knew well enough it wasn't thus that love must come. Deep
+in her soul, the richest thing in her life indeed and the best thing she
+had to give humanity, was a craving for beauty that at times became
+almost intolerable, a craving for something other than beauty and yet
+inseparably allied with it, a craving for deep excitement, for a sort of
+glory in adventure, for passion--for things akin to great music and
+heroic poems and bannered traditions of romance. She had hidden away in
+her an immense tumultuous appetite for life, an immense tumultuous
+capacity for living. To be loved beautifully was surely the crown and
+climax of her being.
+
+She did not dare to listen to these deeps, yet these insurgent voices
+filled her. Even while she drove her little crocodile of primly sensible
+thoughts to their sane appointed conclusion, her blood and nerves and
+all her being were protesting that Mr. Magnet would not do, that
+whatever other worthiness was in him, regarded as a lover he was
+preposterous and flat and foolish and middle-aged, and that it were
+better never to have lived than to put the treasure of her life to his
+meagre lips and into his hungry, unattractive arms. "The ugliness of
+it! The spiritless horror of it!" so dumbly and formlessly the rebel
+voices urged.
+
+"One has to be sensible," said Marjorie to herself, suddenly putting
+down Shaw's book on Municipal Trading, which she imagined she had been
+reading....
+
+(Perhaps all marriage was horrid, and one had to get over it.)
+
+That was rather what her mother had conveyed to her.
+
+
+§ 2
+
+Mr. Magnet made his first proposal in form three days later, after
+coming twice to tea and staying on to supper. He had played croquet with
+Mr. Pope, he had been beaten twelve times in spite of twinges in the
+sprained ankle--heroically borne--had had three victories lucidly
+explained away, and heard all the particulars of the East Purblow
+experiment three times over, first in relation to the new Labour
+Exchanges, then regarded at rather a different angle in relation to
+female betting, tally-men, and the sanctities of the home generally, and
+finally in a more exhaustive style, to show its full importance from
+every side and more particularly as demonstrating the gross injustice
+done to Mr. Pope by the neglect of its lessons, a neglect too systematic
+to be accidental, in the social reform literature of the time. Moreover,
+Mr. Magnet had been made to understand thoroughly how several later
+quasi-charitable attempts of a similar character had already become, or
+must inevitably become, unsatisfactory through their failure to follow
+exactly in the lines laid down by Mr. Pope.
+
+Mr. Pope was really very anxious to be pleasant and agreeable to Mr.
+Magnet, and he could think of no surer way of doing so than by giving
+him an unrestrained intimacy of conversation that prevented anything
+more than momentary intercourse between his daughter and her admirer.
+And not only did Mr. Magnet find it difficult to get away from Mr. Pope
+without offence, but whenever by any chance Mr. Pope was detached for a
+moment Mr. Magnet discovered that Marjorie either wasn't to be seen, or
+if she was she wasn't to be isolated by any device he could contrive,
+before the unappeasable return of Mr. Pope.
+
+Mr. Magnet did not get his chance therefore until Lady Petchworth's
+little gathering at Summerhay Park.
+
+Lady Petchworth was Mrs. Pope's oldest friend, and one of those brighter
+influences which save our English country-side from lassitude. She had
+been more fortunate than Mrs. Pope, for while Mr. Pope with that
+aptitude for disadvantage natural to his temperament had, he said, been
+tied to a business that never gave him a chance, Lady Petchworth's
+husband had been a reckless investor of exceptional good-luck. In
+particular, led by a dream, he had put most of his money into a series
+of nitrate deposits in caves in Saghalien haunted by benevolent
+penguins, and had been rewarded beyond the dreams of avarice. His
+foresight had received the fitting reward of a knighthood, and Sir
+Thomas, after restoring the Parish Church at Summerhay in a costly and
+destructive manner, spent his declining years in an enviable contentment
+with Lady Petchworth and the world at large, and died long before
+infirmity made him really troublesome.
+
+Good fortune had brought out Lady Petchworth's social aptitudes.
+Summerhay Park was everything that a clever woman, inspired by that
+gardening literature which has been so abundant in the opening years of
+the twentieth century, could make it. It had rosaries and rock gardens,
+sundials and yew hedges, pools and ponds, lead figures and stone urns,
+box borderings and wilderness corners and hundreds and hundreds of feet
+of prematurely-aged red-brick wall with broad herbaceous borders; the
+walks had primroses, primulas and cowslips in a quite disingenuous
+abundance, and in spring the whole extent of the park was gay, here with
+thousands of this sort of daffodil just bursting out and here with
+thousands of that sort of narcissus just past its prime, and every patch
+ready to pass itself off in its naturalized way as the accidental native
+flower of the field, if only it hadn't been for all the other different
+varieties coming on or wilting-off in adjacent patches....
+
+Her garden was only the beginning of Lady Petchworth's activities. She
+had a model dairy, and all her poultry was white, and so far as she was
+able to manage it she made Summerhay a model village. She overflowed
+with activities, it was astonishing in one so plump and blonde, and
+meeting followed meeting in the artistic little red-brick and
+green-stained timber village hall she had erected. Now it was the
+National Theatre and now it was the National Mourning; now it was the
+Break Up of the Poor Law, and now the Majority Report, now the Mothers'
+Union, and now Socialism, and now Individualism, but always something
+progressive and beneficial. She did her best to revive the old village
+life, and brought her very considerable powers of compulsion to make the
+men dance in simple old Morris dances, dressed up in costumes they
+secretly abominated, and to induce the mothers to dress their children
+in art-coloured smocks instead of the prints and blue serge frocks they
+preferred. She did not despair, she said, of creating a spontaneous
+peasant art movement in the district, springing from the people and
+expressing the people, but so far it had been necessary to import not
+only instructors and material, but workers to keep the thing going, so
+sluggish had the spontaneity of our English countryside become.
+
+Her little gatherings were quite distinctive of her. They were a sort of
+garden party extending from mid-day to six or seven; there would be a
+nucleus of house guests, and the highways and byeways on every hand
+would be raided to supply persons and interests. She had told her friend
+to "bring the girls over for the day," and flung an invitation to Mr.
+Pope, who had at once excused himself on the score of his ankle. Mr.
+Pope was one of those men who shun social gatherings--ostensibly because
+of a sterling simplicity of taste, but really because his intolerable
+egotism made him feel slighted and neglected on these occasions. He told
+his wife he would be far happier with a book at home, exhorted her not
+to be late, and was seen composing himself to read the "Vicar of
+Wakefield"--whenever they published a new book Mr. Pope pretended to
+read an old one--as the hired waggonette took the rest of his
+family--Theodore very unhappy in buff silk and a wide Stuart
+collar--down the avenue.
+
+They found a long lunch table laid on the lawn beneath the chestnuts,
+and in full view of the poppies and forget-me-nots around the stone
+obelisk, a butler and three men servants with brass buttons and red and
+white striped waistcoats gave dignity to the scene, and beyond, on the
+terrace amidst abundance of deckchairs, cane chairs, rugs, and cushions,
+a miscellaneous and increasing company seethed under Lady Petchworth's
+plump but entertaining hand. There were, of course, Mr. Magnet, and his
+friend Mr. Wintersloan--Lady Petchworth had been given to understand
+how the land lay; and there was Mr. Bunford Paradise the musician, who
+was doing his best to teach a sullen holiday class in the village
+schoolroom to sing the artless old folk songs of Surrey again, in spite
+of the invincible persuasion of everybody in the class that the songs
+were rather indelicate and extremely silly; there were the Rev. Jopling
+Baynes, and two Cambridge undergraduates in flannels, and a Doctor
+something or other from London. There was also the Hon. Charles Muskett,
+Lord Pottinger's cousin and estate agent, in tweeds and very helpful.
+The ladies included Mrs. Raff, the well-known fashion writer, in a
+wonderful costume, the anonymous doctor's wife, three or four
+neighbouring mothers with an undistinguished daughter or so, and two
+quiet-mannered middle-aged ladies, whose names Marjorie could not catch,
+and whom Lady Petchworth, in that well-controlled voice of hers,
+addressed as Kate and Julia, and seemed on the whole disposed to treat
+as humorous. There was also Fraulein Schmidt in charge of Lady
+Petchworth's three tall and already abundant children, Prunella,
+Prudence, and Mary, and a young, newly-married couple of cousins, who
+addressed each other in soft undertones and sat apart. These were the
+chief items that became distinctive in Marjorie's survey; but there were
+a number of other people who seemed to come and go, split up, fuse,
+change their appearance slightly, and behave in the way inadequately
+apprehended people do behave on these occasions.
+
+Marjorie very speedily found her disposition to take a detached and
+amused view of the entertainment in conflict with more urgent demands.
+From the outset Mr. Magnet loomed upon her--he loomed nearer and nearer.
+He turned his eye upon her as she came up to the wealthy expanse of
+Lady Petchworth's presence, like some sort of obsolescent iron-clad
+turning a dull-grey, respectful, loving searchlight upon a fugitive
+torpedo boat, and thereafter he seemed to her to be looking at her
+without intermission, relentlessly, and urging himself towards her. She
+wished he wouldn't. She hadn't at all thought he would on this occasion.
+
+At first she relied upon her natural powers of evasion, and the presence
+of a large company. Then gradually it became apparent that Lady
+Petchworth and her mother, yes--and the party generally, and the gardens
+and the weather and the stars in their courses were of a mind to
+co-operate in giving opportunity for Mr. Magnet's unmistakable
+intentions.
+
+And Marjorie with that instability of her sex which has been a theme for
+masculine humour in all ages, suddenly and with an extraordinary
+violence didn't want to make up her mind about Mr. Magnet. She didn't
+want to accept him; and as distinctly she didn't want to refuse him. She
+didn't even want to be thought about as making up her mind about
+him--which was, so to speak, an enlargement of her previous
+indisposition. She didn't even want to seem to avoid him, or to be
+thinking about him, or aware of his existence.
+
+After the greeting of Lady Petchworth she had succeeded very clumsily in
+not seeing Mr. Magnet, and had addressed herself to Mr. Wintersloan, who
+was standing a little apart, looking under his hand, with one eye shut,
+at the view between the tree stems towards Buryhamstreet. He told her
+that he thought he had found something "pooty" that hadn't been done,
+and she did her best to share his artistic interests with a vivid sense
+of Mr. Magnet's tentative incessant approach behind her.
+
+He joined them, and she made a desperate attempt to entangle Mr.
+Wintersloan in a three-cornered talk in vain. He turned away at the
+first possible opportunity, and left her to an embarrassed and
+eloquently silent _tęte-ŕ-tęte_. Mr. Magnet's professional wit had
+deserted him. "It's nice to see you again," he said after an immense
+interval. "Shall we go and look at the aviary?"
+
+"I hate to see birds in cages," said Marjorie, "and it's frightfully
+jolly just here. Do you think Mr. Wintersloan will paint this? He does
+paint, doesn't he?"
+
+"I know him best in black and white," said Mr. Magnet.
+
+Marjorie embarked on entirely insincere praises of Mr. Wintersloan's
+manner and personal effect; Magnet replied tepidly, with an air of
+reserving himself to grapple with the first conversational opportunity.
+
+"It's a splendid day for tennis," said Marjorie. "I think I shall play
+tennis all the afternoon."
+
+"I don't play well enough for this publicity."
+
+"It's glorious exercise," said Marjorie. "Almost as good as dancing,"
+and she decided to stick to that resolution. "I never lose a chance of
+tennis if I can help it."
+
+She glanced round and detected a widening space between themselves and
+the next adjacent group.
+
+"They're looking at the goldfish," she said. "Let us join them."
+
+Everyone moved away as they came up to the little round pond, but then
+Marjorie had luck, and captured Prunella, and got her to hold hands and
+talk, until Fraulein Schmidt called the child away. And then Marjorie
+forced Mr. Magnet to introduce her to Mr. Bunford Paradise. She had a
+bright idea of sitting between Prunella and Mary at the lunch table,
+but a higher providence had assigned her to a seat at the end between
+Julia--or was it Kate?--and Mr. Magnet. However, one of the
+undergraduates was opposite, and she saved herself from undertones by
+talking across to him boldly about Newnham, though she hadn't an idea of
+his name or college. From that she came to tennis. To her inflamed
+imagination he behaved as if she was under a Taboo, but she was
+desperate, and had pledged him and his friend to a foursome before the
+meal was over.
+
+"Don't _you_ play?" said the undergraduate to Mr. Magnet.
+
+"Very little," said Mr. Magnet. "Very little--"
+
+At the end of an hour she was conspicuously and publicly shepherded from
+the tennis court by Mrs. Pope.
+
+"Other people want to play," said her mother in a clear little
+undertone.
+
+Mr. Magnet fielded her neatly as she came off the court.
+
+"You play tennis like--a wild bird," he said, taking possession of her.
+
+Only Marjorie's entire freedom from Irish blood saved him from a
+vindictive repartee.
+
+
+§ 3
+
+"Shall we go and look at the aviary?" said Mr. Magnet, reverting to a
+favourite idea of his, and then remembered she did not like to see caged
+birds.
+
+"Perhaps we might see the Water Garden?" he said. "The Water Garden is
+really very delightful indeed--anyhow. You ought to see that."
+
+On the spur of the moment, Marjorie could think of no objection to the
+Water Garden, and he led her off.
+
+"I often think of that jolly walk we had last summer," said Mr. Magnet,
+"and how you talked about your work at Oxbridge."
+
+Marjorie fell into a sudden rapture of admiration for a butterfly.
+
+Twice more was Mr. Magnet baffled, and then they came to the little pool
+of water lilies with its miniature cascade of escape at the head and
+source of the Water Garden. "One of Lady Petchworth's great successes,"
+said Mr. Magnet.
+
+"I suppose the lotus is like the water-lily," said Marjorie, with no
+hope of staving off the inevitable----
+
+She stood very still by the little pool, and in spite of her pensive
+regard of the floating blossoms, stiffly and intensely aware of his
+relentless regard.
+
+"Marjorie," came his voice at last, strangely softened. "There is
+something I want to say to you."
+
+She made no reply.
+
+"Ever since we met last summer----"
+
+A clear cold little resolution not to stand this, had established itself
+in Marjorie's mind. If she must decide, she _would_ decide. He had
+brought it upon himself.
+
+"Marjorie," said Mr. Magnet, "I love you."
+
+She lifted a clear unhesitating eye to his face. "I'm sorry, Mr.
+Magnet," she said.
+
+"I wanted to ask you to marry me," he said.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mr. Magnet," she repeated.
+
+They looked at one another. She felt a sort of scared exultation at
+having done it; her mother might say what she liked.
+
+"I love you very much," he said, at a loss.
+
+"I'm sorry," she repeated obstinately.
+
+"I thought you cared for me a little."
+
+She left that unanswered. She had a curious feeling that there was no
+getting away from this splashing, babbling pool, that she was fixed
+there until Mr. Magnet chose to release her, and that he didn't mean to
+release her yet. In which case she would go on refusing.
+
+"I'm disappointed," he said.
+
+Marjorie could only think that she was sorry again, but as she had
+already said that three times, she remained awkwardly silent.
+
+"Is it because----" he began and stopped.
+
+"It isn't because of anything. Please let's go back to the others, Mr.
+Magnet. I'm sorry if I'm disappointing."
+
+And by a great effort she turned about.
+
+Mr. Magnet remained regarding her--I can only compare it to the
+searching preliminary gaze of an artistic photographer. For a crucial
+minute in his life Marjorie hated him. "I don't understand," he said at
+last.
+
+Then with a sort of naturalness that ought to have touched her he said:
+"Is it possible, Marjorie--that I might hope?--that I have been
+inopportune?"
+
+She answered at once with absolute conviction.
+
+"I don't think so, Mr. Magnet."
+
+"I'm sorry," he said, "to have bothered you."
+
+"_I'm_ sorry," said Marjorie.
+
+A long silence followed.
+
+"I'm sorry too," he said.
+
+They said no more, but began to retrace their steps. It was over.
+Abruptly, Mr. Magnet's bearing had become despondent--conspicuously
+despondent. "I had hoped," he said, and sighed.
+
+With a thrill of horror Marjorie perceived he meant to _look_ rejected,
+let every one see he had been rejected--after encouragement.
+
+What would they think? How would they look? What conceivably might they
+not say? Something of the importance of the thing she had done, became
+manifest to her. She felt first intimations of regret. They would all be
+watching, Mother, Daffy, Lady Petchworth. She would reappear with this
+victim visibly suffering beside her. What could she say to straighten
+his back and lift his chin? She could think of nothing. Ahead at the end
+of the shaded path she could see the copious white form, the agitated
+fair wig and red sunshade of Lady Petchworth----
+
+
+§ 4
+
+Mrs. Pope's eye was relentless; nothing seemed hidden from it; nothing
+indeed was hidden from it; Mr. Magnet's back was diagrammatic. Marjorie
+was a little flushed and bright-eyed, and professed herself eager, with
+an unnatural enthusiasm, to play golf-croquet. It was eloquently
+significant that Mr. Magnet did not share her eagerness, declined to
+play, and yet when she had started with the Rev. Jopling Baynes as
+partner, stood regarding the game with a sort of tender melancholy from
+the shade of the big chestnut-tree.
+
+Mrs. Pope joined him unobtrusively.
+
+"You're not playing, Mr. Magnet," she remarked.
+
+"I'm a looker-on, this time," he said with a sigh.
+
+"Marjorie's winning, I think," said Mrs. Pope.
+
+He made no answer for some seconds.
+
+"She looks so charming in that blue dress," he remarked at last, and
+sighed from the lowest deeps.
+
+"That bird's-egg blue suits her," said Mrs. Pope, ignoring the sigh.
+"She's clever in her girlish way, she chooses all her own
+dresses,--colours, material, everything."
+
+(And also, though Mrs. Pope had not remarked it, she concealed her
+bills.)
+
+There came a still longer interval, which Mrs. Pope ended with the
+slightest of shivers. She perceived Mr. Magnet was heavy for sympathy
+and ripe to confide. "I think," she said, "it's a little cool here.
+Shall we walk to the Water Garden, and see if there are any white
+lilies?"
+
+"There are," said Mr. Magnet sorrowfully, "and they are very
+beautiful--_quite_ beautiful."
+
+He turned to the path along which he had so recently led Marjorie.
+
+He glanced back as they went along between Lady Petchworth's herbaceous
+border and the poppy beds. "She's so full of life," he said, with a sigh
+in his voice.
+
+Mrs. Pope knew she must keep silent.
+
+"I asked her to marry me this afternoon," Mr. Magnet blurted out. "I
+couldn't help it."
+
+Mrs. Pope made her silence very impressive.
+
+"I know I ought not to have done so without consulting you"--he went on
+lamely; "I'm very much in love with her. It's----It's done no harm."
+
+Mrs. Pope's voice was soft and low. "I had no idea, Mr. Magnet.... You
+know she is very young. Twenty. A mother----"
+
+"I know," said Magnet. "I can quite understand. But I've done no harm.
+She refused me. I shall go away to-morrow. Go right away for ever....
+I'm sorry."
+
+Another long silence.
+
+"To me, of course, she's just a child," Mrs. Pope said at last. "She
+_is_ only a child, Mr. Magnet. She could have had no idea that anything
+of the sort was in your mind----"
+
+Her words floated away into the stillness.
+
+For a time they said no more. The lilies came into sight, dreaming under
+a rich green shade on a limpid pool of brown water, water that slept and
+brimmed over as it were, unconsciously into a cool splash and ripple of
+escape. "How beautiful!" cried Mrs. Pope, for a moment genuine.
+
+"I spoke to her here," said Mr. Magnet.
+
+The fountains of his confidence were unloosed.
+
+"Now I've spoken to you about it, Mrs. Pope," he said, "I can tell you
+just how I--oh, it's the only word--adore her. She seems so sweet and
+easy--so graceful----"
+
+Mrs. Pope turned on him abruptly, and grasped his hands; she was deeply
+moved. "I can't tell you," she said, "what it means to a mother to hear
+such things----"
+
+Words failed her, and for some moments they engaged in a mutual
+pressure.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Magnet, and had a queer wish it was the mother he had to
+deal with.
+
+"Are you sure, Mr. Magnet," Mrs. Pope went on as their emotions
+subsided, "that she really meant what she said? Girls are very strange
+creatures----"
+
+"She seems so clear and positive."
+
+"Her manner is always clear and positive."
+
+"Yes. I know."
+
+"I know she _has_ cared for you."
+
+"No!"
+
+"A mother sees. When your name used to be mentioned----. But these are
+not things to talk about. There is something--something sacred----"
+
+"Yes," he said. "Yes. Only----Of course, one thing----"
+
+Mrs. Pope seemed lost in the contemplation of water-lilies.
+
+"I wondered," said Mr. Magnet, and paused again.
+
+Then, almost breathlessly, "I wondered if there should be perhaps--some
+one else?"
+
+She shook her head slowly. "I should know," she said.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I know I should know."
+
+"Perhaps recently?"
+
+"I am sure I should know. A mother's intuition----"
+
+Memories possessed her for awhile. "A girl of twenty is a mass of
+contradictions. I can remember myself as if it was yesterday. Often one
+says no, or yes--out of sheer nervousness.... I am sure there is no
+other attachment----"
+
+It occurred to her that she had said enough. "What a dignity that old
+gold-fish has!" she remarked. "He waves his tail--as if he were a beadle
+waving little boys out of church."
+
+
+§ 5
+
+Mrs. Pope astonished Marjorie by saying nothing about the all too
+obvious event of the day for some time, but her manner to her second
+daughter on their way home was strangely gentle. It was as if she had
+realized for the first time that regret and unhappiness might come into
+that young life. After supper, however, she spoke. They had all gone out
+just before the children went to bed to look for the new moon; Daffy was
+showing the pseudo-twins the old moon in the new moon's arms, and
+Marjorie found herself standing by her mother's side. "I hope dear,"
+said Mrs. Pope, "that it's all for the best--and that you've done
+wisely, dear."
+
+Marjorie was astonished and moved by her mother's tone.
+
+"It's so difficult to know what _is_ for the best," Mrs. Pope went on.
+
+"I had to do--as I did," said Marjorie.
+
+"I only hope you may never find you have made a Great Mistake, dear. He
+cares for you very, very much."
+
+"Oh! we see it now!" cried Rom, "we see it now! Mummy, have you seen it?
+Like a little old round ghost being nursed!"
+
+When Marjorie said "Good-night," Mrs. Pope kissed her with an
+unaccustomed effusion.
+
+It occurred to Marjorie that after all her mother had no selfish end to
+serve in this affair.
+
+
+§ 6
+
+The idea that perhaps after all she had made a Great Mistake, the
+Mistake of her Life it might be, was quite firmly established in its
+place among all the other ideas in Marjorie's mind by the time she had
+dressed next morning. Subsequent events greatly intensified this
+persuasion. A pair of new stockings she had trusted sprang a bad hole as
+she put them on. She found two unmistakable bills from Oxbridge beside
+her plate, and her father was "horrid" at breakfast.
+
+Her father, it appeared, had bought the ordinary shares of a Cuban
+railway very extensively, on the distinct understanding that they would
+improve. In a decent universe, with a proper respect for meritorious
+gentlemen, these shares would have improved accordingly, but the weather
+had seen fit to shatter the wisdom of Mr. Pope altogether. The sugar
+crop had collapsed, the bears were at work, and every morning now saw
+his nominal capital diminished by a dozen pounds or so. I do not know
+what Mr. Pope would have done if he had not had his family to help him
+bear his trouble. As it was he relieved his tension by sending Theodore
+from the table for dropping a knife, telling Rom when she turned the
+plate round to pick the largest banana that she hadn't the self-respect
+of a child of five, and remarking sharply from behind the _Times_ when
+Daffy asked Marjorie if she was going to sketch: "Oh, for God's sake
+don't _whisper!_" Then when Mrs. Pope came round the table and tried to
+take his coffee cup softly to refill it without troubling him, he
+snatched at it, wrenched it roughly out of her hand, and said with his
+mouth full, and strangely in the manner of a snarling beast: "No' ready
+yet. Half foo'."
+
+Marjorie wanted to know why every one didn't get up and leave the room.
+She glanced at her mother and came near to speaking.
+
+And very soon she would have to come home and live in the midst of this
+again--indefinitely!
+
+After breakfast she went to the tumbledown summer-house by the duckpond,
+and contemplated the bills she had not dared to open at table. One was
+boots, nearly three pounds, the other books, over seven. "I _know_
+that's wrong," said Marjorie, and rested her chin on her hand, knitted
+her brows and tried to remember the details of orders and deliveries....
+
+Marjorie had fallen into the net prepared for our sons and daughters by
+the delicate modesty of the Oxbridge authorities in money matters, and
+she was, for her circumstances, rather heavily in debt. But I must admit
+that in Marjorie's nature the Oxbridge conditions had found an eager and
+adventurous streak that rendered her particularly apt to these
+temptations.
+
+I doubt if reticence is really a virtue in a teacher. But this is a
+fearful world, and the majority of those who instruct our youth have the
+painful sensitiveness of the cloistered soul to this spirit of terror in
+things. The young need particularly to be told truthfully and fully all
+we know of three fundamental things: the first of which is God, the
+next their duty towards their neighbours in the matter of work and
+money, and the third Sex. These things, and the adequate why of them,
+and some sort of adequate how, make all that matters in education. But
+all three are obscure and deeply moving topics, topics for which the
+donnish mind has a kind of special ineptitude, and which it evades with
+the utmost skill and delicacy. The middle part of this evaded triad was
+now being taken up in Marjorie's case by the Oxbridge tradespeople.
+
+The Oxbridge shopkeeper is peculiar among shopkeepers in the fact that
+he has to do very largely with shy and immature customers with an
+extreme and distinctive ignorance of most commercial things. They are
+for the most part short of cash, but with vague and often large
+probabilities of credit behind them, for most people, even quite
+straitened people, will pull their sons and daughters out of altogether
+unreasonable debts at the end of their university career; and so the
+Oxbridge shopkeeper becomes a sort of propagandist of the charms and
+advantages of insolvency. Alone among retailers he dislikes the sight of
+cash, declines it, affects to regard it as a coarse ignorant truncation
+of a budding relationship, begs to be permitted to wait. So the
+youngster just up from home discovers that money may stay in the pocket,
+be used for cab and train fares and light refreshments; all the rest may
+be had for the asking. Marjorie, with her innate hunger for good fine
+things, with her quite insufficient pocket-money, and the irregular
+habits of expenditure a spasmodically financed, hard-up home is apt to
+engender, fell very readily into this new, delightful custom of having
+it put down (whatever it happened to be). She had all sorts of things
+put down. She and the elder Carmel girl used to go shopping together,
+having things put down. She brightened her rooms with colour-prints and
+engravings, got herself pretty and becoming clothes, acquired a fitted
+dressing-bag already noted in this story, and one or two other trifles
+of the sort, revised her foot-wear, created a very nice little
+bookshelf, and although at times she felt a little astonished and scared
+at herself, resolutely refused to estimate the total of accumulated debt
+she had attained. Indeed until the bills came in it was impossible to do
+that, because, following the splendid example of the Carmel girl, she
+hadn't even inquired the price of quite a number of things....
+
+She didn't dare think now of the total. She lied even to herself about
+that. She had fixed on fifty pounds as the unendurable maximum. "It is
+less than fifty pounds," she said, and added: "_must_ be." But something
+in her below the threshold of consciousness knew that it was more.
+
+And now she was in her third year, and the Oxbridge tradesman, generally
+satisfied with the dimensions of her account, and no longer anxious to
+see it grow, was displaying the less obsequious side of his character.
+He wrote remarks at the bottom of his account, remarks about settlement,
+about having a bill to meet, about having something to go on with. He
+asked her to give the matter her "early attention." She had a
+disagreeable persuasion that if she wanted many more things anywhere she
+would have to pay ready money for them. She was particularly short of
+stockings. She had overlooked stockings recently.
+
+Daffy, unfortunately, was also short of stockings.
+
+And now, back with her family again, everything conspired to remind
+Marjorie of the old stringent habits from which she had had so
+delightful an interlude. She saw Daffy eye her possessions, reflect.
+This morning something of the awfulness of her position came to her....
+
+At Oxbridge she had made rather a joke of her debts.
+
+"I'd _swear_ I haven't had three pairs of house shoes," said Marjorie.
+"But what can one do?"
+
+And about the whole position the question was, "what can one do?"
+
+She proceeded with tense nervous movements to tear these two distasteful
+demands into very minute pieces. Then she collected them all together in
+the hollow of her hand, and buried them in the loose mould in a corner
+of the summer-house.
+
+"Madge," said Theodore, appearing in the sunshine of the doorway. "Aunt
+Plessington's coming! She's sent a wire. Someone's got to meet her by
+the twelve-forty train."
+
+
+§ 7
+
+Aunt Plessington's descent was due to her sudden discovery that
+Buryhamstreet was in close proximity to Summerhay Park, indeed only
+three miles away. She had promised a lecture on her movement for Lady
+Petchworth's village room in Summerhay, and she found that with a slight
+readjustment of dates she could combine this engagement with her
+promised visit to her husband's sister, and an evening or so of
+influence for her little Madge. So she had sent Hubert to telegraph at
+once, and "here," she said triumphantly on the platform, after a hard
+kiss at Marjorie's cheek, "we are again."
+
+There, at any rate, she was, and Uncle Hubert was up the platform seeing
+after the luggage, in his small anxious way.
+
+Aunt Plessington was a tall lean woman, with firm features, a high
+colour and a bright eye, who wore hats to show she despised them, and
+carefully dishevelled hair. Her dress was always good, but extremely old
+and grubby, and she commanded respect chiefly by her voice. Her voice
+was the true governing-class voice, a strangulated contralto, abundant
+and authoritative; it made everything she said clear and important, so
+that if she said it was a fine morning it was like leaded print in the
+_Times_, and she had over her large front teeth lips that closed quietly
+and with a slight effort after her speeches, as if the words she spoke
+tasted well and left a peaceful, secure sensation in the mouth.
+
+Uncle Hubert was a less distinguished figure, and just a little
+reminiscent of the small attached husbands one finds among the lower
+crustacea: he was much shorter and rounder than his wife, and if he had
+been left to himself, he would probably have been comfortably fat in his
+quiet little way. But Aunt Plessington had made him a Haigite, which is
+one of the fiercer kinds of hygienist, just in the nick of time. He had
+round shoulders, a large nose, and glasses that made him look
+astonished--and she said he had a great gift for practical things, and
+made him see after everything in that line while she did the lecturing.
+His directions to the porter finished, he came up to his niece. "Hello,
+Marjorie!" he said, in a peculiar voice that sounded as though his mouth
+was full (though of course, poor dear, it wasn't), "how's the First
+Class?"
+
+"A second's good enough for me, Uncle Hubert," said Marjorie, and asked
+if they would rather walk or go in the donkey cart, which was waiting
+outside with Daffy. Aunt Plessington, with an air of great _bonhomie_
+said she'd ride in the donkey cart, and they did. But no pseudo-twins or
+Theodore came to meet this arrival, as both uncle and aunt had a way of
+asking how the lessons were getting on that they found extremely
+disagreeable. Also, their aunt measured them, and incited them with loud
+encouraging noises to grow one against the other in an urgent,
+disturbing fashion.
+
+Aunt Plessington's being was consumed by thoughts of getting on. She was
+like Bernard Shaw's life force, and she really did not seem to think
+there was anything in existence but shoving. She had no idea what a lark
+life can be, and occasionally how beautiful it can be when you do not
+shove, if only, which becomes increasingly hard each year, you can get
+away from the shovers. She was one of an energetic family of eight
+sisters who had maintained themselves against a mutual pressure by the
+use of their elbows from the cradle. They had all married against each
+other, all sorts of people; two had driven their husbands into
+bishoprics and made quite typical bishop's wives, one got a leading
+barrister, one a high war-office official, and one a rich Jew, and Aunt
+Plessington, after spending some years in just missing a rich and only
+slightly demented baronet, had pounced--it's the only word for it--on
+Uncle Hubert. "A woman is nothing without a husband," she said, and took
+him. He was a fairly comfortable Oxford don in his furtive way, and
+bringing him out and using him as a basis, she specialized in
+intellectual philanthropy and evolved her Movement. It was quite
+remarkable how rapidly she overhauled her sisters again.
+
+What the Movement was, varied considerably from time to time, but it was
+always aggressively beneficial towards the lower strata of the
+community. Among its central ideas was her belief that these lower
+strata can no more be trusted to eat than they can to drink, and that
+the licensing monopoly which has made the poor man's beer thick,
+lukewarm and discreditable, and so greatly minimized its consumption,
+should be extended to the solid side of his dietary. She wanted to place
+considerable restrictions upon the sale of all sorts of meat, upon
+groceries and the less hygienic and more palatable forms of bread (which
+do not sufficiently stimulate the coatings of the stomach), to increase
+the present difficulties in the way of tobacco purchasers, and to put an
+end to that wanton and deleterious consumption of sweets which has so
+bad an effect upon the enamel of the teeth of the younger generation.
+Closely interwoven with these proposals was an adoption of the principle
+of the East Purblow Experiment, the principle of Payment in Kind. She
+was quite in agreement with Mr. Pope that poor people, when they had
+money, frittered it away, and so she proposed very extensive changes in
+the Truck Act, which could enable employers, under suitable safeguards,
+and with the advice of a small body of spinster inspectors, to supply
+hygienic housing, approved clothing of moral and wholesome sort, various
+forms of insurance, edifying rations, cuisine, medical aid and
+educational facilities as circumstances seemed to justify, in lieu of
+the wages the employees handled so ill....
+
+As no people in England will ever admit they belong to the lower strata
+of society, Aunt Plessington's Movement attracted adherents from every
+class in the community.
+
+She now, as they drove slowly to the vicarage, recounted to
+Marjorie--she had the utmost contempt for Daffy because of her irregular
+teeth and a general lack of progressive activity--the steady growth of
+the Movement, and the increasing respect shown for her and Hubert in the
+world of politico-social reform. Some of the meetings she had addressed
+had been quite full, various people had made various remarks about her,
+hostile for the most part and yet insidiously flattering, and everybody
+seemed quite glad to come to the little dinners she gave in order, she
+said, to gather social support for her reforms. She had been staying
+with the Mastersteins, who were keenly interested, and after she had
+polished off Lady Petchworth she was to visit Lady Rosenbaum. It was all
+going on swimmingly, these newer English gentry were eager to learn all
+she had to teach in the art of breaking in the Anglo-Saxon villagers,
+and now, how was Marjorie going on, and what was _she_ going to do in
+the world?
+
+Marjorie said she was working for her final.
+
+"And what then?" asked Aunt Plessington.
+
+"Not very clear, Aunt, yet."
+
+"Looking around for something to take up?"
+
+"Yes, Aunt."
+
+"Well, you've time yet. And it's just as well to see how the land lies
+before you begin. It saves going back. You'll have to come up to London
+with me for a little while, and see things, and be seen a little."
+
+"I should love to."
+
+"I'll give you a good time," said Aunt Plessington, nodding promisingly.
+"Theodore getting on in school?"
+
+"He's had his remove."
+
+"And how's Sydney getting on with the music?"
+
+"Excellently."
+
+"And Rom. Rom getting on?"
+
+Marjorie indicated a more restrained success.
+
+"And what's Daffy doing?"
+
+"Oh! _get_ on!" said Daffy and suddenly whacked the donkey rather hard.
+"I beg your pardon, Aunt?"
+
+"I asked what _you_ were up to, Daffy?"
+
+"Dusting, Aunt--and the virtues," said Daffy.
+
+"You ought to find something better than that."
+
+"Father tells me a lot about the East Purblow Experiment," said Daffy
+after a perceptible interval.
+
+"Ah!" cried Aunt Plessington with a loud encouraging note, but evidently
+making the best of it, "_that's_ better. Sociological observation."
+
+"Yes, Aunt," said Daffy, and negotiated a corner with exceptional care.
+
+
+§ 8
+
+Mrs. Pope, who had an instinctive disposition to pad when Aunt
+Plessington was about, had secured the presence at lunch of Mr. Magnet
+(who was after all staying on in Buryhamstreet) and the Rev. Jopling
+Baynes. Aunt Plessington liked to meet the clergy, and would always if
+she could win them over to an interest in the Movement. She opened the
+meal with a brisk attack upon him. "Come, Mr. Baynes," she said, "what
+do your people eat here? Hubert and I are making a study of the
+gluttonous side of village life, and we find that no one knows so much
+of that as the vicar--not even the doctor."
+
+The Reverend Jopling Baynes was a clergyman of the evasive type with a
+quite distinguished voice. He pursed his lips and made his eyes round.
+"Well, Mrs. Plessington," he said and fingered his glass, "it's the
+usual dietary. The usual dietary."
+
+"Too much and too rich, badly cooked and eaten too fast," said Aunt
+Plessington. "And what do you think is the remedy?"
+
+"We make an Effort," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes, "we make an Effort. A
+Hint here, a Word there."
+
+"Nothing organized?"
+
+"No," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes, and shook his head with a kind of
+resignation.
+
+"We are going to alter all that," said Aunt Plessington briskly, and
+went on to expound the Movement and the diverse way in which it might be
+possible to control and improve the domestic expenditure of the working
+classes.
+
+The Rev. Jopling Baynes listened sympathetically across the table and
+tried to satisfy a healthy appetite with as abstemious an air as
+possible while he did so. Aunt Plessington passed rapidly from general
+principles, to a sketch of the success of the movement, and Hubert, who
+had hitherto been busy with his lunch, became audible from behind the
+exceptionally large floral trophy that concealed him from his wife,
+bubbling confirmatory details. She was very bright and convincing as she
+told of this prominent man met and subdued, that leading antagonist
+confuted, and how the Bishops were coming in. She made it clear in her
+swift way that an intelligent cleric resolved to get on in this world
+_en route_ for a better one hereafter, might do worse than take up her
+Movement. And this touched in, she turned her mind to Mr. Magnet.
+
+(That floral trophy, I should explain, by the by, was exceptionally
+large because of Mrs. Pope's firm conviction that Aunt Plessington
+starved her husband. Accordingly, she masked him, and so was able to
+heap second and third helpings upon his plate without Aunt Plessington
+discovering his lapse. The avidity with which Hubert ate confirmed her
+worst suspicions and evinced, so far as anything ever did evince, his
+gratitude.)
+
+"Well, Mr. Magnet," she said, "I wish I had your sense of humour."
+
+"I wish you had," said Mr. Magnet.
+
+"I should write tracts," said Aunt Plessington.
+
+"I knew it was good for something," said Mr. Magnet, and Daffy laughed
+in a tentative way.
+
+"I mean it," said Aunt Plessington brightly. "Think if we had a
+Dickens--and you are the nearest man alive to Dickens--on the side of
+social reform to-day!"
+
+Mr. Magnet's light manner deserted him. "We do what we can, Mrs.
+Plessington," he said.
+
+"How much more might be done," said Aunt Plessington, "if humour could
+be organized."
+
+"Hear, hear!" said Mr. Pope.
+
+"If all the humorists of England could be induced to laugh at something
+together."
+
+"They do--at times," said Mr. Magnet, but the atmosphere was too serious
+for his light touch.
+
+"They could laugh it out of existence," said Aunt Plessington.
+
+It was evident Mr. Magnet was struck by the idea.
+
+"Of course," he said, "in _Punch_, to which I happen to be an obscure
+occasional contributor----"
+
+Mrs. Pope was understood to protest that he should not say such things.
+
+"We _do_ remember just what we can do either in the way of advertising
+or injury. I don't think you'll find us up against any really _solid_
+institutions."
+
+"But do you think, Mr. Magnet, you are sufficiently kind to the New?"
+Aunt Plessington persisted.
+
+"I think we are all grateful to _Punch_," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes
+suddenly and sonorously, "for its steady determination to direct our
+mirth into the proper channels. I do not think that any one can accuse
+its editor of being unmindful of his great responsibilities----"
+
+Marjorie found it a very interesting conversation.
+
+She always met her aunt again with a renewal of a kind of admiration.
+That loud authoritative rudeness, that bold thrusting forward of the
+Movement until it became the sole criterion of worth or success, this
+annihilation by disregard of all that Aunt Plessington wasn't and didn't
+and couldn't, always in the intervals seemed too good to be true. Of
+course this really was the way people got on and made a mark, but she
+felt it must be almost as trying to the nerves as aeronautics. Suppose,
+somewhere up there your engine stopped! How Aunt Plessington dominated
+the table! Marjorie tried not to catch Daffy's eye. Daffy was
+unostentatiously keeping things going, watching the mustard, rescuing
+the butter, restraining Theodore, and I am afraid not listening very
+carefully to Aunt Plessington. The children were marvellously silent and
+jumpily well-behaved, and Mr. Pope, in a very unusual state of subdued
+amiability, sat at the end of the table with the East Purblow experiment
+on the tip of his tongue. He liked Aunt Plessington, and she was good
+for him. They had the same inherent distrust of the intelligence and
+good intentions of their fellow creatures, and she had the knack of
+making him feel that he too was getting on, that she was saying things
+on his behalf in influential quarters, and in spite of the almost
+universal conspiracy (based on jealousy) to ignore his stern old-world
+virtues, he might still be able to battle his way to the floor of the
+House of Commons and there deliver himself before he died of a few
+sorely needed home-truths about motor cars, decadence and frivolity
+generally....
+
+
+§ 9
+
+After lunch Aunt Plessington took her little Madge for an energetic
+walk, and showed herself far more observant than the egotism of her
+conversation at that meal might have led one to suppose. Or perhaps she
+was only better informed. Aunt Plessington loved a good hard walk in the
+afternoon; and if she could get any one else to accompany her, then
+Hubert stayed at home, and curled up into a ball on a sofa somewhere,
+and took a little siesta that made him all the brighter for the
+intellectual activities of the evening. The thought of a young life,
+new, untarnished, just at the outset, just addressing itself to the task
+of getting on, always stimulated her mind extremely, and she talked to
+Marjorie with a very real and effectual desire to help her to the utmost
+of her ability.
+
+She talked of a start in life, and the sort of start she had had. She
+showed how many people who began with great advantages did not shove
+sufficiently, and so dropped out of things and weren't seen and
+mentioned. She defended herself for marrying Hubert, and showed what a
+clever shoving thing it had been to do. It startled people a little, and
+made them realize that here was a woman who wanted something more in a
+man than a handsome organ-grinder. She made it clear that she thought a
+clever marriage, if not a startlingly brilliant one, the first duty of a
+girl. It was a girl's normal gambit. She branched off to the things
+single women might do, in order to justify this view. She did not think
+single women could do very much. They might perhaps shove as
+suffragettes, but even there a husband helped tremendously--if only by
+refusing to bail you out. She ran over the cases of a number of
+prominent single women.
+
+"And what," said Aunt Plessington, "do they all amount to? A girl is so
+hampered and an old maid is so neglected," said Aunt Plessington.
+
+She paused.
+
+"Why don't you up and marry Mr. Magnet, Marjorie?" she said, with her
+most brilliant flash.
+
+"It takes two to make a marriage, aunt," said Marjorie after a slight
+hesitation.
+
+"My dear child! he worships the ground you tread on!" said Aunt
+Plessington.
+
+"He's rather--grown up," said Marjorie.
+
+"Not a bit of it. He's not forty. He's just the age."
+
+"I'm afraid it's a little impossible."
+
+"Impossible?"
+
+"You see I've refused him, aunt."
+
+"Naturally--the first time! But I wouldn't send him packing the second."
+
+There was an interval.
+
+Marjorie decided on a blunt question. "Do you really think, aunt, I
+should do well to marry Mr. Magnet?"
+
+"He'd give you everything a clever woman needs," said Aunt Plessington.
+"Everything."
+
+With swift capable touches she indicated the sort of life the future
+Mrs. Magnet might enjoy. "He's evidently a man who wants helping to a
+position," she said. "Of course his farces and things, I'm told, make no
+end of money, but he's just a crude gift by himself. Money like that is
+nothing. With a clever wife he might be all sorts of things. Without one
+he'll just subside--you know the sort of thing this sort of man does. A
+rather eccentric humorous house in the country, golf, croquet,
+horse-riding, rose-growing, queer hats."
+
+"Isn't that rather what he would like to do, aunt?" said Marjorie.
+
+"That's not _our_ business, Madge," said Aunt Plessington with humorous
+emphasis.
+
+She began to sketch out a different and altogether smarter future for
+the fortunate humorist. There would be a house in a good central
+position in London where Marjorie would have bright successful lunches
+and dinners, very unpretending and very good, and tempt the clever smart
+with the lure of the interestingly clever; there would be a bright
+little country cottage in some pretty accessible place to which Aunt and
+Uncle Plessington and able and influential people generally could be
+invited for gaily recreative and yet extremely talkative and helpful
+week-ends. Both places could be made centres of intrigue; conspiracies
+for getting on and helping and exchanging help could be organized,
+people could be warned against people whose getting-on was undesirable.
+In the midst of it all, dressed with all the natural wit she had and an
+enlarging experience, would be Marjorie, shining like a rising planet.
+It wouldn't be long, if she did things well, before she had permanent
+officials and young cabinet ministers mingling with her salad of writers
+and humorists and the Plessington connexion.
+
+"Then," said Aunt Plessington with a joyous lift in her voice, "you'll
+begin to _weed_ a little."
+
+For a time the girl's mind resisted her.
+
+But Marjorie was of the impressionable sex at an impressionable age, and
+there was something overwhelming in the undeviating conviction of her
+aunt, in the clear assurance of her voice, that this life which
+interested her was the real life, the only possible successful life. The
+world reformed itself in Marjorie's fluent mind, until it was all a
+scheme of influence and effort and ambition and triumphs. Dinner-parties
+and receptions, men wearing orders, cabinet ministers more than a little
+in love asking her advice, beautiful robes, a great blaze of lights;
+why! she might be, said Aunt Plessington rising to enthusiasm, "another
+Marcella." The life was not without its adventurous side; it wasn't in
+any way dull. Aunt Plessington to illustrate that point told amusing
+anecdotes of how two almost impudent invitations on her part had
+succeeded, and how she had once scored off her elder sister by getting a
+coveted celebrity through their close family resemblance. "After
+accepting he couldn't very well refuse because I wasn't somebody else,"
+she ended gleefully. "So he came--and stayed as long as anybody."
+
+What else was there for Marjorie to contemplate? If she didn't take this
+by no means unattractive line, what was the alternative? Some sort of
+employment after a battle with her father, a parsimonious life, and even
+then the Oxbridge tradesmen and their immortal bills....
+
+Aunt Plessington was so intent upon her theme that she heeded nothing of
+the delightful little flowers she trampled under foot across the down,
+nor the jolly squirrel with an artistic temperament who saw fit to give
+an uninvited opinion upon her personal appearance from the security of a
+beech-tree in the wood. But Marjorie, noting quite a number of such
+things with the corner of her mind, and being now well under the
+Plessington sway, wished she had more concentration....
+
+In the evening after supper the customary games were suspended, and Mr.
+and Mrs. Plessington talked about getting on, and work and efficiency
+generally, and explained how so-and-so had spoilt his chances in life,
+and why so-and-so was sure to achieve nothing, and how this man ate too
+much and that man drank too much, and on the contrary what promising and
+capable people the latest adherents of and subscribers to the Movement
+were, until two glasses of hot water came--Aunt Plessington had been
+told it was good for her digestion and she thought it just as well that
+Hubert should have some too--and it was time for every one to go to bed.
+
+
+§ 10
+
+Next morning an atmosphere of getting on and strenuosity generally
+prevailed throughout the vicarage. The Plessingtons were preparing a
+memorandum on their movement for the "Reformer's Year Book," every word
+was of importance and might win or lose adherents and subscribers, and
+they secured the undisturbed possession of the drawing-room, from which
+the higher notes of Aunt Plessington's voice explaining the whole thing
+to Hubert, who had to write it out, reached, a spur to effort, into
+every part of the house.
+
+Their influence touched every one.
+
+Marjorie, struck by the idea that she was not perhaps getting on at
+Oxbridge so fast as she ought to do, went into the summer-house with
+Marshall's "Principles of Economics," read for two hours, and did not
+think about her bills for more than a quarter of the time. Rom, who had
+already got up early and read through about a third of "Aurora Leigh,"
+now set herself with dogged determination to finish that great poem. Syd
+practised an extra ten minutes--for Aunt Plessington didn't mind
+practice so long as there wasn't a tune. Mrs. Pope went into the kitchen
+and made a long-needed fuss about the waste of rice. Mr. Pope began the
+pamphlet he had had in contemplation for some time upon the advantages
+to public order of Payment in Kind. Theodore, who had washed behind his
+ears and laced his boots in all the holes, went into the yard before
+breakfast and hit a tennis ball against the wall and back, five hundred
+and twenty-two times--a record. He would have resumed this after
+breakfast, but his father came round the corner of the house with a pen
+in his mouth, and asked him indistinctly, but fiercely, what the _devil_
+he was doing. So he went away, and after a fretful interval set himself
+to revise his Latin irregular verbs. By twelve he had done wonders.
+
+Later in the day the widening circle of aggressive urgency reached the
+kitchen, and at two the cook gave notice in order, she said, to better
+herself.
+
+Lunch, unconscious of this impending shadow, was characterized by a
+virtuous cheerfulness, and Aunt Plessington told in detail how her seven
+and twenty nephews and nieces, the children of her various sisters, were
+all getting on. On the whole, they were not getting on so brilliantly as
+they might have done (which indeed is apt to be the case with the
+children of people who have loved not well but too wisely), and it was
+borne in upon the mind of the respectfully listening Marjorie that, to
+borrow an easy colloquialism of her aunt's, she might "take the shine
+out of the lot of them" with a very little zeal and effort--and of
+course Mr. Magnet.
+
+The lecture in the evening at Summerhay was a great success.
+
+The chair was taken by the Rev. Jopling Baynes, Lady Petchworth was
+enthroned behind the table, Hubert was in charge of his wife's notes--if
+notes should be needed--and Mr. Pope, expectant of an invitation at the
+end to say a few words about the East Purblow experiment, also occupied
+a chair on the platform. Lady Petchworth, with her abundant soft blond
+hair, brightly blond still in spite of her fifty-five years, her
+delicate features, her plump hands, her numerous chins and her entirely
+inaudible voice, made a pleasing contrast with Aunt Plessington's
+resolute personality. She had perhaps an even greater assurance of
+authority, but it was a quiet assurance; you felt that she knew that if
+she spoke in her sleep she would be obeyed, that it was quite
+unnecessary to make herself heard. The two women, indeed, the one so
+assertive, the other so established, were at the opposite poles of
+authoritative British womanhood, and harmonized charmingly. The little
+room struck the note of a well-regulated brightness at every point, it
+had been decorated in a Keltic but entirely respectful style by one of
+Lady Petchworth's artistic discoveries, it was lit by paraffin lamps
+that smelt hardly at all, and it was gay with colour prints illustrating
+the growth of the British Empire from the battle of Ethandune to the
+surrender of Cronje. The hall was fairly full. Few could afford to
+absent themselves from these brightening occasions, but there was a
+tendency on the part of the younger and the less thoughtful section of
+the village manhood to accumulate at the extreme back and rumble in what
+appeared to be a slightly ironical spirit, so far as it had any spirit,
+with its feet.
+
+The Rev. Jopling Baynes opened proceedings with a few well-chosen
+remarks, in which he complimented every one present either singly or
+collectively according to their rank and importance, and then Aunt
+Plessington came forward to the centre of the platform amidst a hectic
+flush of applause, and said "Haw!" in a loud clear ringing tone.
+
+She spoke without resorting to the notes in Hubert's little fist, very
+freely and easily. Her strangulated contralto went into every corner of
+the room and positively seemed to look for and challenge inattentive
+auditors. She had come over, she said, and she had been very glad to
+come over and talk to them that night, because it meant not only seeing
+them but meeting her very dear delightful friend Lady Petchworth (loud
+applause) and staying for a day or so with her brother-in-law Mr. Pope
+(unsupported outburst of applause from Mr. Magnet), to whom she and
+social reform generally owed so much. She had come to talk to them that
+night about the National Good Habits Movement, which was attracting so
+much attention and which bore so closely on our National Life and
+Character; she happened to be--here Aunt Plessington smiled as she
+spoke--a humble person connected with that movement, just a mere woman
+connected with it; she was going to explain to them as well as she could
+in her womanly way and in the time at her disposal just what it was and
+just what it was for, and just what means it adopted and just what ends
+it had in view. Well, they all knew what Habits were, and that there
+were Good Habits and Bad Habits, and she supposed that the difference
+between a good man and a bad man was just that the good man had good
+habits and the bad one had bad habits. Everybody she supposed wanted to
+get on. If a man had good habits he got on, and if he had bad habits he
+didn't get on, and she supposed it was the same with a country, if its
+people had good habits they got on, and if its people had bad habits
+they didn't get on. For her own part she and her husband (Hubert gave a
+little self-conscious jump) had always cultivated good habits, and she
+had to thank him with all her heart for his help in doing so. (Applause
+from the front seats.) Now, the whole idea of her movement was to ask,
+how can we raise the standard of the national habits? how can we get rid
+of bad habits and cultivate good ones?... (Here there was a slight
+interruption due to some one being suddenly pushed off the end of a form
+at the back, and coming to the floor with audible violence, after which
+a choked and obstructed tittering continued intermittently for some
+time.)
+
+Some of her audience, she remarked, had not yet acquired the habit of
+sitting still.
+
+(Laughter, and a coarse vulgar voice: "Good old Billy Punt!")
+
+Well, to resume, she and her husband had made a special and careful
+study of habits; they had consulted all sorts of people and collected
+all sorts of statistics, in fact they had devoted themselves to this
+question, and the conclusion to which they came was this, that Good
+Habits were acquired by Training and Bad Habits came from neglect and
+carelessness and leaving people, who weren't fit for such freedom, to
+run about and do just whatever they liked. And so, she went on with a
+note of complete demonstration, the problem resolved itself into the
+question of how far they could get more Training into the national life,
+and how they could check extravagant and unruly and wasteful and unwise
+ways of living. (Hear, hear! from Mr. Pope.) And this was the problem
+she and her husband had set themselves to solve.
+
+(Scuffle, and a boy's voice at the back, saying: "Oh, _shut_ it, Nuts!
+SHUT it!")
+
+Well, she and her husband had worked the thing out, and they had come to
+the conclusion that what was the matter with the great mass of English
+people was first that they had rather too much loose money, and secondly
+that they had rather too much loose time. (A voice: "What O!" and the
+Rev. Jopling Baynes suddenly extended his neck, knitted his brows, and
+became observant of the interrupter.) She did not say they had too much
+money (a second voice: "Not Arf!"), but too much _loose_ money. She did
+not say they had too much time but too much loose time, that is to say,
+they had money and time they did not know how to spend properly. And so
+they got into mischief. A great number of people in this country, she
+maintained, and this was especially true of the lower classes, did not
+know how to spend either money or time; they bought themselves wasteful
+things and injurious things, and they frittered away their hours in all
+sorts of foolish, unprofitable ways. And, after the most careful and
+scientific study of this problem, she and her husband had come to the
+conclusion that two main principles must underlie any remedial measures
+that were attempted, the first of which was the Principle of Payment in
+Kind, which had already had so interesting a trial at the great carriage
+works of East Purblow, and the second, the Principle of Continuous
+Occupation, which had been recognized long ago in popular wisdom by that
+admirable proverb--or rather quotation--she believed it was a quotation,
+though she gave, she feared, very little time to poetry ("Better
+employed," from Mr. Pope)--
+
+    "Satan finds some mischief still
+    For idle hands to do."
+
+(Irrepressible outbreak of wild and sustained applause from the back
+seats, and in a sudden lull a female voice asking in a flattened,
+thwarted tone: "Ain't there to be no lantern then?")
+
+The lecturer went on to explain what was meant by either member of what
+perhaps they would permit her to call this double-barrelled social
+remedy.
+
+It was an admirable piece of lucid exposition. Slowly the picture of a
+better, happier, more disciplined England grew upon the minds of the
+meeting. First she showed the new sort of employer her movement would
+evoke, an employer paternal, philanthropic, vaguely responsible for the
+social order of all his dependants. (Lady Petchworth was seen to nod her
+head slowly at this.) Only in the last resort, and when he was satisfied
+that his worker and his worker's family were properly housed,
+hygienically clothed and fed, attending suitable courses of instruction
+and free from any vicious inclinations, would he pay wages in cash. In
+the discharge of the duties of payment he would have the assistance of
+expert advice, and the stimulus of voluntary inspectors of his own
+class. He would be the natural clan-master, the captain and leader,
+adviser and caretaker of his banded employees. Responsibility would
+stimulate him, and if responsibility did not stimulate him, inspectors
+(both men and women inspectors) would. The worker, on the other hand,
+would be enormously more healthy and efficient under the new régime. His
+home, designed by qualified and officially recognized architects, would
+be prettier as well as more convenient and elevating to his taste, his
+children admirably trained and dressed in the new and more beautiful
+clothing with which Lady Petchworth (applause) had done so much to make
+them familiar, his vital statistics compared with current results would
+be astonishingly good, his mind free from any anxiety but the proper
+anxiety of a man in his position, to get his work done properly and earn
+recognition from those competent and duly authorized to judge it. Of all
+this she spoke with the inspiring note of absolute conviction. All this
+would follow Payment in Kind and Continuous Occupation as days follow
+sunrise. And there would always,--and here Aunt Plessington's voice
+seemed to brighten--be something for the worker to get on with,
+something for him to do; lectures, classes, reading-rooms, improving
+entertainments. His time would be filled. The proper authorities would
+see that it was filled--and filled in the right way. Never for a moment
+need he be bored. He would never have an excuse for being bored. That
+was the second great idea, the complementary idea to the first. "And
+here it is," she said, turning a large encouraging smile on Lady
+Petchworth, "that the work of a National Theatre, instructive,
+stimulating, well regulated, and morally sustaining, would come in." He
+wouldn't, of course, be _compelled_ to go, but there would be his seat,
+part of his payment in kind, and the public-house would be shut, most
+other temptations would be removed....
+
+The lecture reached its end at last with only one other interruption.
+Some would-be humorist suddenly inquired, _ŕ propos_ of nothing: "What's
+the fare to America, Billy?" and a voice, presumably Billy's, answered
+him: "Mor'n _you'll_ ev 'av in _you'_ pocket."
+
+The Rev. Jopling Baynes, before he called upon Mr. Pope for his promised
+utterance about East Purblow, could not refrain from pointing out how
+silly "in every sense of the word" these wanton interruptions were.
+What, he asked, had English social reform to do with the fare to
+America?--and having roused the meeting to an alert silence by the
+length of his pause, answered in a voice of ringing contempt:
+"Nothing--_whatsoever_." Then Mr. Pope made his few remarks about East
+Purblow with the ease and finish that comes from long practice; much, he
+said, had to be omitted "in view of" the restricted time at his
+disposal, but he did not grudge that, the time had been better filled.
+("No, no," from Aunt Plessington.) Yes, yes,--by the lucid and
+delightful lecture they had all enjoyed, and he not least among them.
+(Applause.)...
+
+
+§ 11
+
+They came out into a luminous blue night, with a crescent young moon
+high overhead. It was so fine that the Popes and the Plessingtons and
+Mr. Magnet declined Lady Petchworth's proffered car, and walked back to
+Buryhamstreet across the park through a sleeping pallid cornfield, and
+along by the edge of the pine woods. Mr. Pope would have liked to walk
+with Mr. Magnet and explain all that the pressure on his time had caused
+him to omit from his speech, and why it was he had seen fit to omit this
+part and include that. Some occult power, however, baffled this
+intention, and he found himself going home in the company of his
+brother-in-law and Daffy, with Aunt Plessington and his wife like a
+barrier between him and his desire. Marjorie, on the other hand, found
+Mr. Magnet's proximity inevitable. They fell a little behind and were
+together again for the first time since her refusal.
+
+He behaved, she thought, with very great restraint, and indeed he left
+her a little doubtful on that occasion whether he had not decided to
+take her decision as final. He talked chiefly about the lecture, which
+had impressed him very deeply. Mrs. Plessington, he said, was so
+splendid--made him feel trivial. He felt stirred up by her, wanted to
+help in this social work, this picking up of helpless people from the
+muddle in which they wallowed.
+
+He seemed not only extraordinarily modest but extraordinarily gentle
+that night, and the warm moonshine gave his face a shadowed earnestness
+it lacked in more emphatic lights. She felt the profound change in her
+feelings towards him that had followed her rejection of him. It had
+cleared away his effect of oppression upon her. She had no longer any
+sense of entanglement and pursuit, and all the virtues his courtship had
+obscured shone clear again. He was kindly, he was patient--and she felt
+something about him a woman is said always to respect, he gave her an
+impression of ability. After all, he could banish the trouble that
+crushed and overwhelmed her with a movement of his little finger. Of all
+her load of debt he could earn the payment in a day.
+
+"Your aunt goes to-morrow?" he said.
+
+Marjorie admitted it.
+
+"I wish I could talk to her more. She's so inspiring."
+
+"You know of our little excursion for Friday?" he asked after a pause.
+
+She had not heard. Friday was Theodore's birthday; she knew it only too
+well because she had had to part with her stamp collection--which very
+luckily had chanced to get packed and come to Buryhamstreet--to meet its
+demand. Mr. Magnet explained he had thought it might be fun to give a
+picnic in honour of the anniversary.
+
+"How jolly of you!" said Marjorie.
+
+"There's a pretty bit of river between Wamping and Friston Hanger--I've
+wanted you to see it for a long time, and Friston Hanger church has the
+prettiest view. The tower gets the bend of the river."
+
+He told her all he meant to do as if he submitted his plans for her
+approval. They would drive to Wamping and get a very comfortable little
+steam launch one could hire there. Wintersloan was coming down again; an
+idle day of this kind just suited his temperament. Theodore would like
+it, wouldn't he?
+
+"Theodore will think he is King of Surrey!"
+
+"I'll have a rod and line if he wants to fish. I don't want to forget
+anything. I want it to be _his_ day really and truly."
+
+The slightest touch upon the pathetic note? She could not tell.
+
+But that evening brought Marjorie nearer to loving Magnet than she had
+ever been. Before she went to sleep that night she had decided he was
+quite a tolerable person again; she had been too nervous and unjust with
+him. After all, his urgency and awkwardness had been just a part of his
+sincerity. Perhaps the faint doubt whether he would make his request
+again gave the zest of uncertainty to his devotion. Of course, she told
+herself, he would ask again. And then the blissful air of limitless
+means she might breathe. The blessed release....
+
+She was suddenly fast asleep.
+
+
+§ 12
+
+Friday was after all not so much Theodore's day as Mr. Magnet's.
+
+Until she found herself committed there was no shadow of doubt in
+Marjorie's mind of what she meant to do. "Before I see you again," said
+Aunt Plessington at the parting kiss, "I hope you'll have something to
+tell me." She might have been Hymen thinly disguised as an aunt, waving
+from the departing train. She continued by vigorous gestures and
+unstinted display of teeth and a fluttering handkerchief to encourage
+Marjorie to marry Mr. Magnet, until the curve of the cutting hid her
+from view....
+
+Fortune favoured Mr. Magnet with a beautiful day, and the excursion was
+bright and successful from the outset. It was done well, and what
+perhaps was more calculated to impress Marjorie, it was done with lavish
+generosity. From the outset she turned a smiling countenance upon her
+host. She did her utmost to suppress a reviving irrational qualm in her
+being, to maintain clearly and simply her overnight decision, that he
+should propose again and that she should accept him.
+
+Yet the festival was just a little dreamlike in its quality to her
+perceptions. She found she could not focus clearly on its details.
+
+Two waggonettes came from Wamping; there was room for everybody and to
+spare, and Wamping revealed itself a pleasant small country town with
+stocks under the market hall, and just that tint of green paint and that
+loafing touch the presence of a boating river gives.
+
+The launch was brilliantly smart with abundant crimson cushions and a
+tasselled awning, and away to the left was a fine old bridge that dated
+in its essentials from Plantagenet times.
+
+They started with much whistling and circling, and went away up river
+under overhanging trees that sometimes swished the funnel, splashing the
+meadow path and making the reeds and bulrushes dance with their wash.
+They went through a reluctant lock, steamed up a long reach, they passed
+the queerly painted Potwell Inn with its picturesque group of poplars
+and its absurd new notice-board of "Omlets." ... Theodore was five stone
+of active happiness; he and the pseudo-twins, strictly under his orders
+as the universal etiquette of birthdays prescribes, clambered round and
+round the boat, clutching the awning rail and hanging over the water in
+an entirely secure and perilous looking manner. No one, unless his
+father happened to be upset by something, would check him, he knew, on
+this auspicious day. Mr. Magnet sat with the grey eye on Marjorie and
+listened a little abstractedly to Mr. Pope, who was telling very fully
+what he would say if the Liberal party were to ask his advice at the
+present juncture. Mrs. Pope attended discreetly, and Daffy and Marjorie
+with a less restrained interest, to Mr. Wintersloan, who showed them how
+to make faces out of a fist tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, how to
+ventriloquize, how to conjure with halfpence--which he did very
+amusingly--and what the buttons on a man's sleeve were for; Theodore
+clambering at his back discovered what he was at, and by right of
+birthday made him do all the faces and tricks over again. Then Mr.
+Wintersloan told stories of all the rivers along which, he said, he had
+travelled in steamboats; the Rhine, the Danube, the Hoogly and the Fall
+River, and particularly how he had been bitten by a very young
+crocodile. "It's the smell of the oil brings it all back to me," he
+said. "And the kind of sway it gives you."
+
+He made sinuous movements of his hand, and looked at Marjorie with that
+wooden yet expressive smile.
+
+Friston Hanger proved to be even better than Wamping. It had a character
+of its own because it was built very largely of a warm buff coloured
+local rock instead of the usual brick, and the outhouses at least of the
+little inn at which they landed were thatched. Most of the cottages had
+casement windows with diamond panes, and the streets were cobbled and
+very up-and-down hill. The place ran to high walls richly suggestive of
+hidden gardens, overhung by big trees and pierced by secretive important
+looking doors. And over it all rose an unusually big church, with a tall
+buttressed tower surmounted by a lantern of pierced stone.
+
+"We'll go through the town and look at the ruins of the old castle
+beyond the church," said Mr. Magnet to Marjorie, "and then I want you to
+see the view from the church tower."
+
+And as they went through the street, he called her attention again to
+the church tower in a voice that seemed to her to be inexplicably
+charged with significance. "I want you to go up there," he said.
+
+"How about something to eat, Mr. Magnet?" remarked Theodore suddenly,
+and everybody felt a little surprised when Mr. Magnet answered: "Who
+wants things to eat on your birthday, Theodore?"
+
+But they saw the joke of that when they reached the castle ruins and
+found in the old tilting yard, with its ivy-covered arch framing a view
+of the town and stream, a table spread with a white cloth that shone in
+the sunshine, glittering with glass and silver and gay with a bowl of
+salad and flowers and cold pies and a jug of claret-cup and an ice
+pail--a silver pail! containing two promising looking bottles, in the
+charge of two real live waiters, in evening dress as waiters should be,
+but with straw hats to protect them from the sun and weather. "Oh!"
+cried Mrs. Pope, "what a _splendid_ idea, Mr. Magnet," when the
+destination of the feast was perfectly clear, and even Theodore seemed a
+little overawed--almost as if he felt his birthday was being carried too
+far and might provoke a judgment later. Manifestly Mr. Magnet must have
+ordered this in London, and have had it sent down, waiters and all!
+Theodore knew he was a very wonderful little boy in spite of the acute
+criticism of four devoted sisters, and Mr. Magnet had noticed him before
+at times, but this was, well, rather immense! "Look at the pie-crusts,
+old man!" And on the pie-crusts, and on the icing of the cake, their
+munificent host had caused to be done in little raised letters of dough
+and chocolate the word "Theodore."
+
+"Oh, _Mr._ Magnet!" said Marjorie--his eye so obviously invited her to
+say something. Mr. Pope tried a nebulous joke about "groaning boards of
+Frisky Hanger," and only Mr. Wintersloan restrained his astonishment and
+admiration. "You could have got those chaps in livery," he
+said--unheeded. The lunch was as a matter of fact his idea; he had
+refused to come unless it was provided, and he had somehow counted on
+blue coats, brass buttons, and yellow waistcoats--but everybody else of
+course ascribed the whole invention to Mr. Magnet.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Pope with a fine air of epigram, "the only thing I can
+say is--to eat it," and prepared to sit down.
+
+"Melon," cried Mr. Magnet to the waiters, "we'll begin with the melon.
+Have you ever tried melon with pepper and salt, Mrs. Pope?"
+
+"You put salt in everything," admired Mr. Pope. "Salt from those attics
+of yours--Attic salt."
+
+"Or there's ginger!" said Mr. Magnet, after a whisper from the waiter.
+
+Mr. Pope said something classical about "ginger hot in the mouth."
+
+"Some of these days," said Mr. Wintersloan, "when I have exhausted all
+other sensations, I mean to try melon and mustard."
+
+Rom made a wonderful face at him.
+
+"I can think of worse things than that," said Mr. Wintersloan with a
+hard brightness.
+
+"Not till after lunch, Mr. Wintersloan!" said Rom heartily.
+
+"The claret cup's all right for Theodore, Mrs. Pope," said Magnet. "It's
+a special twelve year old brand." (He thought of everything!)
+
+"Mummy," said Mr. Pope. "You'd better carve this pie, I think."
+
+"I want very much," said Mr. Magnet in Marjorie's ear and very
+confidentially, "to show you the view from the church tower. I think--it
+will appeal to you."
+
+"Rom!" said Theodore, uncontrollably, in a tremendous stage whisper.
+"There's peaches!... _There!_ on the hamper!"
+
+"Champagne, m'am?" said the waiter suddenly in Mrs. Pope's ear, wiping
+ice-water from the bottle.
+
+(But what could it have cost him?)
+
+
+§ 13
+
+Marjorie would have preferred that Mr. Magnet should not have decided
+with such relentless determination to make his second proposal on the
+church tower. His purpose was luminously clear to her from the
+beginning of lunch onward, and she could feel her nerves going under the
+strain of that long expectation. She tried to pull herself together,
+tried not to think about it, tried to be amused by the high spirits and
+nonsense of Mr. Wintersloan and Syd and Rom and Theodore; but Mr. Magnet
+was very pervasive, and her mother didn't ever look at her, looked past
+her and away from her and all round her, in a profoundly observant
+manner. Marjorie felt chiefly anxious to get to the top of that
+predestinate tower and have the whole thing over, and it was with a
+start that she was just able to prevent one of the assiduous waiters
+filling her glass with champagne for the third time.
+
+There was a little awkwardness in dispersing after lunch. Mr. Pope, his
+heart warmed by the champagne and mellowed by a subsequent excellent
+cigar, wanted very much to crack what he called a "postprandial jest" or
+so with the great humorist, while Theodore also, deeply impressed with
+the discovery that there was more in Mr. Magnet than he had supposed,
+displayed a strong disposition to attach himself more closely than he
+had hitherto done to this remarkable person, and study his quiet but
+enormous possibilities with greater attention. Mrs. Pope with a still
+alertness did her best to get people adjusted, but Syd and Rom had
+conceived a base and unnatural desire to subjugate the affections of the
+youngest waiter, and wouldn't listen to her proposal that they should
+take Theodore away into the town; Mr. Wintersloan displayed
+extraordinary cunning and resource in evading a _tęte-ŕ-tęte_ with Mr.
+Pope that would have released Mr. Magnet. Now Mrs. Pope came to think of
+it, Mr. Wintersloan never had had the delights of a good talk with Mr.
+Pope, he knew practically nothing about the East Purblow experiment
+except for what Mr. Magnet might have retailed to him, and she was very
+greatly puzzled to account for his almost manifest reluctance to go into
+things thoroughly. Daffy remained on hand, available but useless, and
+Mrs. Pope, smiling at the landscape and a prey to Management within, was
+suddenly inspired to take her eldest daughter into her confidence.
+"Daffy," she said, with a guileful finger extended and pointing to the
+lower sky as though she was pointing out the less obvious and more
+atmospheric beauties of Surrey, "get Theodore away from Mr. Magnet if
+you can. He wants to talk to Marjorie."
+
+Daffy looked round. "Shall I call him?" she said.
+
+"No," said Mrs. Pope, "do it--just--quietly."
+
+"I'll try," said Daffy and stared at her task, and Mrs. Pope, feeling
+that this might or might not succeed but that anyhow she had done what
+she could, strolled across to her husband and laid a connubial touch
+upon his shoulder. "All the young people," she said, "are burning to
+climb the church tower. I never _can_ understand this activity after
+lunch."
+
+"Not me," said Mr. Pope. "Eh, Magnet?"
+
+"_I'm_ game," said Theodore. "Come along, Mr. Magnet."
+
+"I think," said Mr. Magnet looking at Marjorie, "I shall go up. I want
+to show Marjorie the view."
+
+"We'll stay here, Mummy, eh?" said Mr. Pope, with a quite unusual
+geniality, and suddenly put his arm round Mrs. Pope's waist. Her
+motherly eye sought Daffy's, and indicated her mission. "I'll come with
+you, Theodore," said Daffy. "There isn't room for everyone at once up
+that tower."
+
+"I'll go with Mr. Magnet," said Theodore, relying firmly on the
+privileges of the day....
+
+For a time they played for position, with the intentions of Mr. Magnet
+showing more and more starkly through the moves of the game. At last
+Theodore was lured down a side street by the sight of a huge dummy fish
+dangling outside a tackle and bait shop, and Mr. Magnet and Marjorie,
+already with a dreadful feeling of complicity, made a movement so rapid
+it seemed to her almost a bolt for the church tower. Whatever Mr. Magnet
+desired to say, and whatever elasticity his mind had once possessed with
+regard to it, there can be no doubt that it had now become so rigid as
+to be sayable only in that one precise position, and in the exact order
+he had determined upon. But when at last they got to that high serenity,
+Mr. Magnet was far too hot and far too much out of breath to say
+anything at all for a time except an almost explosive gust or so of
+approbation of the scenery. "Shor' breath!" he said, "win'ey stairs
+always--that 'fect on me--buful sceny--Suwy--like it always."
+
+Marjorie found herself violently disposed to laugh; indeed she had never
+before been so near the verge of hysterics.
+
+"It's a perfectly lovely view," she said. "No wonder you wanted me to
+see it."
+
+"Naturally," said Mr. Magnet, "wanted you to see it."
+
+Marjorie, with a skill her mother might have envied, wriggled into a
+half-sitting position in an embrasure and concentrated herself upon the
+broad wooded undulations that went about the horizon, and Mr. Magnet
+mopped his face with surreptitious gestures, and took deep restoring
+breaths.
+
+"I've always wanted to bring you here," he said, "ever since I found it
+in the spring."
+
+"It was very kind of you, Mr. Magnet," said Marjorie.
+
+"You see," he explained, "whenever I see anything fine or rich or
+splendid or beautiful now, I seem to want it for you." His voice
+quickened as though he were repeating something that had been long in
+his mind. "I wish I could give you all this country. I wish I could put
+all that is beautiful in the world at your feet."
+
+He watched the effect of this upon her for a moment.
+
+"Marjorie," he said, "did you really mean what you told me the other
+day, that there was indeed no hope for me? I have a sort of feeling I
+bothered you that day, that perhaps you didn't mean all----"
+
+He stopped short.
+
+"I don't think I knew what I meant," said Marjorie, and Magnet gave a
+queer sound of relief at her words. "I don't think I know what I mean
+now. I don't think I can say I love you, Mr. Magnet. I would if I could.
+I like you very much indeed, I think you are awfully kind, you're more
+kind and generous than anyone I have ever known...."
+
+Saying he was kind and generous made her through some obscure
+association of ideas feel that he must have understanding. She had an
+impulse to put her whole case before him frankly. "I wonder," she said,
+"if you can understand what it is to be a girl."
+
+Then she saw the absurdity of her idea, of any such miracle of sympathy.
+He was entirely concentrated upon the appeal he had come prepared to
+make.
+
+"Marjorie," he said, "I don't ask you to love me yet. All I ask is that
+you shouldn't decide _not_ to love me."
+
+Marjorie became aware of Theodore, hotly followed by Daffy, in the
+churchyard below. "I _know_ he's up there," Theodore was manifestly
+saying.
+
+Marjorie faced her lover gravely.
+
+"Mr. Magnet," she said, "I will certainly promise you that."
+
+"I would rather be your servant, rather live for your happiness, than do
+anything else in all the world," said Mr. Magnet. "If you would trust
+your life to me, if you would deign--." He paused to recover his thread.
+"If you would deign to let me make life what it should be for you, take
+every care from your shoulders, face every responsibility----"
+
+Marjorie felt she had to hurry. She could almost feel the feet of
+Theodore coming up that tower.
+
+"Mr. Magnet," she said, "you don't understand. You don't realize what I
+am. You don't know how unworthy I am--what a mere ignorant child----"
+
+"Let me be judge of that!" cried Mr. Magnet.
+
+They paused almost like two actors who listen for the prompter. It was
+only too obvious that both were aware of a little medley of imperfectly
+subdued noises below. Theodore had got to the ladder that made the last
+part of the ascent, and there Daffy had collared him. "_My_ birthday,"
+said Theodore. "Come down! You _shan't_ go up there!" said Daffy. "You
+_mustn't_, Theodore!" "Why not?" There was something like a scuffle, and
+whispers. Then it would seem Theodore went--reluctantly and with
+protests. But the conflict receded.
+
+"Marjorie!" said Mr. Magnet, as though there had been no pause, "if you
+would consent only to make an experiment, if you would try to love me.
+Suppose you _tried_ an engagement. I do not care how long I waited...."
+
+He paused. "Will you try?" he urged upon her distressed silence.
+
+She felt as though she forced the word. "_Yes!_" she said in a very low
+voice.
+
+Then it seemed to her that Mr. Magnet leapt upon her. She felt herself
+pulled almost roughly from the embrasure, and he had kissed her. She
+struggled in his embrace. "Mr. Magnet!" she said. He lifted her face and
+kissed her lips. "Marjorie!" he said, and she had partly released
+herself.
+
+"Oh _don't_ kiss me," she cried, "don't kiss me yet!"
+
+"But a kiss!"
+
+"I don't like it."
+
+"I beg your pardon!" he said. "I forgot----. But you.... You.... I
+couldn't help it."
+
+She was suddenly wildly sorry for what she had done. She felt she was
+going to cry, to behave absurdly.
+
+"I want to go down," she said.
+
+"Marjorie, you have made me the happiest of men! All my life, all my
+strength I will spend in showing you that you have made no mistake in
+trusting me----"
+
+"Yes," she said, "yes," and wondered what she could say or do. It seemed
+to him that her shrinking pose was the most tenderly modest thing he had
+ever seen.
+
+"Oh my dear!" he said, and restrained himself and took her passive hand
+and kissed it.
+
+"I want to go down to them!" she insisted.
+
+He paused on the topmost rungs of the ladder, looking unspeakable things
+at her. Then he turned to go down, and for the second time in her life
+she saw that incipient thinness....
+
+"I am sure you will never be sorry," he said....
+
+They found Mr. and Mrs. Pope in the churchyard. Mr. Pope was reading
+with amusement for the third time an epitaph that had caught his fancy--
+
+    "Lands ever bright, days ever fair,
+    And yet we weep that _he_ is there."
+
+he read. "You know that's really Good. That ought to be printed
+somewhere."
+
+Mrs. Pope glanced sharply at her daughter's white face, and found an
+enigma. Then she looked at Mr. Magnet.
+
+There was no mistake about Mr. Magnet. Marjorie had accepted him,
+whatever else she had felt or done.
+
+
+§ 14
+
+Marjorie's feelings for the rest of the day are only to be accounted for
+on the supposition that she was overwrought. She had a preposterous
+reaction. She had done this thing with her eyes open after days of
+deliberation, and now she felt as though she was caught in a trap. The
+clearest thing in her mind was that Mr. Magnet had taken hold of her and
+kissed her, kissed her on the lips, and that presently he would do it
+again. And also she was asking herself with futile reiteration why she
+had got into debt at Oxbridge? Why she had got into debt? For such silly
+little things too!
+
+Nothing definite was said in her hearing about the engagement, but
+everybody seemed to understand. Mr. Pope was the most demonstrative, he
+took occasion to rap her hard upon the back, his face crinkled with a
+resolute kindliness. "Ah!" he said, "Sly Maggots!"
+
+He also administered several resounding blows to Magnet's shoulder
+blades, and irradiated the party with a glow of benevolent waggery.
+Marjorie submitted without an answer to these paternal intimations. Mrs.
+Pope did no more than watch her daughter. Invisible but overwhelming
+forces were busy in bringing Marjorie and her glowing lover alone
+together again. It happened at last, as he was departing; she was almost
+to her inflamed imagination thrust out upon him, had to take him to the
+gate; and there in the shadows of the trees he kissed her "good night"
+with passionate effusion.
+
+"Madge," he said, "Madge!"
+
+She made no answer. She submitted passively to his embrace, and then
+suddenly and dexterously disengaged herself from him, ran in, and
+without saying good-night to anyone went to her room to bed.
+
+Mr. Pope was greatly amused by this departure from the customary routine
+of life, and noted it archly.
+
+When Daffy came up Marjorie was ostentatiously going to sleep....
+
+As she herself was dropping off Daffy became aware of an odd sound,
+somehow familiar, and yet surprising and disconcerting.
+
+Suddenly wide awake again, she started up. Yes there was no mistake
+about it! And yet it was very odd.
+
+"Madge, what's up?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"I say! you aren't crying, Madge, are you?"
+
+Then after a long interval: "_Madge!_"
+
+An answer came in a muffled voice, almost as if Marjorie had something
+in her mouth. "Oh shut it, old Daffy."
+
+"But Madge?" said Daffy after reflection.
+
+"Shut it. _Do_ shut it! Leave me alone, I say! Can't you leave me alone?
+Oh!"--and for a moment she let her sobs have way with her--"Daffy, don't
+worry me. Old Daffy! _Please!_"
+
+Daffy sat up for a long time in the stifled silence that ensued, and
+then like a sensible sister gave it up, and composed herself again to
+slumber....
+
+Outside watching the window in a state of nebulous ecstasy, was Mr.
+Magnet, moonlit and dewy. It was a high serene night with a growing moon
+and a scattered company of major stars, and if no choir of nightingales
+sang there was at least a very active nightjar. "More than I hoped,"
+whispered Mr. Magnet, "more than I dared to hope." He was very sleepy,
+but it seemed to him improper to go to bed on such a night--on such an
+occasion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRD
+
+THE MAN WHO FELL OUT OF THE SKY
+
+
+§ 1
+
+For the next week Marjorie became more nearly introspective than she had
+ever been in her life before. She began to doubt her hitherto unshaken
+conviction that she was a single, consistent human being. She found such
+discords and discrepancies between mood and mood, between the conviction
+of this hour and the feeling of that, that it seemed to her she was
+rather a collection of samples of emotion and attitude than anything so
+simple as an individual.
+
+For example, there can be no denying there was one Marjorie in the
+bundle who was immensely set up by the fact that she was engaged, and
+going to be at no very remote date mistress of a London house. She was
+profoundly Plessingtonian, and quite the vulgarest of the lot. The new
+status she had attained and the possibly beautiful house and the
+probably successful dinner-parties and the arrangements and the
+importance of such a life was the substance of this creature's thought.
+She designed some queenly dresses. This was the Marjorie most in
+evidence when it came to talking with her mother and Daphne. I am afraid
+she patronized Daphne, and ignored the fact that Daphne, who had begun
+with a resolute magnanimity, was becoming annoyed and resentful.
+
+And she thought of things she might buy, and the jolly feeling of
+putting them about and making fine effects with them. One thing she told
+Daphne, she had clearly resolved upon; the house should be always full
+and brimming over with beautiful flowers. "I've always wished mother
+would have more flowers--and not keep them so long when she has
+them...."
+
+Another Marjorie in the confusion of her mind was doing her sincerest,
+narrow best to appreciate and feel grateful for and return the devotion
+of Mr. Magnet. This Marjorie accepted and even elaborated his views,
+laid stress on his voluntary subjection, harped upon his goodness,
+brought her to kiss him.
+
+"I don't deserve all this love," this side of Marjorie told Magnet. "But
+I mean to learn to love you----"
+
+"My dear one!" cried Magnet, and pressed her hand....
+
+A third Marjorie among the many was an altogether acuter and less
+agreeable person. She was a sprite of pure criticism, and in spite of
+the utmost efforts to suppress her, she declared night and day in the
+inner confidences of Marjorie's soul that she did not believe in Mr.
+Magnet's old devotion at all. She was anti-Magnet, a persistent
+insurgent. She was dreadfully unsettling. It was surely this Marjorie
+that wouldn't let the fact of his baldness alone, and who discovered and
+insisted upon a curious unbeautiful flatness in his voice whenever he
+was doing his best to speak from the heart. And as for this devotion,
+what did it amount to? A persistent unimaginative besetting of Marjorie,
+a growing air of ownership, an expansive, indulgent, smiling disposition
+to thwart and control. And he was always touching her! Whenever he came
+near her she would wince at the freedoms a large, kind hand might take
+with her elbow or wrist, at a possible sudden, clumsy pat at some erring
+strand of hair.
+
+Then there was an appraising satisfaction in his eye.
+
+On the third day of their engagement he began, quite abruptly, to call
+her "Magsy." "We'll end this scandal of a Girl Pope," he said. "Magsy
+Magnet, you'll be--M.M. No women M.P.'s for _us_, Magsy...."
+
+She became acutely critical of his intellectual quality. She listened
+with a new alertness to the conversations at the dinner-table, the bouts
+of wit with her father. She carried off utterances and witticism for
+maturer reflection. She was amazed to find how little they could
+withstand the tests and acids of her mind. So many things, such wide and
+interesting fields, he did not so much think about as cover with a large
+enveloping shallowness....
+
+He came strolling around the vicarage into the garden one morning about
+eleven, though she had not expected him until lunch-time; and she was
+sitting with her feet tucked up on the aged but still practicable
+garden-seat reading Shaw's "Common Sense of Municipal Trading." He came
+and leant over the back of the seat, and she looked up, said "Good
+morning. Isn't it perfectly lovely?" and indicated by a book still open
+that her interest in it remained alive.
+
+"What's the book, Magsy?" he asked, took it out of her slightly
+resisting hand, closed it and read the title. "Um," he said; "Isn't this
+a bit stiff for little women's brains?"
+
+All the rebel Marjories were up in arms at that.
+
+"Dreadful word, 'Municipal.' I _don't_ like it." He shook his head with
+a grimace of humorous distaste.
+
+"I suppose women have as good brains as men," said Marjorie, "if it
+comes to that."
+
+"Better," said Magnet. "That's why they shouldn't trouble about horrid
+things like Municipal and Trading.... On a day like this!"
+
+"Don't you think this sort of thing is interesting?"
+
+"Oh!" he said, and flourished the book. "Come! And besides--_Shaw!_"
+
+"He makes a very good case."
+
+"But he's such a--mountebank."
+
+"Does that matter? He isn't a mountebank there."
+
+"He's not sincere. I doubt if you had a serious book on Municipal
+Trading, Magsy, whether you'd make head or tail of it. It's a stiff
+subject. Shaw just gets his chance for a smart thing or so.... I'd
+rather you read a good novel."
+
+He really had the air of taking her reading in hand.
+
+"You think I ought not to read an intelligent book."
+
+"I think we ought to leave those things to the people who understand."
+
+"But we ought to understand."
+
+He smiled wisely. "There's a lot of things _you_ have to understand," he
+said, "nearer home than this."
+
+Marjorie was ablaze now. "What a silly thing to say!" she cried, with an
+undergraduate's freedom. "Really, you are talking nonsense! I read that
+book because it interests me. If I didn't, I should read something else.
+Do you mean to suggest that I'm reading like a child, who holds a book
+upside down?"
+
+She was so plainly angry that he was taken aback. "I don't mean to
+suggest--" he began, and turned to greet the welcome presence, the
+interrogative eye of Mrs. Pope.
+
+"Here we are!" he said, "having a quarrel!"
+
+"Marjorie!" said Mrs. Pope.
+
+"Oh, it's serious!" said Mr. Magnet, and added with a gleam: "It's about
+Municipal Trading!"
+
+Mrs. Pope knew the wicked little flicker in Marjorie's eye better than
+Mr. Magnet. She had known it from the nursery, and yet she had never
+quite mastered its meaning. She had never yet realized it was Marjorie,
+she had always regarded it as something Marjorie, some other Marjorie,
+ought to keep under control. So now she adopted a pacificatory tone.
+
+"Oh! lovers' quarrels," she said, floating over the occasion. "Lovers'
+quarrels. You mustn't ask _me_ to interfere!"
+
+Marjorie, already a little ashamed of her heat, thought for an instant
+she ought to stand that, and then decided abruptly with a return to
+choler that she would not do so. She stood up, and held out her hand for
+her book.
+
+"Mr. Magnet," she said to her mother with remarkable force and freedom
+as she took it, "has been talking unutterable nonsense. I don't call
+that a lovers' quarrel--anyhow."
+
+Then, confronted with a double astonishment, and having no more to say,
+she picked up her skirt quite unnecessarily, and walked with a
+heavenward chin indoors.
+
+"I'm afraid," explained Mr. Magnet, "I was a little too free with one of
+Magsy's favourite authors."
+
+"Which is the favourite author now?" asked Mrs. Pope, after a reflective
+pause, with a mother's indulgent smile.
+
+"Shaw." He raised amused eyebrows. "It's just the age, I suppose."
+
+"She's frightfully loyal while it lasts," said Mrs. Pope. "No one dare
+say a word against them."
+
+"I think it's adorable of her," said Mr. Magnet--with an answering
+loyalty and gusto.
+
+
+§ 2
+
+The aviation accident occurred while Mrs. Pope, her two eldest
+daughters, and Mr. Magnet were playing golf-croquet upon the vicarage
+lawn. It was a serene, hot afternoon, a little too hot to take a game
+seriously, and the four little figures moved slowly over the green and
+grouped and dispersed as the game required. Mr. Magnet was very fond of
+golf-croquet, he displayed a whimsical humour and much invention at this
+game, it was not too exacting physically; and he could make his ball
+jump into the air in the absurdest manner. Occasionally he won a laugh
+from Marjorie or Daffy. No one else was in sight; the pseudo-twins and
+Theodore and Toupee were in the barn, and Mr. Pope was six miles away at
+Wamping, lying prone, nibbling grass blades and watching a county
+cricket match, as every good Englishman, who knows what is expected of
+him, loves to do.... Click went ball and mallet, and then after a long
+interval, click. It seemed incredible that anything could possibly
+happen before tea.
+
+But this is no longer the world it was. Suddenly this tranquil scene was
+slashed and rent by the sound and vision of a monoplane tearing across
+the heavens.
+
+A purring and popping arrested Mr. Magnet in mid jest, and the monster
+came sliding up the sky over the trees beside the church to the east,
+already near enough to look big, a great stiff shape, big buff sails
+stayed with glittering wire, and with two odd little wheels beneath its
+body. It drove up the sky, rising with a sort of upward heaving, until
+the croquet players could see the driver and a passenger perched behind
+him quite clearly. It passed a little to the right of the church tower
+and only a few yards above the level of the flagstaff, there wasn't
+fifty feet of clearance altogether, and as it did so Marjorie could see
+both driver and passenger making hasty movements. It became immense and
+over-shadowing, and every one stood rigid as it swept across the sun
+above the vicarage chimneys. Then it seemed to drop twenty feet or so
+abruptly, and then both the men cried out as it drove straight for the
+line of poplars between the shrubbery and the meadow. "Oh, oh, OH!"
+cried Mrs. Pope and Daffy. Evidently the aviator was trying to turn
+sharply; the huge thing banked, but not enough, and came about and
+slipped away until its wing was slashing into the tree tops with a
+thrilling swish of leaves and the snapping of branches and stays.
+
+"Run!" cried Magnet, and danced about the lawn, and the three ladies
+rushed sideways as the whole affair slouched down on them. It came on
+its edge, hesitated whether to turn over as a whole, then crumpled, and
+amidst a volley of smashing and snapping came to rest amidst ploughed-up
+turf, a clamorous stench of petrol, and a cloud of dust and blue smoke
+within twenty yards of them. The two men had jumped to clear the engine,
+had fallen headlong, and were now both covered by the fabric of the
+shattered wing.
+
+It was all too spectacular for word or speech until the thing lay still.
+Even then the croquet players stood passive for awhile waiting for
+something to happen. It took some seconds to reconcile their minds to
+this sudden loss of initiative in a monster that had been so recently
+and threateningly full of go. It seemed quite a long time before it came
+into Marjorie's head that she ought perhaps to act in some way. She saw
+a tall young man wriggling on all fours from underneath the wreckage of
+fabric. He stared at her rather blankly. She went forward with a vague
+idea of helping him. He stood up, swayed doubtfully on his legs, turned,
+and became energetic, struggling mysteriously with the edge of the left
+wing. He gasped and turned fierce blue eyes over his shoulder.
+
+"Help me to hold the confounded thing up!" he cried, with a touch of
+irritation in his voice at her attitude.
+
+Marjorie at once seized the edge of the plane and pushed. The second
+man, in a peculiar button-shaped head-dress, was lying crumpled up
+underneath, his ear and cheek were bright with blood, and there was a
+streak of blood on the ground near his head.
+
+"That's right. Can you hold it if I use only one hand?"
+
+Marjorie gasped "Yes," with a terrific weight as it seemed suddenly on
+her wrists.
+
+"Right O," and the tall young man had thrust himself backwards under the
+plane until it rested on his back, and collared the prostrate man. "Keep
+it up!" he said fiercely when Marjorie threatened to give way. He seemed
+to assume that she was there to obey orders, and with much grunting and
+effort he had dragged his companion clear of the wreckage.
+
+The man's face was a mass of blood, and he was sickeningly inert to his
+companion's lugging.
+
+"Let it go," said the tall young man, and Marjorie thanked heaven as the
+broken wing flapped down again.
+
+She came helpfully to his side, and became aware of Daffy and her mother
+a few paces off. Magnet--it astonished her--was retreating hastily. But
+he had to go away because the sight of blood upset him--so much that it
+was always wiser for him to go away.
+
+"Is he hurt?" cried Mrs. Pope.
+
+"We both are," said the tall young man, and then as though these other
+people didn't matter and he and Marjorie were old friends, he said: "Can
+we turn him over?"
+
+"I think so." Marjorie grasped the damaged man's shoulder and got him
+over skilfully.
+
+"Will you get some water?" said the tall young man to Daffy and Mrs.
+Pope, in a way that sent Daffy off at once for a pail.
+
+"He wants water," she said to the parlourmaid who was hurrying out of
+the house.
+
+The tall young man had gone down on his knees by his companion,
+releasing his neck, and making a hasty first examination of his
+condition. "The pneumatic cap must have saved his head," he said,
+throwing the thing aside. "Lucky he had it. He can't be badly hurt. Just
+rubbed his face along the ground. Silly thing to have come as we did."
+
+He felt the heart, and tried the flexibility of an arm.
+
+"_That's_ all right," he said.
+
+He became judicial and absorbed over the problems of his friend's side.
+"Um," he remarked. He knelt back and regarded Marjorie for the first
+time. "Thundering smash," he said. His face relaxed into an agreeable
+smile. "He only bought it last week."
+
+"Is he hurt?"
+
+"Rib, I think--or two ribs perhaps. Stunned rather. All _this_--just his
+nose."
+
+He regarded Marjorie and Marjorie him for a brief space. He became aware
+of Mrs. Pope on his right hand. Then at a clank behind, he turned round
+to see Daphne advancing with a pail of water. The two servants were now
+on the spot, and the odd-job man, and the old lady who did out the
+church, and Magnet hovered doubtfully in the distance. Suddenly with
+shouts and barks of sympathetic glee the pseudo-twins, Theodore and
+Toupee shot out of the house. New thoughts were stirring in the young
+aviator. He rose, wincing a little as he did so. "I'm afraid I'm a
+little rude," he said.
+
+"I do hope your friend isn't hurt," said Mrs. Pope, feeling the duty of
+a hostess.
+
+"He's not hurt _much_--so far as I can see. Haven't we made rather a
+mess of your lawn?"
+
+"Oh, not at all!" said Mrs. Pope.
+
+"We have. If that is your gardener over there, it would be nice if he
+kept back the people who seem to be hesitating beyond those trees. There
+will be more presently. I'm afraid I must throw myself on your hands."
+He broke into a chuckle for a moment. "I have, you know. Is it possible
+to get a doctor? My friend's not hurt so very much, but still he wants
+expert handling. He's Sir Rupert Solomonson, from"--he jerked his head
+back--"over beyond Tunbridge Wells. My name's Trafford."
+
+"I'm Mrs. Pope and these are my daughters."
+
+Trafford bowed. "We just took the thing out for a lark," he said.
+
+Marjorie had been regarding the prostrate man. His mouth was a little
+open, and he showed beautiful teeth. Apart from the dry blood upon him
+he was not an ill-looking man. He was manifestly a Jew, a square-rigged
+Jew (you have remarked of course that there are square-rigged Jews,
+whose noses are within bounds, and fore-and-aft Jews, whose noses
+aren't), with not so much a bullet-head as a round-shot, cropped like
+the head of a Capuchin monkey. Suddenly she was down and had his head on
+her knee, with a quick movement that caught Trafford's eye. "He's
+better," she said. "His eyelids flickered. Daffy, bring the water."
+
+She had felt a queer little repugnance at first with this helpless man,
+but now that professional nurse who lurks in the composition of so many
+women, was uppermost. "Give me your handkerchief," she said to Trafford,
+and with Daffy kneeling beside her and also interested, and Mrs. Pope a
+belated but more experienced and authoritative third, Sir Rupert was
+soon getting the best of attention.
+
+"Wathall ..." said Sir Rupert suddenly, and tried again: "Wathall." A
+third effort gave "Wathall about, eh?"
+
+"If we could get him into the shade," said Marjorie.
+
+"Woosh," cried Sir Rupert. "Weeeooo!"
+
+"That's all right," said Trafford. "It's only a rib or two."
+
+"Eeeeeyoooo!" said Sir Rupert.
+
+"Exactly. We're going to carry you out of the glare."
+
+"Don't touch me," said Sir Rupert. "Gooo."
+
+It took some little persuasion before Sir Rupert would consent to be
+moved, and even then he was for a time--oh! crusty. But presently
+Trafford and the two girls had got him into the shade of a large bush
+close to where in a circle of rugs and cushions the tea things lay
+prepared. There they camped. The helpful odd-job man was ordered to
+stave off intruders from the village; water, towels, pillows were
+forthcoming. Mr. Magnet reappeared as tentative assistance, and
+Solomonson became articulate and brave and said he'd nothing but a
+stitch in his side. In his present position he wasn't at all
+uncomfortable. Only he didn't want any one near him. He enforced that by
+an appealing smile. The twins, invited to fetch the doctor, declined,
+proffering Theodore. They had conceived juvenile passions for the tall
+young man, and did not want to leave him. He certainly had a very nice
+face. So Theodore after walking twice round the wreckage, tore himself
+away and departed on Rom's bicycle. Enquiry centred on Solomonson for a
+time. His face, hair and neck were wet but no longer bloody, and he
+professed perfect comfort so long as he wasn't moved, and no one came
+too near him. He was very clear about that though perfectly polite, and
+scrutinized their faces to see if they were equally clear. Satisfied
+upon this point he closed his eyes and spoke no more. He looked then
+like a Capuchin monkey lost in pride. There came a pause. Every one was
+conscious of having risen to an emergency and behaved well under unusual
+circumstances. The young man's eye rested on the adjacent tea-things,
+lacking nothing but the coronation of the teapot.
+
+"Why not," he remarked, "have tea?"
+
+"If you think your friend----" began Mrs. Pope.
+
+"Oh! _he's_ all right. Aren't you, Solomonson? There's nothing more now
+until the doctor."
+
+"Only want to be left alone," said Solomonson, and closed his heavy
+eyelids again.
+
+Mrs. Pope told the maids, with an air of dismissal, to get tea.
+
+"We can keep an eye on him," said Trafford.
+
+Marjorie surveyed her first patient with a pretty unconscious mixture of
+maternal gravity and girlish interest, and the twins to avoid too openly
+gloating upon the good looks of Trafford, chose places and secured
+cushions round the tea-things, calculating to the best of their ability
+how they might secure the closest proximity to him. Mr. Magnet and
+Toupee had gone to stare at the monoplane; they were presently joined by
+the odd-job man in an interrogative mood. "Pretty complete smash, sir!"
+said the odd-job man, and then perceiving heads over the hedge by the
+churchyard, turned back to his duty of sentinel. Daffy thought of the
+need of more cups and plates and went in to get them, and Mrs. Pope
+remarked that she did hope Sir Rupert was not badly hurt....
+
+"Extraordinary all this is," remarked Mr. Trafford. "Now, here we were
+after lunch, twenty miles away--smoking cigars and with no more idea of
+having tea with you than--I was going to say--flying. But that's out of
+date now. Then we just thought we'd try the thing.... Like a dream."
+
+He addressed himself to Marjorie: "I never feel that life is quite real
+until about three days after things have happened. Never. Two hours ago
+I had not the slightest intention of ever flying again."
+
+"But haven't you flown before?" asked Mrs. Pope.
+
+"Not much. I did a little at Sheppey, but it's so hard for a poor man to
+get his hands on a machine. And here was Solomonson, with this thing in
+his hangar, eating its head off. Let's take it out," I said, "and go
+once round the park. And here we are.... I thought it wasn't wise for
+him to come...."
+
+Sir Rupert, without opening his eyes, was understood to assent.
+
+"Do you know," said Trafford, "The sight of your tea makes me feel
+frightfully hungry."
+
+"I don't think the engine's damaged?" he said cheerfully, "do you?" as
+Magnet joined them. "The ailerons are in splinters, and the left wing's
+not much better. But that's about all except the wheels. One falls so
+much lighter than you might suppose--from the smash.... Lucky it didn't
+turn over. Then, you know, the engine comes on the top of you, and
+you're done."
+
+
+§ 3
+
+The doctor arrived after tea, with a bag and a stethoscope in a small
+coffin-like box, and the Popes and Mr. Magnet withdrew while Sir Rupert
+was carefully sounded, tested, scrutinized, questioned, watched and
+examined in every way known to medical science. The outcome of the
+conference was presently communicated to the Popes by Mr. Trafford and
+the doctor. Sir Rupert was not very seriously injured, but he was
+suffering from concussion and shock, two of his ribs were broken and his
+wrist sprained, unless perhaps one of the small bones was displaced. He
+ought to be bandaged up and put to bed....
+
+"Couldn't we--" said Mrs. Pope, but the doctor assured her his own house
+was quite the best place. There Sir Rupert could stay for some days. At
+present the cross-country journey over the Downs or by the South Eastern
+Railway would be needlessly trying and painful. He would with the Popes'
+permission lie quietly where he was for an hour or so, and then the
+doctor would come with a couple of men and a carrying bed he had, and
+take him off to his own house. There he would be, as Mr. Trafford said,
+"as right as ninepence," and Mr. Trafford could put up either at the Red
+Lion with Mr. Magnet or in the little cottage next door to the doctor.
+(Mr. Trafford elected for the latter as closer to his friend.) As for
+the smashed aeroplane, telegrams would be sent at once to Sir Rupert's
+engineers at Chesilbury, and they would have all that cleared away by
+mid-day to-morrow....
+
+The doctor departed; Sir Rupert, after stimulants, closed his eyes, and
+Mr. Trafford seated himself at the tea-things for some more cake, as
+though introduction by aeroplane was the most regular thing in the
+world.
+
+He had very pleasant and easy manners, an entire absence of
+self-consciousness, and a quick talkative disposition that made him very
+rapidly at home with everybody. He described all the sensations of
+flight, his early lessons and experiments, and in the utmost detail the
+events of the afternoon that had led to this disastrous adventure. He
+made his suggestion of "trying the thing" seem the most natural impulse
+in the world. The bulk of the conversation fell on him; Mr. Magnet, save
+for the intervention of one or two jests, was quietly observant; the
+rest were well disposed to listen. And as Mr. Trafford talked his eye
+rested ever and again on Marjorie with the faintest touch of scrutiny
+and perplexity, and she, too, found a curious little persuasion growing
+up in her mind that somewhere, somehow, she and he had met and had
+talked rather earnestly. But how and where eluded her altogether....
+
+They had sat for an hour--the men from the doctor's seemed never
+coming--when Mr. Pope returned unexpectedly from his cricket match,
+which had ended a little prematurely in a rot on an over-dry wicket. He
+was full of particulars of the day's play, and how Wiper had got a most
+amazing catch and held it, though he fell; how Jenks had deliberately
+bowled at a man's head, he believed, and little Gibbs thrown a man out
+from slip. He was burning to tell all this in the utmost detail to
+Magnet and his family, so that they might at least share the retrospect
+of his pleasure. He had thought out rather a good pun on Wiper, and he
+was naturally a little thwarted to find all this good, rich talk
+crowded out by a more engrossing topic.
+
+At the sight of a stranger grouped in a popular manner beside the
+tea-things, he displayed a slight acerbity, which was if anything
+increased by the discovery of a prostrate person with large brown eyes
+and an expression of Oriental patience and disdain, in the shade of a
+bush near by. At first he seemed scarcely to grasp Mrs. Pope's
+explanations, and regarded Sir Rupert with an expression that bordered
+on malevolence. Then, when his attention was directed to the smashed
+machine upon the lawn, he broke out into a loud indignant: "Good God!
+What next?"
+
+He walked towards the wreckage, disregarding Mr. Trafford beside him. "A
+man can't go away from his house for an hour!" he complained.
+
+"I can assure you we did all we could to prevent it," said Trafford.
+
+"Ought never to have had it to prevent," said Mr. Pope. "Is your friend
+hurt?"
+
+"A rib--and shock," said Trafford.
+
+"Well--he deserves it," said Mr. Pope. "Rather than launch myself into
+the air in one of those infernal things, I'd be stood against a wall and
+shot."
+
+"Tastes differ, of course," said Trafford, with unruffled urbanity.
+
+"You'll have all this cleared away," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Mechanics--oh! a complete break-down party--are speeding to us in fast
+motors," said Trafford. "Thanks to the kindness of your domestic in
+taking a telegram for me."
+
+"Hope they won't kill any one," said Mr. Pope, and just for a moment the
+conversation hung fire. "And your friend?" he asked.
+
+"He goes in the next ten minutes--well, whenever the litter comes from
+the doctor's. Poor old Solomonson!"
+
+"Solomonson?"
+
+"Sir Rupert."
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Pope. "Is that the Pigmentation Solomonson?"
+
+"I believe he does do some beastly company of that sort," said Trafford.
+"Isn't it amazing we didn't smash our engine?"
+
+Sir Rupert Solomonson was indeed a familiar name to Mr. Pope. He had
+organized the exploitation of a number of pigment and bye-product
+patents, and the ordinary and deferred shares of his syndicate has risen
+to so high a price as to fill Mr. Pope with the utmost confidence in
+their future; indeed he had bought considerably, withdrawing capital to
+do so from an Argentine railway whose stock had awakened his distaste
+and a sort of moral aversion by slumping heavily after a bad wheat and
+linseed harvest. This discovery did much to mitigate his first asperity,
+his next remark to Trafford was almost neutral, and he was even asking
+Sir Rupert whether he could do anything to make him comfortable, when
+the doctor returned with a litter, borne by four hastily compiled
+bearers.
+
+
+§ 4
+
+Some brightness seemed to vanish when the buoyant Mr. Trafford, still
+undauntedly cheerful, limped off after his more injured friend, and
+disappeared through the gate. Marjorie found herself in a world whose
+remaining manhood declined to see anything but extreme annoyance in this
+gay, exciting rupture of the afternoon. "Good God!" said Mr. Pope. "What
+next? What next?"
+
+"Registration, I hope," said Mr. Magnet,--"and relegation to the desert
+of Sahara."
+
+"One good thing about it," said Mr. Pope--"it all wastes petrol. And
+when the petrol supply gives out--they're done."
+
+"Certainly we might all have been killed!" said Mrs. Pope, feeling she
+had to bear her witness against their visitors, and added: "If we hadn't
+moved out of the way, that is."
+
+There was a simultaneous movement towards the shattered apparatus, about
+which a small contingent of villagers, who had availed themselves of the
+withdrawal of the sentinel, had now assembled.
+
+"Look at it!" said Mr. Pope, with bitter hostility. "Look at it!"
+
+Everyone had anticipated his command.
+
+"They'll never come to anything," said Mr. Pope, after a pause of silent
+hatred.
+
+"But they _have_ to come to something," said Marjorie.
+
+"They've come to smash!" said Mr. Magnet, with the true humorist's air.
+
+"But consider the impudence of this invasion, the
+wild--objectionableness of it!"
+
+"They're nasty things," said Mr. Magnet. "Nasty things!"
+
+A curious spirit of opposition stirred in Marjorie. It seemed to her
+that men who play golf-croquet and watch cricket matches have no
+business to contemn men who risk their lives in the air. She sought for
+some controversial opening.
+
+"Isn't the engine rather wonderful?" she remarked.
+
+Mr. Magnet regarded the engine with his head a little on one side. "It's
+the usual sort," he said.
+
+"There weren't engines like that twenty years ago."
+
+"There weren't people like _you_ twenty years ago," said Mr. Magnet,
+smiling wisely and kindly, and turned his back on the thing.
+
+Mr. Pope followed suit. He was filled with the bitter thought that he
+would never now be able to tell the history of the remarkable match he
+had witnessed. It was all spoilt for him--spoilt for ever. Everything
+was disturbed and put out.
+
+"They've left us our tennis lawn," he said, with a not unnatural
+resentment passing to invitation. "What do you say, Magnet? Now you've
+begun the game you must keep it up?"
+
+"If Marjorie, or Mrs. Pope, or Daffy...?" said Magnet.
+
+Mrs. Pope declared the house required her. And so with the gravest
+apprehensions, and an insincere compliment to their father's energy,
+Daffy and Marjorie made up a foursome for that healthy and invigorating
+game. But that evening Mr. Pope got his serve well into the bay of the
+sagging net almost at once, and with Marjorie in the background taking
+anything he left her, he won quite easily, and everything became
+pleasant again. Magnet gloated upon Marjorie and served her like a
+missionary giving Bibles to heathen children, he seemed always looking
+at her instead of the ball, and except for a slight disposition on the
+part of Daffy to slash, nothing could have been more delightful. And at
+supper Mr. Pope, rather crushing his wife's attempt to recapitulate the
+more characteristic sayings and doings of Sir Rupert and his friend, did
+after all succeed in giving every one a very good idea indeed of the
+more remarkable incidents of the cricket match at Wamping, and made the
+pun he had been accustomed to use upon the name of Wiper in a new and
+improved form. A general talk about cricket and the Immense Good of
+cricket followed. Mr. Pope said he would make cricket-playing compulsory
+for every English boy.
+
+Everyone it seemed to Marjorie was forgetting that dark shape athwart
+the lawn, and all the immense implication of its presence, with a
+deliberate and irrational skill, and she noted that the usual move
+towards the garden at the end of the evening was not made.
+
+
+§ 5
+
+In the night time Marjorie had a dream that she was flying about in the
+world on a monoplane with Mr. Trafford as a passenger.
+
+Then Mr. Trafford disappeared, and she was flying about alone with a
+curious uneasy feeling that in a minute or so she would be unable any
+longer to manage the machine.
+
+Then her father and Mr. Magnet appeared very far below, walking about
+and disapproving of her. Mr. Magnet was shaking his head very, very
+sagely, and saying: "Rather a stiff job for little Marjorie," and her
+father was saying she would be steadier when she married. And then, she
+wasn't clear how, the engine refused to work until her bills were paid,
+and she began to fall, and fall, and fall towards Mr. Magnet. She tried
+frantically to pay her bills. She was falling down the fronts of
+skyscrapers and precipices--and Mr. Magnet was waiting for her below
+with a quiet kindly smile that grew wider and wider and wider....
+
+She woke up palpitating.
+
+
+§ 6
+
+Next morning a curious restlessness came upon Marjorie. Conceivably it
+was due to the absence of Magnet, who had gone to London to deliver his
+long promised address on The Characteristics of English Humour to the
+_Literati_ Club. Conceivably she missed his attentions. But it
+crystallized out in the early afternoon into the oddest form, a powerful
+craving to go to the little town of Pensting, five miles off, on the
+other side of Buryhamstreet, to buy silk shoelaces.
+
+She decided to go in the donkey cart. She communicated her intention to
+her mother, but she did not communicate an equally definite intention to
+be reminded suddenly of Sir Rupert Solomonson as she was passing the
+surgery, and make an inquiry on the spur of the moment--it wouldn't
+surely be anything but a kindly and justifiable impulse to do that. She
+might see Mr. Trafford perhaps, but there was no particular harm in
+that.
+
+It is also to be remarked that finding Theodore a little disposed to
+encumber her vehicle with his presence she expressed her delight at
+being released from the need of going, and abandoned the whole
+expedition to him--knowing as she did perfectly well that if Theodore
+hated anything more than navigating the donkey cart alone, it was going
+unprotected into a shop to buy articles of feminine apparel--until he
+chucked the whole project and went fishing--if one can call it fishing
+when there are no fish and the fisherman knows it--in the decadent
+ornamental water.
+
+And it is also to be remarked that as Marjorie approached the surgery
+she was seized with an absurd and powerful shyness, so that not only did
+she not call at the surgery, she did not even look at the surgery, she
+gazed almost rigidly straight ahead, telling herself, however, that she
+merely deferred that kindly impulse until she had bought her laces. And
+so it happened that about half a mile beyond the end of Buryhamstreet
+she came round a corner upon Trafford, and by a singular fatality he
+also was driving a donkey, or, rather, was tracing a fan-like pattern on
+the road with a donkey's hoofs. It was a very similar donkey to
+Marjorie's, but the vehicle was a governess cart, and much smarter than
+Marjorie's turn-out. His ingenuous face displayed great animation at the
+sight of her, and as she drew alongside he hailed her with an almost
+unnatural ease of manner.
+
+"Hullo!" he cried. "I'm taking the air. You seem to be able to drive
+donkeys forward. How do you do it? I can't. Never done anything so
+dangerous in my life before. I've just been missed by two motor cars,
+and hung for a terrible minute with my left wheel on the very verge of
+an unfathomable ditch. I could hear the little ducklings far, far below,
+and bits of mould dropping. I tried to count before the splash. Aren't
+you--_white?_"
+
+"But why are you doing it?"
+
+"One must do something. I'm bandaged up and can't walk. It hurt my leg
+more than I knew--your doctor says. Solomonson won't talk of anything
+but how he feels, and _I_ don't care a rap how he feels. So I got this
+thing and came out with it."
+
+Marjorie made her inquiries. There came a little pause.
+
+"Some day no one will believe that men were ever so foolish as to trust
+themselves to draught animals," he remarked. "Hullo! Look out! The
+horror of it!"
+
+A large oil van--a huge drum on wheels--motor-driven, had come round the
+corner, and after a preliminary and quite insufficient hoot, bore down
+upon them, and missing Trafford as it seemed by a miracle, swept past.
+Both drivers did wonderful things with whips and reins, and found
+themselves alone in the road again, with their wheels locked and an
+indefinite future.
+
+"I leave the situation to you," said Trafford. "Or shall we just sit and
+talk until the next motor car kills us?"
+
+"We ought to make an effort," said Marjorie, cheerfully, and descended
+to lead the two beasts.
+
+Assisted by an elderly hedger, who had been taking a disregarded
+interest in them for some time, she separated the wheels and got the two
+donkeys abreast. The old hedger's opinion of their safety on the king's
+highway was expressed by his action rather than his words; he directed
+the beasts towards a shady lane that opened at right angles to the road.
+He stood by their bridles while Marjorie resumed her seat.
+
+"It seems to me clearly a case for compromise," said Trafford. "You want
+to go that way, I want to go that way. Let us both go _this_ way. It is
+by such arrangements that civilization becomes possible."
+
+He dismissed the hedger generously and resumed his reins.
+
+"Shall we race?" he asked.
+
+"With your leg?" she inquired.
+
+"No; with the donkeys. I say, this _is_ rather a lark. At first I
+thought it was both dangerous and dull. But things have changed. I am in
+beastly high spirits. I feel there will be a cry before night; but
+still, I am----I wanted the companionship of an unbroken person. It's
+so jolly to meet you again."
+
+"Again?"
+
+"After the year before last."
+
+"After the year before last?"
+
+"You didn't know," said Trafford, "I had met you before? How aggressive
+I must have seemed! Well, _I_ wasn't quite clear. I spent the greater
+part of last night--my ankle being foolish in the small hours--in
+trying to remember how and where."
+
+"I don't remember," said Marjorie.
+
+"I remembered you very distinctly, and some things I thought about you,
+but not where it had happened. Then in the night I got it. It _is_ a
+puzzle, isn't it? You see, I was wearing a black gown, and I had been
+out of the sunlight for some months--and my eye, I remember it acutely,
+was bandaged. I'm usually bandaged somewhere.
+
+    'I was a King in Babylon
+    And you were a Christian slave'
+
+--I mean a candidate."
+
+Marjorie remembered suddenly. "You're Professor Trafford."
+
+"Not in this atmosphere. But I am at the Romeike College. And as soon as
+I recalled examining you I remembered it--minutely. You were
+intelligent, though unsound--about cryo-hydrates it was. Ah, you
+remember me now. As most young women are correct by rote and
+unintelligent in such questions, and as it doesn't matter a rap about
+anything of that sort, whether you are correct or not, as long as the
+mental gesture is right----" He paused for a moment, as though tired of
+his sentence. "I remembered you."
+
+He proceeded in his easy and detached manner, that seemed to make every
+topic possible, to tell her his first impressions of her, and show how
+very distinctly indeed he remembered her.
+
+"You set me philosophizing. I'd never examined a girls' school before,
+and I was suddenly struck by the spectacle of the fifty of you. What's
+going to become of them all?"
+
+"I thought," he went on, "how bright you were, and how keen and eager
+you were--_you_, I mean, in particular--and just how certain it was
+your brightness and eagerness would be swallowed up by some silly
+ordinariness or other--stuffy marriage or stuffy domestic duties. The
+old, old story--done over again with a sort of threadbare badness.
+(Nothing to say against it if it's done well.) I got quite sentimental
+and pathetic about life's breach of faith with women. Odd, isn't it, how
+one's mind runs on. But that's what I thought. It's all come back to
+me."
+
+Marjorie's bright, clear eye came round to him. "I don't see very much
+wrong with the lot of women," she reflected. "Things are different
+nowadays. Anyhow----"
+
+She paused.
+
+"You don't want to be a man?"
+
+"_No!_"
+
+She was emphatic.
+
+"Some of us cut more sharply at life than you think," he said, plumbing
+her unspoken sense.
+
+She had never met a man before who understood just how a girl can feel
+the slow obtuseness of his sex. It was almost as if he had found her out
+at something.
+
+"Oh," she said, "perhaps you do," and looked at him with an increased
+interest.
+
+"I'm half-feminine, I believe," he said. "For instance, I've got just a
+woman's joy in textures and little significant shapes. I know how you
+feel about that. I can spend hours, even now, in crystal gazing--I don't
+mean to see some silly revelation of some silly person's proceedings
+somewhere, but just for the things themselves. I wonder if you have ever
+been in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, and looked at
+Ruskin's crystal collection? I saw it when I was a boy, and it became--I
+can't help the word--an obsession. The inclusions like moss and like
+trees, and all sorts of fantastic things, and the cleavages and
+enclosures with little bubbles, and the lights and shimmer--What were we
+talking about? Oh, about the keen way your feminine perceptions cut into
+things. And yet somehow I was throwing contempt on the feminine
+intelligence. I don't do justice to the order of my thoughts. Never
+mind. We've lost the thread. But I wish you knew my mother."
+
+He went on while Marjorie was still considering the proper response to
+this.
+
+"You see, I'm her only son and she brought me up, and we know each
+other--oh! very well. She helps with my work. She understands nearly all
+of it. She makes suggestions. And to this day I don't know if she's the
+most original or the most parasitic of creatures. And that's the way
+with all women and girls, it seems to me. You're as critical as light,
+and as undiscriminating.... I say, do I strike you as talking nonsense?"
+
+"Not a bit," said Marjorie. "But you do go rather fast."
+
+"I know," he admitted. "But somehow you excite me. I've been with
+Solomonson a week, and he's dull at all times. It was that made me take
+out that monoplane of his. But it did him no good."
+
+He paused.
+
+"They told me after the exam.," said Marjorie, "you knew more about
+crystallography--than anyone."
+
+"Does that strike you as a dull subject?"
+
+"No," said Marjorie, in a tone that invited justifications.
+
+"It isn't. I think--naturally, that the world one goes into when one
+studies molecular physics is quite the most beautiful of Wonderlands....
+I can assure you I work sometimes like a man who is exploring a magic
+palace.... Do you know anything of molecular physics?"
+
+"You examined me," said Marjorie.
+
+"The sense one has of exquisite and wonderful rhythms--just beyond sound
+and sight! And there's a taunting suggestion of its being all there,
+displayed and confessed, if only one were quick enough to see it. Why,
+for instance, when you change the composition of a felspar almost
+imperceptibly, do the angles change? What's the correspondence between
+the altered angle and the substituted atom? Why does this bit of clear
+stuff swing the ray of light so much out of its path, and that swing it
+more? Then what happens when crystals gutter down, and go into solution.
+The endless launching of innumerable little craft. Think what a clear
+solution must be if only one had ultra-microscopic eyes and could see
+into it, see the extraordinary patternings, the swimming circling
+constellations. And then the path of a ray of polarized light beating
+through it! It takes me like music. Do you know anything of the effects
+of polarized light, the sight of a slice of olivine-gabbro for instance
+between crossed Nicols?"
+
+"I've seen some rock sections," said Marjorie. "I forget the names of
+the rocks."
+
+"The colours?"
+
+"Oh yes, the colours."
+
+"Is there anything else so rich and beautiful in all the world? And
+every different mineral and every variety of that mineral has a
+different palette of colours, a different scheme of harmonies--and is
+telling you something."
+
+"If only you understood."
+
+"Exactly. All the ordinary stuff of life--you know--the carts and motor
+cars and dusty roads and--cinder sifting, seems so blank to me--with
+that persuasion of swing and subtlety beneath it all. As if the whole
+world was fire and crystal and aquiver--with some sort of cotton
+wrappers thrown over it...."
+
+"Dust sheets," said Marjorie. "I know."
+
+"Or like a diamond painted over!"
+
+"With that sort of grey paint, very full of body--that lasts."
+
+"Yes." He smiled at her. "I can't help apologetics. Most people think a
+professor of science is just----"
+
+"A professor of science."
+
+"Yes. Something all pedantries and phrases. I want to clear my
+character. As though it is foolish to follow a vortex ring into a
+vacuum, and wise to whack at a dirty golf ball on a suburban railway
+bank. Oh, their golf! Under high heaven!... You don't play golf, do you,
+by any chance?"
+
+"Only the woman's part," said Marjorie.
+
+"And they despise us," he said. "Solomonson can hardly hide how he
+despises us. Nothing is more wonderful than the way these people go on
+despising us who do research, who have this fever of curiosity, who
+won't be content with--what did you call those wrappers?"
+
+"Dust sheets."
+
+"Yes, dust sheets. What a life! Swaddling bands, dust sheets and a
+shroud! You know, research and discovery aren't nearly so difficult as
+people think--if only you have the courage to say a thing or try a thing
+now and then that it isn't usual to say or try. And after all----" he
+went off at a tangent, "these confounded ordinary people aren't
+justified in their contempt. We keep on throwing them things over our
+shoulders, electric bells, telephones, Marconigrams. Look at the
+beautiful electric trains that come towering down the London streets at
+nightfall, ships of light in full sail! Twenty years ago they were as
+impossible as immortality. We conquer the seas for these--golfers, puts
+arms in their hands that will certainly blow them all to bits if ever
+the idiots go to war with them, come sailing out of the air on them----"
+
+He caught Marjorie's eye and stopped.
+
+"_Falling_ out of the air on them," corrected Marjorie very softly.
+
+"That was only an accident," said Mr. Trafford....
+
+So they began a conversation in the lane where the trees met overhead
+that went on and went on like a devious path in a shady wood, and
+touched upon all manner of things....
+
+
+§ 7
+
+In the end quite a number of people were aggrieved by this dialogue, in
+the lane that led nowhither....
+
+Sir Rupert Solomonson was the first to complain. Trafford had been away
+"three mortal hours." No one had come near him, not a soul, and there
+hadn't been even a passing car to cheer his ear.
+
+Sir Rupert admitted he had to be quiet. "But not so _damned_ quiet."
+
+"I'd have been glad," said Sir Rupert, "if a hen had laid an egg and
+clucked a bit. You might have thought there had been a Resurrection or
+somethin', and cleared off everybody. Lord! it was deadly. I'd have sung
+out myself if it hadn't been for these infernal ribs...."
+
+Mrs. Pope came upon the affair quite by accident.
+
+"Well, Marjorie," she said as she poured tea for the family, "did you
+get your laces?"
+
+"Never got there, Mummy," said Marjorie, and paused fatally.
+
+"Didn't get there!" said Mrs. Pope. "That's worse than Theodore!
+Wouldn't the donkey go, poor dear?"
+
+There was nothing to colour about, and yet Marjorie felt the warm flow
+in neck and cheek and brow. She threw extraordinary quantities of
+candour into her manner. "I had a romantic adventure," she said rather
+quietly. "I was going to tell you."
+
+(Sensation.)
+
+"You see it was like this," said Marjorie. "I ran against Mr.
+Trafford...."
+
+She drank tea, and pulled herself together for a lively description of
+the wheel-locking and the subsequent conversation, a bright ridiculous
+account which made the affair happen by implication on the high road and
+not in a byeway, and was adorned with every facetious ornament that
+seemed likely to get a laugh from the children. But she talked rather
+fast, and she felt she forced the fun a little. However, it amused the
+children all right, and Theodore created a diversion by choking with his
+tea. From first to last Marjorie was extremely careful to avoid the
+affectionate scrutiny of her mother's eye. And had this lasted the
+_whole_ afternoon? asked Mrs. Pope. "Oh, they'd talked for
+half-an-hour," said Marjorie, or more, and had driven back very slowly
+together. "He did all the talking. You saw what he was yesterday. And
+the donkeys seemed too happy together to tear them away."
+
+"But what was it all about?" asked Daffy curious.
+
+"He asked after you, Daffy, most affectionately," said Marjorie, and
+added, "several times." (Though Trafford had as a matter of fact
+displayed a quite remarkable disregard of all her family.)
+
+"And," she went on, getting a plausible idea at last, "he explained all
+about aeroplanes. And all that sort of thing. Has Daddy gone to Wamping
+for some more cricket?..."
+
+(But none of this was lost on Mrs. Pope.)
+
+
+§ 8
+
+Mr. Magnet's return next day was heralded by nearly two-thirds of a
+column in the _Times_.
+
+The Lecture on the Characteristics of Humour had evidently been quite a
+serious affair, and a very imposing list of humorists and of prominent
+people associated with their industry had accepted the hospitality of
+the _Literati_.
+
+Marjorie ran her eyes over the Chairman's flattering introduction, then
+with a queer faint flavour of hostility she reached her destined
+husband's utterance. She seemed to hear the flat full tones of his voice
+as she read, and automatically the desiccated sentences of the reporter
+filled out again into those rich quietly deliberate unfoldings of sound
+that were already too familiar to her ear.
+
+Mr. Magnet had begun with modest disavowals. "There was a story, he
+said,"--so the report began--"whose hallowed antiquity ought to protect
+it from further exploitation, but he was tempted to repeat it because it
+offered certain analogies to the present situation. There were three
+characters in the story, a bluebottle and two Scotsmen. (Laughter.) The
+bluebottle buzzed on the pane, otherwise a profound silence reigned.
+This was broken by one of the Scotsmen trying to locate the bluebottle
+with zoölogical exactitude. Said this Scotsman: 'Sandy, I am thinking if
+yon fly is a birdie or a beastie.' The other replied: 'Man, don't spoil
+good whiskey with religious conversation.' (Laughter.) He was tempted,
+Mr. Magnet resumed, to ask himself and them why it was that they should
+spoil the aftereffects of a most excellent and admirably served dinner
+by an academic discussion on British humour. At first he was pained by
+the thought that they proposed to temper their hospitality with a demand
+for a speech. A closer inspection showed that he was to introduce a
+debate and that others were to speak, and that was a new element in
+their hospitality. Further, he was permitted to choose the subject so
+that he could bring their speeches within the range of his
+comprehension. (Laughter.) His was an easy task. He could make it
+easier; the best thing to do would be to say nothing at all.
+(Laughter.)"
+
+For a space the reporter seemed to have omitted largely--perhaps he was
+changing places with his relief--and the next sentence showed Mr. Magnet
+engaged as it were in revising a _hortus siccus_ of jokes. "There was
+the humour of facts and situations," he was saying, "or that humour of
+expression for which there was no human responsibility, as in the case
+of Irish humour; he spoke of the humour of the soil which found its
+noblest utterance in the bull. Humour depended largely on contrast.
+There was a humour of form and expression which had many local
+varieties. American humour had been characterized by exaggeration, the
+suppression of some link in the chain of argument or narrative, and a
+wealth of simile and metaphor which had been justly defined as the
+poetry of a pioneer race."...
+
+Marjorie's attention slipped its anchor, and caught lower down upon: "In
+England there was a near kinship between laughter and tears; their
+mental relations were as close as their physical. Abroad this did not
+appear to be the case. It was different in France. But perhaps on the
+whole it would be better to leave the humour of France and what some
+people still unhappily chose to regard as matters open to
+controversy--he referred to choice of subject--out of their discussion
+altogether. ('Hear, hear,' and cheers.)"...
+
+Attention wandered again. Then she remarked:--it reminded her in some
+mysterious way of a dropped hairpin--"It was noticeable that the pun to
+a great extent had become démodé...."
+
+At this point the flight of Marjorie's eyes down the column was arrested
+by her father's hand gently but firmly taking possession of the _Times_.
+She yielded it without reluctance, turned to the breakfast table, and
+never resumed her study of the social relaxations of humorists....
+
+Indeed she forgot it. Her mind was in a state of extreme perplexity. She
+didn't know what to make of herself or anything or anybody. Her mind was
+full of Trafford and all that he had said and done and all that he might
+have said and done, and it was entirely characteristic that she could
+not think of Magnet in any way at all except as a bar-like shadow that
+lay across all her memories and all the bright possibilities of this
+engaging person.
+
+She thought particularly of the mobile animation of his face, the keen
+flash of enthusiasm in his thoughts and expressions....
+
+It was perhaps more characteristic of her time than of her that she did
+not think she was dealing so much with a moral problem as an
+embarrassment, and that she hadn't as yet felt the first stirrings of
+self-reproach for the series of disingenuous proceedings that had
+rendered the yesterday's encounter possible. But she was restless,
+wildly restless as a bird whose nest is taken. She could abide nowhere.
+She fretted through the morning, avoided Daffy in a marked manner, and
+inflicted a stinging and only partially merited rebuke upon Theodore for
+slouching, humping and--of all trite grievances!--not washing behind his
+ears. As if any chap washed behind his ears! She thought tennis with the
+pseudo-twins might assuage her, but she broke off after losing two sets;
+and then she went into the garden to get fresh flowers, and picked a
+large bunch and left them on the piano until her mother reminded her of
+them. She tried a little Shaw. She struggled with an insane wish to walk
+through the wood behind the village and have an accidental meeting with
+someone who couldn't possibly appear but whom it would be quite adorable
+to meet. Anyhow she conquered that.
+
+She had a curious and rather morbid indisposition to go after lunch to
+the station and meet Mr. Magnet as her mother wished her to do, in order
+to bring him straight to the vicarage to early tea, but here again
+reason prevailed and she went.
+
+Mr. Magnet arrived by the 2.27, and to Marjorie's eye his alighting
+presence had an effect of being not so much covered with laurels as
+distended by them. His face seemed whiter and larger than ever. He waved
+a great handful of newspapers.
+
+"Hullo, Magsy!" he said. "They've given me a thumping Press. I'm nearer
+swelled head than I've ever been, so mind how you touch me!"
+
+"We'll take it down at croquet," said Marjorie.
+
+"They've cleared that thing away?"
+
+"And made up the lawn like a billiard table," she said.
+
+"That makes for skill," he said waggishly. "I shall save my head after
+all."
+
+For a moment he seemed to loom towards kissing her, but she averted
+this danger by a business-like concern for his bag. He entrusted this to
+a porter, and reverted to the triumph of overnight so soon as they were
+clear of the station. He was overflowing with kindliness towards his
+fellow humorists, who had appeared in force and very generously at the
+banquet, and had said the most charming things--some of which were in
+one report and some in another, and some the reporters had missed
+altogether--some of the kindliest.
+
+"It's a pleasant feeling to think that a lot of good fellows think you
+are a good fellow," said Mr. Magnet.
+
+He became solicitous for her. How had she got on while he was away? She
+asked him how one was likely to get on at Buryhamstreet; monoplanes
+didn't fall every day, and as she said that it occurred to her she was
+behaving meanly. But he was going on to his next topic before she could
+qualify.
+
+"I've got something in my pocket," he remarked, and playfully: "Guess."
+
+She did, but she wouldn't. She had a curious sinking of the heart.
+
+"I want you to see it before anyone else," he said. "Then if you don't
+like it, it can go back. It's a sapphire."
+
+He was feeling nervously in his pockets and then the little box was in
+her hand.
+
+She hesitated to open it. It made everything so dreadfully concrete. And
+this time the sense of meanness was altogether acuter. He'd bought this
+in London; he'd brought it down, hoping for her approval. Yes, it
+was--horrid. But what was she to do?
+
+"It's--awfully pretty," she said with the glittering symbol in her hand,
+and indeed he had gone to one of those artistic women who are reviving
+and improving upon the rich old Roman designs. "It's so beautifully
+made."
+
+"I'm so glad you like it. You really _do_ like it?"
+
+"I don't deserve it."
+
+"Oh! But you _do_ like it?"
+
+"Enormously."
+
+"Ah! I spent an hour in choosing it."
+
+She could see him. She felt as though she had picked his pocket.
+
+"Only I don't deserve it, Mr. Magnet. Indeed I don't. I feel I am taking
+it on false pretences."
+
+"Nonsense, Magsy. Nonsense! Slip it on your finger, girl."
+
+"But I don't," she insisted.
+
+He took the box from her, pocketed it and seized her hand. She drew it
+away from him.
+
+"No!" she said. "I feel like a cheat. You know, I don't--I'm sure I
+don't love----"
+
+"I'll love enough for two," he said, and got her hand again. "No!" he
+said at her gesture, "you'll wear it. Why shouldn't you?"
+
+And so Marjorie came back along the vicarage avenue with his ring upon
+her hand. And Mr. Pope was evidently very glad to see him....
+
+The family was still seated at tea upon rugs and wraps, and still
+discussing humorists at play, when Professor Trafford appeared, leaning
+on a large stick and limping, but resolute, by the church gate. "Pish!"
+said Mr. Pope. Marjorie tried not to reveal a certain dismay, there was
+dumb, rich approval in Daphne's eyes, and the pleasure of Theodore and
+the pseudo-twins was only too scandalously evident. "Hoo-Ray!" said
+Theodore, with ill-concealed relief.
+
+Mrs. Pope was the incarnate invocation of tact as Trafford drew near.
+
+"I hope," he said, with obvious insincerity, "I don't invade you. But
+Solomonson is frightfully concerned and anxious about your lawn, and
+whether his men cleared it up properly and put things right." His eye
+went about the party and rested on Marjorie. "How are you?" he said, in
+a friendly voice.
+
+"Well, we seem to have got our croquet lawn back," said Mr. Pope. "And
+our nerves are recovering. How is Sir Rupert?"
+
+"A little fractious," said Trafford, with the ghost of a smile.
+
+"You'll take some tea?" said Mrs. Pope in the pause that followed.
+
+"Thank you," said Trafford and sat down instantly.
+
+"I saw your jolly address in the _Standard_," he said to Magnet. "I
+haven't read anything so amusing for some time."
+
+"Rom dear," said Mrs. Pope, "will you take the pot in and get some fresh
+tea?"
+
+Mr. Trafford addressed himself to the flattery of Magnet with
+considerable skill. He had detected a lurking hostility in the eyes of
+the two gentlemen that counselled him to propitiate them if he meant to
+maintain his footing in the vicarage, and now he talked to them almost
+exclusively and ignored the ladies modestly but politely in the way that
+seems natural and proper in a British middle-class house of the better
+sort. But as he talked chiefly of the improvement of motor machinery
+that had recently been shown at the Engineering Exhibition, he did not
+make that headway with Marjorie's father that he had perhaps
+anticipated. Mr. Pope fumed quietly for a time, and then suddenly spoke
+out.
+
+"I'm no lover of machines," he said abruptly, slashing across Mr.
+Trafford's description. "All our troubles began with villainous
+saltpetre. I'm an old-fashioned man with a nose--and a neck, and I don't
+want the one offended or the other broken. No, don't ask me to be
+interested in your valves and cylinders. What do you say, Magnet? It
+starts machinery in my head to hear about them...."
+
+On such occasions as this when Mr. Pope spoke out, his horror of an
+anti-climax or any sort of contradiction was apt to bring the utterance
+to a culmination not always to be distinguished from a flight. And now
+he rose to his feet as he delivered himself.
+
+"Who's for a game of tennis?" he said, "in this last uncontaminated
+patch of air? I and Marjorie will give you a match, Daffy--if Magnet
+isn't too tired to join you."
+
+Daffy looked at Marjorie for an instant.
+
+"We'll want you, Theodore, to look after the balls in the potatoes,"
+said Mr. Pope lest that ingenuous mind should be corrupted behind his
+back....
+
+Mrs. Pope found herself left to entertain a slightly disgruntled
+Trafford. Rom and Syd hovered on the off chance of notice, at the corner
+of the croquet lawn nearest the tea things. Mrs. Pope had already
+determined to make certain little matters clearer than they appeared to
+be to this agreeable but superfluous person, and she was greatly
+assisted by his opening upon the subject of her daughters. "Jolly tennis
+looks," he said.
+
+"Don't they?" said Mrs. Pope. "I think it is such a graceful game for a
+girl."
+
+Mr. Trafford glanced at Mrs. Pope's face, but her expression was
+impenetrable.
+
+"They both like it and play it so well," she said. "Their father is so
+skillful and interested in games. Marjorie tells me you were her
+examiner a year or so ago."
+
+"Yes. She struck my memory--her work stood out."
+
+"Of course she is clever," said Mrs. Pope. "Or we shouldn't have sent
+her to Oxbridge. There she's doing quite well--quite well. Everyone says
+so. I don't know, of course, if Mr. Magnet will let her finish there."
+
+"Mr. Magnet?"
+
+"She's just engaged to him. Of course she's frightfully excited about
+it, and naturally he wants her to come away and marry. There's very
+little excuse for a long engagement. No."
+
+Her voice died in a musical little note, and she seemed to be
+scrutinizing the tennis with an absorbed interest. "They've got new
+balls," she said, as if to herself.
+
+Trafford had rolled over, and she fancied she detected a change in his
+voice when it came. "Isn't it rather a waste not to finish a university
+career?" he said.
+
+"Oh, it wouldn't be wasted. Of course a girl like that will be hand and
+glove with her husband. She'll be able to help him with the scientific
+side of his jokes and all that. I sometimes wish it had been Daffy who
+had gone to college though. I sometimes think we've sacrificed Daffy a
+little. She's not the bright quickness of Marjorie, but there's
+something quietly solid about her mind--something _stable_. Perhaps I
+didn't want her to go away from me.... Mr. Magnet is doing wonders at
+the net. He's just begun to play--to please Marjorie. Don't you think
+he's a dreadfully amusing man, Mr. Trafford? He says such _quiet_
+things."
+
+
+§ 9
+
+The effect of this _éclaircissement_ upon Mr. Trafford was not what it
+should have been. Properly he ought to have realized at once that
+Marjorie was for ever beyond his aspirations, and if he found it too
+difficult to regard her with equanimity, then he ought to have shunned
+her presence. But instead, after his first shock of incredulous
+astonishment, his spirit rose in a rebellion against arranged facts that
+was as un-English as it was ungentlemanly. He went back to Solomonson
+with a mood of thoughtful depression giving place to a growing passion
+of indignation. He presented it to himself in a generalized and
+altruistic form. "What the deuce is the good of all this talk of
+Eugenics," he asked himself aloud, "if they are going to hand over that
+shining girl to that beastly little area sneak?"
+
+He called Mr. Magnet a "beastly little area sneak!"
+
+Nothing could show more clearly just how much he had contrived to fall
+in love with Marjorie during his brief sojourn in Buryhamstreet and the
+acuteness of his disappointment, and nothing could be more eloquent of
+his forcible and undisciplined temperament. And out of ten thousand
+possible abusive epithets with which his mind was no doubt stored, this
+one, I think, had come into his head because of the alert watchfulness
+with which Mr. Magnet followed a conversation, as he waited his chance
+for some neat but brilliant flash of comment....
+
+Trafford, like Marjorie, was another of those undisciplined young people
+our age has produced in such significant quantity. He was just
+six-and-twenty, but the facts that he was big of build, had as an only
+child associated much with grown-up people, and was already a
+conspicuous success in the world of micro-chemical research, had given
+him the self-reliance and assurance of a much older man. He had still to
+come his croppers and learn most of the important lessons in life, and,
+so far, he wasn't aware of it. He was naturally clean-minded, very busy
+and interested in his work, and on remarkably friendly and confidential
+terms with his mother who kept house for him, and though he had had
+several small love disturbances, this was the first occasion that
+anything of the kind had ploughed deep into his feelings and desires.
+
+Trafford's father had died early in life. He had been a brilliant
+pathologist, one of that splendid group of scientific investigators in
+the middle Victorian period which shines ever more brightly as our
+criticism dims their associated splendours, and he had died before he
+was thirty through a momentary slip of the scalpel. His wife--she had
+been his wife for five years--found his child and his memory and the
+quality of the life he had made about her too satisfying for the risks
+of a second marriage, and she had brought up her son with a passionate
+belief in the high mission of research and the supreme duty of seeking
+out and expressing truth finely. And here he was, calling Mr. Magnet a
+"beastly little area sneak."
+
+The situation perplexed him. Marjorie perplexed him. It was, had he
+known it, the beginning for him of a lifetime of problems and
+perplexities. He was absolutely certain she didn't love Magnet. Why,
+then, had she agreed to marry him? Such pressures and temptations as he
+could see about her seemed light to him in comparison with such an
+undertaking.
+
+Were they greater than he supposed?
+
+His method of coming to the issue of that problem was entirely original.
+He presented himself next afternoon with the air of an invited guest,
+drove Mr. Pope who was suffering from liver, to expostulatory sulking in
+the study, and expressed a passionate craving for golf-croquet, in spite
+of Mrs. Pope's extreme solicitude for his still bandaged ankle. He was
+partnered with Daffy, and for a long time he sought speech with Marjorie
+in vain. At last he was isolated in a corner of the lawn, and with the
+thinnest pretence of inadvertence, in spite of Daffy's despairing cry of
+"She plays next!" he laid up within two yards of her. He walked across
+to her as she addressed herself to her ball, and speaking in an
+incredulous tone and with the air of a comment on the game, he said: "I
+say, are you engaged to that chap Magnet?"
+
+Marjorie was amazed, but remarkably not offended. Something in his tone
+set her trembling. She forgot to play, and stood with her mallet hanging
+in her hand.
+
+"Punish him!" came the voice of Magnet from afar.
+
+"Yes," she said faintly.
+
+His remark came low and clear. It had a note of angry protest. "_Why?_"
+
+Marjorie, by the way of answer, hit her ball so that it jumped and
+missed his, ricochetted across the lawn and out of the ground on the
+further side.
+
+"I'm sorry if I've annoyed you," said Trafford, as Marjorie went after
+her ball, and Daffy thanked heaven aloud for the respite.
+
+They came together no more for a time, and Trafford, observant with
+every sense, found no clue to the riddle of her grave, intent bearing.
+She played very badly, and with unusual care and deliberation. He felt
+he had made a mess of things altogether, and suddenly found his leg was
+too painful to go on. "Partner," he asked, "will you play out my ball
+for me? I can't go on. I shall have to go."
+
+Marjorie surveyed him, while Daffy and Magnet expressed solicitude. He
+turned to go, mallet in hand, and found Marjorie following him.
+
+"Is that the heavier mallet?" she asked, and stood before him looking
+into his eyes and weighing a mallet in either hand.
+
+"Mr. Trafford, you're one of the worst examiners I've ever met," she
+said.
+
+He looked puzzled.
+
+"I don't know _why_," said Marjorie, "I wonder as much as you. But I
+am"; and seeing the light dawning in his eyes, she turned about, and
+went back to the debacle of her game.
+
+
+§ 10
+
+After that Mr. Trafford had one clear desire in his being which ruled
+all his other desires. He wanted a long, frank, unembarrassed and
+uninterrupted conversation with Marjorie. He had a very strong
+impression that Marjorie wanted exactly the same thing. For a week he
+besieged the situation in vain. After the fourth day Solomonson was only
+kept in Buryhamstreet by sheer will-power, exerted with a brutality that
+threatened to end that friendship abruptly. He went home on the sixth
+day in his largest car, but Trafford stayed on beyond the limits of
+decency to perform some incomprehensible service that he spoke of as
+"clearing up."
+
+"I want," he said, "to clear up."
+
+"But what _is_ there to clear up, my dear boy?"
+
+"Solomonson, you're a pampered plutocrat," said Trafford, as though
+everything was explained.
+
+"I don't see any sense in it at all," said Solomonson, and regarded his
+friend aslant with thick, black eyebrows raised.
+
+"I'm going to stay," said Trafford.
+
+And Solomonson said one of those unhappy and entirely disregarded things
+that ought never to be said.
+
+"There's some girl in this," said Solomonson.
+
+"Your bedroom's always waiting for you at Riplings," he said, when at
+last he was going off....
+
+Trafford's conviction that Marjorie also wanted, with an almost equal
+eagerness, the same opportunity for speech and explanations that he
+desired, sustained him in a series of unjustifiable intrusions upon the
+seclusion of the Popes. But although the manner of Mr. and Mrs. Pope did
+change considerably for the better after his next visit, it was
+extraordinary how impossible it seemed for him and Marjorie to achieve
+their common end of an encounter.
+
+Always something intervened.
+
+In the first place, Mrs. Pope's disposition to optimism had got the
+better of her earlier discretions, and a casual glance at Daphne's face
+when their visitor reappeared started quite a new thread of
+interpretations in her mind. She had taken the opportunity of hinting at
+this when Mr. Pope asked over his shirt-stud that night, "What the devil
+that--that chauffeur chap meant by always calling in the afternoon."
+
+"Now that Will Magnet monopolizes Marjorie," she said, after a little
+pause and a rustle or so, "I don't see why Daffy shouldn't have a little
+company of her own age."
+
+Mr. Pope turned round and stared at her. "I didn't think of that," he
+said. "But, anyhow, I don't like the fellow."
+
+"He seems to be rather clever," said Mrs. Pope, "though he certainly
+talks too much. And after all it was Sir Rupert's aeroplane. _He_ was
+only driving it to oblige."
+
+"He'll think twice before he drives another," said Mr. Pope, wrenching
+off his collar....
+
+Once Mrs. Pope had turned her imagination in this more and more
+agreeable direction, she was rather disposed, I am afraid, to let it
+bolt with her. And it was a deflection that certainly fell in very
+harmoniously with certain secret speculations of Daphne's. Trafford,
+too, being quite unused to any sort of social furtiveness, did perhaps,
+in order to divert attention from his preoccupation with Marjorie,
+attend more markedly to Daphne than he would otherwise have done. And so
+presently he found Daphne almost continuously on his hands. So far as
+she was concerned, he might have told her the entire history of his
+life, and every secret he had in the world, without let or hindrance.
+Mrs. Pope, too, showed a growing appreciation of his company, became
+sympathetic and confidential in a way that invited confidence, and threw
+a lot of light on her family history and Daffy's character. She had
+found Daffy a wonderful study, she said. Mr. Pope, too, seemed partly
+reconciled to him. The idea that, after all, both motor cars and
+monoplane were Sir Rupert's, and not Trafford's, had produced a reaction
+in the latter gentleman's favour. Moreover, it had occurred to him that
+Trafford's accident had perhaps disposed him towards a more thoughtful
+view of mechanical traction, and that this tendency would be greatly
+helped by a little genial chaff. So that he ceased to go indoors when
+Trafford was there, and hung about, meditating and delivering sly digs
+at this new victim of his ripe, old-fashioned humour.
+
+Nor did it help Trafford in his quest for Marjorie and a free, outspoken
+delivery that the pseudo-twins considered him a person of very
+considerable charm, and that Theodore, though indisposed to "suck up" to
+him publicly--I write here in Theodorese--did so desire intimate and
+solitary communion with him, more particularly in view of the chances of
+an adventitious aeroplane ride that seemed to hang about him--as to
+stalk him persistently--hovering on the verge of groups, playing a
+waiting game with a tennis ball and an old racquet, strolling artlessly
+towards the gate of the avenue when the time seemed ripening for his
+appearance or departure.
+
+On the other hand, Marjorie was greatly entangled by Magnet.
+
+Magnet was naturally an attentive lover; he was full of small
+encumbering services, and it made him none the less assiduous to
+perceive that Marjorie seemed to find no sort of pleasure in all the
+little things he did. He seemed to think that if picking the very best
+rose he could find for her did not cause a very perceptible brightening
+in her, then it was all the more necessary quietly to force her racquet
+from her hand and carry it for her, or help her ineffectually to cross a
+foot-wide ditch, or offer to read her in a rich, abundant, well
+modulated voice, some choice passage from "The Forest Lovers" of Mr.
+Maurice Hewlett. And behind these devotions there was a streak of
+jealousy. He knew as if by instinct that it was not wise to leave these
+two handsome young people together; he had a queer little disagreeable
+sensation whenever they spoke to one another or looked at one another.
+Whenever Trafford and Marjorie found themselves in a group, there was
+Magnet in the midst of them. He knew the value of his Marjorie, and did
+not mean to lose her....
+
+Being jointly baffled in this way was oddly stimulating to Marjorie's
+and Trafford's mutual predisposition. If you really want to throw people
+together, the thing to do--thank God for Ireland!--is to keep them
+apart. By the fourth day of this emotional incubation, Marjorie was
+thinking of Trafford to the exclusion of all her reading; and Trafford
+was lying awake at nights--oh, for half an hour and more--thinking of
+bold, decisive ways of getting at Marjorie, and bold, decisive things to
+say to her when he did.
+
+(But why she should be engaged to Magnet continued, nevertheless, to
+puzzle him extremely. It was a puzzle to which no complete solution was
+ever to be forthcoming....)
+
+
+§ 11
+
+At last that opportunity came. Marjorie had come with her mother into
+the village, and while Mrs. Pope made some purchases at the general shop
+she walked on to speak to Mrs. Blythe the washerwoman. Trafford suddenly
+emerged from the Red Lion with a soda syphon under each arm. She came
+forward smiling.
+
+"I say," he said forthwith, "I want to talk with you--badly."
+
+"And I," she said unhesitatingly, "with you."
+
+"How can we?"
+
+"There's always people about. It's absurd."
+
+"We'll have to meet."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have to go away to-morrow. I ought to have gone two days ago. Where
+_can_ we meet?"
+
+She had it all prepared.
+
+"Listen," she said. "There is a path runs from our shrubbery through a
+little wood to a stile on the main road." He nodded. "Either I will be
+there at three or about half-past five or--there's one more chance.
+While father and Mr. Magnet are smoking at nine.... I might get away."
+
+"Couldn't I write?"
+
+"No. Impossible."
+
+"I've no end of things to say...."
+
+Mrs. Pope appeared outside her shop, and Trafford gesticulated a
+greeting with the syphons. "All right," he said to Marjorie. "I'm
+shopping," he cried as Mrs. Pope approached.
+
+
+§ 12
+
+All through the day Marjorie desired to go to Trafford and could not do
+so. It was some minutes past nine when at last with a swift rustle of
+skirts that sounded louder than all the world to her, she crossed the
+dimly lit hall between dining-room and drawing-room and came into the
+dreamland of moonlight upon the lawn. She had told her mother she was
+going upstairs; at any moment she might be missed, but she would have
+fled now to Trafford if an army pursued her. Her heart seemed beating in
+her throat, and every fibre of her being was aquiver. She flitted past
+the dining-room window like a ghost, she did not dare to glance aside at
+the smokers within, and round the lawn to the shrubbery, and so under a
+blackness of trees to the gate where he stood waiting. And there he was,
+dim and mysterious and wonderful, holding the gate open for her, and she
+was breathless, and speechless, and near sobbing. She stood before him
+for a moment, her face moonlit and laced with the shadows of little
+twigs, and then his arms came out to her.
+
+"My darling," he said, "Oh, my darling!"
+
+They had no doubt of one another or of anything in the world. They clung
+together; their lips came together fresh and untainted as those first
+lovers' in the garden.
+
+"I will die for you," he said, "I will give all the world for you...."
+
+They had thought all through the day of a hundred statements and
+explanations they would make when this moment came, and never a word of
+it all was uttered. All their anticipations of a highly strung eventful
+conversation vanished, phrases of the most striking sort went like
+phantom leaves before a gale. He held her and she clung to him between
+laughing and sobbing, and both were swiftly and conclusively assured
+their lives must never separate again.
+
+
+§ 13
+
+Marjorie never knew whether it was a moment or an age before her father
+came upon them. He had decided to take a turn in the garden when Magnet
+could no longer restrain himself from joining the ladies, and he chanced
+to be stick in hand because that was his habit after twilight. So it was
+he found them. She heard his voice falling through love and moonlight
+like something that comes out of an immense distance.
+
+"Good God!" he cried, "what next!"
+
+But he still hadn't realized the worst.
+
+"Daffy," he said, "what in the name of goodness----?"
+
+Marjorie put her hands before her face too late.
+
+"Good Lord!" he cried with a rising inflection, "it's Madge!"
+
+Trafford found the situation difficult. "I should explain----"
+
+But Mr. Pope was giving himself up to a towering rage. "You damned
+scoundrel!" he said. "What the devil are you doing?" He seized Marjorie
+by the arm and drew her towards him. "My poor misguided girl!" he said,
+and suddenly she was tensely alive, a little cry of horror in her
+throat, for her father, at a loss for words and full of heroic rage, had
+suddenly swung his stick with passionate force, and struck at Trafford's
+face. She heard the thud, saw Trafford wince and stiffen. For a
+perfectly horrible moment it seemed to her these men, their faces
+queerly distorted by the shadows of the branches in the slanting
+moonlight, might fight. Then she heard Trafford's voice, sounding cool
+and hard, and she knew that he would do nothing of the kind. In that
+instant if there had remained anything to win in Marjorie it was
+altogether won. "I asked your daughter to meet me here," he said.
+
+"Be off with you, sir!" cried Mr. Pope. "Don't tempt me further, sir,"
+and swung his stick again. But now the force had gone out of him.
+Trafford stood with a hand out ready for him, and watched his face.
+
+"I asked your daughter to meet me here, and she came. I am prepared to
+give you any explanation----"
+
+"If you come near this place again----"
+
+For some moments Marjorie's heart had been held still, now it was
+beating violently. She felt this scene must end. "Mr. Trafford," she
+said, "will you go. Go now. Nothing shall keep us apart!"
+
+Mr. Pope turned on her. "Silence, girl!" he said.
+
+"I shall come to you to-morrow," said Trafford.
+
+"Yes," said Marjorie, "to-morrow."
+
+"Marjorie!" said Mr. Pope, "_will_ you go indoors."
+
+"I have done nothing----"
+
+"Be off, sir."
+
+"I have done nothing----"
+
+"Will you be off, sir? And you, Marjorie--will you go indoors?"
+
+He came round upon her, and after one still moment of regard for
+Trafford--and she looked very beautiful in the moonlight with her hair a
+little disordered and her face alight--she turned to precede her father
+through the shrubbery.
+
+Mr. Pope hesitated whether he should remain with Trafford.
+
+A perfectly motionless man is very disconcerting.
+
+"Be off, sir," he said over his shoulder, lowered through a threatening
+second, and followed her.
+
+But Trafford remained stiffly with a tingling temple down which a little
+thread of blood was running, until their retreating footsteps had died
+down into that confused stirring of little sounds which makes the
+stillness of an English wood at night.
+
+Then he roused himself with a profound sigh, and put a hand to his cut
+and bruised cheek.
+
+"_Well!_" he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FOURTH
+
+CRISIS
+
+
+§ 1
+
+Crisis prevailed in Buryhamstreet that night. On half a dozen sleepless
+pillows souls communed with the darkness, and two at least of those
+pillows were wet with tears.
+
+Not one of those wakeful heads was perfectly clear about the origins and
+bearings of the trouble; not even Mr. Pope felt absolutely sure of
+himself. It had come as things come to people nowadays, because they
+will not think things out, much less talk things out, and are therefore
+in a hopeless tangle of values that tightens sooner or later to a
+knot....
+
+What an uncharted perplexity, for example, was the mind of that
+excellent woman Mrs. Pope!
+
+Poor lady! she hadn't a stable thing in her head. It is remarkable that
+some queer streak in her composition sympathized with Marjorie's passion
+for Trafford. But she thought it such a pity! She fought that sympathy
+down as if it were a wicked thing. And she fought too against other
+ideas that rose out of the deeps and did not so much come into her mind
+as cluster at the threshold, the idea that Marjorie was in effect grown
+up, a dozen queer criticisms of Magnet, and a dozen subtle doubts
+whether after all Marjorie was going to be happy with him as she assured
+herself the girl would be. (So far as any one knew Trafford might be an
+excellent match!) And behind these would-be invaders of her guarded mind
+prowled even worse ones, doubts, horrible disloyal doubts, about the
+wisdom and kindness of Mr. Pope.
+
+Quite early in life Mrs. Pope had realized that it is necessary to be
+very careful with one's thoughts. They lead to trouble. She had clipped
+the wings of her own mind therefore so successfully that all her
+conclusions had become evasions, all her decisions compromises. Her
+profoundest working conviction was a belief that nothing in the world
+was of value but "tact," and that the art of living was to "tide things
+over." But here it seemed almost beyond her strength to achieve any sort
+of tiding over....
+
+(Why _couldn't_ Mr. Pope lie quiet?)
+
+Whatever she said or did had to be fitted to the exigencies of Mr. Pope.
+
+Availing himself of the privileges of matrimony, her husband so soon as
+Mr. Magnet had gone and they were upstairs together, had explained the
+situation with vivid simplicity, and had gone on at considerable length
+and with great vivacity to enlarge upon his daughter's behaviour. He
+ascribed this moral disaster,--he presented it as a moral disaster of
+absolutely calamitous dimensions--entirely to Mrs. Pope's faults and
+negligences. Warming with his theme he had employed a number of homely
+expressions rarely heard by decent women except in these sacred
+intimacies, to express the deep indignation of a strong man moved to
+unbridled speech by the wickedness of those near and dear to him. Still
+warming, he raised his voice and at last shouted out his more forcible
+meanings, until she feared the servants and children might hear, waved a
+clenched fist at imaginary Traffords and scoundrels generally, and
+giving way completely to his outraged virtue, smote and kicked blameless
+articles of furniture in a manner deeply impressive to the feminine
+intelligence.
+
+Finally he sat down in the little arm-chair between her and the cupboard
+where she was accustomed to hang up her clothes, stuck out his legs very
+stiffly across the room, and despaired of his family in an obtrusive and
+impregnable silence for an enormous time.
+
+All of which awakened a deep sense of guilt and unworthiness in Mrs.
+Pope's mind, and prevented her going to bed, but did not help her in the
+slightest degree to grasp the difficulties of the situation....
+
+She would have lain awake anyhow, but she was greatly helped in this by
+Mr. Pope's restlessness. He was now turning over from left to right or
+from right to left at intervals of from four to seven minutes, and such
+remarks as "Damned scoundrel! Get out of this!" or "_My_ daughter and
+degrade yourself in this way!" or "Never let me see your face again!"
+"Plight your troth to one man, and fling yourself shamelessly--I repeat
+it, Marjorie, shamelessly--into the arms of another!" kept Mrs. Pope
+closely in touch with the general trend of his thoughts.
+
+She tried to get together her plans and perceptions rather as though she
+swept up dead leaves on a gusty day. She knew that the management of the
+whole situation rested finally on her, and that whatever she did or did
+not do, or whatever arose to thwart her arrangements, its entire tale of
+responsibility would ultimately fall upon her shoulders. She wondered
+what was to be done with Marjorie, with Mr. Magnet? Need he know? Could
+that situation be saved? Everything at present was raw in her mind.
+Except for her husband's informal communications she did not even know
+what had appeared, what Daffy had seen, what Magnet thought of
+Marjorie's failure to bid him good-night. For example, had Mr. Magnet
+noticed Mr. Pope's profound disturbance? She had to be ready to put a
+face on things before morning, and it seemed impossible she could do so.
+In times of crisis, as every woman knows, it is always necessary to
+misrepresent everything to everybody, but how she was to dovetail her
+misrepresentations, get the best effect from them, extract a working
+system of rights and wrongs from them, she could not imagine....
+
+(Oh! she did so wish Mr. Pope would lie quiet.)
+
+But he had no doubts of what became _him_. He had to maintain a splendid
+and irrational rage--at any cost--to anybody.
+
+
+§ 2
+
+A few yards away, a wakeful Marjorie confronted a joyless universe. She
+had a baffling realization that her life was in a hopeless mess, that
+she really had behaved disgracefully, and that she couldn't for a moment
+understand how it had happened. She had intended to make quite sure of
+Trafford--and then put things straight.
+
+Only her father had spoilt everything.
+
+She regarded her father that night with a want of natural affection
+terrible to record. Why had he come just when he had, just as he had?
+Why had he been so violent, so impossible?
+
+Of course, she had no business to be there....
+
+She examined her character with a new unprecedented detachment. Wasn't
+she, after all, rather a mean human being? It had never occurred to her
+before to ask such a question. Now she asked it with only too clear a
+sense of the answer. She tried to trace how these multiplying threads of
+meanness had first come into the fabric of a life she had supposed
+herself to be weaving in extremely bright, honourable, and adventurous
+colours. She ought, of course, never to have accepted Magnet....
+
+She faced the disagreeable word; was she a liar?
+
+At any rate, she told lies.
+
+And she'd behaved with extraordinary meanness to Daphne. She realized
+that now. She had known, as precisely as if she had been told, how
+Daphne felt about Trafford, and she'd never given her an inkling of her
+own relations. She hadn't for a moment thought of Daphne. No wonder
+Daffy was sombre and bitter. Whatever she knew, she knew enough. She had
+heard Trafford's name in urgent whispers on the landing. "I suppose you
+couldn't leave him alone," Daffy had said, after a long hostile silence.
+That was all. Just a sentence without prelude or answer flung across the
+bedroom, revealing a perfect understanding--deeps of angry
+disillusionment. Marjorie had stared and gasped, and made no answer.
+
+Would she ever see him again? After this horror of rowdy intervention?
+She didn't deserve to; she didn't deserve anything.... Oh, the tangle of
+it all! The tangle of it all! And those bills at Oxbridge! She was just
+dragging Trafford down into her own miserable morass of a life.
+
+Her thoughts would take a new turn. "I love him," she whispered
+soundlessly. "I would die for him. I would like to lie under his
+feet--and him not know it."
+
+Her mind hung on that for a long time. "Not know it until afterwards,"
+she corrected.
+
+She liked to be exact, even in despair....
+
+And then in her memory he was struck again, and stood stiff and still.
+She wanted to kneel to him, imagined herself kneeling....
+
+And so on, quite inconclusively, round and round through the
+interminable night hours.
+
+
+§ 3
+
+The young man in the village was, if possible, more perplexed,
+round-eyed and generally inconclusive than anyone else in this series of
+nocturnal disturbances. He spent long intervals sitting on his
+window-sill regarding a world that was scented with nightstock, and
+seemed to be woven of moonshine and gossamer. Being an inexpert and
+infrequent soliloquist, his only audible comment on his difficulties was
+the repetition in varying intonations of his fervent, unalterable
+conviction that he was damned. But behind this simple verbal mask was a
+great fury of mental activity.
+
+He had something of Marjorie's amazement at the position of affairs.
+
+He had never properly realized that it was possible for any one to
+regard Marjorie as a daughter, to order her about and resent the
+research for her society as criminal. It was a new light in his world.
+Some day he was to learn the meaning of fatherhood, but in these night
+watches he regarded it as a hideous survival of medićval darknesses.
+
+"Of course," he said, entirely ignoring the actual quality of their
+conversation, "she had to explain about the Magnet affair. Can't
+one--converse?"
+
+He reflected through great intervals.
+
+"I _will_ see her! Why on earth shouldn't I see her?"
+
+"I suppose they can't lock her up!"
+
+For a time he contemplated a writ of Habeas Corpus. He saw reason to
+regret the gaps in his legal knowledge.
+
+"Can any one get a writ of Habeas Corpus for any one--it doesn't matter
+whom"--more especially if you are a young man of six-and-twenty,
+anxious to exchange a few richly charged words with a girl of twenty
+who is engaged to someone else?
+
+The night had no answer.
+
+It was nearly dawn when he came to the entirely inadvisable
+conclusion--I use his own word's--to go and have it out with the old
+ruffian. He would sit down and ask him what he meant by it all--and
+reason with him. If he started flourishing that stick again, it would
+have to be taken away.
+
+And having composed a peroration upon the institution of the family of a
+character which he fondly supposed to be extraordinarily tolerant,
+reasonable and convincing, but which was indeed calculated to madden Mr.
+Pope to frenzy, Mr. Trafford went very peacefully to sleep.
+
+
+§ 4
+
+Came dawn, with a noise of birds and afterwards a little sleep, and then
+day, and heavy eyes opened again, and the sound of frying and the smell
+of coffee recalled our actors to the stage. Mrs. Pope was past her worst
+despair; always the morning brings courage and a clearer grasp of
+things, and she could face the world with plans shaped subconsciously
+during those last healing moments of slumber.
+
+Breakfast was difficult, but not impossible. Mr. Pope loomed like a
+thundercloud, but Marjorie pleaded a headache very wisely, and was taken
+a sympathetic cup of tea. The pseudo-twins scented trouble, but Theodore
+was heedless and over-full of an entertaining noise made by a moorhen as
+it dived in the ornamental water that morning. You could make it
+practically _sotto voce_, and it amused Syd. He seemed to think the
+_Times_ opaque to such small sounds, and learnt better only to be
+dismissed underfed and ignominiously from the table to meditate upon the
+imperfections of his soul in the schoolroom. There for a time he was
+silent, and then presently became audible again, playing with a ball
+and, presumably, Marjorie's tennis racquet.
+
+Directly she could disentangle herself from breakfast Mrs. Pope, with
+all her plans acute, went up to the girls' room. She found her daughter
+dressing in a leisurely and meditative manner. She shut the door almost
+confidentially. "Marjorie," she said, "I want you to tell me all about
+this."
+
+"I thought I heard father telling you," said Marjorie.
+
+"He was too indignant," said Mrs. Pope, "to explain clearly. You see,
+Marjorie"--she paused before her effort--"he knows things--about this
+Professor Trafford."
+
+"What things?" asked Marjorie, turning sharply.
+
+"I don't know, my dear--and I can't imagine."
+
+She looked out of the window, aware of Marjorie's entirely distrustful
+scrutiny.
+
+"I don't believe it," said Marjorie.
+
+"Don't believe what, dear?"
+
+"Whatever he says."
+
+"I wish I didn't," said Mrs. Pope, and turned. "Oh, Madge," she cried,
+"you cannot imagine how all this distresses me! I cannot--I cannot
+conceive how you came to be in such a position! Surely honour----! Think
+of Mr. Magnet, how good and patient he has been! You don't know that
+man. You don't know all he is, and all that it means to a girl. He is
+good and honourable and--pure. He is kindness itself. It seemed to me
+that you were to be so happy--rich, honoured."
+
+She was overcome by a rush of emotion; she turned to the bed and sat
+down.
+
+"_There!_" she said desolately. "It's all ruined, shattered, gone."
+
+Marjorie tried not to feel that her mother was right.
+
+"If father hadn't interfered," she said weakly.
+
+"Oh, don't, my dear, speak so coldly of your father! You don't know what
+he has to put up with. You don't know his troubles and anxieties--all
+this wretched business." She paused, and her face became portentous.
+"Marjorie, do you know if these railways go on as they are going he may
+have to _eat into his capital_ this year. Just think of that, and the
+worry he has! And this last shame and anxiety!"
+
+Her voice broke again. Marjorie listened with an expression that was
+almost sullen.
+
+"But what is it," she asked, "that father knows about Mr. Trafford?"
+
+"I don't know, dear. I don't know. But it's something that matters--that
+makes it all different."
+
+"Well, may I speak to Mr. Trafford before he leaves Buryhamstreet?"
+
+"My dear! Never see him, dear--never think of him again! Your father
+would not dream----Some day, Marjorie, you will rejoice--you will want
+to thank your father on your bended knees that he saved you from the
+clutches of this man...."
+
+"I won't believe anything about Mr. Trafford," she said slowly, "until I
+know----"
+
+She left the sentence incomplete.
+
+She made her declaration abruptly. "I love Mr. Trafford," she said, with
+a catch in her voice, "and I don't love Mr. Magnet."
+
+Mrs. Pope received this like one who is suddenly stabbed. She sat still
+as if overwhelmed, one hand pressed to her side and her eyes closed.
+Then she said, as if she gasped involuntarily--
+
+"It's too dreadful! Marjorie," she said, "I want to ask you to do
+something. After all, a mother has _some_ claim. Will you wait just a
+little. Will you promise me to do nothing--nothing, I mean, to commit
+you--until your father has been able to make inquiries. Don't _see_ him
+for a little while. Very soon you'll be one-and-twenty, and then perhaps
+things may be different. If he cares for you, and you for him, a little
+separation won't matter.... Until your father has inquired...."
+
+"Mother," said Marjorie, "I can't----"
+
+Mrs. Pope drew in the air sharply between her teeth, as if in agony.
+
+"But, mother----Mother, I _must_ let Mr. Trafford know that I'm not to
+see him. I _can't_ suddenly cease.... If I could see him once----"
+
+"Don't!" said Mrs. Pope, in a hollow voice.
+
+Marjorie began weeping. "He'd not understand," she said. "If I might
+just speak to him!"
+
+"Not alone, Marjorie."
+
+Marjorie stood still. "Well--before you."
+
+Mrs. Pope conceded the point. "And then, Marjorie----" she said.
+
+"I'd keep my word, mother," said Marjorie, and began to sob in a manner
+she felt to be absurdly childish--"until--until I am one-and-twenty. I'd
+promise that."
+
+Mrs. Pope did a brief calculation. "Marjorie," she said, "it's only your
+happiness I think of."
+
+"I know," said Marjorie, and added in a low voice, "and father."
+
+"My dear, you don't understand your father.... I believe--I do firmly
+believe--if anything happened to any of you girls--anything bad--he
+would kill himself.... And I know he means that you aren't to go about
+so much as you used to do, unless we have the most definite promises. Of
+course, your father's ideas aren't always my ideas, Marjorie; but it's
+your duty--You know how hasty he is and--quick. Just as you know how
+good and generous and kind he is"--she caught Marjorie's eye, and added
+a little lamely--"at bottom." ... She thought. "I think I could get him
+to let you say just one word with Mr. Trafford. It would be very
+difficult, but----"
+
+She paused for a few seconds, and seemed to be thinking deeply.
+
+"Marjorie," she said, "Mr. Magnet must never know anything of this."
+
+"But, mother----!"
+
+"Nothing!"
+
+"I can't go on with my engagement!"
+
+Mrs. Pope shook her head inscrutably.
+
+"But how _can_ I, mother?"
+
+"You need not tell him _why_, Marjorie."
+
+"But----"
+
+"Just think how it would humiliate and distress him! You _can't_,
+Marjorie. You must find some excuse--oh, any excuse! But not the
+truth--not the truth, Marjorie. It would be too dreadful."
+
+Marjorie thought. "Look here, mother, I _may_ see Mr. Trafford again? I
+_may_ really speak to him?"
+
+"Haven't I promised?"
+
+"Then, I'll do as you say," said Marjorie.
+
+
+§ 5
+
+Mrs. Pope found her husband seated at the desk in the ultra-Protestant
+study, meditating gloomily.
+
+"I've been talking to her," she said, "She's in a state of terrible
+distress."
+
+"She ought to be," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Philip, you don't understand Marjorie."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"You think she was kissing that man."
+
+"Well, she was."
+
+"You can think _that_ of her!"
+
+Mr. Pope turned his chair to her. "But I _saw!_"
+
+Mrs. Pope shook her head. "She wasn't; she was struggling to get away
+from him. She told me so herself. I've been into it with her. You don't
+understand, Philip. A man like that has a sort of fascination for a
+girl. He dazzles her. It's the way with girls. But you're quite
+mistaken.... Quite. It's a sort of hypnotism. She'll grow out of it. Of
+course, she _loves_ Mr. Magnet. She does indeed. I've not a doubt of it.
+But----"
+
+"You're _sure_ she wasn't kissing him?"
+
+"Positive."
+
+"Then why didn't you say so?"
+
+"A girl's so complex. You didn't give her a chance. She's fearfully
+ashamed of herself--fearfully! but it's just because she _is_ ashamed
+that she won't admit it."
+
+"I'll make her admit it."
+
+"You ought to have had all boys," said Mrs. Pope. "Oh! she'll admit it
+some day--readily enough. But I believe a girl of her spirit would
+rather _die_ than begin explaining. You can't expect it of her. Really
+you can't."
+
+He grunted and shook his head slowly from side to side.
+
+She sat down in the arm-chair beside the desk.
+
+"I want to know just exactly what we are to do about the girl, Philip. I
+can't bear to think of her--up there."
+
+"How?" he asked. "Up there?"
+
+"Yes," she answered with that skilful inconsecutiveness of hers, and let
+a brief silence touch his imagination. "Do you think that man means to
+come here again?" she asked.
+
+"Chuck him out if he does," said Mr. Pope, grimly.
+
+She pressed her lips together firmly. She seemed to be weighing things
+painfully. "I wouldn't," she said at last.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Pope.
+
+"I do not want you to make an open quarrel with Mr. Trafford."
+
+"_Not_ quarrel!"
+
+"Not an open one," said Mrs. Pope. "Of course I know how nice it would
+be if you _could_ use a horsewhip, dear. There's such a lot of
+things--if we only just slash. But--it won't help. Get him to go away.
+She's consented never to see him again--practically. She's ready to tell
+him so herself. Part them against their will--oh! and the thing may go
+on for no end of time. But treat it as it ought to be treated--She'll be
+very tragic for a week or so, and then she'll forget him like a dream.
+He _is_ a dream--a girl's dream.... If only we leave it alone, she'll
+leave it alone."
+
+
+§ 6
+
+Things were getting straight, Mrs. Pope felt. She had now merely to add
+a few touches to the tranquillization of Daphne, and the misdirection of
+the twin's curiosity. These touches accomplished, it seemed that
+everything was done. After a brief reflection, she dismissed the idea of
+putting things to Theodore. She ran over the possibilities of the
+servants eavesdropping, and found them negligible. Yes, everything was
+done--everything. And yet....
+
+The queer string in her nature between religiosity and superstition
+began to vibrate. She hesitated. Then she slipped upstairs, fastened the
+door, fell on her knees beside the bed and put the whole thing as
+acceptably as possible to Heaven in a silent, simple, but lucidly
+explanatory prayer....
+
+She came out of her chamber brighter and braver than she had been for
+eighteen long hours. She could now, she felt, await the developments
+that threatened with the serenity of one who is prepared at every point.
+She went almost happily to the kitchen, only about forty-five minutes
+behind her usual time, to order the day's meals and see with her own
+eyes that economies prevailed. And it seemed to her, on the whole,
+consoling, and at any rate a distraction, when the cook informed her
+that after all she _had_ meant to give notice on the day of aunt
+Plessington's visit.
+
+
+§ 7
+
+The unsuspecting Magnet, fatigued but happy--for three hours of solid
+humorous writing (omitting every unpleasant suggestion and mingling in
+the most acceptable and saleable proportions smiles and tears) had added
+its quota to the intellectual heritage of England, made a simple light
+lunch cooked in homely village-inn fashion, lit a well merited cigar,
+and turned his steps towards the vicarage. He was preceded at some
+distance along the avenuesque drive by the back of Mr. Trafford, which
+he made no attempt to overtake.
+
+Mr. Trafford was admitted and disappeared, and a minute afterwards
+Magnet reached the door.
+
+Mrs. Pope appeared radiant--about the weather. A rather tiresome man had
+just called upon Mr. Pope about business matters, she said, and he
+might be detained five or ten minutes. Marjorie and Daffy were
+upstairs--resting. They had been disturbed by bats in the night.
+
+"Isn't it charmingly rural?" said Mrs. Pope. "_Bats!_"
+
+She talked about bats and the fear she had of their getting in her hair,
+and as she talked she led the way brightly but firmly as far as possible
+out of earshot of the windows of the ultra Protestant study in which Mr.
+Pope was now (she did so hope temperately) interviewing Mr. Trafford.
+
+
+§ 8
+
+Directly Mr. Trafford had reached the front door it had opened for him,
+and closed behind him at once. He had found himself with Mrs. Pope. "You
+wish to see my husband?" she had said, and had led him to the study
+forthwith. She had returned at once to intercept Mr. Magnet....
+
+Trafford found Mr. Pope seated sternly at the centre of the writing
+desk, regarding him with a threatening brow.
+
+"Well, sir," said Mr. Pope breaking the silence, "you have come to offer
+some explanation----"
+
+While awaiting this encounter Mr. Pope had not been insensitive to the
+tactical and scenic possibilities of the occasion. In fact, he had spent
+the latter half of the morning in intermittent preparations, arranging
+desks, books, hassocks in advantageous positions, and not even
+neglecting such small details as the stamp tray, the articles of
+interest from Jerusalem, and the rock-crystal cenotaph, which he had
+exhibited in such a manner as was most calculated to damp, chill and
+subjugate an antagonist in the exposed area towards the window. He had
+also arranged the chairs in a highly favourable pattern.
+
+Mr. Trafford was greatly taken aback by Mr. Pope's juridical manner and
+by this form of address, and he was further put out by Mr. Pope saying
+with a regal gesture to the best illuminated and most isolated chair:
+"Be seated, sir."
+
+Mr. Trafford's exordium vanished from his mind, he was at a loss for
+words until spurred to speech by Mr. Pope's almost truculent: "Well?"
+
+"I am in love sir, with your daughter."
+
+"I am not aware of it," said Mr. Pope, and lifted and dropped the
+paper-weight. "My daughter, sir, is engaged to marry Mr. Magnet. If you
+had approached me in a proper fashion before presuming to attempt--to
+attempt----" His voice thickened with indignation,--"Liberties with her,
+you would have been duly informed of her position--and everyone would
+have been saved"--he lifted the paper-weight. "Everything that has
+happened." (Bump.)
+
+Mr. Trafford had to adjust himself to the unexpected elements in this
+encounter. "Oh!" he said.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Pope, and there was a distinct interval.
+
+"Is your daughter in love with Mr. Magnet?" asked Mr. Trafford in an
+almost colloquial tone.
+
+Mr. Pope smiled gravely. "I presume so, sir."
+
+"She never gave me that impression, anyhow," said the young man.
+
+"It was neither her duty to give nor yours to receive that impression,"
+said Mr. Pope.
+
+Again Mr. Trafford was at a loss.
+
+"Have you come here, sir, merely to bandy words?" asked Mr. Pope,
+drumming with ten fingers on the table.
+
+Mr. Trafford thrust his hands into his pockets and assumed a fictitious
+pose of ease. He had never found any one in his life before quite so
+provocative of colloquialism as Mr. Pope.
+
+"Look here, sir, this is all very well," he began, "but why can't I fall
+in love with your daughter? I'm a Doctor of Science and all that sort of
+thing. I've a perfectly decent outlook. My father was rather a swell in
+his science. I'm an entirely decent and respectable person."
+
+"I beg to differ," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"But I am."
+
+"Again," said Mr. Pope, with great patience, and a slight forward bowing
+of the head, "I beg to differ."
+
+"Well--differ. But all the same----"
+
+He paused and began again, and for a time they argued to no purpose.
+They generalized about the position of an engaged girl and the rights
+and privileges of a father. Then Mr. Pope, "to cut all this short," told
+him frankly he wasn't wanted, his daughter did not want him, nobody
+wanted him; he was an invader, he had to be got rid of--"if possible by
+peaceful means." Trafford disputed these propositions, and asked to see
+Marjorie. Mr. Pope had been leading up to this, and at once closed with
+that request.
+
+"She is as anxious as any one to end this intolerable siege," he said.
+He went to the door and called for Marjorie, who appeared with
+conspicuous promptitude. She was in a dress of green linen that made her
+seem very cool as well as very dignified to Trafford; she was tense with
+restrained excitement, and either--for these things shade into each
+other--entirely without a disposition to act her part or acting with
+consummate ability. Trafford rose at the sight of her, and remained
+standing. Mr. Pope closed the door and walked back to the desk. "Mr.
+Trafford has to be told," he said, "that you don't want him in
+Buryhamstreet." He arrested Marjorie's forward movement towards Trafford
+by a gesture of the hand, seated himself, and resumed his drumming on
+the table. "Well?" he said.
+
+"I don't think you ought to stay in Buryhamstreet, Mr. Trafford," said
+Marjorie.
+
+"You don't want me to?"
+
+"It will only cause trouble--and scenes."
+
+"You want me to go?"
+
+"Away from here."
+
+"You really mean that?"
+
+Marjorie did not answer for a little time; she seemed to be weighing the
+exact force of all she was going to say.
+
+"Mr. Trafford," she answered, "everything I've ever said to
+you--everything--I've _meant_, more than I've ever meant anything.
+Everything!"
+
+A little flush of colour came into Trafford's cheeks. He regarded
+Marjorie with a brightening eye.
+
+"Oh well," he said, "I don't understand. But I'm entirely in your hands,
+of course."
+
+Marjorie's pose and expression altered. For an instant she was a miracle
+of instinctive expression, she shone at him, she conveyed herself to
+him, she assured him. Her eyes met his, she stood warmly flushed and
+quite unconquered--visibly, magnificently _his_. She poured into him
+just that riotous pride and admiration that gives a man altogether to a
+woman.... Then it seemed as if a light passed, and she was just an
+everyday Marjorie standing there.
+
+"I'll do anything you want me to," said Trafford.
+
+"Then I want you to go."
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Yes," said Trafford, with his eyes on her self-possession.
+
+"I've promised not to write or send to you, or--think more than I can
+help of you, until I'm twenty-one--nearly two months from now."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"I don't know. How can I?"
+
+"You hear, sir?" from Mr. Pope, in the pause of mutual scrutiny that
+followed.
+
+"One question," said Mr. Trafford.
+
+"You've surely asked enough, sir," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Are you still engaged to Magnet?"
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Please, father;" said Marjorie, with unusual daring and in her mother's
+voice. "Mr. Trafford, after what I've told you--you must leave that to
+me."
+
+"She _is_ engaged to Mr. Magnet," said Mr. Pope. "Tell him outright,
+Marjorie. Make it clear."
+
+"I think I understand," said Trafford, with his eyes on Marjorie.
+
+"I've not seen Mr. Magnet since last night," said Marjorie. "And
+so--naturally--I'm still engaged to him."
+
+"Precisely!" said Mr. Pope, and turned with a face of harsh
+interrogation to his importunate caller. Mr. Trafford seemed disposed
+for further questions. "I don't think we need detain you, Madge," said
+Mr. Pope, over his shoulder.
+
+The two young people stood facing one another for a moment, and I am
+afraid that they were both extremely happy and satisfied with each
+other. It was all right, they were quite sure--all right. Their lips
+were almost smiling. Then Marjorie made an entirely dignified exit. She
+closed the door very softly, and Mr. Pope turned to his visitor again
+with a bleak politeness. "I hope that satisfies you," he said.
+
+"There is nothing more to be said at present, I admit," said Mr.
+Trafford.
+
+"Nothing," said Mr. Pope.
+
+Both gentlemen bowed. Mr. Pope rose ceremoniously, and Mr. Trafford
+walked doorward. He had a sense of latent absurdities in these
+tremendous attitudes. They passed through the hall--processionally. But
+just at the end some lower strain in Mr. Trafford's nature touched the
+fine dignity of the occasion with an inappropriate remark.
+
+"Good-bye, sir," said Mr. Pope, holding the housedoor wide.
+
+"Good-bye, sir," said Mr. Trafford, and then added with a note of
+untimely intimacy in his voice, with an inexcusable levity upon his
+lips: "You know--there's nobody--no man in the world--I'd sooner have
+for a father-in-law than you."
+
+Mr. Pope, caught unprepared on the spur of the moment, bowed in a cold
+and distant manner, and then almost immediately closed the door to save
+himself from violence....
+
+From first to last neither gentleman had made the slightest allusion to
+a considerable bruise upon Mr. Trafford's left cheek, and a large
+abrasion above his ear.
+
+
+§ 9
+
+That afternoon Marjorie began her difficult task of getting disengaged
+from Mr. Magnet. It was difficult because she was pledged not to tell
+him of the one thing that made this line of action not only explicable,
+but necessary. Magnet, perplexed, and disconcerted, and secretly
+sustained by her mother's glancing sidelights on the feminine character
+and the instability of "girlish whims," remained at Buryhamstreet until
+the family returned to Hartstone Square. The engagement was
+ended--formally--but in such a manner that Magnet was left a rather
+pathetic and invincibly assiduous besieger. He lavished little presents
+upon both sisters, he devised little treats for the entire family, he
+enriched Theodore beyond the dreams of avarice, and he discussed his
+love and admiration for Marjorie, and the perplexities and delicacies of
+the situation not only with Mrs. Pope, but with Daphne. At first he had
+thought very little of Daphne, but now he was beginning to experience
+the subtle pleasures of a confidential friendship. She understood, he
+felt; it was quite wonderful how she understood. He found Daffy much
+richer in response than Marjorie, and far less disconcerting in
+reply....
+
+Mr. Pope, for all Marjorie's submission to his wishes, developed a Grand
+Dudgeon of exceptionally fine proportions when he heard of the breach of
+the engagement. He ceased to speak to his daughter or admit himself
+aware of her existence, and the Grand Dudgeon's blighting shadow threw a
+chill over the life of every one in the house. He made it clear that the
+Grand Dudgeon would only be lifted by Marjorie's re-engagement to
+Magnet, and that whatever blight or inconvenience fell on the others was
+due entirely to Marjorie's wicked obstinacy. Using Mrs. Pope as an
+intermediary, he also conveyed to Marjorie his decision to be no longer
+burthened with the charges of her education at Oxbridge, and he made it
+seem extremely doubtful whether he should remember her approaching
+twenty-first birthday.
+
+Marjorie received the news of her severance from Oxbridge, Mrs. Pope
+thought, with a certain hardness.
+
+"I thought he would do that," said Marjorie. "He's always wanted to do
+that," and said no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTH
+
+A TELEPHONE CALL
+
+
+§ 1
+
+Trafford went back to Solomonson for a day or so, and then to London, to
+resume the experimental work of the research he had in hand. But he was
+so much in love with Marjorie that for some days it was a very dazed
+mind that fumbled with the apparatus--arranged it and rearranged it, and
+fell into daydreams that gave the utmost concern to Durgan the
+bottle-washer.
+
+"He's not going straight at things," said Durgan the bottle-washer to
+his wife. "He usually goes so straight at things it's a pleasure to
+watch it. He told me he was going down into Kent to think everything
+out." Mr. Durgan paused impressively, and spoke with a sigh of
+perplexity. "He hasn't...."
+
+But later Durgan was able to report that Trafford had pulled himself
+together. The work was moving.
+
+"I was worried for a bit," said Mr. Durgan. "But I _think_ it's all
+right again. I _believe_ it's all right again."
+
+
+§ 2
+
+Trafford was one of those rare scientific men who really ought to be
+engaged in scientific research.
+
+He could never leave an accepted formula alone. His mind was like some
+insatiable corrosive, that ate into all the hidden inequalities and
+plastered weaknesses of accepted theories, and bit its way through
+every plausibility of appearance. He was extraordinarily fertile in
+exasperating alternative hypotheses. His invention of destructive test
+experiments was as happy as the respectful irony with which he brought
+them into contact with the generalizations they doomed. He was already,
+at six-and-twenty, hated, abused, obstructed, and respected. He was
+still outside the Royal Society, of course, and the editors of the
+scientific periodicals admired his papers greatly, and delayed
+publication; but it was fairly certain that that pressure of foreign
+criticism and competition which prevents English scientific men of good
+family and social position from maintaining any such national standards
+as we are able to do in art, literature, and politics, would finally
+carry him in. And since he had a small professorship worth three hundred
+a year, which gave him the command of a sufficient research laboratory
+and the services of Mr. Durgan, a private income of nearly three hundred
+more, a devoted mother to keep house for him, and an invincible faith in
+Truth, he had every prospect of winning in his particular struggle to
+inflict more Truth, new lucidities, and fresh powers upon this fractious
+and unreasonable universe.
+
+In the world of science now, even more than in the world of literature
+and political thought, the thing that is alive struggles,
+half-suffocated, amidst a copious production of things born dead. The
+endowment of research, the organization of scientific progress, the
+creation of salaried posts, and the assignment of honours, has attracted
+to this field just that type of man which is least gifted to penetrate
+and discover, and least able to admit its own defect or the quality of a
+superior. Such men are producing great, bulky masses of imitative
+research, futile inquiries, and monstrous entanglements of technicality
+about their subjects; and it is to their instinctive antagonism to the
+idea of a "gift" in such things that we owe the preposterous conception
+of a training for research, the manufacture of mental blinkers that is
+to say, to avoid what is the very soul of brilliant inquiry--applicable
+discursiveness. The trained investigator is quite the absurdest figure
+in the farce of contemporary intellectual life; he is like a bath-chair
+perpetually starting to cross the Himalayas by virtue of a licence to do
+so. For such enterprises one must have wings. Organization and genius
+are antipathetic. The vivid and creative mind, by virtue of its
+qualities, is a spasmodic and adventurous mind; it resents blinkers, and
+the mere implication that it can be driven in harness to the unexpected.
+It demands freedom. It resents regular attendance from ten to four and
+punctualities in general and all those paralyzing minor tests of conduct
+that are vitally important to the imagination of the authoritative dull.
+Consequently, it is being eliminated from its legitimate field, and it
+is only here and there among the younger men that such a figure as
+Trafford gives any promise of a renewal of that enthusiasm, that
+intellectual enterprise, which were distinctive of the great age of
+scientific advance.
+
+Trafford was the only son of his parents. His father had been a young
+surgeon, more attracted by knowledge than practice, who had been killed
+by a scratch of the scalpel in an investigation upon ulcerative
+processes, at the age of twenty-nine. Trafford at that time was three
+years old, so that he had not the least memory of his father; but his
+mother, by a thousand almost unpremeditated touches, had built up a
+figure for him and a tradition that was shaping his life. She had loved
+her husband passionately, and when he died her love burnt up like a
+flame released, and made a god of the good she had known with him. She
+was then a very beautiful and active-minded woman of thirty, and she did
+her best to reconstruct her life; but she could find nothing so living
+in the world as the clear courage, the essential simplicity, and tender
+memories of the man she had lost. And she was the more devoted to him
+that he had had little weaknesses of temper and bearing, and that an
+outrageous campaign had been waged against him that did not cease with
+his death. He had, in some medical periodical, published drawings of a
+dead dog clamped to display a deformity, and these had been seized upon
+by a group of anti-vivisection fanatics as the representation of a
+vivisection. A libel action had been pending when he died; but there is
+no protection of the dead from libel. That monstrous lie met her on
+pamphlet cover, on hoardings, in sensational appeals; it seemed
+immortal, and she would have suffered the pains of a dozen suttees if
+she could have done so, to show the world how the power and tenderness
+of this alleged tormentor of helpless beasts had gripped one woman's
+heart. It counted enormously in her decision to remain a widow and
+concentrate her life upon her son.
+
+She watched his growth with a care and passionate subtlety that even at
+six-and-twenty he was still far from suspecting. She dreaded his
+becoming a mother's pet, she sent him away to school and fretted through
+long terms alone, that he might be made into a man. She interested
+herself in literary work and social affairs lest she should press upon
+him unduly. She listened for the crude expression of growing thought in
+him with an intensity that was almost anguish. She was too intelligent
+to dream of forming his mind, he browsed on every doctrine to find his
+own, but she did desire most passionately, she prayed, she prayed in
+the darkness of sleepless nights, that the views, the breadths, the
+spacious emotions which had ennobled her husband in her eyes should rise
+again in him.
+
+There were years of doubt and waiting. He was a good boy and a bad boy,
+now brilliant, now touching, now disappointing, now gloriously
+reassuring, and now heart-rending as only the children of our blood can
+be. He had errors and bad moments, lapses into sheer naughtiness, phases
+of indolence, attacks of contagious vulgarity. But more and more surely
+she saw him for his father's son; she traced the same great curiosities,
+the same keen dauntless questioning; whatever incidents might disturb
+and perplex her, his intellectual growth went on strong and clear and
+increasing like some sacred flame that is carried in procession, halting
+perhaps and swaying a little but keeping on, over the heads of a
+tumultuous crowd.
+
+He went from his school to the Royal College of Science, thence to
+successes at Cambridge, and thence to Berlin. He travelled a little in
+Asia Minor and Persia, had a journey to America, and then came back to
+her and London, sunburnt, moustached, manly, and a little strange. When
+he had been a boy she had thought his very soul pellucid; it had clouded
+opaquely against her scrutiny as he passed into adolescence. Then
+through the period of visits and departures, travel together,
+separations, he grew into something detached and admirable, a man
+curiously reminiscent of his father, unexpectedly different. She ceased
+to feel what he was feeling in his mind, had to watch him, infer, guess,
+speculate about him. She desired for him and dreaded for him with an
+undying tenderness, but she no longer had any assurance that she could
+interfere to help him. He had his father's trick of falling into
+thought. Her brown eyes would watch him across the flowers and delicate
+glass and silver of her dinner table when he dined at home with her.
+Sometimes he seemed to forget she existed, sometimes he delighted in
+her, talked to amuse her, petted her; sometimes, and then it was she was
+happiest, he talked of plays and books with her, discussed general
+questions, spoke even of that broadly conceived scheme of work which
+engaged so much of his imagination. She knew that it was distinguished
+and powerful work. Old friends of her husband spoke of it to her,
+praised its inspired directness, its beautiful simplicity. Since the
+days of Wollaston, they said, no one had been so witty an experimenter,
+no one had got more out of mere scraps of apparatus or contrived more
+ingenious simplifications.
+
+When he had accepted the minor Professorship which gave him a footing in
+the world of responsible scientific men, she had taken a house in a
+quiet street in Chelsea which necessitated a daily walk to his
+laboratory. It was a little old Georgian house with worn and graceful
+rooms, a dignified front door and a fine gateway of Sussex ironwork much
+painted and eaten away. She arranged it with great care; she had kept
+most of her furniture, and his study had his father's bureau, and the
+selfsame agate paper-weight that had pressed the unfinished paper he
+left when he died. She was a woman of persistent friendships, and there
+came to her, old connections of those early times trailing fresher and
+younger people in their wake, sons, daughters, nephews, disciples; her
+son brought home all sorts of interesting men, and it was remarkable to
+her that amidst the talk and discussion at her table, she discovered
+aspects of her son and often quite intimate aspects she would never have
+seen with him alone.
+
+She would not let herself believe that this Indian summer of her life
+could last for ever. He was no passionless devotee of research, for all
+his silence and restraints. She had seen him kindle with anger at
+obstacles and absurdities, and quicken in the presence of beauty. She
+knew how readily and richly he responded to beauty. Things happened to
+have run smoothly with him so far, that was all. "Of course," she said,
+"he must fall in love. It cannot be long before he falls in love."
+
+Once or twice that had seemed to happen, and then it had come to
+nothing....
+
+She knew that sooner or later this completion of his possibilities must
+come, that the present steadfastness of purpose was a phase in which
+forces gathered, that love must sweep into his life as a deep and
+passionate disturbance. She wondered where it would take him, whether it
+would leave him enriched or devastated. She saw at times how young he
+was; she had, as I suppose most older people have about their juniors,
+the profoundest doubt whether he was wise enough yet to be trusted with
+a thing so good as himself. He had flashes of high-spirited
+indiscretion, and at times a wildfire of humour flared in his talk. So
+far that had done no worse for him than make an enemy or so in
+scientific circles. But she had no idea of the limits of his
+excitability. She would watch him and fear for him--she knew the
+wreckage love can make--and also she desired that he should lose nothing
+that life and his nature could give him.
+
+
+§ 3
+
+In the two months of separation that ensued before Marjorie was
+one-and-twenty, Trafford's mind went through some remarkable phases. At
+first the excitement of his passion for Marjorie obscured everything
+else, then with his return to London and his laboratory the immense
+inertia of habit and slowly developed purposes, the complex yet
+convergent system of ideas and problems to which so much of his life had
+been given, began to reassert itself. His love was vivid and intense, a
+light in his imagination, a fever in his blood; but it was a new thing;
+it had not crept into the flesh and bones of his being, it was away
+there in Surrey; the streets of London, his home, the white-walled
+chamber with its skylight and high windows and charts of constants, in
+which his apparatus was arranged, had no suggestion of her. She was
+outside--an adventure--a perplexing incommensurable with all these
+things.
+
+He had left Buryhamstreet with Marjorie riotously in possession of his
+mind. He could think of nothing but Marjorie in the train, and how she
+had shone at him in the study, and how her voice had sounded when she
+spoke, and how she stood and moved, and the shape and sensation of her
+hands, and how it had felt to hold her for those brief moments in the
+wood and press lips and body to his, and how her face had gleamed in the
+laced shadows of the moonlight, soft and wonderful.
+
+In fact, he thought of Marjorie.
+
+He thought she was splendid, courageous, wise by instinct. He had no
+doubt of her or that she was to be his--when the weeks of waiting had
+passed by. She was his, and he was Marjorie's; that had been settled
+from the beginning of the world. It didn't occur to him that anything
+had happened to alter his life or any of his arrangements in any way,
+except that they were altogether altered--as the world is altered
+without displacement when the sun pours up in the east. He was
+glorified--and everything was glorified.
+
+He wondered how they would meet again, and dreamt a thousand impossible
+and stirring dreams, but he dreamt them as dreams.
+
+At first, to Durgan's infinite distress, he thought of her all day, and
+then, as the old familiar interests grappled him again, he thought of
+her in the morning and the evening and as he walked between his home and
+the laboratory and at all sorts of incidental times--and even when the
+close-locked riddles of his research held the foreground and focus of
+his thoughts, he still seemed to be thinking of her as a radiant
+background to ions and molecules and atoms and interwoven systems of
+eddies and quivering oscillations deep down in the very heart of matter.
+
+And always he thought of her as something of the summer. The rich decays
+of autumn came, the Chelsea roads were littered with variegated leaves
+that were presently wet and dirty and slippery, the twilight crept down
+into the day towards five o'clock and four, but in his memory of her the
+leaves were green, the evenings were long, the warm quiet of rural
+Surrey in high August filled the air. So that it was with a kind of
+amazement he found her in London and in November close at hand. He was
+called to the college telephone one day from a conversation with a
+proposed research student. It was a middle-aged woman bachelor anxious
+for the D.Sc., who wished to occupy the further bench in the laboratory;
+but she had no mental fire, and his mind was busy with excuses and
+discouragements.
+
+He had no thought of Marjorie when she answered, and for an instant he
+did not recognize her voice.
+
+"Yes, I'm Mr. Trafford."...
+
+"Who is it?" he reiterated with a note of irascibility. "_Who?_"
+
+The little voice laughed. "Why! I'm Marjorie!" it said.
+
+Then she was back in his life like a lantern suddenly become visible in
+a wood at midnight.
+
+It was like meeting her as a china figure, neat and perfect and two
+inches high. It was her voice, very clear and very bright, and quite
+characteristic, as though he was hearing it through the wrong end of a
+telescope. It was her voice, clear as a bell; confident without a
+shadow.
+
+"It's _me!_ Marjorie! I'm twenty-one to-day!"
+
+It was like a little arrow of exquisite light shot into the very heart
+of his life.
+
+He laughed back. "Are you for meeting me then, Marjorie?"
+
+
+§ 4
+
+They met in Kensington Gardens with an air of being clandestine and
+defiant. It was one of those days of amber sunlight, soft air, and
+tender beauty with which London relieves the tragic glooms of the year's
+decline. There were still a residue of warm-tinted leaves in puffs and
+clusters upon the tree branches, a boat or two ruffled the blue
+Serpentine, and the waterfowl gave colour and animation to the selvage
+of the water. The sedges were still a greenish yellow.
+
+The two met shyly. They were both a little unfamiliar to each other.
+Trafford was black-coated, silk-hatted, umbrella-d, a decorous young
+professor in the place of the cheerful aeronaut who had fallen so gaily
+out of the sky. Marjorie had a new tailor-made dress of russet-green,
+and a little cloth toque ruled and disciplined the hair he had known as
+a ruddy confusion.... They had dreamt, I think, of extended arms and a
+wild rush to embrace one another. Instead, they shook hands.
+
+"And so," said Trafford, "we meet again!"
+
+"I don't see why we shouldn't meet!" said Marjorie.
+
+There was a slight pause.
+
+"Let's have two of those jolly little green chairs," said Trafford....
+
+They walked across the grass towards the chairs he had indicated, and
+both were full of the momentous things they were finding it impossible
+to say.
+
+"There ought to be squirrels here, as there are in New York," he said at
+last.
+
+They sat down. There was a moment's silence, and then Trafford's spirit
+rose in rebellion and he plunged at this--this stranger beside him.
+
+"Look here," he said, "do you still love me, Marjorie?"
+
+She looked up into his face with eyes in which surprise and scrutiny
+passed into something altogether beautiful. "I love you--altogether,"
+she said in a steady, low voice.
+
+And suddenly she was no longer a stranger, but the girl who had flitted
+to his arms breathless, unhesitating, through the dusk. His blood
+quickened. He made an awkward gesture as though he arrested an impulse
+to touch her. "My sweetheart," he said. "My dear one!"
+
+Marjorie's face flashed responses. "It's you," he said.
+
+"Me," she answered.
+
+"Do you remember?"
+
+"Everything!"
+
+"My dear!"
+
+"I want to tell you things," said Marjorie. "What are we to do?"....
+
+He tried afterwards to retrace that conversation. He was chiefly
+ashamed of his scientific preoccupations during that London interval. He
+had thought of a thousand things; Marjorie had thought of nothing else
+but love and him. Her happy assurance, her absolute confidence that his
+desires would march with hers, reproached and confuted every adverse
+thought in him as though it was a treachery to love. He had that sense
+which I suppose comes at times to every man, of entire unworthiness for
+the straight, unhesitating decision, the clear simplicity of a woman's
+passion. He had dreamt vaguely, unsubstantially, the while he had
+arranged his pressures and temperatures and infinitesimal ingredients,
+and worked with goniometer and trial models and the new calculating
+machine he had contrived for his research. But she had thought clearly,
+definitely, fully--of nothing but coming to him. She had thought out
+everything that bore upon that; reasons for preciptance, reasons for
+delay, she had weighed the rewards of conformity against the glamour of
+romance. It became more and more clear to him as they talked, that she
+was determined to elope with him, to go to Italy, and there have an
+extraordinarily picturesque and beautiful time. Her definiteness shamed
+his poverty of anticipation. Her enthusiasm carried him with her. Of
+course it was so that things must be done....
+
+When at last they parted under the multiplying lamps of the November
+twilight, he turned his face eastward. He was afraid of his mother's
+eyes--he scarcely knew why. He walked along Kensington Gore, and the
+clustering confused lights of street and house, white and golden and
+orange and pale lilac, the moving lamps and shining glitter of the
+traffic, the luminous interiors of omnibuses, the reflection of carriage
+and hoarding, the fading daylight overhead, the phantom trees to the
+left, the deepening shadows and blacknesses among the houses on his
+right, the bobbing heads of wayfarers, were just for him the stir and
+hue and texture of fairyland. All the world was fairyland. He went to
+his club and dined there, and divided the evening between geography, as
+it is condensed in Baedeker and Murray on North Italy, Italian
+Switzerland and the Italian Riviera, and a study of the marriage laws as
+they are expounded in "Whitaker's Almanac," the "Encyclopćdia
+Britannica," and other convenient works of reference. He replaced the
+books as he used them, and went at last from the library into the
+smoking-room, but seeing a man who might talk to him there, he went out
+at once into the streets, and fetched a wide compass by Baker Street,
+Oxford Street, and Hyde Park, home.
+
+He was a little astonished at himself and everything.
+
+But it was going to be--splendid.
+
+(What poor things words can be!)
+
+
+§ 5
+
+He found his mother still up. She had been re-reading "The Old Wives'
+Tale," and she sat before a ruddy fire in the shadow beyond the lit
+circle of a green-shaded electric light thinking, with the book put
+aside. In the dimness above was his father's portrait. "Time you were in
+bed, mother," he said reprovingly, and kissed her eyebrow and stood
+above her. "What's the book?" he asked, and picked it up and put it
+down, forgotten. Their eyes met. She perceived he had something to say;
+she did not know what. "Where have you been?" she asked.
+
+He told her, and they lapsed into silence. She asked another question
+and he answered her, and the indifferent conversation ended again. The
+silence lengthened. Then he plunged: "I wonder, mother, if it would put
+you out very much if I brought home a wife to you?"
+
+So it had come to this--and she had not seen it coming. She looked into
+the glowing recesses of the fire before her and controlled her voice by
+an effort. "I'd be glad for you to do it, dear--if you loved her," she
+said very quietly. He stared down at her for a moment; then he knelt
+down beside her and took her hand and kissed it. "_My dear_," she
+whispered softly, stroking his head, and her tears came streaming. For a
+time they said no more.
+
+Presently he put coal on the fire, and then sitting on the hearthrug at
+her feet and looking away from her into the flames--in an attitude that
+took her back to his boyhood--he began to tell her brokenly and
+awkwardly of Marjorie.
+
+"It's so hard, mother, to explain these things," he began. "One doesn't
+half understand the things that are happening to one. I want to make you
+in love with her, dear, just as I am. And I don't see how I can."
+
+"Perhaps I shall understand, my dear. Perhaps I shall understand better
+than you think."
+
+"She's such a beautiful thing--with something about her----. You know
+those steel blades you can bend back to the hilt--and they're steel! And
+she's tender. It's as if someone had taken tears, mother, and made a
+spirit out of them----"
+
+She caressed and stroked his hand. "My dear," she said, "I know."
+
+"And a sort of dancing daring in her eyes."
+
+"Yes," she said. "But tell me where she comes from, and how you met
+her--and all the circumstantial things that a sensible old woman can
+understand."
+
+He kissed her hand and sat down beside her, with his shoulder against
+the arm of her chair, his fingers interlaced about his knee. She could
+not keep her touch from his hair, and she tried to force back the
+thought in her mind that all these talks must end, that very soon indeed
+they would end. And she was glad, full of pride and joy too that her son
+was a lover after her heart, a clean and simple lover as his father had
+been before him. He loved this unknown Marjorie, finely, sweetly,
+bravely, even as she herself could have desired to have been loved. She
+told herself she did not care very greatly even if this Marjorie should
+prove unworthy. So long as her son was not unworthy.
+
+He pieced his story together. He gave her a picture of the Popes,
+Marjorie in her family like a jewel in an ugly setting, so it seemed to
+him, and the queer dull rage of her father and all that they meant to
+do. She tried to grasp his perplexities and advise, but chiefly she was
+filled with the thought that he was in love. If he wanted a girl he
+should have her, and if he had to take her by force, well, wasn't it his
+right? She set small store upon the Popes that night--or any
+circumstances. And since she herself had married on the slightest of
+security, she was concerned very little that this great adventure was to
+be attempted on an income of a few hundreds a year. It was outside her
+philosophy that a wife should be anything but glad to tramp the roads if
+need be with the man who loved her. He sketched out valiant plans, was
+for taking Marjorie away in the teeth of all opposition and bringing her
+back to London. It would have to be done decently, of course, but it
+would have, he thought, to be done. Mrs. Trafford found the prospect
+perfect; never before had he sounded and looked so like that dim figure
+which hung still and sympathetic above them. Ever and again she glanced
+up at her husband's quiet face....
+
+On one point she was very clear with him.
+
+"You'll live with us, mother?" he said abruptly.
+
+"Not with you. As near as you like. But one house, one woman.... I'll
+have a little flat of my own--for you both to come to me."
+
+"Oh, nonsense, mother! You'll have to be with us. Living alone, indeed!"
+
+"My dear, I'd _prefer_ a flat of my own. You don't
+understand--everything. It will be better for all of us like that."
+
+There came a little pause between them, and then her hand was on his
+head again. "Oh, my dear," she said, "I want you to be happy. And life
+can be difficult. I won't give a chance--for things to go wrong. You're
+hers, dear, and you've got to be hers--be each other's altogether. I've
+watched so many people. And that's the best, the very best you can have.
+There's just the lovers--the real enduring lovers; and the uncompleted
+people who've failed to find it."...
+
+
+§ 6
+
+Trafford's second meeting with Marjorie, which, by the by, happened on
+the afternoon of the following day, brought them near to conclusive
+decisions. The stiffness of their first encounter in London had
+altogether vanished. She was at her prettiest and in the highest
+spirits--and she didn't care for anything else in the world. A gauzy
+silk scarf which she had bought and not paid for that day floated
+atmospherically about her straight trim body; her hair had caught the
+infection of insurrection and was waving rebelliously about her ears. As
+he drew near her his grave discretion passed from him as clouds pass
+from a hillside. She smiled radiantly. He held out both his hands for
+both of hers, and never did a maiden come so near and yet not get a
+public and shameless kissing.
+
+One could as soon describe music as tell their conversation. It was a
+matter of tones and feelings. But the idea of flight together, of the
+bright awakening in unfamiliar sunshine with none to come between them,
+had gripped them both. A certain sober gravity of discussion only masked
+that deeper inebriety. It would be easy for them to get away; he had no
+lectures until February; he could, he said, make arrangements, leave his
+research. She dreaded disputation. She was for a simple disappearance,
+notes on pincushions and defiantly apologetic letters from Boulogne, but
+his mother's atmosphere had been a gentler one than her home's, with a
+more powerful disposition to dignity. He still couldn't understand that
+the cantankerous egotism of Pope was indeed the essential man; it seemed
+to him a crust of bad manners that reason ought to pierce.
+
+The difference in their atmospheres came out in their talk--in his
+desire for a handsome and dignified wedding--though the very heavens
+protested--and her resolve to cut clear of every one, to achieve a sort
+of gaol delivery of her life, make a new beginning altogether, with the
+minimum of friction and the maximum of surprise. Unused to fighting, he
+was magnificently prepared to fight; she, with her intimate knowledge of
+chronic domestic conflict, was for the evasion of all the bickerings,
+scoldings, and misrepresentations his challenge would occasion. He
+thought in his innocence a case could be stated and discussed; but no
+family discussion she had ever heard had even touched the realities of
+the issue that occasioned it.
+
+"I don't like this underhand preparation," he said.
+
+"Nor I," she echoed. "But what can one do?"
+
+"Well, oughtn't I to go to your father and give him a chance? Why
+shouldn't I? It's--the dignified way."
+
+"It won't be dignified for father," said Marjorie, "anyhow."
+
+"But what right has he to object?"
+
+"He isn't going to discuss his rights with you. He _will_ object."
+
+"But _why?_"
+
+"Oh! because he's started that way. He hit you. I haven't forgotten it.
+Well, if he goes back on that now----He'd rather die than go back on it.
+You see, he's ashamed in his heart. It would be like confessing himself
+wrong not to keep it up that you're the sort of man one hits. He just
+hates you because he hit you. I haven't been his daughter for twenty-one
+years for nothing."
+
+"I'm thinking of us," said Trafford. "I don't see we oughtn't to go to
+him just because he's likely to be--unreasonable."
+
+"My dear, do as you please. He'll forbid and shout, and hit tables until
+things break. Suppose he locks me up!"
+
+"Oh, Habeas Corpus, and my strong right arm! He's much more likely to
+turn you out-of-doors."
+
+"Not if he thinks the other will annoy you more. I'll have to bear a
+storm."
+
+"Not for long."
+
+"He'll bully mother till she cries over me. But do as you please. She'll
+come and she'll beg me----Do as you please. Perhaps I'm a coward. I'd
+far rather I could slip away."
+
+Trafford thought for a moment. "I'd far rather you could," he answered,
+in a voice that spoke of inflexible determinations.
+
+They turned to the things they meant to do. "_Italy!_" she whispered,
+"_Italy!_" Her face was alight with her burning expectation of beauty,
+of love, of the new heaven and the new earth that lay before them. The
+intensity of that desire blazing through her seemed to shame his dull
+discretions. He had to cling to his resolution, lest it should vanish in
+that contagious intoxication.
+
+"You understand I shall come to your father," he said, as they drew near
+the gate where it seemed discreet for them to part.
+
+"It will make it harder to get away," she said, with no apparent
+despondency. "It won't stop us. Oh! do as you please."
+
+She seemed to dismiss the question, and stood hand-in-hand with him in a
+state of glowing gravity. She wouldn't see him again for four-and-twenty
+hours. Then a thought came into her head--a point of great practical
+moment.
+
+"Oh!" she said, "of course, you won't tell father you've seen me."
+
+She met his eye. "Really you mustn't," she said. "You see--he'll make a
+row with mother for not having watched me better. I don't know what he
+isn't likely to do. It isn't myself----This is a confidential
+communication--all this. No one in this world knows I am meeting you. If
+you _must_ go to him, go to him."
+
+"For myself?"
+
+She nodded, with her open eyes on his--eyes that looked now very blue
+and very grave, and her lips a little apart.
+
+She surprised him a little, but even this sudden weakness seemed
+adorable.
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+"You don't think that I'm shirking----?" she asked, a little too
+eagerly.
+
+"You know your father best," he answered. "I'll tell you all he says and
+all the terror of him here to-morrow afternoon."
+
+
+§ 7
+
+In the stillness of the night Trafford found himself thinking over
+Marjorie; it was a new form of mental exercise, which was destined to
+play a large part in his existence for many subsequent years. There had
+come a shadow on his confidence in her. She was a glorious person; she
+had a kind of fire behind her and in her--shining through her, like the
+lights in a fire-opal, but----He wished she had not made him promise to
+conceal their meeting and their close co-operation from her father. Why
+did she do that? It would spoil his case with her father, and it could
+forward things for them in no conceivable way. And from that, in some
+manner too subtle to trace, he found his mind wandering to another
+problem, which was destined to reappear with a slowly dwindling
+importance very often in this procedure of thinking over Marjorie in the
+small hours. It was the riddle--it never came to him in the daytime, but
+only in those intercalary and detachedly critical periods of
+thought--why exactly had she engaged herself to Magnet? Why had she? He
+couldn't imagine himself, in Marjorie's position, doing anything of the
+sort. Marjorie had ways of her own; she was different.... Well, anyhow,
+she was splendid and loving and full of courage.... He had got no
+further than this when at last he fell asleep.
+
+
+§ 8
+
+Trafford's little attempt to regularise his position was as creditable
+to him as it was inevitably futile. He sought out 29, Hartstone Square
+in the morning on his way to his laboratory, and he found it one of a
+great row of stucco houses each with a portico and a dining-room window
+on the ground floor, and each with a railed area from which troglodytic
+servants peeped. Collectively the terrace might claim a certain ugly
+dignity of restraint, there was none of your Queen Anne nonsense of art
+or beauty about it, and the narrow height, the subterranean kitchens of
+each constituent house, told of a steep relentless staircase and the
+days before the pampering of the lower classes began. The houses formed
+a square, as if the British square so famous at Waterloo for its dogged
+resistance to all the forces of the universe had immortalized itself in
+buildings, and they stared upon a severely railed garden of hardy shrubs
+and gravel to which the tenants had the inestimable privilege of access.
+They did not use it much, that was their affair, but at any rate they
+had keys and a nice sense of rights assured, and at least it kept other
+people out.
+
+Trafford turned out of a busy high road full of the mixed exhilarating
+traffic of our time, and came along a quiet street into this place, and
+it seemed to him he had come into a corner of defence and retreat, into
+an atmosphere of obstinate and unteachable resistances. But this
+illusion of conservativism in its last ditch was dispelled altogether in
+Mr. Pope's portico. Youth flashed out of these solemnities like a dart
+shot from a cave. Trafford was raising his hand to the solid brass
+knocker when abruptly it was snatched from his fingers, the door was
+flung open and a small boy with a number of dirty books in a strap flew
+out and hit him with projectile violence.
+
+"Blow!" said the young gentleman recoiling, and Trafford recovering
+said: "Hullo, Theodore!"
+
+"Lord!" said Theodore breathless, "It's you! _What_ a lark! Your name's
+never mentioned--no how. What _did_ you do?... Wish I could stop and see
+it! I'm ten minutes late. _Ave atque vale_. So long!"
+
+He vanished with incredible velocity. And Mr. Trafford was alone in
+possession of the open doorway except for Toupee, who after a violent
+outbreak of hostility altered his mind and cringed to his feet in abject
+and affectionate propitiation. A pseudo-twin appeared, said "Hello!" and
+vanished, and then he had an instant's vision of Mr. Pope, newspaper in
+hand, appearing from the dining-room. His expression of surprise changed
+to malevolence, and he darted back into the room from which he had
+emerged. Trafford decided to take the advice of a small brass plate on
+his left hand, and "ring also."
+
+A housemaid came out of the bowels of the earth very promptly and
+ushered him up two flights of stairs into what was manifestly Mr. Pope's
+study.
+
+It was a narrow, rather dark room lit by two crimson-curtained windows,
+and with a gas fire before which Mr. Pope's walking boots were warming
+for the day. The apartment revealed to Trafford's cursory inspection
+many of the stigmata of an Englishman of active intelligence and
+literary tastes. There in the bookcase were the collected works of
+Scott, a good large illustrated Shakespeare in numerous volumes, and a
+complete set of bound _Punches_ from the beginning. A pile of back
+numbers of the _Times_ stood on a cane stool in a corner, and in a
+little bookcase handy for the occupier of the desk were Whitaker,
+Wisden and an old peerage. The desk bore traces of recent epistolary
+activity, and was littered with the printed matter of Aunt Plessington's
+movements. Two or three recent issues of _The Financial Review of
+Reviews_ were also visible. About the room hung steel engravings
+apparently of defunct judges or at any rate of exceedingly grim
+individuals, and over the mantel were trophies of athletic prowess, a
+bat witnessing that Mr. Pope had once captained the second eleven at
+Harrogby.
+
+Mr. Pope entered with a stern expression and a sentence prepared. "Well,
+sir," he said with a note of ironical affability, "to what may I ascribe
+this--intrusion?"
+
+Mr. Trafford was about to reply when Mr. Pope interrupted. "Will you be
+seated," he said, and turned his desk chair about for himself, and
+occupying it, crossed his legs and pressed the finger tips of his two
+hands together. "Well, sir?" he said.
+
+Trafford remained standing astraddle over the boots before the gas fire.
+
+"Look here, sir," he said; "I am in love with your daughter. She's one
+and twenty, and I want to see her--and in fact----" He found it hard to
+express himself. He could think only of a phrase that sounded
+ridiculous. "I want--in fact--to pay my addresses to her."
+
+"Well, sir, I don't want you to do so. That is too mild. I object
+strongly--very strongly. My daughter has been engaged to a very
+distinguished and able man, and I hope very shortly to hear that that
+engagement----Practically it is still going on. I don't want you to
+intrude upon my daughter further."
+
+"But look here, sir. There's a certain justice--I mean a certain
+reasonableness----"
+
+Mr. Pope held out an arresting hand. "I don't wish it. Let that be
+enough."
+
+"Of course it isn't enough. I'm in love with her--and she with me. I'm
+an entirely reputable and decent person----"
+
+"May I be allowed to judge what is or is not suitable companionship for
+my daughter--and what may or may not be the present state of her
+affections?"
+
+"Well, that's rather the point we are discussing. After all, Marjorie
+isn't a baby. I want to do all this--this affair, openly and properly if
+I can, but, you know, I mean to marry Marjorie--anyhow."
+
+"There are two people to consult in that matter."
+
+"I'll take the risk of that."
+
+"Permit me to differ."
+
+A feeling of helplessness came over Trafford. The curious irritation Mr.
+Pope always roused in him began to get the better of him. His face
+flushed hotly. "Oh really! really! this is--this is nonsense!" he cried.
+"I never heard anything so childish and pointless as your objection----"
+
+"Be careful, sir!" cried Mr. Pope, "be careful!"
+
+"I'm going to marry Marjorie."
+
+"If she marries you, sir, she shall never darken my doors again!"
+
+"If you had a thing against me!"
+
+"_Haven't_ I!"
+
+"What have you?"
+
+There was a quite perceptible pause before Pope fired his shot.
+
+"Does any decent man want the name of Trafford associated with his
+daughter. Trafford! Look at the hoardings, sir!"
+
+A sudden blaze of anger lit Trafford. "My God!" he cried and clenched
+his fists and seemed for a moment ready to fall upon the man before
+him. Then he controlled himself by a violent effort. "You believe in
+that libel on my dead father?" he said, with white lips.
+
+"Has it ever been answered?"
+
+"A hundred times. And anyhow!--Confound it! I don't believe--_you_
+believe it. You've raked it up--as an excuse! You want an excuse for
+your infernal domestic tyranny! That's the truth of it. You can't bear a
+creature in your household to have a will or preference of her own. I
+tell you, sir, you are intolerable--intolerable!"
+
+He was shouting, and Pope was standing now and shouting too. "Leave my
+house, sir. Get out of my house, sir. You come here to insult me, sir!"
+
+A sudden horror of himself and Pope seized the younger man. He stiffened
+and became silent. Never in his life before had he been in a bawling
+quarrel. He was amazed and ashamed.
+
+"Leave my house!" cried Pope with an imperious gesture towards the door.
+
+Trafford made an absurd effort to save the situation. "I am sorry, sir,
+I lost my temper. I had no business to abuse you----"
+
+"You've said enough."
+
+"I apologise for that. I've done what I could to manage things
+decently."
+
+"Will you go, sir?" threatened Mr. Pope.
+
+"I'm sorry I came," said Trafford.
+
+Mr. Pope took his stand with folded arms and an expression of weary
+patience.
+
+"I did what I could," said Trafford at the door.
+
+The staircase and passage were deserted. The whole house seemed to have
+caught from Mr. Pope that same quality of seeing him out....
+
+"Confound it!" said Trafford in the street. "How on earth did all this
+happen?"...
+
+He turned eastward, and then realized that work would be impossible that
+day. He changed his direction for Kensington Gardens, and in the
+flower-bordered walk near the Albert Memorial he sat down on a chair,
+and lugged at his moustache and wondered. He was extraordinarily
+perplexed, as well as ashamed and enraged by this uproar. How had it
+begun? Of course, he had been stupidly abusive, but the insult to his
+father had been unendurable. Did a man of Pope's sort quite honestly
+believe that stuff? If he didn't, he deserved kicking. If he did, of
+course he was entitled to have it cleared up. But then he wouldn't
+listen! Was there any case for the man at all? Had he, Trafford, really
+put the thing so that Pope would listen? He couldn't remember. What was
+it he had said in reply to Pope? What was it exactly that Pope had said?
+
+It was already vague; it was a confused memory of headlong words and
+answers; what wasn't vague, what rang in his ears still, was the hoarse
+discord of two shouting voices.
+
+Could Marjorie have heard?
+
+
+§ 9
+
+So Marjorie carried her point. She wasn't to be married tamely after the
+common fashion which trails home and all one's beginnings into the new
+life. She was to be eloped with, romantically and splendidly, into a
+glorious new world. She walked on shining clouds, and if she felt some
+remorse, it was a very tender and satisfactory remorse, and with a clear
+conviction below it that in the end she would be forgiven.
+
+They made all their arrangements elaborately and carefully. Trafford got
+a license to marry her; she was to have a new outfit from top to toe to
+go away with on that eventful day. It accumulated in the shop, and they
+marked the clothes _M.T._ She was watched, she imagined, but as her
+father did not know she had seen Trafford, nothing had been said to her,
+and no attempt was made to prohibit her going out and coming in.
+Trafford entered into the conspiracy with a keen interest, a certain
+amusement, and a queer little feeling of distaste. He hated to hide any
+act of his from any human being. The very soul of scientific work, you
+see, is publication. But Marjorie seemed to justify all things, and when
+his soul turned against furtiveness, he reminded it that the alternative
+was bawling.
+
+One eventful afternoon he went to the college, and Marjorie slipped
+round by his arrangement to have tea with Mrs. Trafford....
+
+He returned about seven in a state of nervous apprehension; came
+upstairs two steps at a time, and stopped breathless on the landing. He
+gulped as he came in, and his eyes were painfully eager. "She's been?"
+he asked.
+
+But Marjorie had won Mrs. Trafford.
+
+"She's been," she answered. "Yes, she's all right, my dear."
+
+"Oh, mother!" he said.
+
+"She's a beautiful creature, dear--and such a child! Oh! such a child!
+And God bless you, dear, God bless you....
+
+"I think all young people are children. I want to take you both in my
+arms and save you.... I'm talking nonsense, dear."
+
+He kissed her, and she clung to him as if he were something too precious
+to release.
+
+
+§ 10
+
+The elopement was a little complicated by a surprise manoeuvre of Mrs.
+Pope's. She was more alive to the quality of the situation, poor lady!
+than her daughter suspected; she was watching, dreading, perhaps even
+furtively sympathizing and trying to arrange--oh! trying dreadfully to
+arrange. She had an instinctive understanding of the deep blue quiet in
+Marjorie's eyes, and the girl's unusual tenderness with Daffy and the
+children. She peeped under the blind as Marjorie went out, noted the
+care in her dress, watched her face as she returned, never plumbed her
+with a question for fear of the answer. She did not dare to breathe a
+hint of her suspicions to her husband, but she felt things were adrift
+in swift, smooth water, and all her soul cried out for delay. So
+presently there came a letter from Cousin Susan Pendexter at Plymouth.
+The weather was beautiful, Marjorie must come at once, pack up and come
+and snatch the last best glow of the dying autumn away there in the
+west. Marjorie's jerry-built excuses, her manifest chagrin and
+reluctance, confirmed her mother's worst suspicions.
+
+She submitted and went, and Mrs. Pope and Syd saw her off.
+
+I do not like to tell how a week later Marjorie explained herself and
+her dressing-bag and a few small articles back to London from Plymouth.
+Suffice it that she lied desperately and elaborately. Her mother had
+never achieved such miracles of mis-statement, and she added a vigour
+that was all her own. It is easier to sympathize with her than exonerate
+her. She was in a state of intense impatience, and--what is
+strange--extraordinarily afraid that something would separate her from
+her lover if she did not secure him. She was in a fever of
+determination. She could not eat or sleep or attend to anything
+whatever; she was occupied altogether with the thought of assuring
+herself to Trafford. He towered in her waking vision over town and land
+and sea.
+
+He didn't hear the lies she told; he only knew she was magnificently
+coming back to him. He met her at Paddington, a white-faced, tired,
+splendidly resolute girl, and they went to the waiting registrar's
+forthwith.
+
+She bore herself with the intentness and dignity of one who is taking
+the cardinal step in life. They kissed as though it was a symbol, and
+were keenly business-like about cabs and luggage and trains. At last
+they were alone in the train together. They stared at one another.
+
+"We've done it, Mrs. Trafford!" said Trafford.
+
+She snapped like an over-taut string, crumpled, clung to him, and
+without a word was weeping passionately in his arms.
+
+It surprised him that she could weep as she did, and still more to see
+her as she walked by his side along the Folkestone pier, altogether
+recovered, erect, a little flushed and excited like a child. She seemed
+to miss nothing. "Oh, smell the sea!" she said, "Look at the lights!
+Listen to the swish of the water below." She watched the luggage
+spinning on the wire rope of the giant crane, and he watched her face
+and thought how beautiful she was. He wondered why her eyes could
+sometimes be so blue and sometimes dark as night.
+
+The boat cleared the pier and turned about and headed for France. They
+walked the upper deck together and stood side by side, she very close to
+him.
+
+"I've never crossed the sea before," she said.
+
+"Old England," she whispered. "It's like leaving a nest. A little row
+of lights and that's all the world I've ever known, shrunken to that
+already."
+
+Presently they went forward and peered into the night.
+
+"Look!" she said. "_Italy!_ There's sunshine and all sorts of beautiful
+things ahead. Warm sunshine, wonderful old ruins, green lizards...." She
+paused and whispered almost noiselessly: "_love_----"
+
+They pressed against each other.
+
+"And yet isn't it strange? All you can see is darkness, and clouds--and
+big waves that hiss as they come near...."
+
+
+§ 11
+
+Italy gave all her best to welcome them. It was a late year, a golden
+autumn, with skies of such blue as Marjorie had never seen before. They
+stayed at first in a pretty little Italian hotel with a garden on the
+lake, and later they walked over Salvator to Morcote and by boat to
+Ponte Tresa, and thence they had the most wonderful and beautiful tramp
+in the world to Luino, over the hills by Castelrotto. To the left of
+them all day was a broad valley with low-lying villages swimming in a
+luminous mist, to the right were purple mountains. They passed through
+paved streets with houses the colour of flesh and ivory, with balconies
+hung with corn and gourds, with tall church campaniles rising high, and
+great archways giving upon the blue lowlands; they tramped along avenues
+of sweet chestnut and between stretches of exuberant vineyard, in which
+men and women were gathering grapes--purple grapes, a hatful for a
+soldo, that rasped the tongue. Everything was strange and wonderful to
+Marjorie's eyes; now it would be a wayside shrine and now a yoke of
+soft-going, dewlapped oxen, now a chapel hung about with _ex votos_, and
+now some unfamiliar cultivation--or a gipsy-eyed child--or a scorpion
+that scuttled in the dust. The very names of the villages were like
+jewels to her, Varasca, Croglio, Ronca, Sesia, Monteggio. They walked,
+or sat by the wayside and talked, or rested at the friendly table of
+some kindly albergo. A woman as beautiful as Ceres, with a white neck
+all open, made them an omelette, and then fetched her baby from its
+cradle to nurse it while she talked to them as they made their meal. And
+afterwards she filled their pockets with roasted chestnuts, and sent
+them with melodious good wishes upon their way. And always high over all
+against the translucent blue hung the white shape of Monte Rosa, that
+warmed in colour as the evening came.
+
+Marjorie's head was swimming with happiness and beauty, and with every
+fresh delight she recurred again to the crowning marvel of this
+clean-limbed man beside her, who smiled and carried all her luggage in a
+huge rucksack that did not seem to exist for him, and watched her and
+caressed her--and was hers, _hers!_
+
+At Baveno there were letters. They sat at a little table outside a café
+and read them, suddenly mindful of England again. Incipient forgiveness
+showed through Mrs. Pope's reproaches, and there was also a simple,
+tender love-letter (there is no other word for it) from old Mrs.
+Trafford to her son.
+
+From Baveno they set off up Monte Mottarone--whence one may see the Alps
+from Visto to Ortler Spitz--trusting to find the inn still open, and if
+it was closed to get down to Orta somehow before night. Or at the worst
+sleep upon the mountain side.
+
+(Monte Mottarone! Just for a moment taste the sweet Italian name upon
+your lips.) These were the days before the funicular from Stresa, when
+one trudged up a rude path through the chestnuts and walnuts.
+
+As they ascended the long windings through the woods, they met an old
+poet and his wife, coming down from sunset and sunrise. There was a word
+or two about the inn, and they went upon their way. The old man turned
+ever and again to look at them.
+
+"Adorable young people," he said. "Adorable happy young people....
+
+"Did you notice, dear, how she held that dainty little chin of hers?...
+
+"Pride is such a good thing, my dear, clear, straight pride like
+theirs--and they were both so proud!...
+
+"Isn't it good, dear, to think that once you and I may have looked like
+that to some passer-by. I wish I could bless them--sweet, swift young
+things! I wish, dear, it was possible for old men to bless young people
+without seeming to set up for saints...."
+
+
+
+
+    BOOK THE SECOND
+    MARJORIE MARRIED
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIRST
+
+SETTLING DOWN
+
+
+§ 1
+
+It was in a boat among reeds upon the lake of Orta that Trafford first
+became familiarized with the idea that Marjorie was capable of debt.
+
+"Oh, I ought to have told you," she began, apropos of nothing.
+
+Her explanation was airy; she had let the thing slip out of her mind for
+a time. But there were various debts to Oxbridge tradespeople. How much?
+Well, rather a lot. Of course, the tradespeople were rather enticing
+when first one went up----How much, anyhow?
+
+"Oh, about fifty pounds," said Marjorie, after her manner. "Not _more_.
+I've not kept all the bills; and some haven't come in. You know how slow
+they are."
+
+"These things _will_ happen," said Trafford, though, as a matter of
+fact, nothing of the sort had happened in his case. "However, you'll be
+able to pay as soon as you get home, and get them all off your mind."
+
+"I think fifty pounds will clear me," said Marjorie, clinging to her
+long-established total, "if you'll let me have that."
+
+"Oh, we don't do things like that," said Trafford. "I'm arranging that
+my current account will be a sort of joint account, and your signature
+will be as good as mine--for the purpose of drawing, at least. You'll
+have your own cheque-book----"
+
+"I don't understand, quite," said Marjorie.
+
+"You'll have your own cheque-book and write cheques as you want them.
+That seems the simplest way to me."
+
+"Of course," said Marjorie. "But isn't this--rather unusual? Father
+always used to allowance mother."
+
+"It's the only decent way according to my ideas," said Trafford. "A man
+shouldn't marry when he can't trust."
+
+"Of course not," said Marjorie. Something between fear and compunction
+wrung her. "Do you think you'd better?" she asked, very earnestly.
+
+"Better?"
+
+"Do this."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It's--it's so generous."
+
+He didn't answer. He took up an oar and began to push out from among the
+reeds with something of the shy awkwardness of a boy who becomes
+apprehensive of thanks. He stole a glance at her presently and caught
+her expression--there was something very solemn and intent in her
+eyes--and he thought what a grave, fine thing his Marjorie could be.
+
+But, indeed, her state of mind was quite exceptionally confused. She was
+disconcerted--and horribly afraid of herself.
+
+"Do you mean that I can spend what I like?" asked Marjorie.
+
+"Just as I may," he said.
+
+"I wonder," said Marjorie again, "if I'd better."
+
+She was tingling with delight at this freedom, and she knew she was not
+fit for its responsibility. She just came short of a passionate refusal
+of his proposal. He was still so new to her, and things were so
+wonderful, or I think she would have made that refusal.
+
+"You've got to," said Trafford, and ended the matter.
+
+So Marjorie was silent--making good resolutions.
+
+
+§ 2
+
+Perhaps some day it may be possible to tell in English again, in the
+language of Shakspeare and Herrick, of the passion, the tenderness, the
+beauty, and the delightful familiarizations of a happy honeymoon;
+suffice it now, in this delicate period, to record only how our two
+young lovers found one day that neither had a name for the other. He
+said she could be nothing better than Marjorie to him; and she, after a
+number of unsuccessful experiments, settled down to the old school-boy
+nickname made out of his initials, R. A. G.
+
+"Dick," she said, "is too bird-like and boy-like. Andrew I can't abide.
+Goodwin gives one no chances for current use. Rag you must be. Mag and
+Rag--poor innocents! Old rag!"
+
+"Mag," he said, "has its drawbacks! The street-boy in London says, 'Shut
+your mag.' No, I think I shall stick to Marjorie...."
+
+All honeymoons must end at last, so back they came to London, still very
+bright and happy. And then, Marjorie, whose eyes had changed from
+flashing stones to darkly shining pools of blue, but whose soul had
+still perhaps to finds its depths, set herself to the business of
+decorating and furnishing the little house Mrs. Trafford had found for
+them within ten minutes of her own. Meanwhile they lived in lodgings.
+
+There can be no denying that Marjorie began her furnishing with severely
+virtuous intentions. She was very particular to ask Trafford several
+times what he thought she might spend upon the enterprise. He had
+already a bedroom and a study equipped, and he threw out three hundred
+pounds as his conception of an acceptable figure. "Very well," said
+Marjorie, with a note of great precision, "now I shall know," and
+straightway that sum took a place in her imagination that was at once
+definitive and protective, just as her estimate of fifty pounds for her
+Oxbridge debts had always been. She assured herself she was going to do
+things, and she assured herself she was doing things, on three hundred
+pounds. At times the astonishment of two or three school friends, who
+joined her in her shopping, stirred her to a momentary surprise at the
+way she was managing to keep things within that limit, and following a
+financial method that had, after all, in spite of some momentary and
+already nearly forgotten distresses, worked very well at Oxbridge, she
+refrained from any additions until all the accounts had come to hand.
+
+It was an immense excitement shopping to make a home. There was in her
+composition a strain of constructive artistry with such concrete things,
+a strain that had hitherto famished. She was making a beautiful, secure
+little home for Trafford, for herself, for possibilities--remote
+perhaps, but already touching her imagination with the anticipation of
+warm, new, wonderful delights. There should be simplicity indeed in this
+home, but no bareness, no harshness, never an ugliness nor a discord.
+She had always loved colour in the skies, in the landscapes, in the
+texture of stuffs and garments; now out of the chaotic skein of
+countless shops she could choose and pick and mingle her threads in a
+glow of feminine self-expression.
+
+On three hundred pounds, that is to say--as a maximum.
+
+The house she had to deal with was, like Mrs. Trafford's, old and rather
+small; it was partly to its lack of bedroom accommodation, but much more
+to the invasion of the street by the back premises of Messrs. Siddons &
+Thrale, the great Chelsea outfitters, that the lowness of the rent was
+due, a lowness which brought it within the means of Trafford. Marjorie
+knew very clearly that her father would say her husband had taken her to
+live in a noisy slum, and that made her all the keener to ensure that
+every good point in the interior told to its utmost, and that whatever
+was to be accessible to her family should glow with a refined but warm
+prosperity. The room downstairs was shapely, and by ripping off the
+papered canvas of the previous occupier, some very dilapidated but
+admirably proportioned panelling was brought to light. The dining-room
+and study door on the ground floor, by a happy accident, were of
+mahogany, with really very beautiful brass furnishings; and the
+dining-room window upon the minute but by no means offensive paved
+garden behind, was curved and had a little shallow balcony of ironwork,
+half covered by a devitalized but leafy grapevine. Moreover, the
+previous occupier had equipped the place with electric light and a
+bathroom of almost American splendour on the landing, glass-shelved,
+white-tiled, and white painted, so that it was a delight to go into.
+
+Marjorie's mind leapt very rapidly to the possibilities of this little
+establishment. The panelling must be done and done well, anyhow; that
+would be no more than a wise economy, seeing it might at any time help
+them to re-let; it would be painted white, of course, and thus set the
+key for a clean brightness of colour throughout. The furniture would
+stand out against the softly shining white, and its line and
+proportions must be therefore the primary qualities to consider as she
+bought it. The study was much narrower than the dining-room, and so the
+passage, which the agent called the hall, was much broader and more
+commodious behind the happily wide staircase than in front, and she was
+able to banish out of the sight of the chance visitor all that litter of
+hat-stand and umbrella-stand, letters, boxes arriving and parcels to
+post, which had always offended her eye at home. At home there had been
+often the most unsightly things visible, one of Theo's awful caps, or
+his school books, and not infrequently her father's well-worn and all
+too fatally comfortable house slippers. A good effect at first is half
+the victory of a well done house, and Marjorie accomplished another of
+her real economies here by carpeting hall and staircase with a
+fine-toned, rich-feeling and rather high-priced blue carpet, held down
+by very thick brass stair-rods. She hung up four well-chosen steel
+engravings, put a single Chippendale chair in the hall, and a dark old
+Dutch clock that had turned out to be only five pounds when she had
+expected the shopman to say eleven or twelve, on the half-landing. That
+was all. Round the corner by the study door was a mahogany slab, and the
+litter all went upon a capacious but very simple dark-stained hat-stand
+and table that were out of the picture entirely until you reached the
+stairs.
+
+Her dining-room was difficult for some time. She had equipped that with
+a dark oak Welsh dresser made very bright with a dessert service that
+was, in view of its extremely decorative quality, remarkably cheap, and
+with some very pretty silver-topped glass bottles and flasks. This
+dresser and a number of simple but shapely facsimiles of old chairs,
+stood out against a nearly primrose paper, very faintly patterned, and a
+dark blue carpet with a margin of dead black-stained wood. Over the
+mantel was a German colour-print of waves full of sunlight breaking
+under cliffs, and between this and the window were dark bookshelves and
+a few bright-coloured books. On the wall, black-framed, were four very
+good Japanese prints, rich in greenish-blues and blueish-greys that
+answered the floor, and the window curtains took up some of the colours
+of the German print. But something was needed towards the window, she
+felt, to balance the warmly shining plates upon the dresser. The deep
+rose-red of the cherries that adorned them was too isolated, usurped too
+dominating a value. And while this was weighing upon her mind she saw in
+a window in Regent Street a number of Bokhara hangings very nobly
+displayed. They were splendid pieces of needlework, particularly
+glorious in their crimsons and reds, and suddenly it came to her that it
+was just one of these, one that had great ruby flowers upon it with
+dead-blue interlacings, that was needed to weld her gay-coloured scheme
+together. She hesitated, went half-way to Piccadilly Circus, turned
+back and asked the prices. The prices were towering prices, ten,
+fifteen, eighteen guineas, and when at last the shopman produced one
+with all the charm of colour she sought at eight, it seemed like ten
+guineas snatched back as they dropped from her hands. And still
+hesitating, she had three that pleased her most sent home, "on
+approval," before she decided finally to purchase one of them. But the
+trial was conclusive. And then, struck with a sudden idea, she carried
+off a long narrow one she had had no idea of buying before into the
+little study behind. Suppose, she thought, instead of hanging two
+curtains as anybody else would do in that window, she ran this glory of
+rich colour across from one side on a great rod of brass.
+
+She was giving the study the very best of her attention. After she had
+lapsed in some other part of the house from the standards of rigid
+economy she had set up, she would as it were restore the balance by
+adding something to the gracefully dignified arrangement of this den he
+was to use. And the brass rod of the Bokhara hanging that was to do
+instead of curtains released her mind somehow to the purchase of certain
+old candlesticks she had hitherto resisted. They were to stand, bored to
+carry candle electric lights, on either corner of the low bookcase that
+faced the window. They were very heavy, very shapely candlesticks, and
+they cost thirty-five shillings. They looked remarkably well when they
+were put up, except that a sort of hollowness appeared between them and
+clamoured for a delightful old brass-footed workbox she had seen in a
+shop in Baker Street. Enquiry confirmed her quick impression that this
+was a genuine piece (of quite exceptional genuineness) and that the
+price--they asked five pounds ten and came down to five guineas--was in
+accordance with this. It was a little difficult (in spite of the silent
+hunger between the candlesticks) to reconcile this particular article
+with her dominating idea of an austerely restrained expenditure, until
+she hit upon the device of calling it a _hors d'oeuvre_, and regarding
+it not as furniture but as a present from herself to Trafford that
+happened to fall in very agreeably with the process of house furnishing.
+She decided she would some day economise its cost out of her dress
+allowance. The bookcase on which it stood was a happy discovery in
+Kensington, just five feet high, and with beautiful oval glass fronts,
+and its capacity was supplemented and any excess in its price at least
+morally compensated by a very tall, narrow, distinguished-looking set of
+open shelves that had been made for some special corner in another
+house, and which anyhow were really and truly dirt cheap. The desk
+combined grace and good proportions to an admirable extent, the fender
+of pierced brass looked as if it had always lived in immediate contact
+with the shapely old white marble fireplace, and the two arm-chairs were
+marvels of dignified comfort. By the fireplace were a banner-shaped
+needlework firescreen, a white sheepskin hearthrug, a little patch and
+powder table adapted to carry books, and a green-shaded lamp, grouped in
+a common inaudible demand for a reader in slippers. Trafford, when at
+last the apartment was ready for his inspection, surveyed these
+arrangements with a kind of dazzled admiration.
+
+"By Jove!" he said. "How little people know of the homes of the Poor!"
+
+Marjorie was so delighted with his approval that she determined to show
+Mrs. Trafford next day how prettily at least her son was going to live.
+The good lady came and admired everything, and particularly the Bokhara
+hangings. She did not seem to appraise, but something set Marjorie
+talking rather nervously of a bargain-hunter's good fortune. Mrs.
+Trafford glanced at the candlesticks and the low bookcase, and returned
+to the glowing piece of needlework that formed the symmetrical window
+curtain in the study. She took it in her hand, and whispered,
+"beautiful!"
+
+"But aren't these rather good?" asked Mrs. Trafford.
+
+Marjorie answered, after a little pause. "They're not too good for
+_him_," she said.
+
+
+§ 3
+
+And now these young people had to resume life in London in earnest. The
+orchestral accompaniment of the world at large began to mingle with
+their hitherto unsustained duet. It had been inaudible in Italy. In
+Chelsea it had sounded, faintly perhaps but distinctly, from their very
+first inspection of the little house. A drawing-room speaks of callers,
+a dining-room of lunch-parties and dinners. It had swayed Marjorie from
+the front door inward.
+
+During their honeymoon they had been gloriously unconscious of comment.
+Now Marjorie began to show herself keenly sensitive to the advent of a
+score of personalities, and very anxious to show just how completely
+successful in every sense her romantic disobedience had been. She knew
+she had been approved of, admired, condemned, sneered at, thoroughly
+discussed. She felt it her first duty to Trafford, to all who had
+approved of her flight, to every one, herself included, to make this
+marriage obviously, indisputably, a success, a success not only by her
+own standards but by the standards of anyonesoever who chose to sit in
+judgment on her.
+
+There was Trafford. She felt she had to extort the admission from every
+one that he was the handsomest, finest, ablest, most promising and most
+delightful man a prominent humorist was ever jilted for. She wanted them
+to understand clearly just all that Trafford was--and that involved, she
+speedily found in practice, making them believe a very great deal that
+as yet Trafford wasn't. She found it practically impossible not to
+anticipate his election to the Royal Society and the probability of a
+more important professorship. She felt that anyhow he was an F.R.S. in
+the sight of God....
+
+It was almost equally difficult not to indicate a larger income than
+facts justified.
+
+It was entirely in Marjorie's vein in those early days that she would
+want to win on every score and by every standard of reckoning. If
+Marjorie had been a general she would have counted no victory complete
+if the struggle was not sustained and desperate, and if it left the
+enemy with a single gun or flag, or herself with so much as a man killed
+or wounded. The people she wanted to impress varied very widely. She
+wanted to impress the Carmel girls, and the Carmel girls, she knew, with
+their racial trick of acute appraisement, were only to be won by the
+very highest quality all round. They had, she knew, two standards of
+quality, cost and distinction. As far as possible, she would give them
+distinction. But whenever she hesitated over something on the verge of
+cheapness the thought of those impending judgments tipped the balance.
+The Carmel girls were just two influential representatives of a host.
+She wanted to impress quite a number of other school and college
+friends. There were various shy, plastic-spirited, emotional creatures,
+of course, for the most part with no confidence in their own appearance,
+who would be impressed quite adequately enough by Trafford's good looks
+and witty manner and easy temper. They might perhaps fall in love with
+him and become slavish to her after the way of their kind, and anyhow
+they would be provided for, but there were plenty of others of a harder
+texture whose tests would be more difficult to satisfy. There were girls
+who were the daughters of prominent men, who must be made to understand
+that Trafford was prominent, girls who were well connected, who must be
+made to realize the subtle excellence of Trafford's blood. As she
+thought of Constance Graham, for example, or Ottiline Winchelsea, she
+felt the strongest disposition to thicken the by no means well
+authenticated strands that linked Trafford with the Traffords of
+Trafford-over-Lea. She went about the house dreaming a little
+apprehensively of these coming calls, and the pitiless light of
+criticism they would bring to bear, not indeed upon her happiness--that
+was assured--but upon her success.
+
+The social side of the position would have to be strained to the
+utmost, Marjorie felt, with Aunt Plessington. The thought of Aunt
+Plessington made her peculiarly apprehensive. Aunt Plessington had to
+the fullest extent that contempt for merely artistic or scientific
+people which sits so gracefully upon the administrative English. You
+see people of that sort do not get on in the sense that a young lawyer
+or barrister gets on. They do not make steps; they boast and quarrel
+and are jealous perhaps, but that steady patient shove upward seems
+beyond their intelligence. The energies God manifestly gave them for
+shoving, they dissipate in the creation of weak beautiful things and
+unremunerative theories, or in the establishment of views sometimes
+diametrically opposed to the ideas of influential people. And they are
+"queer"--socially. They just moon about doing this so-called "work" of
+theirs, and even when the judgment of eccentric people forces a kind
+of reputation upon them--Heaven knows why?--they make no public or
+social use of it. It seemed to Aunt Plessington that the artist and
+the scientific man were dealt with very neatly and justly in the
+Parable of the Buried Talent. Moreover their private lives were often
+scandalous, they married for love instead of interest, often quite
+disadvantageously, and their relationships had all the instability
+that is natural upon such a foundation. And, after all, what good were
+they? She had never met an artist or a prominent imaginative writer or
+scientific man that she had not been able to subdue in a minute or so
+by flat contradiction, and if necessary slightly raising her voice.
+They had little or no influence even upon their own public
+appointments....
+
+The thought of the invasion of her agreeable little back street
+establishment by this Britannic system of judgments filled Marjorie's
+heart with secret terrors. She felt she had to grapple with and overcome
+Aunt Plessington, or be for ever fallen--at least, so far as that
+amiable lady's report went, and she knew it went pretty far. She
+wandered about the house trying to imagine herself Aunt Plessington.
+
+Immediately she felt the gravest doubts whether the whole thing wasn't
+too graceful and pretty. A rich and rather massive ugliness, of course,
+would have been the thing to fetch Aunt Plessington. Happily, it was
+Aunt Plessington's habit to veil her eyes with her voice. She might not
+see very much.
+
+The subjugation of Aunt Plessington was difficult, but not altogether
+hopeless, Marjorie felt, provided her rejection of Magnet had not been
+taken as an act of personal ingratitude. There was a case on her side.
+She was discovering, for example, that Trafford had a really very
+considerable range of acquaintance among quite distinguished people; big
+figures like Evesham and MacHaldo, for example, were intelligently
+interested in the trend of his work. She felt this gave her a basis for
+Plessingtonian justifications. She could produce those people--as one
+shows one's loot. She could imply, "Oh, Love and all that nonsense!
+Certainly not! _This_ is what I did it for." With skill and care and
+good luck, and a word here and there in edgeways, she believed she might
+be able to represent the whole adventure as the well-calculated opening
+of a campaign on soundly Plessingtonian lines. Her marriage to Trafford,
+she tried to persuade herself, might be presented as something almost
+as brilliant and startling as her aunt's swoop upon her undistinguished
+uncle.
+
+She might pretend that all along she had seen her way to things, to
+coveted dinner-tables and the familiarity of coveted guests, to bringing
+people together and contriving arrangements, to influence and
+prominence, to culminations and intrigues impossible in the
+comparatively specialized world of a successful humorist and playwright,
+and so at last to those high freedoms of authoritative and if necessary
+offensive utterance in a strangulated contralto, and from a position of
+secure eminence, which is the goal of all virtuously ambitious
+Englishwomen of the governing classes--that is to say, of all virtuously
+ambitious Englishwomen....
+
+
+§ 4
+
+And while such turbid solicitudes as these were flowing in again from
+the London world to which she had returned, and fouling the bright,
+romantic clearness of Marjorie's life, Trafford, in his ampler, less
+detailed way was also troubled about their coming re-entry into society.
+He, too, had his old associations.
+
+For example, he was by no means confident of the favourable judgments of
+his mother upon Marjorie's circle of school and college friends, whom he
+gathered from Marjorie's talk were destined to play a large part in this
+new phase of his life. She had given him very ample particulars of some
+of them; and he found them interesting rather than richly attractive
+personalities. It is to be noted that while he thought always of
+Marjorie as a beautiful, grown-up woman, and his mate and equal, he was
+still disposed to regard her intimate friends as schoolgirls of an
+advanced and aggressive type....
+
+Then that large circle of distinguished acquaintances which Marjorie saw
+so easily and amply utilized for the subjugation of Aunt Plessington
+didn't present itself quite in that service to Trafford's private
+thoughts. He hadn't that certitude of command over them, nor that
+confidence in their unhesitating approval of all he said and did. Just
+as Marjorie wished him to shine in the heavens over all her people, so,
+in regard to his associates, he was extraordinarily anxious that they
+should realize, and realize from the outset without qualification or
+hesitation, how beautiful, brave and delightful she was. And you know he
+had already begun to be aware of an evasive feeling in his mind that at
+times she did not altogether do herself justice--he scarcely knew as yet
+how or why....
+
+She was very young....
+
+One or two individuals stood out in his imagination, representatives and
+symbols of the rest. Particularly there was that old giant, Sir Roderick
+Dover, who had been, until recently, the Professor of Physics in the
+great Oxford laboratories. Dover and Trafford had one of those warm
+friendships which spring up at times between a rich-minded man whose
+greatness is assured and a young man of brilliant promise. It was all
+the more affectionate because Dover had been a friend of Trafford's
+father. These two and a group of other careless-minded, able,
+distinguished, and uninfluential men at the Winton Club affected the end
+of the smoking-room near the conservatory in the hours after lunch, and
+shared the joys of good talk and fine jesting about the big fireplace
+there. Under Dover's broad influence they talked more ideas and less
+gossip than is usual with English club men. Twaddle about appointments,
+about reputations, topics from the morning's papers, London
+architecture, and the commerce in "good stories" took refuge at the
+other end in the window bays or by the further fireplace. Trafford only
+began to realize on his return to London how large a share this
+intermittent perennial conversation had contributed to the atmosphere of
+his existence. Amidst the romantic circumstances of his flight with
+Marjorie he had forgotten the part these men played in his life and
+thoughts. Now he was enormously exercised in the search for a
+reconciliation between these, he felt, incommensurable factors.
+
+He was afraid of what might be Sir Roderick's unspoken judgment on
+Marjorie and the house she had made--though what was there to be afraid
+of? He was still more afraid--and this was even more remarkable--of the
+clear little judgments--hard as loose, small diamonds in a bed--that he
+thought Marjorie might pronounce on Sir Roderick. He had never disguised
+from himself that Sir Roderick was fat--nobody who came within a hundred
+yards of him could be under any illusion about that--and that he drank a
+good deal, ate with a cosmic spaciousness, loved a cigar, and talked and
+laughed with a freedom that sometimes drove delicate-minded new members
+into the corners remotest from the historical fireplace. Trafford knew
+himself quite definitely that there was a joy in Dover's laugh and
+voice, a beauty in his face (that was somehow mixed up with his healthy
+corpulence), and a breadth, a charity, a leonine courage in his mind
+(that was somehow mixed up with his careless freedom of speech) that
+made him an altogether satisfactory person.
+
+But supposing Marjorie didn't see any of that!
+
+Still, he was on the verge of bringing Sir Roderick home when a talk at
+the club one day postponed that introduction of the two extremes of
+Trafford's existence for quite a considerable time.
+
+Those were the days of the first enthusiasms of the militant suffrage
+movement, and the occasional smashing of a Downing Street window or an
+assault upon a minister kept the question of woman's distinctive
+intelligence and character persistently before the public. Godley
+Buzard, the feminist novelist, had been the guest of some member to
+lunch, and the occasion was too provocative for any one about Dover's
+fireplace to avoid the topic. Buzard's presence, perhaps, drove Dover
+into an extreme position on the other side; he forgot Trafford's
+new-wedded condition, and handled this great argument, an argument which
+has scarcely progressed since its beginning in the days of Plato and
+Aristophanes, with the freedoms of an ancient Greek and the explicitness
+of a modern scientific man.
+
+He opened almost apropos of nothing. "Women," he said, "are
+inferior--and you can't get away from it."
+
+"You can deny it," said Buzard.
+
+"In the face of the facts," said Sir Roderick. "To begin with, they're
+several inches shorter, several pounds lighter; they've less physical
+strength in footpounds."
+
+"More endurance," said Buzard.
+
+"Less sensitiveness merely. All those are demonstrable things--amenable
+to figures and apparatus. Then they stand nervous tensions worse, the
+breaking-point comes sooner. They have weaker inhibitions, and
+inhibition is the test of a creature's position in the mental scale."
+
+He maintained that in the face of Buzard's animated protest. Buzard
+glanced at their moral qualities. "More moral!" cried Dover, "more
+self-restraint! Not a bit of it! Their desires and passions are weaker
+even than their controls; that's all. Weaken restraints and they show
+their quality. A drunken woman is far worse than a drunken man. And as
+for their biological significance----"
+
+"They are the species," said Buzard, "and we are the accidents."
+
+"They are the stolon and we are the individualized branches. They are
+the stem and we are the fruits. Surely it's better to exist than just
+transmit existence. And that's a woman's business, though we've fooled
+and petted most of 'em into forgetting it...."
+
+He proceeded to an attack on the intellectual quality of women. He
+scoffed at the woman artist, at feminine research, at what he called the
+joke of feminine philosophy. Buzard broke in with some sentences of
+reply. He alleged the lack of feminine opportunity, inferior education.
+
+"You don't or won't understand me," said Dover. "It isn't a matter of
+education or opportunity, or simply that they're of inferior capacity;
+it lies deeper than that. They don't _want_ to do these things. They're
+different."
+
+"Precisely," ejaculated Buzard, as if he claimed a score.
+
+"They don't care for these things. They don't care for art or
+philosophy, or literature or anything except the things that touch them
+directly. That's their peculiar difference. Hunger they understand, and
+comfort, and personal vanity and desire, furs and chocolate and
+husbands, and the extreme importance conferred upon them by having
+babies at infrequent intervals. But philosophy or beauty for its own
+sake, or dreams! Lord! no! The Mahometans know they haven't souls, and
+they say it. We know, and keep it up that they have. Haven't all we
+scientific men had 'em in our laboratories working; don't we know the
+papers they turn out? Every sane man of five and forty knows something
+of the disillusionment of the feminine dream, but we who've had the
+beautiful creatures under us, weighing rather badly, handling rather
+weakly, invariably missing every fine detail and all the implications of
+our researches, never flashing, never leaping, never being even
+thoroughly bad,--we're specialists in the subject. At the present time
+there are far more educated young women than educated young men
+available for research work--and who wants them? Oh, the young
+professors who've still got ideals perhaps. And in they come, and if
+they're dull, they just voluminously do nothing, and if they're bright,
+they either marry your demonstrator or get him into a mess. And the
+work----? It's nothing to them. No woman ever painted for the love of
+painting, or sang for the sounds she made, or philosophized for the sake
+of wisdom as men do----"
+
+Buzard intervened with instances. Dover would have none of them. He
+displayed astonishing and distinctive knowledge. "Madame Curie,"
+clamoured Buzard, "Madame Curie."
+
+"There was Curie," said Dover. "No woman alone has done such things. I
+don't say women aren't clever," he insisted. "They're too clever. Give
+them a man's track or a man's intention marked and defined, they'll ape
+him to the life----"
+
+Buzard renewed his protests, talking at the same time as Dover, and was
+understood to say that women had to care for something greater than art
+or philosophy. They were custodians of life, the future of the race----
+
+"And that's my crowning disappointment," cried Dover. "If there was one
+thing in which you might think women would show a sense of some divine
+purpose in life, it is in the matter of children--and they show about
+as much care in that matter, oh!--as rabbits. Yes, rabbits! I stick to
+it. Look at the things a nice girl will marry; look at the men's
+children she'll consent to bring into the world. Cheerfully! Proudly!
+For the sake of the home and the clothes. Nasty little beasts they'll
+breed without turning a hair. All about us we see girls and women
+marrying ugly men, dull and stupid men, ill-tempered dyspeptic wrecks,
+sickly young fools, human rats--_rats!_"
+
+"No, no!" cried Trafford to Dover.
+
+Buzard's voice clamoured that all would be different when women had the
+vote.
+
+"If ever we get a decent care for Eugenics, it will come from men," said
+a white-faced little man on the sofa beside Trafford, in the
+confidential tone of one who tells a secret.
+
+"Doing it cheerfully!" insisted Dover.
+
+Trafford in mid-protest was suddenly stricken into silence by a memory.
+It was as if the past had thrown a stone at the back of his head and hit
+it smartly. He nipped his sentence in the bud. He left the case for
+women to Buzard....
+
+He revived that memory again on his way home. It had been in his mind
+overlaid by a multitude of newer, fresher things, but now he took it out
+and looked at it. It was queer, it was really very queer, to think that
+once upon a time, not so very long ago, Marjorie had been prepared to
+marry Magnet. Of course she had hated it, but still----....
+
+There is much to be discovered about life, even by a brilliant and
+rising young Professor of Physics....
+
+Presently Dover, fingering the little glass of yellow chartreuse he had
+hitherto forgotten in the heat of controversy, took a more personal
+turn.
+
+"Don't we know," he said, and made the limpid amber vanish in his pause.
+"Don't we know we've got to manage and control 'em--just as we've got to
+keep 'em and stand the racket of their misbehaviour? Don't our instincts
+tell us? Doesn't something tell us all that if we let a woman loose with
+our honour and trust, some other man will get hold of her? We've tried
+it long enough now, this theory that a woman's a partner and an equal;
+we've tried it long enough to see some of the results, and does it work?
+Does it? A woman's a prize, a possession, a responsibility, something to
+take care of and be careful about.... You chaps, if you'll forgive me,
+you advanced chaps, seem to want to have the women take care of you. You
+seem always to want to force decisions on them, make them answerable for
+things that you ought to decide and answer for.... If one could, if one
+could! If!... But they're not helps--that's a dream--they're
+distractions, gratifications, anxieties, dangers, undertakings...."
+
+Buzard got in his one effective blow at this point. "That's why you've
+never married, Sir Roderick?" he threw out.
+
+The big man was checked for a moment. Trafford wondered what memory lit
+that instant's pause. "I've had my science," said Dover.
+
+
+§ 5
+
+Mrs. Pope was of course among the first to visit the new home so soon as
+it was open to inspection. She arrived, looking very bright and neat in
+a new bonnet and some new black furs that suited her, bearing up bravely
+but obviously in a state of dispersed and miscellaneous emotion....
+
+In many ways Marjorie's marriage had been a great relief to her mother.
+Particularly it had been a financial relief. Marjorie had been the most
+expensive child of her family, and her cessation had led to increments
+both of Mrs. Pope's and Daphne's all too restricted allowances. Mrs.
+Pope had been able therefore to relapse from the orthodox Anglicanism
+into which poverty had driven her, and indulge for an hour weekly in the
+consolations of Higher Thought. These exercises in emancipated
+religiosity occurred at the house of Mr. Silas Root, and were greatly
+valued by a large circle of clients. Essentially they were orgies of
+vacuity, and they cost six guineas for seven hours. They did her no end
+of good. All through the precious weekly hour she sat with him in a
+silent twilight, very, very still and feeling--oh! "higher" than
+anything, and when she came out she wore an inane smile on her face and
+was prepared not to worry, to lie with facility, and to take the easiest
+way in every eventuality in an entirely satisfactory and exalted manner.
+Moreover he was "treating" her investments. Acting upon his advice, and
+doing the whole thing quietly with the idea of preparing a pleasant
+surprise for her husband, she had sold out of certain Home Railway
+debentures and invested in a company for working the auriferous waste
+which is so abundant in the drainage of Philadelphia, a company whose
+shareholders were chiefly higher thought disciples and whose profits
+therefore would inevitably be greatly enhanced by their concerted mental
+action. It was to the prospective profits in this that she owed the new
+black furs she was wearing.
+
+The furs and the bonnet and the previous day's treatment she had had,
+all helped to brace her up on Marjorie's doorstep for a complex and
+difficult situation, and to carry her through the first tensions of her
+call. She was so much to pieces as it was that she could not help
+feeling how much more to pieces she might have been--but for the grace
+of Silas Root. She knew she ought to have very strong feelings about
+Trafford, though it was not really clear to her what feelings she ought
+to have. On the whole she was inclined to believe she was experiencing
+moral disapproval mixed up with a pathetic and rather hopeless appeal
+for the welfare of the tender life that had entrusted itself so
+recklessly to these brutal and discreditable hands, though indeed if she
+had really dared to look inside her mind her chief discovery would have
+been a keenly jealous appreciation of Trafford's good looks and generous
+temper, and a feeling of injustice as between her own lot and
+Marjorie's. However, going on her assumed basis she managed to be very
+pale, concise and tight-lipped at any mention of her son-in-law, and to
+put a fervour of helpless devotion into her embraces of her daughter.
+She surveyed the house with a pained constrained expression, as though
+she tried in vain to conceal from herself that it was all slightly
+improper, and even such objects as the Bokhara hangings failed to extort
+more than an insincere, "Oh, very nice, dear--_very_ nice."
+
+In the bedroom, she spoke about Mr. Pope. "He was dreadfully upset," she
+said. "His first thought was to come after you both with a pistol.
+If--if _he_ hadn't married you----"
+
+"But dear Mummy, of _course_ we meant to marry! We married right away."
+
+"Yes, dear, of course. But if he hadn't----"
+
+She paused, and Marjorie, with a momentary flush of indignation in her
+cheeks, did not urge her to conclude her explanation.
+
+"He's _wounded_," said Mrs. Pope. "Some day perhaps he'll come
+round--you were always his favourite daughter."
+
+"I know," said Marjorie concisely, with a faint flavour of cynicism in
+her voice.
+
+"I'm afraid dear, at present--he will do nothing for you."
+
+"I don't think Rag would like him to," said Marjorie with an unreal
+serenity; "_ever_."
+
+"For a time I'm afraid he'll refuse to see you. He just wants to
+forget----. Everything."
+
+"Poor old Dad! I wish he wouldn't put himself out like this. Still, I
+won't bother him, Mummy, if you mean that."
+
+Then suddenly into Mrs. Pope's unsystematic, unstable mind, started
+perhaps by the ring in her daughter's voice, there came a wave of
+affectionate feeling. That she had somehow to be hostile and
+unsympathetic to Marjorie, that she had to pretend that Trafford was
+wicked and disgusting, and not be happy in the jolly hope and happiness
+of this bright little house, cut her with a keen swift pain. She didn't
+know clearly why she was taking this coldly hostile attitude, or why she
+went on doing so, but the sense of that necessity hurt her none the
+less. She put out her hands upon her daughter's shoulders and whimpered:
+"Oh my dear! I do wish things weren't so difficult--so very difficult."
+
+The whimper changed by some inner force of its own to honest sobs and
+tears.
+
+Marjorie passed through a flash of amazement to a sudden understanding
+of her mother's case. "Poor dear Mummy," she said. "Oh! poor dear Mummy.
+It's a shame of us!"
+
+She put her arms about her mother and held her for awhile.
+
+"It _is_ a shame," said her mother in a muffled voice, trying to keep
+hold of this elusive thing that had somehow both wounded her and won her
+daughter back. But her poor grasp slipped again. "I knew you'd come to
+see it," she said, dabbing with her handkerchief at her eyes. "I knew
+you would." And then with the habitual loyalty of years resuming its
+sway: "He's always been so good to you."...
+
+But Mrs. Pope had something more definite to say to Marjorie, and came
+to it at last with a tactful offhandedness. Marjorie communicated it to
+Trafford about an hour later on his return from the laboratory. "I say,"
+she said, "old Daffy's engaged to Magnet!"
+
+She paused, and added with just the faintest trace of resentment in her
+voice: "She can have him, as far as I'm concerned."
+
+"He didn't wait long," said Trafford tactlessly.
+
+"No," said Marjorie; "he didn't wait long.... Of course she got him on
+the rebound."...
+
+
+§ 6
+
+Mrs. Pope was only a day or so ahead of a cloud of callers. The Carmel
+girls followed close upon her, tall figures of black fur, with
+costly-looking muffs and a rich glitter at neck and wrist. Marjorie
+displayed her house, talking fluently about other things, and watching
+for effects. The Carmel girls ran their swift dark eyes over her
+appointments, glanced quickly from side to side of her rooms, saw only
+too certainly that the house was narrow and small----. But did they see
+that it was clever? They saw at any rate that she meant it to be clever,
+and with true Oriental politeness said as much urgently and
+extravagantly. Then there were the Rambord girls and their mother, an
+unobservant lot who chattered about the ice at Prince's; then Constance
+Graham came with a thoroughbred but very dirty aunt, and then Ottiline
+Winchelsea with an American minor poet, who wanted a view of mountains
+from the windows at the back, and said the bathroom ought to be done in
+pink. Then Lady Solomonson came; an extremely expensive-looking fair
+lady with an affectation of cynicism, a keen intelligence, acutely apt
+conversation, and a queer effect of thinking of something else all the
+time she was talking. She missed nothing....
+
+Hardly anybody failed to appreciate the charm and decision of Marjorie's
+use of those Bokhara embroideries.
+
+They would have been cheap at double the price.
+
+
+§ 7
+
+And then our two young people went out to their first dinner-parties
+together. They began with Trafford's rich friend Solomonson, who had
+played so large and so passive a part in their first meeting. He had
+behaved with a sort of magnanimous triumph over the marriage. He made it
+almost his personal affair, as though he had brought it about. "I knew
+there was a girl in it," he insisted, "and you told me there wasn't.
+O-a-ah! And you kept me in that smell of disinfectant and things--what a
+chap that doctor was for spilling stuff!--for six blessed days!..."
+
+Marjorie achieved a dress at once simple and good with great facility by
+not asking the price until it was all over. (There is no half-success
+with dinner-dresses, either the thing is a success and inestimable, or
+not worth having at any price at all.) It was blue with a thread of
+gold, and she had a necklace of blueish moonstones, gold-set, and her
+hair ceased to be copper and became golden, and her eyes unfathomable
+blue. She was radiant with health and happiness, no one else there had
+her clear freshness, and her manner was as restrained and dignified and
+ready as a proud young wife's can be. Everyone seemed to like her and
+respect her and be interested in her, and Trafford kissed her flushed
+cheek in the hansom as they came home again and crowned her happiness.
+It had been quite a large party, and really much more splendid and
+brilliant than anything she had ever seen before. There had been one old
+gentleman with a coloured button and another with a ribbon; there had
+been a countess with historical pearls, and half-a-dozen other people
+one might fairly call distinguished. The house was tremendous in its
+way, spacious, rich, glowing with lights, abounding in vistas and fine
+remote backgrounds. In the midst of it all she had a sudden thrill at
+the memory that less than a year ago she had been ignominiously
+dismissed from the dinner-table by her father for a hiccup....
+
+A few days after Aunt Plessington suddenly asked the Traffords to one of
+her less important but still interesting gatherings; not one of those
+that swayed the world perhaps, but one which Marjorie was given to
+understand achieved important subordinate wagging. Aunt Plessington had
+not called, she explained in her note, because of the urgent demands the
+Movement made upon her time; it was her wonderful hard-breathing way
+never to call on anyone, and it added tremendously to her reputation;
+none the less it appeared--though here the scrawl became illegible--she
+meant to shove and steer her dear niece upward at a tremendous pace.
+They were even asked to come a little early so that she might make
+Trafford's acquaintance.
+
+The dress was duly admired, and then Aunt Plessington--assuming the
+hearthrug and forgetting the little matter of their career--explained
+quite Napoleonic and wonderful things she was going to do with her
+Movement, fresh principles, fresh applications, a big committee of all
+the "names"--they were easy to get if you didn't bother them to do
+things--a new and more attractive title, "Payment in Kind" was to give
+way to "Reality of Reward," and she herself was going to have her hair
+bleached bright white (which would set off her eyes and colour and the
+general geniality of appearance due to her projecting teeth), and so
+greatly increase her "platform efficiency." Hubert, she said, was
+toiling away hard at the detail of these new endeavours. He would be
+down in a few minutes' time. Marjorie, she said, ought to speak at their
+meetings. It would help both the Traffords to get on if Marjorie cut a
+dash at the outset, and there was no such dash to be cut as speaking at
+Aunt Plessington's meetings. It was catching on; all next season it was
+sure to be the thing. So many promising girls allowed themselves to be
+submerged altogether in marriage for a time, and when they emerged
+everyone had forgotten the promise of their début. She had an air of
+rescuing Marjorie from an impending fate by disabusing Trafford from
+injurious prepossessions....
+
+Presently the guests began to drop in, a vegetarian health specialist, a
+rising young woman factory inspector, a phrenologist who was being
+induced to put great talents to better uses under Aunt Plessington's
+influence, his dumb, obscure, but inevitable wife, a colonial bishop, a
+baroness with a taste rather than a capacity for intellectual society, a
+wealthy jam and pickle manufacturer and his wife, who had subscribed
+largely to the funds of the Movement and wanted to meet the lady of
+title, and the editor of the Movement's organ, _Upward and On_, a young
+gentleman of abundant hair and cadaverous silences, whom Aunt
+Plessington patted on the shoulder and spoke of as "one of our
+discoveries." And then Uncle Hubert came down, looking ruffled and
+overworked, with his ready-made dress-tie--he was one of those men who
+can never master the art of tying a bow--very much askew. The
+conversation turned chiefly on the Movement; if it strayed Aunt
+Plessington reached out her voice after it and brought it back in a
+masterful manner.
+
+Through soup and fish Marjorie occupied herself with the inflexible
+rigour of the young editor, who had brought her down. When she could
+give her attention to the general conversation she discovered her
+husband a little flushed and tackling her aunt with an expression of
+quiet determination. The phrenologist and the vegetarian health
+specialist were regarding him with amazement, the jam and pickle
+manufacturer's wife was evidently deeply shocked. He was refusing to
+believe in the value of the Movement, and Aunt Plessington was
+manifestly losing her temper.
+
+"I don't see, Mrs. Plessington," he was saying, "that all this amounts
+to more than a kind of Glorious District Visiting. That is how I see it.
+You want to attack people in their homes--before they cry out to you.
+You want to compel them by this Payment in Kind of yours to do what you
+want them to do instead of trying to make them want to do it. Now, I
+think your business is to make them want to do it. You may perhaps
+increase the amount of milk in babies, and the amount of whitewash in
+cottages and slums by your methods--I don't dispute the promise of your
+statistics--but you're going to do it at a cost of human self-respect
+that's out of all proportion----"
+
+Uncle Hubert's voice, with that thick utterance that always suggested a
+mouthful of plums, came booming down the table. "All these arguments,"
+he said, "have been answered long ago."
+
+"No doubt," said Trafford with a faint asperity. "But tell me the
+answers."
+
+"It's ridiculous," said Aunt Plessington, "to talk of the self-respect
+of the kind of people--oh! the very dregs!"
+
+"It's just because the plant is delicate that you've got to handle it
+carefully," said Trafford.
+
+"Here's Miss Gant," said Aunt Plessington, "_she_ knows the strata we
+are discussing. She'll tell you they have positively _no_
+self-respect--none at all."
+
+"_My_ people," said Miss Gant, as if in conclusive testimony, "actually
+conspire with their employers to defeat me."
+
+"I don't see the absence of self-respect in that," said Trafford.
+
+"But all their interests----"
+
+"I'm thinking of their pride."...
+
+The discussion lasted to the end of dinner and made no headway. As soon
+as the ladies were in the drawing-room, Aunt Plessington, a little
+flushed from the conflict, turned on Marjorie and said, "I _like_ your
+husband. He's wrong-headed, but he's young, and he's certainly spirited.
+He _ought_ to get on if he wants to. Does he do nothing but his
+researches?"
+
+"He lectures in the spring term," said Marjorie.
+
+"Ah!" said Aunt Plessington with a triumphant note, "you must alter all
+that. You must interest him in wider things. You must bring him out of
+his shell, and let him see what it is to deal with Affairs. Then he
+wouldn't talk such nonsense about our Work."
+
+Marjory was at a momentary loss for a reply, and in the instant's
+respite Aunt Plessington turned to the jam and pickle lady and asked in
+a bright, encouraging note: "Well! And how's the Village Club getting
+on?"...
+
+She had another lunge at Trafford as he took his leave. "You must come
+again soon," she said. "I _love_ a good wrangle, and Hubert and I never
+want to talk about our Movement to any one but unbelievers. You don't
+know the beginnings of it yet. Only I warn you they have a way of
+getting converted. I warn you."...
+
+On this occasion there was no kissing in the cab. Trafford was
+exasperated.
+
+"Of all the intolerable women!" he said, and was silent for a time.
+
+"The astounding part of it is," he burst out, "that this sort of thing,
+this Movement and all the rest of it, does really give the quality of
+English public affairs. It's like a sample--dredged. The--the
+_cheapness_ of it! Raised voices, rash assertions, sham investigations,
+meetings and committees and meetings, that's the stuff of it, and
+politicians really have to attend to it, and silly, ineffective,
+irritating bills really get drafted and messed about with and passed on
+the strength of it. Public affairs are still in the Dark Ages. Nobody
+now would think of getting together a scratch committee of rich old
+women and miscellaneous conspicuous people to design an electric tram,
+and jabbering and jabbering and jabbering, and if any one objects"--a
+note of personal bitterness came into his voice--"jabbering faster; but
+nobody thinks it ridiculous to attempt the organization of poor people's
+affairs in that sort of way. This project of the supersession of Wages
+by Payment in Kind--oh! it's childish. If it wasn't it would be
+outrageous and indecent. Your uncle and aunt haven't thought for a
+moment of any single one of the necessary consequences of these things
+they say their confounded Movement aims at, effects upon the race, upon
+public spirit, upon people's habits and motives. They've just a queer
+craving to feel powerful and influential, which they think they can best
+satisfy by upsetting the lives of no end of harmless poor people--the
+only people they dare upset--and that's about as far as they go.... Your
+aunt's detestable, Marjorie."
+
+Marjorie had never seen him so deeply affected by anything but herself.
+It seemed to her he was needlessly disturbed by a trivial matter. He
+sulked for a space, and then broke out again.
+
+"That confounded woman talks of my physical science," he said, "as if
+research were an amiable weakness, like collecting postage stamps. And
+it's changed human conditions more in the last ten years than all the
+parliamentary wire-pullers and legislators and administrative experts
+have done in two centuries. And for all that, there's more clerks in
+Whitehall than professors of physics in the whole of England."...
+
+"I suppose it's the way that sort of thing gets done," said Marjorie,
+after an interval.
+
+"That sort of thing doesn't get done," snapped Trafford. "All these
+people burble about with their movements and jobs, and lectures and
+stuff--and _things happen_. Like some one getting squashed to death in a
+crowd. Nobody did it, but anybody in the muddle can claim to have done
+it--if only they've got the cheek of your Aunt Plessington."
+
+He seemed to have finished.
+
+"_Done!_" he suddenly broke out again. "Why! people like your Aunt
+Plessington don't even know where the handle is. If they ventured to
+look for it, they'd give the whole show away! Done, indeed!"
+
+"Here we are!" said Marjorie, a little relieved to find the hansom
+turning out of King's Road into their own side street....
+
+And then Marjorie wore the blue dress with great success at the
+Carmels'. The girls came and looked at it and admired it--it was no mere
+politeness. They admitted there was style about it, a quality--there was
+no explaining. "You're _wonderful_, Madge!" cried the younger Carmel
+girl.
+
+The Carmel boy, seizing the opportunity of a momentary seclusion in a
+corner, ended a short but rather portentous silence with "I say, you
+_do_ look ripping," in a voice that implied the keenest regret for the
+slacknesses of a summer that was now infinitely remote to Marjorie. It
+was ridiculous that the Carmel boy should have such emotions--he was six
+years younger than Trafford and only a year older than Marjorie, and yet
+she was pleased by his manifest wound....
+
+There was only one little thing at the back of her mind that alloyed her
+sense of happy and complete living that night, and that was the ghost of
+an addition sum. At home, in her pretty bureau, a little gathering pile
+of bills, as yet unpaid, and an empty cheque-book with appealing
+counterfoils, awaited her attention.
+
+Marjorie had still to master the fact that all the fine braveries and
+interests and delights of life that offer themselves so amply to the
+favoured children of civilization, trail and, since the fall of man at
+any rate, have trailed after them something--something, the
+justification of morality, the despair of all easy, happy souls, the
+unavoidable drop of bitterness in the cup of pleasure--the Reckoning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SECOND
+
+THE CHILD OF THE AGES
+
+
+§ 1
+
+When the intellectual history of this time comes to be written, nothing
+I think will stand out more strikingly than the empty gulf in quality
+between the superb and richly fruitful scientific investigations that
+are going on and the general thought of other educated sections of the
+community. I do not mean that the scientific men are as a whole a class
+of supermen, dealing with and thinking about everything in a way
+altogether better than the common run of humanity, but that in their own
+field, they think and work with an intensity, an integrity, a breadth,
+boldness, patience, thoroughness and faithfulness that (excepting only a
+few artists) puts their work out of all comparison with any other human
+activity. Often the field in which the work is done is very narrow, and
+almost universally the underlying philosophy is felt rather than
+apprehended. A scientific man may be large and deep-minded, deliberate
+and personally detached in his work, and hasty, commonplace and
+superficial in every other relation of life. Nevertheless it is true
+that in these particular directions the human mind has achieved a new
+and higher quality of attitude and gesture, a veracity, self-detachment
+and self-abnegating vigour of criticism that tend to spread out and must
+ultimately spread out to every other human affair. In these
+uncontroversial issues at least mankind has learnt the rich rewards that
+ensue from patience and infinite pains.
+
+The peculiar circumstances of Trafford's birth and upbringing had
+accentuated his natural disposition toward this new thoroughness of
+intellectual treatment which has always distinguished the great artist,
+and which to-day is also the essential quality of the scientific method.
+He had lived apart from any urgency to produce and compete in the common
+business of the world; his natural curiosities, fed and encouraged by
+his natural gifts, had grown into a steady passion for clarity and
+knowledge. But with him there was no specialization. He brought out from
+his laboratory into the everyday affairs of the world the same sceptical
+restraint of judgment which is the touchstone of scientific truth. This
+made him a tepid and indeed rather a scornful spectator of political and
+social life. Party formulae, international rivalries, social customs,
+and very much of the ordinary law of our state impressed him as a kind
+of fungoid growth out of a fundamental intellectual muddle. It all
+maintained itself hazardously, changing and adapting itself
+unintelligently to unseen conditions. He saw no ultimate truth in this
+seething welter of human efforts, no tragedy as yet in its defeats, no
+value in its victories. It had to go on, he believed, until the
+spreading certitudes of the scientific method pierced its unsubstantial
+thickets, burst its delusive films, drained away its folly. Aunt
+Plessington's talk of order and progress and the influence of her
+Movement impressed his mind very much as the cackle of some larger kind
+of hen--which cackles because it must. Only Aunt Plessington being human
+simply imagined the egg. She laid--on the plane of the ideal. When the
+great nonsensical issues between liberal and conservative, between
+socialist and individualist, between "Anglo-Saxon" and "Teuton," between
+the "white race" and the "yellow race" arose in Trafford's company, he
+would if he felt cheerful take one side or the other as chance or his
+amusement with his interlocutors determined, and jest and gibe at the
+opponent's inconsistencies, and if on the other hand he chanced to be
+irritable he would lose his temper at this "chewing of mesembryanthemum"
+and sulk into silence. "Chewing mesembryanthemum" was one of Trafford's
+favourite images,--no doubt the reader knows that abundant fleshy
+Mediterranean weed and the weakly unpleasant wateriness of its
+substance. He went back to his laboratory and his proper work after such
+discussions with a feeling of escape, as if he shut a door upon a dirty
+and undisciplined market-place crowded with mental defectives. Yet even
+before he met and married Marjorie, there was a queer little undertow of
+thought in his mind which insisted that this business could not end with
+door-slamming, that he didn't altogether leave the social confusion
+outside his panels when he stood alone before his apparatus, and that
+sooner or later that babble of voices would force his defences and
+overcome his disdain.
+
+His particular work upon the intimate constitution of matter had
+broadened very rapidly in his hands. The drift of his work had been to
+identify all colloids as liquid solutions of variable degrees of
+viscosity, and to treat crystalline bodies as the only solids. He had
+dealt with oscillating processes in colloid bodies with especial
+reference to living matter. He had passed from a study of the melting
+and toughening of glass to the molecular structure of a number of
+elastic bodies, and so, by a characteristic leap into botanical
+physiology, to the states of resinous and gummy substances at the moment
+of secretion. He worked at first upon a false start, and then resumed to
+discover a growing illumination. He found himself in the presence of
+phenomena that seemed to him to lie near the still undiscovered
+threshold to the secret processes of living protoplasm. He was, as it
+were, breaking into biology by way of molecular physics. He spent many
+long nights of deep excitement, calculating and arranging the
+development of these seductive intimations. It was this work which his
+marriage had interrupted, and to which he was now returning.
+
+He was surprised to find how difficult it was to take it up again. He
+had been only two months away from it, and yet already it had not a
+little of the feeling of a relic taken from a drawer. Something had
+faded. It was at first as if a film had come over his eyes, so that he
+could no longer see these things clearly and subtly and closely. His
+senses, his emotions, had been living in a stirring and vivid
+illumination. Now in this cool quietude bright clouds of coloured
+memory-stuff swam distractingly before his eyes. Phantom kisses on his
+lips, the memory of touches and the echoing vibrations of an adorable
+voice, the thought of a gay delightful fireside and the fresh
+recollection of a companion intensely felt beside him, effaced the
+delicate profundities of this dim place. Durgan hovered about him,
+helpful and a mute reproach. Trafford had to force his attention daily
+for the better part of two weeks before he had fully recovered the fine
+enchanting interest of that suspended work.
+
+
+§ 2
+
+At last one day he had the happiness of possession again. He had exactly
+the sensation one gets when some hitherto intractable piece of a machine
+one is putting together, clicks neatly and beyond all hoping, into its
+place. He found himself working in the old style, with the hours
+slipping by disregarded. He sent out Durgan to get him tobacco and tea
+and smoked-salmon sandwiches, and he stayed in the laboratory all night.
+He went home about half-past five, and found a white-faced, red-eyed
+Marjorie still dressed, wrapped in a travelling-rug, and crumpled and
+asleep in his study arm-chair beside the grey ashes of an extinct fire.
+
+In the instant before she awoke he could see what a fragile and pitiful
+being a healthy and happy young wife can appear. Her pose revealed an
+unsuspected slender weakness of body, her face something infantile and
+wistful he had still to reckon with. She awoke with a start and stared
+at him for a moment, and at the room about her. "Oh, where have you
+been?" she asked almost querulously. "Where _have_ you been?"
+
+"But my dear!" he said, as one might speak to a child, "why aren't you
+in bed? It's just dawn."
+
+"Oh," she said, "I waited and I waited. It seemed you _must_ come. I
+read a book. And then I fell asleep." And then with a sob of feeble
+self-pity, "And here I am!" She rubbed the back of her hand into one eye
+and shivered. "I'm cold," she said, "and I want some tea."
+
+"Let's make some," said Trafford.
+
+"It's been horrible waiting," said Marjorie without moving; "horrible!
+Where have you been?"
+
+"I've been working. I got excited by my work. I've been at the
+laboratory. I've had the best spell of work I've ever had since our
+marriage."
+
+"But I have been up all night!" she cried with her face and voice
+softening to tears. "How _could_ you? How _could_ you?"
+
+He was surprised by her weeping. He was still more surprised by the
+self-abandonment that allowed her to continue. "I've been working," he
+repeated, and then looked about with a man's helplessness for the tea
+apparatus. One must have hot water and a teapot and a kettle; he would
+find those in the kitchen. He strolled thoughtfully out of the room,
+thinking out the further details of tea-making all mixed up with
+amazement at Marjorie, while she sat wiping her eyes with a crumpled
+pocket-handkerchief. Presently she followed him down with the rug about
+her like a shawl, and stood watching him as he lit a fire of wood and
+paper among the ashes in the kitchen fireplace. "It's been dreadful,"
+she said, not offering to help.
+
+"You see," he said, on his knees, "I'd really got hold of my work at
+last."
+
+"But you should have sent----"
+
+"I was thinking of my work. I clean forgot."
+
+"Forgot?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"Forgot--_me!_"
+
+"Of course," said Trafford, with a slightly puzzled air, "you don't see
+it as I do."
+
+The kettle engaged him for a time. Then he threw out a suggestion.
+"We'll have to have a telephone."
+
+"I couldn't imagine where you were. I thought of all sorts of things. I
+almost came round--but I was so horribly afraid I mightn't find you."
+
+He renewed his suggestion of a telephone.
+
+"So that if I really want you----" said Marjorie. "Or if I just want to
+feel you're there."
+
+"Yes," said Trafford slowly, jabbing a piece of firewood into the glow;
+but it was chiefly present in his mind that much of that elaborate
+experimenting of his wasn't at all a thing to be cut athwart by the
+exasperating gusts of a telephone bell clamouring for attention.
+Hitherto the laboratory telephone had been in the habit of disconnecting
+itself early in the afternoon.
+
+And yet after all it was this instrument, the same twisted wire and
+little quivering tympanum, that had brought back Marjorie into his life.
+
+
+§ 3
+
+And now Trafford fell into a great perplexity of mind. His banker had
+called his attention to the fact that his account was overdrawn to the
+extent of three hundred and thirteen pounds, and he had been under that
+vague sort of impression one always has about one's current account that
+he was a hundred and fifty or so to the good. His first impression was
+that those hitherto infallible beings, those unseen gnomes of the
+pass-book whose lucid figures, neat tickings, and unrelenting additions
+constituted banks to his imagination, must have made a mistake; his
+second that some one had tampered with a cheque. His third thought
+pointed to Marjorie and the easy circumstances of his home. For a
+fortnight now she had been obviously ailing, oddly irritable; he did not
+understand the change in her, but it sufficed to prevent his taking the
+thing to her at once and going into it with her as he would have done
+earlier. Instead he had sent for his pass-book, and in the presence of
+its neat columns realized for the first time the meaning of Marjorie's
+"three hundred pounds." Including half-a-dozen cheques to Oxbridge
+tradesmen for her old debts, she had spent, he discovered, nearly seven
+hundred and fifty.
+
+He sat before the little bundle of crumpled strips of pink and white,
+perforated, purple stamped and effaced, in a state of extreme
+astonishment. It was no small factor in his amazement to note how very
+carelessly some of those cheques of Marjorie's had been written. Several
+she had not even crossed. The effect of it all was that she'd just spent
+his money--freely--with an utter disregard of the consequences.
+
+Up to that moment it had never occurred to Trafford that anybody one
+really cared for, could be anything but punctilious about money. Now
+here, with an arithmetical exactitude of demonstration, he perceived
+that Marjorie wasn't.
+
+It was so tremendous a discovery for him, so disconcerting and
+startling, that he didn't for two days say a word to her about it. He
+couldn't think of a word to say. He felt that even to put these facts
+before her amounted to an accusation of disloyalty and selfishness that
+he hadn't the courage to make. His work stopped altogether. He struggled
+hourly with that accusation. Did she realize----? There seemed no escape
+from his dilemma; either she didn't care or she didn't understand!
+
+His thoughts went back to the lake of Orta, when he had put all his
+money at her disposal. She had been surprised, and now he perceived she
+had also been a little frightened. The chief excuse he could find for
+her was that she was inexperienced--absolutely inexperienced.
+
+Even now, of course, she was drawing fresh cheques....
+
+He would have to pull himself together, and go into the whole thing--for
+all its infinite disagreeableness--with her....
+
+But it was Marjorie who broached the subject.
+
+He had found work at the laboratory unsatisfactory, and after lunching
+at his club he had come home and gone to his study in order to think out
+the discussion he contemplated with her. She came in to him as he sat
+at his desk. "Busy?" she said. "Not very," he answered, and she came up
+to him, kissed his head, and stood beside him with her hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+"Pass-book?" she asked.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I've been overrunning."
+
+"No end."
+
+The matter was opened. What would she say?
+
+She bent to his ear and whispered. "I'm going to overrun some more."
+
+His voice was resentful. "You _can't_," he said compactly without
+looking at her. "You've spent--enough."
+
+"There's--things."
+
+"What things?"
+
+Her answer took some time in coming. "We'll have to give a wedding
+present to Daffy.... I shall want--some more furniture."
+
+Well, he had to go into it now. "I don't think you can have it," he
+said, and then as she remained silent, "Marjorie, do you know how much
+money I've got?"
+
+"Six thousand."
+
+"I _had_. But we've spent nearly a thousand pounds. Yes--one thousand
+pounds--over and above income. We meant to spend four hundred. And now,
+we've got--hardly anything over five."
+
+"Five thousand," said Marjorie.
+
+"Five thousand."
+
+"And there's your salary."
+
+"Yes, but at this pace----"
+
+"Dear," said Marjorie, and her hands came about his neck, "dear--there's
+something----"
+
+She broke off. An unfamiliar quality in her voice struck into him. He
+turned his head to see her face, rose to his feet staring at her.
+
+This remarkable young woman had become soft and wonderful as April hills
+across which clouds are sweeping. Her face was as if he had never seen
+it before; her eyes bright with tears.
+
+"Oh! don't let's spoil things by thinking of money," she said. "I've got
+something----" Her voice fell to a whisper. "Don't let's spoil things by
+thinking of money.... It's too good, dear, to be true. It's too good to
+be true. It makes everything perfect.... We'll have to furnish that
+little room. I didn't dare to hope it--somehow. I've been so excited and
+afraid. But we've got to furnish that little room there--that empty
+little room upstairs, dear, that we left over.... Oh my _dear!_ my
+_dear!_"
+
+
+§ 4
+
+The world of Trafford and Marjorie was filled and transfigured by the
+advent of their child.
+
+For two days of abundant silences he had been preparing a statement of
+his case for her, he had been full of the danger to his research and all
+the waste of his life that her extravagance threatened. He wanted to
+tell her just all that his science meant to him, explain how his income
+and life had all been arranged to leave him, mind and time and energy,
+free for these commanding investigations. His life was to him the
+service of knowledge--or futility. He had perceived that she did not
+understand this in him; that for her, life was a blaze of eagerly sought
+experiences and gratifications. So far he had thought out things and had
+them ready for her. But now all this impending discussion vanished out
+of his world. Their love was to be crowned by the miracle of parentage.
+This fact flooded his outlook and submerged every other consideration.
+
+This manifest probability came to him as if it were an unforeseen
+marvel. It was as if he had never thought of such a thing before, as
+though a fact entirely novel in the order of the universe had come into
+existence. Marjorie became again magical and wonderful for him, but in a
+manner new and strange, she was grave, solemn, significant. He was
+filled with a passionate solicitude for her welfare, and a passionate
+desire to serve her. It seemed impossible to him that only a day or so
+ago he should have been accusing her in his heart of disloyalty, and
+searching for excuses and mitigations....
+
+All the freshness of his first love for Marjorie returned, his keen
+sense of the sweet gallantry of her voice and bearing, his admiration
+for the swift, falconlike swoop of her decisions, for the grace and
+poise of her body, and the steady frankness of her eyes; but now it was
+all charged with his sense of this new joint life germinating at the
+heart of her slender vigour, spreading throughout her being to change it
+altogether into womanhood for ever. In this new light his passion for
+research and all the scheme of his life appeared faded and unworthy, as
+much egotism as if he had been devoted to hunting or golf or any such
+aimless preoccupation. Fatherhood gripped him and faced him about. It
+was manifestly a monstrous thing that he should ever have expected
+Marjorie to become a mere undisturbing accessory to the selfish
+intellectualism of his career, to shave and limit herself to a mere
+bachelor income, and play no part of her own in the movement of the
+world. He knew better now. Research must fall into its proper place,
+and for his immediate business he must set to work to supplement his
+manifestly inadequate resources.
+
+At first he could form no plan at all for doing that. He determined that
+research must still have his morning hours until lunch-time, and, he
+privately resolved, some part of the night. The rest of his day, he
+thought, he would set aside for a time to money-making. But he was
+altogether inexperienced in the methods of money-making; it was a new
+problem, and a new sort of problem to him altogether. He discovered
+himself helpless and rather silly in the matter. The more obvious
+possibilities seemed to be that he might lecture upon his science or
+write. He communicated with a couple of lecture agencies, and was amazed
+at their scepticism; no doubt he knew his science, on that point they
+were complimentary in a profuse, unconvincing manner, but could he
+interest like X--and here they named a notorious quack--could he _draw_?
+He offered Science Notes to a weekly periodical; the editor answered
+that for the purposes of his publication he preferred, as between
+professors and journalists, journalists. "You real scientific men," he
+said, "are no doubt a thousand times more accurate and novel and all
+that, but as no one seems able to understand you----" He went to his old
+fellow-student, Gwenn, who was editing _The Scientific Review_, and
+through him he secured some semi-popular lectures, which involved, he
+found, travelling about twenty-nine miles weekly at the rate of
+four-and-sixpence a mile--counting nothing for the lectures. Afterwards
+Gwenn arranged for some regular notes on physics and micro-chemistry.
+Trafford made out a weekly time-table, on whose white of dignity,
+leisure, and the honourable pursuit of knowledge, a diaper of red marked
+the claims of domestic necessity.
+
+
+§ 5
+
+It was astonishing how completely this coming child dominated the whole
+atmosphere and all the circumstances of the Traffords. It became their
+central fact, to which everything else turned and pointed. Its effect on
+Marjorie's circle of school and college friends was prodigious. She was
+the first of their company to cross the mysterious boundaries of a
+woman's life. She became to them a heroine mingled with something of the
+priestess. They called upon her more abundantly and sat with her, noted
+the change in her eyes and voice and bearing, talking with a kind of awe
+and a faint diffidence of the promised new life.
+
+Many of them had been deeply tinged by the women's suffrage movement,
+the feminist note was strong among them, and when one afternoon Ottiline
+Winchelsea brought round Agatha Alimony, the novelist, and Agatha said
+in that deep-ringing voice of hers: "I hope it will be a girl, so that
+presently she may fight the battle of her sex," there was the
+profoundest emotion. But when Marjorie conveyed that to Trafford he was
+lacking in response.
+
+"I want a boy," he said, and, being pressed for a reason, explained:
+"Oh, one likes to have a boy. I want him with just your quick eyes and
+ears, my dear, and just my own safe and certain hands."
+
+Mrs. Pope received the news with that depth and aimless complexity of
+emotion which had now become her habitual method with Marjorie. She
+kissed and clasped her daughter, and thought confusedly over her
+shoulder, and said: "Of course, dear----. Oh, I _do_ so hope it won't
+annoy your father." Daffy was "nice," but vague, and sufficiently
+feminist to wish it a daughter, and the pseudo-twins said "_Hoo_-ray!"
+and changed the subject at the earliest possible opportunity. But
+Theodore was deeply moved at the prospect of becoming an uncle, and went
+apart and mused deeply and darkly thereon for some time. It was
+difficult to tell just what Trafford's mother thought, she was complex
+and subtle, and evidently did not show Marjorie all that was in her
+mind; but at any rate it was clear the prospect of a grandchild pleased
+and interested her. And about Aunt Plessington's views there was no
+manner of doubt at all. She thought, and remarked judicially, as one
+might criticize a game of billiards, that on the whole it was just a
+little bit too soon.
+
+
+§ 6
+
+Marjorie kept well throughout March and April, and then suddenly she
+grew unutterably weary and uncomfortable in London. The end of April
+came hot and close and dry--it might have been July for the heat--the
+scrap of garden wilted, and the streets were irritating with fine dust
+and blown scraps of paper and drifting straws. She could think of
+nothing but the shade of trees, and cornfields under sunlight and the
+shadows of passing clouds. So Trafford took out an old bicycle and
+wandered over the home counties for three days, and at last hit upon a
+little country cottage near Great Missenden, a cottage a couple of girl
+artists had furnished and now wanted to let. It had a long, untidy
+vegetable garden and a small orchard and drying-ground, with an old,
+superannuated humbug of a pear-tree near the centre surrounded by a
+green seat, and high hedges with the promise of honeysuckle and
+dog-roses, and gaps that opened into hospitable beechwoods--woods not
+so thick but that there were glades of bluebells, bracken and, to be
+exact, in places embattled stinging-nettles. He took it and engaged a
+minute, active, interested, philoprogenitive servant girl for it, and
+took Marjorie thither in a taxi-cab. She went out, wrapped in a shawl,
+and sat under the pear-tree and cried quietly with weakness and
+sentiment and the tenderness of afternoon sunshine, and forthwith began
+to pick up wonderfully, and was presently writing to Trafford to buy her
+a dog to go for walks with, while he was away in London.
+
+Trafford was still struggling along with his research in spite of a
+constant gravitation to the cottage and Marjorie's side, but he was also
+doing his best to grapple with the difficulties of his financial
+situation. His science notes, which were very uncongenial and difficult
+to do, and his lecturing, still left his income far behind his
+expenditure, and the problem of minimising the inevitable fresh inroads
+on his capital was insistent and distracting. He discovered that he
+could manage his notes more easily and write a more popular article if
+he dictated to a typist instead of writing out the stuff in his own
+manuscript. Dictating made his sentences more copious and open, and the
+effect of the young lady's by no means acquiescent back was to make him
+far more explicit than he tended to be pen in hand. With a pen and alone
+he felt the boredom of the job unendurably, and, to be through with it,
+became more and more terse, allusive, and compactly technical, after the
+style of his original papers. One or two articles by him were accepted
+and published by the monthly magazines, but as he took what the editors
+sent him, he did not find this led to any excessive opulence....
+
+But his heart was very much with Marjorie through all this time.
+Hitherto he had taken her health and vigour and companionship for
+granted, and it changed his attitudes profoundly to find her now an
+ailing thing, making an invincible appeal for restraint and
+consideration and help. She changed marvellously, she gained a new
+dignity, and her complexion took upon itself a fresh, soft beauty. He
+would spend three or four days out of a week at the cottage, and long
+hours of that would be at her side, paper and notes of some forthcoming
+lecture at hand neglected, talking to her consolingly and dreamingly.
+His thoughts were full of ideas about education; he was obsessed, as are
+most intelligent young parents of the modern type, by the enormous
+possibilities of human improvement that might be achieved--if only one
+could begin with a baby from the outset, on the best lines, with the
+best methods, training and preparing it--presumably for a cleaned and
+chastened world. Indeed he made all the usual discoveries of intelligent
+modern young parents very rapidly, fully and completely, and overlooked
+most of those practical difficulties that finally reduce them to human
+dimensions again in quite the normal fashion.
+
+"I sit and muse sometimes when I ought to be computing," he said. "Old
+Durgan watches me and grunts. But think, if we take reasonable care,
+watch its phases, stand ready with a kindergarten toy directly it
+stretches out its hand--think what we can make of it!"...
+
+"We will make it the most wonderful child in the world," said Marjorie.
+"Indeed! what else can it be?"
+
+"Your eyes," said Trafford, "and my hands."
+
+"A girl."
+
+"A boy."
+
+He kissed her white and passive wrist.
+
+
+§ 7
+
+The child was born a little before expectation at the cottage throughout
+a long summer's night and day in early September. Its coming into the
+world was a long and painful struggle; the general practitioner who had
+seemed two days before a competent and worthy person enough, revealed
+himself as hesitating, old-fashioned, and ill-equipped. He had a
+lingering theological objection to the use of chloroform, and the nurse
+from London sulked under his directions and came and discussed his
+methods scornfully with Trafford. From sundown until daylight Trafford
+chafed in the little sitting-room and tried to sleep, and hovered
+listening at the foot of the narrow staircase to the room above. He
+lived through interminable hours of moaning and suspense....
+
+The dawn and sunrise came with a quality of beautiful horror. For years
+afterwards that memory stood out among other memories as something
+peculiarly strange and dreadful. Day followed an interminable night and
+broke slowly. Things crept out of darkness, awoke as it were out of
+mysteries and reclothed themselves in unsubstantial shadows and
+faint-hued forms. All through that slow infiltration of the world with
+light and then with colour, the universe it seemed was moaning and
+endeavouring, and a weak and terrible struggle went on and kept on in
+that forbidden room whose windows opened upon the lightening world,
+dying to a sobbing silence, rising again to agonizing cries,
+fluctuating, a perpetual obstinate failure to achieve a tormenting end.
+He went out, and behold the sky was a wonder of pink flushed level
+clouds and golden hope, and nearly every star except the morning star
+had gone, the supine moon was pale and half-dissolved in blue, and the
+grass which had been grey and wet, was green again, and the bushes and
+trees were green. He returned and hovered in the passage, washed his
+face, listened outside the door for age-long moments, and then went out
+again to listen under the window....
+
+He went to his room and shaved, sat for a long time thinking, and then
+suddenly knelt by his bed and prayed. He had never prayed before in all
+his life....
+
+He returned to the garden, and there neglected and wet with dew was the
+camp chair Marjorie had sat on the evening before, the shawl she had
+been wearing, the novel she had been reading. He brought these things in
+as if they were precious treasures....
+
+Light was pouring into the world again now. He noticed with an extreme
+particularity the detailed dewy delicacy of grass and twig, the silver
+edges to the leaves of briar and nettle, the soft clearness of the moss
+on bank and wall. He noted the woods with the first warmth of autumn
+tinting their green, the clear, calm sky, with just a wisp or so of
+purple cloud waning to a luminous pink on the brightening east, the
+exquisite freshness of the air. And still through the open window,
+incessant, unbearable, came this sound of Marjorie moaning, now dying
+away, now reviving, now weakening again....
+
+Was she dying? Were they murdering her? It was incredible this torture
+could go on. Somehow it must end. Chiefly he wanted to go in and kill
+the doctor. But it would do no good to kill the doctor!
+
+At last the nurse came out, looking a little scared, to ask him to cycle
+three miles away and borrow some special sort of needle that the fool of
+a doctor had forgotten. He went, outwardly meek, and returning was met
+by the little interested servant, very alert and excited and rather
+superior--for here was something no man can do--with the news that he
+had a beautiful little daughter, and that all was well with Marjorie.
+
+He said "Thank God, thank God!" several times, and then went out into
+the kitchen and began to eat some flabby toast and drink some lukewarm
+tea he found there. He was horribly fatigued. "Is she all right?" he
+asked over his shoulder, hearing the doctor's footsteps on the
+stairs....
+
+They were very pontifical and official with him.
+
+Presently they brought out a strange, wizened little animal, wailing
+very stoutly, with a face like a very, very old woman, and reddish skin
+and hair--it had quite a lot of wet blackish hair of an incredible
+delicacy of texture. It kicked with a stumpy monkey's legs and inturned
+feet. He held it: his heart went out to it. He pitied it beyond measure,
+it was so weak and ugly. He was astonished and distressed by the fact of
+its extreme endearing ugliness. He had expected something strikingly
+pretty. It clenched a fist, and he perceived it had all its complement
+of fingers and ridiculous, pretentious little finger nails. Inside that
+fist it squeezed his heart.... He did not want to give it back to them.
+He wanted to protect it. He felt they could not understand it or
+forgive, as he could forgive, its unjustifiable feebleness....
+
+Later, for just a little while, he was permitted to see
+Marjorie--Marjorie so spent, so unspeakably weary, and yet so
+reassuringly vital and living, so full of gentle pride and gentler
+courage amidst the litter of surgical precaution, that the tears came
+streaming down his face and he sobbed shamelessly as he kissed her.
+"Little daughter," she whispered and smiled--just as she had always
+smiled--that sweet, dear smile of hers!--and closed her eyes and said
+no more....
+
+Afterwards as he walked up and down the garden he remembered their
+former dispute and thought how characteristic of Marjorie it was to have
+a daughter in spite of all his wishes.
+
+
+§ 8
+
+For weeks and weeks this astonishing and unprecedented being filled the
+Traffords' earth and sky. Very speedily its minute quaintness passed,
+and it became a vigorous delightful baby that was, as the nurse
+explained repeatedly and very explicitly, not only quite exceptional and
+distinguished, but exactly everything that a baby should be. Its weight
+became of supreme importance; there was a splendid week when it put on
+nine ounces, and an indifferent one when it added only one. And then
+came a terrible crisis. It was ill; some sort of infection had reached
+it, an infantile cholera. Its temperature mounted to a hundred and three
+and a half. It became a flushed misery, wailing with a pathetic feeble
+voice. Then it ceased to wail. Marjorie became white-lipped and
+heavy-eyed from want of sleep, and it seemed to Trafford that perhaps
+his child might die. It seemed to him that the spirit of the universe
+must be a monstrous calivan since children had to die. He went for a
+long walk through the October beechwoods, under a windy sky, and in a
+drift of falling leaves, wondering with a renewed freshness at the
+haunting futilities of life.... Life was not futile--anything but that,
+but futility seemed to be stalking it, waiting for it.... When he
+returned the child was already better, and in a few days it was well
+again--but very light and thin.
+
+When they were sure of its safety, Marjorie and he confessed the
+extremity of their fears to one another. They had not dared to speak
+before, and even now they spoke in undertones of the shadow that had
+hovered and passed over the dearest thing in their lives.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRD
+
+THE NEW PHASE
+
+
+§ 1
+
+In the course of the next six months the child of the ages became an
+almost ordinary healthy baby, and Trafford began to think consecutively
+about his scientific work again--in the intervals of effort of a more
+immediately practical sort.
+
+The recall of molecular physics and particularly of the internal
+condition of colloids to something like their old importance in his life
+was greatly accelerated by the fact that a young Oxford don named
+Behrens was showing extraordinary energy in what had been for a time
+Trafford's distinctive and undisputed field. Behrens was one of those
+vividly clever energetic people who are the despair of originative men.
+He had begun as Trafford's pupil and sedulous ape; he had gone on to
+work that imitated Trafford's in everything except its continual
+freshness, and now he was ransacking every scrap of suggestion to be
+found in Trafford's work, and developing it with an intensity of
+uninspired intelligence that most marvellously simulated originality. He
+was already being noted as an authority; sometimes in an article his
+name would be quoted and Trafford's omitted in relation to Trafford's
+ideas, and in every way his emergence and the manner of his emergence
+threatened and stimulated his model and master. A great effort had to be
+made. Trafford revived the drooping spirits of Durgan by a renewed
+punctuality in the laboratory. He began to stay away from home at night
+and work late again, now, however, under no imperative inspiration, but
+simply because it was only by such an invasion of the evening and night
+that it would be possible to make headway against Behren's unremitting
+industry. And this new demand upon Trafford's already strained mental
+and nervous equipment began very speedily to have its effect upon his
+domestic life.
+
+It is only in romantic fiction that a man can work strenuously to the
+limit of his power and come home to be sweet, sunny and entertaining.
+Trafford's preoccupation involved a certain negligence of Marjorie, a
+certain indisposition to be amused or interested by trifling things, a
+certain irritability....
+
+
+§ 2
+
+And now, indeed, the Traffords were coming to the most difficult and
+fatal phase in marriage. They had had that taste of defiant adventure
+which is the crown of a spirited love affair, they had known the
+sweetness of a maiden passion for a maid, and they had felt all those
+rich and solemn emotions, those splendid fears and terrible hopes that
+weave themselves about the great partnership in parentage. And now, so
+far as sex was concerned, there might be much joy and delight still, but
+no more wonder, no fresh discoveries of incredible new worlds and
+unsuspected stars. Love, which had been a new garden, an unknown land, a
+sunlit sea to launch upon, was now a rich treasure-house of memories.
+And memories, although they afford a perpetually increasing enrichment
+to emotion, are not sufficient in themselves for the daily needs of
+life.
+
+For this, indeed, is the truth of passionate love, that it works outs
+its purpose and comes to an end. A day arrives in every marriage when
+the lovers must face each other, disillusioned, stripped of the last
+shred of excitement--undisguisedly themselves. And our two were married;
+they had bound themselves together under a penalty of scandalous
+disgrace, to take the life-long consequences of their passionate
+association.
+
+It was upon Trafford that this exhaustion of the sustaining magic of
+love pressed most severely, because it was he who had made the greatest
+adaptations to the exigencies of their union. He had crippled, he
+perceived more and more clearly, the research work upon which his whole
+being had once been set, and his hours were full of tiresome and trivial
+duties and his mind engaged and worried by growing financial anxieties.
+He had made these abandonments in a phase of exalted passion for the one
+woman in the world and her unprecedented child, and now he saw, in spite
+of all his desire not to see, that she was just a weak human being among
+human beings, and neither she nor little Margharita so very marvellous.
+
+But while Marjorie shrank to the dimensions of reality, research
+remained still a luminous and commanding dream. In love one fails or one
+wins home, but the lure of research is for ever beyond the hills, every
+victory is a new desire. Science has inexhaustibly fresh worlds to
+conquer....
+
+He was beginning now to realize the dilemma of his life, the reality of
+the opposition between Marjorie and child and home on the one hand and
+on the other this big wider thing, this remoter, severer demand upon his
+being. He had long perceived these were distinct and different things,
+but now it appeared more and more inevitable that they should be
+antagonistic and mutually disregardful things. Each claimed him
+altogether, it seemed, and suffered compromise impatiently. And this is
+where the particular stress of his situation came in. Hitherto he had
+believed that nothing of any importance was secret or inexplicable
+between himself and Marjorie. His ideal of his relationship had assumed
+a complete sympathy of feeling, an almost instinctive identity of
+outlook. And now it was manifest they were living in a state of
+inadequate understanding, that she knew only in the most general and
+opaque forms, the things that interested him so profoundly, and had but
+the most superficial interest in his impassioned curiosities. And
+missing as she did the strength of his intellectual purpose she missed
+too, she had no inkling of, the way in which her careless expansiveness
+pressed upon him. She was unaware that she was destroying an essential
+thing in his life.
+
+He could not tell how far this antagonism was due to inalterable
+discords of character, how far it might not be an ineradicable sex
+difference, a necessary aspect of marriage. The talk of old Sir Roderick
+Dover at the Winton Club germinated in his mind, a branching and
+permeating suggestion. And then would come a phase of keen sympathy with
+Marjorie; she would say brilliant and penetrating things, display a
+swift cleverness that drove all these intimations of incurable
+divergence clean out of his head again. Then he would find explanations
+in the differences between his and Marjorie's training and early
+associations. He perceived his own upbringing had had a steadfastness
+and consistency that had been altogether lacking in hers. He had had the
+rare advantage of perfect honesty in the teaching and tradition of his
+home. There had never been any shams or sentimentalities for him to find
+out and abandon. From boyhood his mother's hand had pointed steadily to
+the search for truth as the supreme ennobling fact in life. She had
+never preached this to him, never delivered discourses upon his father's
+virtues, but all her conversation and life was saturated with this idea.
+Compared with this atmosphere of high and sustained direction, the
+intellectual and moral quality of the Popes, he saw, was the quality of
+an agitated rag bag. They had thought nothing out, joined nothing
+together, they seemed to believe everything and nothing, they were
+neither religious nor irreligious, neither moral nor adventurous. In the
+place of a religion, and tainting their entire atmosphere, they had the
+decaying remains of a dead Anglicanism; it was clear they did not
+believe in its creed, and as clear that they did not want to get rid of
+it; it afforded them no guidance, but only vague pretensions, and the
+dismal exercises of Silas Root flourished in its shadows, a fungus, a
+post-mortem activity of the soul. None of them had any idea of what they
+were for or what their lives as a whole might mean; they had no
+standards, but only instincts and an instinctive fear of instincts; Pope
+wanted to be tremendously respected and complimented by everybody and
+get six per cent. for his money; Mrs. Pope wanted things to go smoothly;
+the young people had a general indisposition to do anything that might
+"look bad," and otherwise "have a good time." But neither Marjorie nor
+any of them had any test for a good time, and so they fluctuated in
+their conceptions of what they wanted from day to day. Now it was
+Plessingtonian standards, now Carmel standards, now the standards of
+Agatha Alimony; now it was a stimulating novel, now a gleam of ćsthetic
+imaginativeness come, Heaven knows whence, that dominated her mood. He
+was beginning to understand all this at last, and to see the need of
+coherence in Marjorie's mood.
+
+He realized the unfairness of keeping his thoughts to himself, the need
+of putting his case before her, and making her realize their fatal and
+widening divergence. He wanted to infect her with his scientific
+passion, to give her his sense of the gravity of their practical
+difficulties. He would sit amidst his neglected work in his laboratory
+framing explanatory phrases. He would prepare the most lucid and
+complete statements, and go about with these in his mind for days
+waiting for an opportunity of saying what he felt so urgently had to be
+said.
+
+But the things that seemed so luminous and effective in the laboratory
+had a curious way of fading and shrinking beside the bright colours of
+Marjorie's Bokhara hangings, in the presence of little Margharita pink
+and warm and entertaining in her bath, or amidst the fluttering rustle
+of the afternoon tea-parties that were now becoming frequent in his
+house. And when he was alone with her he discovered they didn't talk now
+any more--except in terms of a constrained and formal affection.
+
+What had happened to them? What was the matter between himself and
+Marjorie that he couldn't even intimate his sense of their divergence?
+He would have liked to discuss the whole thing with his mother, but
+somehow that seemed disloyal to Marjorie....
+
+One day they quarrelled.
+
+He came in about six in the afternoon, jaded from the delivery of a
+suburban lecture, and the consequent tedium of suburban travel, and
+discovered Marjorie examining the effect of a new picture which had
+replaced the German print of sunlit waves over the dining-room
+mantelpiece. It was a painting in the post-impressionist manner, and it
+had arrived after the close of the exhibition in Weldon Street, at
+which Marjorie had bought it. She had bought it in obedience to a sudden
+impulse, and its imminence had long weighed upon her conscience. She had
+gone to the show with Sydney Flor and old Mrs. Flor, Sydney's mother,
+and a kind of excitement had come upon them at the idea of possessing
+this particular picture. Mrs. Flor had already bought three Herbins, and
+her daughter wanted to dissuade her from more. "But they're so
+delightful," said Mrs. Flor. "You're overrunning your allowance," said
+Sydney. Disputing the point, they made inquiries for the price, and
+learnt that this bright epigram in colour was going begging--was even
+offered at a reduction from the catalogue price. A reduced price always
+had a strong appeal nowadays to Marjorie's mind. "If you don't get it,"
+she said abruptly, "I shall."
+
+The transition from that attitude to ownership was amazingly rapid. Then
+nothing remained but to wait for the picture. She had dreaded a mistake,
+a blundering discord, but now with the thing hung she could see her
+quick eye had not betrayed her. It was a mass of reds, browns, purples,
+and vivid greens and greys; an effect of roof and brick house facing
+upon a Dutch canal, and it lit up the room and was echoed and reflected
+by all the rest of her courageous colour scheme, like a coal-fire amidst
+mahogany and metal. It justified itself to her completely, and she faced
+her husband with a certain confidence.
+
+"Hullo!" he cried.
+
+"A new picture," she said. "What do you think of it?"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"A town or something--never mind. Look at the colour. It heartens
+everything."
+
+Trafford looked at the painting with a reluctant admiration.
+
+"It's brilliant--and impudent. He's an artist--whoever he is. He hits
+the thing. But--I say--how did you get it?"
+
+"I bought it."
+
+"Bought it! Good Lord! How much?"
+
+"Oh! ten guineas," said Marjorie, with an affectation of ease; "it will
+be worth thirty in ten years' time."
+
+Trafford's reply was to repeat: "Ten guineas!"
+
+Their eyes met, and there was singularly little tenderness in their
+eyes.
+
+"It was priced at thirteen," said Marjorie, ending a pause, and with a
+sinking heart.
+
+Trafford had left her side. He walked to the window and sat down in a
+chair.
+
+"I think this is too much," he said, and his voice had disagreeable
+notes in it she had never heard before. "I have just been earning two
+guineas at Croydon, of all places, administering comminuted science to
+fools--and here I find--this exploit! Ten guineas' worth of picture. To
+say we can't afford it is just to waste a mild expression. It's--mad
+extravagance. It's waste of money--it's--oh!--monstrous disloyalty.
+Disloyalty!" He stared resentful at the cheerful, unhesitating daubs of
+the picture for a moment. Its affected carelessness goaded him to fresh
+words. He spoke in a tone of absolute hostility. "I think this winds me
+up to something," he said. "You'll have to give up your cheque-book,
+Marjorie."
+
+"Give up my cheque-book!"
+
+He looked up at her and nodded. There was a warm flush in her cheeks,
+her lips panted apart, and tears of disappointment and vexation were
+shining beautifully in her eyes. She mingled the quality of an
+indignant woman with the distress and unreasonable resentment of a
+child.
+
+"Because I've bought this picture?"
+
+"Can we go on like this?" he asked, and felt how miserably he had
+bungled in opening this question that had been in his mind so long.
+
+"But it's _beautiful!_" she said.
+
+He disregarded that. He felt now that he had to go on with these
+long-premeditated expostulations. He was tired and dusty from his
+third-class carriage, his spirit was tired and dusty, and he said what
+he had to say without either breadth or power, an undignified statement
+of personal grievances, a mere complaint of the burthen of work that
+falls upon a man. That she missed the high aim in him, and all sense of
+the greatness they were losing had vanished from his thoughts. He had
+too heavy a share of the common burthen, and she pressed upon him
+unthinkingly; that was all he could say. He girded at her with a bitter
+and loveless truth; it was none the less cruel that in her heart she
+knew these things he said were true. But he went beyond justice--as
+every quarrelling human being does; he called the things she had bought
+and the harmonies she had created, "this litter and rubbish for which I
+am wasting my life." That stabbed into her pride acutely and deeply. She
+knew anyhow that it wasn't so simple and crude as that. It was not mere
+witlessness she contributed to their trouble. She tried to indicate her
+sense of that. But she had no power of ordered reasoning, she made
+futile interruptions, she was inexpressive of anything but emotion, she
+felt gagged against his flow of indignant, hostile words. They blistered
+her.
+
+Suddenly she went to her little desk in the corner, unlocked it with
+trembling hands, snatched her cheque-book out of a heap of still
+unsettled bills, and having locked that anti-climax safe away again,
+turned upon him. "Here it is," she said, and stood poised for a moment.
+Then she flung down the little narrow grey cover--nearly empty, it was,
+of cheques, on the floor before him.
+
+"Take it," she cried, "take it. I never asked you to give it me."
+
+A memory of Orta and its reeds and sunshine and love rose like a
+luminous mist between them....
+
+She ran weeping from the room.
+
+He leapt to his feet as the door closed. "Marjorie!" he cried.
+
+But she did not hear him....
+
+
+§ 3
+
+The disillusionment about marriage which had discovered Trafford a
+thwarted, overworked, and worried man, had revealed Marjorie with time
+on her hands, superabundant imaginative energy, and no clear intimation
+of any occupation. With them, as with thousands of young couples in
+London to-day, the breadwinner was overworked, and the spending
+partner's duty was chiefly the negative one of not spending. You cannot
+consume your energies merely in not spending money. Do what she could,
+Marjorie could not contrive to make house and child fill the waking
+hours. She was far too active and irritable a being to be beneficial
+company all day for genial, bubble-blowing little Margharita; she could
+play with that young lady and lead her into ecstasies of excitement and
+delight, and she could see with an almost instinctive certainty when
+anything was going wrong; but for the rest that little life reposed far
+more beneficially upon the passive acquiescence of May, her pink and
+wholesome nurse. And the household generally was in the hands of a
+trustworthy cook-general, who maintained a tolerable routine. Marjorie
+did not dare to have an idea about food or domestic arrangements; if she
+touched that routine so much as with her little finger it sent up the
+bills. She could knock off butcher and greengrocer and do every scrap of
+household work that she could touch, in a couple of hours a day. She
+tried to find some work to fill her leisure; she suggested to Trafford
+that she might help him by writing up his Science Notes from rough
+pencil memoranda, but when it became clear that the first step to her
+doing this would be the purchase of a Remington typewriter and a special
+low table to carry it, he became bluntly discouraging. She thought of
+literary work, and sat down one day to write a short story and earn
+guineas, and was surprised to find that she knew nothing of any sort of
+human being about whom she could invent a story. She tried a cheap
+subscription at Mudie's and novels, and they filled her with a thirst
+for events; she tried needlework, and found her best efforts
+aesthetically feeble and despicable, and that her mind prowled above the
+silks and colours like a hungry wolf.
+
+The early afternoons were the worst time, from two to four, before
+calling began. The devil was given great power over Marjorie's early
+afternoon. She could even envy her former home life then, and reflect
+that there, at any rate, one had a chance of a game or a quarrel with
+Daffy or Syd or Rom or Theodore. She would pull herself together and go
+out for a walk, and whichever way she went there were shops and shops
+and shops, a glittering array of tempting opportunities for spending
+money. Sometimes she would give way to spending exactly as a struggling
+drunkard decides to tipple. She would fix on some object, some object
+trivial and a little rare and not too costly, as being needed--when she
+knew perfectly well it wasn't needed--and choose the most remotest shops
+and display the exactest insistence upon her requirements. Sometimes she
+would get home from these raids without buying at all. After four the
+worst of the day was over; one could call on people or people might
+telephone and follow up with a call; and there was a chance of Trafford
+coming home....
+
+One day at the Carmels' she found herself engaged in a vigorous
+flirtation with young Carmel. She hadn't noticed it coming on, but there
+she was in a windowseat talking quite closely to him. He said he was
+writing a play, a wonderful passionate play about St. Francis, and only
+she could inspire and advise him. Wasn't there some afternoon in the
+week when she sat and sewed, so that he might come and sit by her and
+read to her and talk to her? He made his request with a certain
+confidence, but it filled her with a righteous panic; she pulled him up
+with an abruptness that was almost inartistic. On her way home she was
+acutely ashamed of herself; this was the first time she had let any man
+but Trafford think he might be interesting to her, but once or twice on
+former occasions she had been on the verge of such provocative
+intimations. This sort of thing anyhow mustn't happen.
+
+But if she didn't dress with any distinction--because of the cost--and
+didn't flirt and trail men in her wake, what was she to do at the
+afternoon gatherings which were now her chief form of social contact?
+What was going to bring people to her house? She knew that she was more
+than ordinarily beautiful and that she could talk well, but that does
+not count for much if you are rather dowdy, and quite uneventfully
+virtuous.
+
+It became the refrain of all her thoughts that she must find something
+to do.
+
+There remained "Movements."
+
+She might take up a movement. She was a rather exceptionally good public
+speaker. Only her elopement and marriage had prevented her being
+president of her college Debating Society. If she devoted herself to
+some movement she would be free to devise an ostentatiously simple dress
+for herself and stick to it, and she would be able to give her little
+house a significance of her own, and present herself publicly against
+what is perhaps quite the best of all backgrounds for a good-looking,
+clear-voiced, self-possessed woman, a platform. Yes; she had to go in
+for a Movement.
+
+She reviewed the chief contemporary Movements much as she might have
+turned over dress fabrics in a draper's shop, weighing the advantages
+and disadvantages of each....
+
+London, of course, is always full of Movements. Essentially they are
+absorbents of superfluous feminine energy. They have a common flavour of
+progress and revolutionary purpose, and common features in abundant
+meetings, officials, and organization generally. Few are expensive, and
+still fewer produce any tangible results in the world. They direct
+themselves at the most various ends; the Poor, that favourite butt,
+either as a whole or in such typical sections as the indigent invalid or
+the indigent aged, the young, public health, the woman's cause, the
+prevention of animal food, anti-vivisection, the gratuitous
+advertisement of Shakespear (that neglected poet), novel but genteel
+modifications of medical or religious practice, dress reform, the
+politer aspects of socialism, the encouragement of ćronautics, universal
+military service, garden suburbs, domestic arts, proportional
+representation, duodecimal arithmetic, and the liberation of the drama.
+They range in size and importance from campaigns on a Plessingtonian
+scale to sober little intellectual Beckingham things that arrange to
+meet half-yearly, and die quietly before the second assembly. If Heaven
+by some miracle suddenly gave every Movement in London all it professed
+to want, our world would be standing on its head and everything would be
+extremely unfamiliar and disconcerting. But, as Mr. Roosevelt once
+remarked, the justifying thing about life is the effort and not the
+goal, and few Movements involve any real and impassioned struggle to get
+to the ostensible object. They exist as an occupation; they exercise the
+intellectual and moral activities without undue disturbance of the
+normal routines of life. In the days when everybody was bicycling an
+ingenious mechanism called Hacker's Home Bicycle used to be advertised.
+Hacker's Home Bicycle was a stand bearing small rubber wheels upon which
+one placed one's bicycle (properly equipped with a cyclometer) in such a
+way that it could be mounted and ridden without any sensible forward
+movement whatever. In bad weather, or when the state of the roads made
+cycling abroad disagreeable Hacker's Home Bicycle could be placed in
+front of an open window and ridden furiously for any length of time.
+Whenever the rider tired, he could descend--comfortably at home
+again--and examine the cyclometer to see how far he had been. In exactly
+the same way the ordinary London Movement gives scope for the restless
+and progressive impulse in human nature without the risk of personal
+entanglements or any inconvenient disturbance of the milieu.
+
+Marjorie considered the Movements about her. She surveyed the accessible
+aspects of socialism, but that old treasure-house of constructive
+suggestion had an effect like a rich château which had been stormed and
+looted by a mob. For a time the proposition that "we are all Socialists
+nowadays" had prevailed. The blackened and discredited frame remained,
+the contents were scattered; Aunt Plessington had a few pieces, the Tory
+Democrats had taken freely, the Liberals were in possession of a hastily
+compiled collection. There wasn't, she perceived, and there never had
+been a Socialist Movement; the socialist idea which had now become part
+of the general consciousness, had always been too big for polite
+domestication. She weighed Aunt Plessington, too, in the balance, and
+found her not so much wanting indeed as excessive. She felt that a
+Movement with Aunt Plessington in it couldn't possibly offer even
+elbow-room for anybody else. Philanthropy generally she shunned. The
+movements that aim at getting poor people into rooms and shouting at
+them in an improving, authoritative way, aroused an instinctive dislike
+in her. Her sense of humour, again, would not let her patronize
+Shakespear or the stage, or raise the artistic level of the country by
+means of green-dyed deal, and the influence of Trafford on her mind
+debarred her from attempting the physical and moral regeneration of
+humanity by means of beans and nut butter. It was indeed rather by the
+elimination of competing movements than by any positive preference that
+she found herself declining at last towards Agatha Alimony's section of
+the suffrage movement.... It was one of the less militant sections, but
+it held more meetings and passed more resolutions than any two others.
+
+One day Trafford, returning from an afternoon of forced and
+disappointing work in his laboratory,--his mind had been steadfastly
+sluggish and inelastic,--discovered Marjorie's dining room crowded with
+hats and all the rustle and colour which plays so large a part in
+constituting contemporary feminine personality. Buzard, the feminist
+writer, and a young man just down from Cambridge who had written a
+decadent poem, were the only men present. The chairs were arranged
+meeting-fashion, but a little irregularly to suggest informality; the
+post-impressionist picture was a rosy benediction on the gathering, and
+at a table in the window sat Mrs. Pope in the chair, looking quietly
+tactful in an unusually becoming bonnet, supported by her daughter and
+Agatha Alimony. Marjorie was in a simple gown of blueish-grey, hatless
+amidst a froth of foolish bows and feathers, and she looked not only
+beautiful and dignified but deliberately and conscientiously patient
+until she perceived the new arrival. Then he noted she was a little
+concerned for him, and made some futile sign he did not comprehend. The
+meeting was debating the behaviour of women at the approaching census,
+and a small, earnest, pale-faced lady with glasses was standing against
+the fireplace with a crumpled envelope covered with pencil notes in her
+hand, and making a speech. Trafford wanted his tea badly, but he had not
+the wit to realize that his study had been converted into a refreshment
+room for the occasion; he hesitated, and seated himself near the
+doorway, and so he was caught; he couldn't, he felt, get away and seem
+to slight a woman who was giving herself the pains of addressing him.
+
+The small lady in glasses was giving a fancy picture of the mind of Mr.
+Asquith and its attitude to the suffrage movement, and telling with a
+sort of inspired intimacy just how Mr. Asquith had hoped to "bully women
+down," and just how their various attempts to bring home to him the
+eminent reasonableness of their sex by breaking his windows,
+interrupting his meetings, booing at him in the streets and threatening
+his life, had time after time baffled this arrogant hope. There had been
+many signs lately that Mr. Asquith's heart was failing him. Now here was
+a new thing to fill him with despair. When Mr. Asquith learnt that women
+refused to be counted in the census, then at least she was convinced he
+must give in. When he gave in it would not be long--she had her
+information upon good authority--before they got the Vote. So what they
+had to do was not to be counted in the census. That was their paramount
+duty at the present time. The women of England had to say quietly but
+firmly to the census man when he came round: "No, we don't count in an
+election, and we won't count now. Thank you." No one could force a woman
+to fill in a census paper she didn't want to, and for her own part, said
+the little woman with the glasses, she'd starve first. (Applause.) For
+her own part she was a householder with a census paper of her own, and
+across that she was going to write quite plainly and simply what she
+thought of Mr. Asquith. Some of those present wouldn't have census
+papers to fill up; they would be sent to the man, the so-called Head of
+the House. But the W.S.P.U. had foreseen that. Each householder had to
+write down the particulars of the people who slept in his house on
+Sunday night, or who arrived home before mid-day on Monday; the reply of
+the women of England must be not to sleep in a house that night where
+census papers were properly filled, and not to go home until the
+following afternoon. All through that night the women of England must be
+abroad. She herself was prepared, and her house would be ready. There
+would be coffee and refreshments enough for an unlimited number of
+refugees, there would be twenty or thirty sofas and mattresses and piles
+of blankets for those who chose to sleep safe from all counting. In
+every quarter of London there would be houses of refuge like hers. And
+so they would make Mr. Asquith's census fail, as it deserved to fail, as
+every census would fail until women managed these affairs in a sensible
+way. For she supposed they were all agreed that only women could manage
+these things in a sensible way. That was _her_ contribution to this
+great and important question. (Applause, amidst which the small lady
+with the glasses resumed her seat.)
+
+Trafford glanced doorward, but before he could move another speaker was
+in possession of the room. This was a very young, tall, fair,
+round-shouldered girl who held herself with an unnatural rigidity, fixed
+her eyes on the floor just in front of the chairwoman, and spoke with
+knitted brows and an effect of extreme strain. She remarked that some
+people did not approve of this proposed boycott of the census. She hung
+silent for a moment, as if ransacking her mind for something mislaid,
+and then proceeded to remark that she proposed to occupy a few moments
+in answering that objection--if it could be called an objection. They
+said that spoiling the census was an illegitimate extension of the woman
+movement. Well, she objected--she objected fiercely--to every word of
+that phrase. Nothing was an illegitimate extension of the woman
+movement. Nothing could be. (Applause.) That was the very principle
+they had been fighting for all along. So that, examined in this way,
+this so-called objection resolved itself into a mere question begging
+phrase. Nothing more. And her reply therefore to those who made it was
+that they were begging the question, and however well that might do for
+men, it would certainly not do, they would find, for women. (Applause.)
+For the freshly awakened consciousness of women. (Further applause.)
+This was a war in which quarter was neither asked nor given; if it were
+not so things might be different. She remained silent after that for the
+space of twenty seconds perhaps, and then remarked that that seemed to
+be all she had to say, and sat down amidst loud encouragement.
+
+Then with a certain dismay Trafford saw his wife upon her feet. He was
+afraid of the effect upon himself of what she was going to say, but he
+need have had no reason for his fear. Marjorie was a seasoned debater,
+self-possessed, with a voice very well controlled and a complete mastery
+of that elaborate appearance of reasonableness which is so essential to
+good public speaking. She could speak far better than she could talk.
+And she startled the meeting in her opening sentence by declaring that
+she meant to stay at home on the census night, and supply her husband
+with every scrap of information he hadn't got already that might be
+needed to make the return an entirely perfect return. (Marked absence of
+applause.)
+
+She proceeded to avow her passionate interest in the feminist movement
+of which this agitation for the vote was merely the symbol. (A voice:
+"No!") No one could be more aware of the falsity of woman's position at
+the present time than she was--she seemed to be speaking right across
+the room to Trafford--they were neither pets nor partners, but
+something between the two; now indulged like spoilt children, now
+blamed like defaulting partners; constantly provoked to use the arts of
+their sex, constantly mischievous because of that provocation. She
+caught her breath and stopped for a moment, as if she had suddenly
+remembered the meeting intervening between herself and Trafford. No, she
+said, there was no more ardent feminist and suffragist than herself in
+the room. She wanted the vote and everything it implied with all her
+heart. With all her heart. But every way to get a thing wasn't the right
+way, and she felt with every fibre of her being that this petulant
+hostility to the census was a wrong way and an inconsistent way, and
+likely to be an unsuccessful way--one that would lose them the sympathy
+and help of just that class of men they should look to for support, the
+cultivated and scientific men. (A voice: "_Do_ we want them?") What was
+the commonest charge made by the man in the street against women?--that
+they were unreasonable and unmanageable, that it was their way to get
+things by crying and making an irrelevant fuss. And here they were, as a
+body, doing that very thing! Let them think what the census and all that
+modern organization of vital statistics of which it was the central
+feature stood for. It stood for order, for the replacement of guesses
+and emotional generalization by a clear knowledge of facts, for the
+replacement of instinctive and violent methods, by which women had
+everything to lose (a voice: "No!") by reason and knowledge and
+self-restraint, by which women had everything to gain. To her the
+advancement of science, the progress of civilization, and the
+emancipation of womanhood were nearly synonymous terms. At any rate,
+they were different phases of one thing. They were different aspects of
+one wider purpose. When they struck at the census, she felt, they
+struck at themselves. She glanced at Trafford as if she would convince
+him that this was the real voice of the suffrage movement, and sat down
+amidst a brief, polite applause, that warmed to rapture as Agatha
+Alimony, the deep-voiced, stirring Agatha, rose to reply.
+
+Miss Alimony, who was wearing an enormous hat with three nodding ostrich
+feathers, a purple bow, a gold buckle and numerous minor ornaments of
+various origin and substance, said they had all of them listened with
+the greatest appreciation and sympathy to the speech of their hostess.
+Their hostess was a newcomer to the movement, she knew she might say
+this without offence, and was passing through a phase, an early phase,
+through which many of them had passed. This was the phase of trying to
+take a reasonable view of an unreasonable situation. (Applause.) Their
+hostess had spoken of science, and no doubt science was a great thing;
+but there was something greater than science, and that was the ideal. It
+was woman's place to idealize. Sooner or later their hostess would
+discover, as they had all discovered, that it was not to science but the
+ideal that women must look for freedom. Consider, she said, the
+scientific men of to-day. Consider, for example, Sir James
+Crichton-Browne, the physiologist. Was he on their side? On the
+contrary, he said the most unpleasant things about them on every
+occasion. He went out of his way to say them. Or consider Sir Almroth
+Wright, did he speak well of women? Or Sir Ray Lankester, the biologist,
+who was the chief ornament of the Anti-Suffrage Society. Or Sir Roderick
+Dover, the physicist, who--forgetting Madame Curie, a far more
+celebrated physicist than himself, she ventured to say (Applause.) had
+recently gone outside his province altogether to abuse feminine
+research. There were your scientific men. Mrs. Trafford had said their
+anti-census campaign would annoy scientific men; well, under the
+circumstances, she wanted to annoy scientific men. (Applause.) She
+wanted to annoy everybody. Until women got the vote (loud applause) the
+more annoying they were the better. When the whole world was impressed
+by the idea that voteless women were an intolerable nuisance, then there
+would cease to be voteless women. (Enthusiasm.) Mr. Asquith had said--
+
+And so on for quite a long time....
+
+Buzard rose out of waves of subsiding emotion. Buzard was a slender,
+long-necked, stalk-shaped man with gilt glasses, uneasy movements and a
+hypersensitive manner. He didn't so much speak as thrill with thought
+vibrations; he spoke like an entranced but still quite gentlemanly
+sibyl. After Agatha's deep trumpet calls, he sounded like a solo on the
+piccolo. He picked out all his more important words with a little stress
+as though he gave them capitals. He said their hostess's remarks had set
+him thinking. He thought it was possible to stew the Scientific Argument
+in its own Juice. There was something he might call the Factuarial
+Estimate of Values. Well, it was a High Factuarial Value on their side,
+in his opinion at any rate, when Anthropologists came and told him that
+the Primitive Human Society was a Matriarchate. ("But it wasn't!" said
+Trafford to himself.) It had a High Factuarial Value when they assured
+him that Every One of the Great Primitive Inventions was made by a
+Woman, and that it was to Women they owed Fire and the early Epics and
+Sagas. ("Good Lord!" said Trafford.) It had a High Factuarial Value when
+they not only asserted but proved that for Thousands of Years, and
+perhaps for Hundreds of Thousands of Years, Women had been in possession
+of Articulate Speech before men rose to that Level of Intelligence....
+
+It occurred suddenly to Trafford that he could go now; that it would be
+better to go; that indeed he _must_ go; it was no doubt necessary that
+his mind should have to work in the same world as Buzard's mental
+processes, but at any rate those two sets of unsympathetic functions
+need not go on in the same room. Something might give way. He got up,
+and with those elaborate efforts to be silent that lead to the violent
+upsetting of chairs, got himself out of the room and into the passage,
+and was at once rescued by the sympathetic cook-general, in her most
+generalized form, and given fresh tea in his study--which impressed him
+as being catastrophically disarranged....
+
+
+§ 4
+
+When Marjorie was at last alone with him she found him in a state of
+extreme mental stimulation. "Your speech," he said, "was all right. I
+didn't know you could speak like that, Marjorie. But it soared like the
+dove above the waters. Waters! I never heard such a flood of rubbish....
+You know, it's a mistake to _mass_ women. It brings out something
+silly.... It affected Buzard as badly as any one. The extraordinary
+thing is they have a case, if only they'd be quiet. Why did you get them
+together?"
+
+"It's our local branch."
+
+"Yes, but _why?_"
+
+"Well, if they talk about things--Discussions like this clear up their
+minds."
+
+"Discussion! It wasn't discussion."
+
+"Oh! it was a beginning."
+
+"Chatter of that sort isn't the beginning of discussion, it's the end.
+It's the death-rattle. Nobody was meeting the thoughts of any one. I
+admit Buzard, who's a man, talked the worst rubbish of all. That
+Primitive Matriarchate of his! So it isn't sex. I've noticed before that
+the men in this movement of yours are worse than the women. It isn't
+sex. It's something else. It's a foolishness. It's a sort of
+irresponsible looseness." He turned on her gravely. "You ought not to
+get all these people here. It's contagious. Before you know it you'll
+find your own mind liquefy and become enthusiastic and slop about.
+You'll begin to talk monomania about Mr. Asquith."
+
+"But it's a great movement, Rag, even if incidentally they say and do
+silly things!"
+
+"My dear! aren't I feminist? Don't I want women fine and sane and
+responsible? Don't I want them to have education, to handle things, to
+vote like men and bear themselves with the gravity of men? And these
+meetings--all hat and flutter! These displays of weak, untrained,
+hysterical vehemence! These gatherings of open-mouthed impressionable
+young girls to be trained in incoherence! You can't go on with it!"
+
+Marjorie regarded him quietly for a moment. "I must go on with
+something," she said.
+
+"Well, not this."
+
+"Then _what?_"
+
+"Something sane."
+
+"Tell me what."
+
+"It must come out of yourself."
+
+Marjorie thought sullenly for a moment. "Nothing comes out of myself,"
+she said.
+
+"I don't think you realize a bit what my life has become," she went on;
+"how much I'm like some one who's been put in a pleasant, high-class
+prison."
+
+"This house! It's your own!"
+
+"It doesn't give me an hour's mental occupation in the day. It's all
+very well to say I might do more in it. I can't--without absurdity. Or
+expenditure. I can't send the girl away and start scrubbing. I can't
+make jam or do ornamental needlework. The shops do it better and
+cheaper, and I haven't been trained to it. I've been trained _not_ to do
+it. I've been brought up on games and school-books, and fed on mixed
+ideas. I can't sit down and pacify myself with a needle as women used to
+do. Besides, I not only detest doing needlework but I hate it--the sort
+of thing a woman of my kind does anyhow--when it's done. I'm no artist.
+I'm not sufficiently interested in outside things to spend my time in
+serious systematic reading, and after four or five novels--oh, these
+meetings are better than that! You see, you've got a life--too much of
+it--_I_ haven't got enough. I wish almost I could sleep away half the
+day. Oh! I want something _real_, Rag; something more than I've got." A
+sudden inspiration came to her. "Will you let me come to your laboratory
+and work with you?"
+
+She stopped abruptly. She caught up her own chance question and pointed
+it at him, a vitally important challenge. "Will you let me come to your
+laboratory and work?" she repeated.
+
+Trafford thought. "No," he said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I'm in love with you. I can't think of my work when you're
+about.... And you're too much behind. Oh my dear! don't you see how
+you're behind?" He paused. "I've been soaking in this stuff of mine for
+ten long years."
+
+"Yes," assented Marjorie flatly.
+
+He watched her downcast face, and then it lifted to him with a helpless
+appeal in her eyes, and lift in her voice. "But look here, Rag!" she
+cried--"what on earth am I to _DO?_"
+
+
+§ 5
+
+At least there came out of these discussions one thing, a phrase, a
+purpose, which was to rule the lives of the Traffords for some years. It
+expressed their realization that instinct and impulse had so far played
+them false, that life for all its rich gifts of mutual happiness wasn't
+adjusted between them. "We've got," they said, "to talk all this out
+between us. We've got to work this out." They didn't mean to leave
+things at a misfit, and that was certainly their present relation. They
+were already at the problem of their joint lives, like a tailor with his
+pins and chalk. Marjorie hadn't rejected a humorist and all his works in
+order to decline at last to the humorous view of life, that rather
+stupid, rather pathetic, grin-and-bear-it attitude compounded in
+incalculable proportions of goodwill, evasion, indolence, slovenliness,
+and (nevertheless) spite (masquerading indeed as jesting comment), which
+supplies the fabric of everyday life for untold thousands of educated
+middle-class people. She hated the misfit. She didn't for a moment
+propose to pretend that the ungainly twisted sleeve, the puckered back,
+was extremely jolly and funny. She had married with a passionate
+anticipation of things fitting and fine, and it was her nature, in great
+matters as in small, to get what she wanted strenuously before she
+counted the cost. About both their minds there was something sharp and
+unrelenting, and if Marjorie had been disposed to take refuge from facts
+in swathings of aesthetic romanticism, whatever covering she contrived
+would have been torn to rags very speedily by that fierce and steely
+veracity which swung down out of the laboratory into her home.
+
+One may want to talk things out long before one hits upon the phrases
+that will open up the matter.
+
+There were two chief facts in the case between them and so far they had
+looked only one in the face, the fact that Marjorie was unemployed to a
+troublesome and distressing extent, and that there was nothing in her
+nature or training to supply, and something in their circumstances and
+relations to prevent any adequate use of her energies. With the second
+fact neither of them cared to come to close quarters as yet, and neither
+as yet saw very distinctly how it was linked to the first, and that was
+the steady excess of her expenditure over their restricted means. She
+was secretly surprised at her own weakness. Week by week and month by
+month, they were spending all his income and eating into that little
+accumulation of capital that had once seemed so sufficient against the
+world....
+
+And here it has to be told that although Trafford knew that Marjorie had
+been spending too much money, he still had no idea of just how much
+money she had spent. She was doing her utmost to come to an
+understanding with him, and at the same time--I don't explain it, I
+don't excuse it--she was keeping back her bills from him, keeping back
+urgent second and third and fourth demands, that she had no cheque-book
+now to stave off even by the most partial satisfaction. It kept her
+awake at nights, that catastrophic explanation, that all unsuspected by
+Trafford hung over their attempts at mutual elucidation; it kept her
+awake but she could not bring it to the speaking point, and she clung,
+in spite of her own intelligence, to a persuasion that _after_ they had
+got something really settled and defined then it would be time enough
+to broach the particulars of this second divergence....
+
+Talking one's relations over isn't particularly easy between husband and
+wife at any time; we are none of us so sure of one another as to risk
+loose phrases or make experiments in expression in matters so vital;
+there is inevitably an excessive caution on the one hand and an abnormal
+sensitiveness to hints and implications on the other. Marjorie's bills
+were only an extreme instance of these unavoidable suppressions that
+always occur. Moreover, when two people are continuously together, it is
+amazingly hard to know when and where to begin; where intercourse is
+unbroken it is as a matter of routine being constantly interrupted. You
+cannot broach these broad personalities while you are getting up in the
+morning, or over the breakfast-table while you make the coffee, or when
+you meet again after a multitude of small events at tea, or in the
+evening when one is rather tired and trivial after the work of the day.
+Then Miss Margharita Trafford permitted no sustained analysis of life in
+her presence. She synthesized things fallaciously, but for the time
+convincingly; she insisted that life wasn't a thing you discussed, but
+pink and soft and jolly, which you crowed at and laughed at and
+addressed as "Goo." Even without Margharita there were occasions when
+the Traffords were a forgetfulness to one another. After an ear has been
+pinched or a hand has been run through a man's hair, or a pretty bare
+shoulder kissed, all sorts of broader interests lapse into a temporary
+oblivion. They found discussion much more possible when they walked
+together. A walk seemed to take them out of the everyday sequence,
+isolate them from their household, abstract them a little from one
+another. They set out one extravagant spring Sunday to Great Missenden,
+and once in spring also they discovered the Waterlow Park. On each
+occasion they seemed to get through an enormous amount of talking. But
+the Great Missenden walk was all mixed up with a sweet keen wind, and
+beechwoods just shot with spring green and bursting hedges and the
+extreme earliness of honeysuckle, which Trafford noted for the first
+time, and a clamorous rejoicing of birds. And in the Waterlow Park there
+was a great discussion of why the yellow crocus comes before white and
+purple, and the closest examination of the manner in which daffodils and
+narcissi thrust their green noses out of the garden beds. Also they
+found the ugly, ill-served, aggressively propagandist non-alcoholic
+refreshment-room in that gracious old house a scandal and
+disappointment, and Trafford scolded at the stupidity of officialdom
+that can control so fine a thing so ill.
+
+Though they talked on these walks they were still curiously evasive.
+Indeed, they were afraid of each other. They kept falling away from
+their private thoughts and intentions. They generalized, they discussed
+Marriage and George Gissing and Bernard Shaw and the suffrage movement
+and the agitation for the reform of the divorce laws. They pursued
+imaginary cases into distant thickets of contingency remotely far from
+the personal issues between them....
+
+
+§ 6
+
+One day came an incident that Marjorie found wonderfully illuminating.
+Trafford had a fit of rage. Stung by an unexpected irritation, he forgot
+himself, as people say, and swore, and was almost physically violent,
+and the curious thing was that so he lit up things for her as no
+premeditated attempt of his had ever done.
+
+A copy of the _Scientific Bulletin_ fired the explosion. He sat down at
+the breakfast-table with the heaviness of a rather overworked and
+worried man, tasted his coffee, tore open a letter and crumpled it with
+his hand, turned to the _Bulletin_, regarded its list of contents with a
+start, opened it, read for a minute, and expressed himself with an
+extraordinary heat of manner in these amazing and unprecedented words:
+
+"Oh! Damnation and damnation!"
+
+Then he shied the paper into the corner of the room and pushed his plate
+from him.
+
+"Damn the whole scheme of things!" he said, and met the blank amazement
+of Marjorie's eye.
+
+"Behrens!" he said with an air of explanation.
+
+"Behrens?" she echoed with a note of inquiry.
+
+"He's doing my stuff!"
+
+He sat darkling for a time and then hit the table with his fist so hard
+that the breakfast things seemed to jump together--to Marjorie's
+infinite amazement. "I can't _stand_ it!" he said.
+
+She waited some moments. "I don't understand," she began. "What has he
+done?"
+
+"Oh!" was Trafford's answer. He got up, recovered the crumpled paper and
+stood reading. "Fool and thief," he said.
+
+Marjorie was amazed beyond measure. She felt as though she had been
+effaced from Trafford's life. "Ugh!" he cried and slapped back the
+_Bulletin_ into the corner with quite needless violence. He became aware
+of Marjorie again.
+
+"He's doing my work," he said.
+
+And then as if he completed the explanation: "And I've got to be in
+Croydon by half-past ten to lecture to a pack of spinsters and duffers,
+because they're too stupid to get the stuff from books. It's all in
+books,--every bit of it."
+
+He paused and went on in tones of unendurable wrong. "It isn't as though
+he was doing it right. He isn't. He can't. He's a fool. He's a clever,
+greedy, dishonest fool with a twist. Oh! the pile, the big Pile of silly
+muddled technicalities he's invented already! The solemn mess he's
+making of it! And there he is, I can't get ahead of him, I can't get at
+him. I've got no time. I've got no room or leisure to swing my mind in!
+Oh, curse these engagements, curse all these silly fretting
+entanglements of lecture and article! I never get the time, I can't get
+the time, I can't get my mind clear! I'm worried! I'm badgered! And
+meanwhile Behrens----!"
+
+"Is he discovering what you want to discover?"
+
+"Behrens! _No!_ He's going through the breaches I made. He's guessing
+out what I meant to do. And he's getting it set out all
+wrong,--misleading terminology,--distinctions made in the wrong place.
+Oh, the fool he is!"
+
+"But afterwards----"
+
+"Afterwards I may spend my life--removing the obstacles he's made. He'll
+be established and I shan't. You don't know anything of these things.
+You don't understand."
+
+She didn't. Her next question showed as much. "Will it affect your
+F.R.S.?" she asked.
+
+"Oh! _that's_ safe enough, and it doesn't matter anyhow. The F.R.S.!
+Confound the silly little F.R.S.! As if that mattered. It's seeing all
+my great openings--misused. It's seeing all I might be doing. This
+brings it all home to me. Don't you understand, Marjorie? Will you
+never understand? I'm getting away from all _that!_ I'm being hustled
+away by all this work, this silly everyday work to get money. Don't you
+see that unless I can have time for thought and research, life is just
+darkness to me? I've made myself master of that stuff. I had at any
+rate. No one can do what I can do there. And when I find myself--oh,
+shut out, shut out! I come near raving. As I think of it I want to rave
+again." He paused. Then with a swift transition: "I suppose I'd better
+eat some breakfast. Is that egg boiled?"
+
+She gave him an egg, brought his coffee, put things before him, seated
+herself at the table. For a little while he ate in silence. Then he
+cursed Behrens.
+
+"Look here!" she said. "Bad as I am, you've got to reason with me, Rag.
+I didn't know all this. I didn't understand ... I don't know what to do."
+
+"What _is_ there to do?"
+
+"I've got to do something. I'm beginning to see things. It's just as
+though everything had become clear suddenly." She was weeping. "Oh, my
+dear! I want to help you. I have so wanted to help you. Always. And it's
+come to this!"
+
+"But it's not _your_ fault. I didn't mean that. It's--it's in the nature
+of things."
+
+"It's my fault."
+
+"It's not your fault."
+
+"It is."
+
+"Confound it, Marjorie. When I swear at Behrens I'm not swearing at
+you."
+
+"It's my fault. All this is my fault. I'm eating you up. What's the good
+of your pretending, Rag. You know it is. Oh! When I married you I meant
+to make you happy, I had no thought but to make you happy, to give
+myself to you, my body, my brains, everything, to make life beautiful
+for you----"
+
+"Well, _haven't_ you?" He thrust out a hand she did not take.
+
+"I've broken your back," she said.
+
+An unwonted resolution came into her face. Her lips whitened. "Don't you
+know, Rag," she said, forcing herself to speak----"Don't you guess? You
+don't know half! In that bureau there----In there! It's stuffed with
+bills. Unpaid bills."
+
+She was weeping, with no attempt to wipe the streaming tears away;
+terror made the expression of her wet face almost fierce. "Bills," she
+repeated. "More than a hundred pounds still. Yes! Now. _Now!_"
+
+He drew back, stared at her and with no trace of personal animus, like
+one who hears of a common disaster, remarked with a quiet emphasis: "Oh,
+_damn!_"
+
+"I know," she said, "Damn!" and met his eyes. There was a long silence
+between them. She produced a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. "That's
+what I amount to," she said.
+
+"It's your silly upbringing," he said after a long pause.
+
+"And my silly self."
+
+She stood up, unlocked and opened her littered desk, turned and held out
+the key to him.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"Take it. You gave me a cheque-book of my own and a corner of my own,
+and they--they are just ambushes--against you."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Take it," said Marjorie with quiet insistence.
+
+He obeyed. She stood with her eyes on the crumpled heap of bills. They
+were not even tidily arranged. That seemed to her now an extreme
+aggravation of her offence.
+
+"I ought to be sent to the chemist's," she remarked, "as one sends a
+worthless cat."
+
+Trafford weighed this proposition soberly for some moments. "You're a
+bother, Marjorie," he said with his eyes on the desk; "no end of a
+bother. I'd better have those bills."
+
+He looked at her, stood up, put his hands on her shoulders, drew her to
+him and kissed her forehead. He did it without passion, without
+tenderness, with something like resignation in his manner. She clung to
+him tightly, as though by clinging she could warm and soften him.
+
+"Rag," she whispered; "all my heart is yours.... I want to help you....
+And this is what I have done."
+
+"I know," he said--almost grimly.
+
+He repeated his kiss.
+
+Then he seemed to explode again. "Gods!" he cried, "look at the clock. I
+shall miss that Croydon lecture!" He pushed her from him. "Where are my
+boots?..."
+
+
+§ 7
+
+Marjorie spent the forenoon and the earlier part of the afternoon
+repeating and reviewing this conversation. Her mind was full of the long
+disregarded problem of her husband's state of mind. She thought with a
+sympathetic astonishment of his swearing, of his startling blow upon the
+table. She hadn't so far known he could swear. But this was the real
+thing, the relief of vehement and destructive words. His voice, saying
+"damnation and damnation," echoed and re-echoed in her ears. Somehow she
+understood that as she had never understood any sober statement of his
+case. Such women as Marjorie, I think, have an altogether keener
+understanding of people who have lost control of themselves than they
+have of reasoned cases. Perhaps that is because they themselves always
+reserve something when they state a reasoned case.
+
+She went on to the apprehension of a change in him that hitherto she had
+not permitted herself to see--a change in his attitude to her. There had
+been a time when she had seemed able without an effort to nestle inside
+his heart. Now she felt distinctly for the first time that that hadn't
+happened. She had instead a sense of her embrace sliding over a rather
+deliberately contracted exterior.... Of course he had been in a
+hurry....
+
+She tried to follow him on his journey to Croydon. Now he'd have just
+passed out of London Bridge. What was he thinking and feeling about her
+in the train? Now he would be going into the place, wherever it was,
+where he gave his lecture. Did he think of Behrens and curse her under
+his breath as he entered that tiresome room?...
+
+It seemed part of the prevailing inconvenience of life that Daffy should
+see fit to pay an afternoon call.
+
+Marjorie heard the sobs and uproar of an arrested motor, and glanced
+discreetly from the window to discover the dark green car with its
+green-clad chauffeur which now adorned her sister's life, and which
+might under different circumstances, have adorned her own. Wilkins--his
+name was Wilkins, his hair was sandy and his expression discreet, and he
+afforded material for much quiet humorous observation--descended smartly
+and opened the door. Daffy appeared in black velvet, with a huge black
+fur muff, and an air of being unaware that there were such things as
+windows in the world.
+
+It was just four, and the cook-general, who ought to have been now in
+her housemaid's phase, was still upstairs divesting herself of her more
+culinary characteristics. Marjorie opened the door.
+
+"Hullo, old Daffy!" she said.
+
+"Hullo, old Madge!" and there was an exchange of sisterly kisses and a
+mutual inspection.
+
+"Nothing wrong?" asked Daffy, surveying her.
+
+"_Wrong?_"
+
+"You look pale and--tired about the eyes," said Daffy, leading the way
+into the drawing-room. "Thought you might be a bit off it, that's all.
+No offence, Madge."
+
+"I'm all right," said Marjorie, getting her back to the light. "Want a
+holiday, perhaps. How's every one?"
+
+"All right. _We're_ off to Lake Garda next week. This new play has taken
+it out of Will tremendously. He wants a rest and fresh surroundings.
+It's to be the biggest piece of work he's done--so far, and it's
+straining him. And people worry him here; receptions, first nights,
+dinners, speeches. He's so neat, you know, in his speeches.... But it
+wastes him. He wants to get away. How's Rag?"
+
+"Busy."
+
+"Lecturing?"
+
+"And his Research of course."
+
+"Oh! of course. How's the Babe?"
+
+"Just in. Come up and see the little beast, Daffy! It is getting so
+pretty, and it talks----"
+
+Margharita dominated intercourse for a time. She was one of those
+tactful infants who exactly resemble their fathers and exactly resemble
+their mothers, and have a charm and individuality quite distinctly their
+own, and she was now beginning to converse with startling enterprise and
+intelligence.
+
+"Big, big, bog," she said at the sight of Daffy.
+
+"Remembers you," said Marjorie.
+
+"Bog! Go ta-ta!" said Margharita.
+
+"There!" said Marjorie, and May, the nurse in the background, smiled
+unlimited appreciation.
+
+"Bably," said Margharita.
+
+"That's herself!" said Marjorie, falling on her knees. "She talks like
+this all day. Oh de sweetums, den!" _Was_ it?
+
+Daffy made amiable gestures and canary-like noises with her lips, and
+Margharita responded jovially.
+
+"You darling!" cried Marjorie, "you delight of life," kneeling by the
+cot and giving the crowing, healthy little mite a passionate hug.
+
+"It's really the nicest of babies," Daffy conceded, and reflected....
+
+"I don't know what I should do with a kiddy," said Daffy, as the infant
+worship came to an end; "I'm really glad we haven't one--yet. He'd love
+it, I know. But it would be a burthen in some ways. They _are_ a tie. As
+he says, the next few years means so much for him. Of course, here his
+reputation is immense, and he's known in Germany, and there are
+translations into Russian; but he's still got to conquer America, and he
+isn't really well known yet in France. They read him, of course, and buy
+him in America, but they're--_restive_. Oh! I do so wish they'd give him
+the Nobel prize, Madge, and have done with it! It would settle
+everything. Still, as he says, we mustn't think of that--yet, anyhow. He
+isn't venerable enough. It's doubtful, he thinks, that they would give
+the Nobel prize to any humorist now that Mark Twain is dead. Mark Twain
+was different, you see, because of the German Emperor and all that white
+hair and everything."
+
+At this point Margharita discovered that the conversation had drifted
+away from herself, and it was only when they got downstairs again that
+Daffy could resume the thread of Magnet's career, which had evidently
+become the predominant interest in her life. She brought out all the
+worst elements of Marjorie's nature and their sisterly relationship.
+There were moments when it became nakedly apparent that she was
+magnifying Magnet to belittle Trafford. Marjorie did her best to
+counter-brag. She played her chief card in the F. R. S.
+
+"They always ask Will to the Royal Society Dinner," threw out Daffy;
+"but of course he can't always go. He's asked to so many things."
+
+Five years earlier Marjorie would have kicked her shins for that.
+
+Instead she asked pointedly, offensively, if Magnet was any balder.
+
+"He's not really bald," said Daffy unruffled, and went on to discuss the
+advisability of a second motor car--purely for town use. "I tell him I
+don't want it," said Daffy, "but he's frightfully keen upon getting
+one."
+
+
+§ 8
+
+When Daffy had at last gone Marjorie went back into Trafford's study and
+stood on the hearthrug regarding its appointments, with something of the
+air of one who awakens from a dream. She had developed a new, appalling
+thought. Was Daffy really a better wife than herself? It was dawning
+upon Marjorie that she hadn't been doing the right thing by her husband,
+and she was as surprised as if it had been suddenly brought home to her
+that she was neglecting Margharita. This was her husband's study--and it
+showed just a little dusty in the afternoon sunshine, and everything
+about it denied the pretensions of serene sustained work that she had
+always made to herself. Here were the crumpled galley proofs of his
+science notes; here were unanswered letters. There, she dare not touch
+them, were computations, under a glass paper-weight. What did they
+amount to now? On the table under the window were back numbers of the
+_Scientific Bulletin_ in a rather untidy pile, and on the footstool by
+the arm-chair she had been accustomed to sit at his feet when he stayed
+at home to work, and look into the fire, and watch him furtively, and
+sometimes give way to an overmastering tenderness and make love to him.
+The thought of Magnet, pampered, fenced around, revered in his
+industrious tiresome repetitions, variations, dramatizations and so
+forth of the half-dozen dry little old jokes which the British public
+accepted as his characteristic offering and rewarded him for so highly,
+contrasted vividly with her new realization of Trafford's thankless work
+and worried face.
+
+And she loved him, she loved him--_so_. She told herself in the presence
+of all these facts, and without a shadow of doubt in her mind that all
+she wanted in the world was to make him happy.
+
+It occurred to her as a rather drastic means to this end that she might
+commit suicide.
+
+She had already gone some way in the composition of a touching letter of
+farewell to him, containing a luminous analysis of her own defects,
+before her common-sense swept away this imaginative exercise.
+
+Meanwhile, as if it had been working at her problem all the time that
+this exciting farewell epistle had occupied the foreground of her
+thoughts, her natural lucidity emerged with the manifest conclusion that
+she had to alter her way of living. She had been extraordinarily
+regardless of him, she only began to see that, and now she had to take
+up the problem of his necessities. Her self-examination now that it had
+begun was thorough. She had always told herself before that she had made
+a most wonderful and beautiful little home for him. But had she made it
+for him? Had he as a matter of fact ever wanted it, except that he was
+glad to have it through her? No doubt it had given him delight and
+happiness, it had been a marvellous little casket of love for them, but
+how far did that outweigh the burthen and limitation it had imposed upon
+him? She had always assumed he was beyond measure grateful to her for
+his home, in spite of all her bills, but was he? It was like sticking a
+knife into herself to ask that, but she was now in a phase heroic enough
+for the task--was he? She had always seen herself as the giver of
+bounties; greatest bounty of all was Margharita. She had faced pains and
+terrors and the shadow of death to give him Margharita. Now with Daffy's
+illuminating conversation in her mind, she could turn the light upon a
+haunting doubt that had been lurking in the darkness for a long time.
+Had he really so greatly wanted Margharita? Had she ever troubled to get
+to the bottom of that before? Hadn't she as a matter of fact wanted
+Margharita ten thousand times more than he had done? Hadn't she in
+effect imposed Margharita upon him, as she had imposed her distinctive
+and delightful home upon him, regardlessly, because these things were
+the natural and legitimate developments of herself?
+
+These things were not his ends.
+
+Had she hitherto ever really cared what his ends might be?
+
+A phrase she had heard abundantly enough in current feminist discussion
+recurred to her mind, "the economic dependence of women," and now for
+the first time it was charged with meaning. She had imposed these things
+upon him not because she loved him, but because these things that were
+the expansions and consequences of her love for him were only obtainable
+through him. A woman gives herself to a man out of love, and remains
+clinging parasitically to him out of necessity. Was there no way of
+evading that necessity?
+
+For a time she entertained dreams of marvellous social reconstructions.
+Suppose the community kept all its women, suppose all property in homes
+and furnishings and children vested in them! That was Marjorie's version
+of that idea of the Endowment of Womanhood which has been creeping into
+contemporary thought during the last two decades. Then every woman would
+be a Princess to the man she loved.... He became more definitely
+personal. Suppose she herself was rich, then she could play the Princess
+to Trafford; she could have him free, unencumbered, happy and her lover!
+Then, indeed, her gifts would be gifts, and all her instincts and
+motives would but crown his unhampered life! She could not go on from
+that idea, she lapsed into a golden reverie, from which she was roused
+by the clock striking five.
+
+In half an hour perhaps Trafford would be home again. She could at least
+be so much of a princess as to make his home sweet for his home-coming.
+There should be tea in here, where callers did not trouble. She glanced
+at an empty copper vase. It ached. There was no light in the room. There
+would be just time to dash out into High Street and buy some flowers for
+it before he came....
+
+
+§ 9
+
+Spring and a renewed and deepened love for her husband were in
+Marjorie's blood. Her mind worked rapidly during the next few days, and
+presently she found herself clearly decided upon her course of action.
+She had to pull herself together and help him, and if that meant a
+Spartan and strenuous way of living, then manifestly she must be Spartan
+and strenuous. She must put an end once for all to her recurrent
+domestic deficits, and since this could only be done by getting rid of
+May, she must get rid of May and mind the child herself. (Every day,
+thank Heaven! Margharita became more intelligent, more manageable, and
+more interesting.) Then she must also make a far more systematic and
+thorough study of domestic economy than she had hitherto done, and run
+the shopping and housekeeping on severer lines; she bought fruit
+carelessly, they had far too many joints; she never seemed able to
+restrain herself when it came to flowers. And in the evenings, which
+would necessarily be very frequently lonely evenings if Trafford's
+researches were to go on, she would typewrite, and either acquire great
+speed at that or learn shorthand, and so save Trafford's present
+expenditure on a typist. That unfortunately would mean buying a
+typewriter.
+
+She found one afternoon in a twopenny book-box, with which she was
+trying to allay her craving for purchases, a tattered little pamphlet
+entitled: "Proposals for the Establishment of an Order of Samurai,"
+which fell in very exactly with her mood. The title "dated"; it carried
+her mind back to her middle girlhood and the defeats of Kuropatki and
+the futile earnest phase in English thought which followed the Boer War.
+The order was to be a sort of self-appointed nobility serving the world.
+It shone with the light of a generous dawn, but cast, I fear, the shadow
+of the prig. Its end was the Agenda Club.... She read and ceased to
+read--and dreamt.
+
+The project unfolded the picture of a new method of conduct to her,
+austere, yet picturesque and richly noble. These Samurai, it was
+intimated, were to lead lives of hard discipline and high effort, under
+self-imposed rule and restraint. They were to stand a little apart from
+the excitements and temptations of everyday life, to eat sparingly,
+drink water, resort greatly to self-criticism and self-examination, and
+harden their spirits by severe and dangerous exercises. They were to
+dress simply, work hard, and be the conscious and deliberate salt of the
+world. They were to walk among mountains. Incidentally, great power was
+to be given them. Such systematic effort and self-control as this,
+seemed to Marjorie to give just all she wasn't and needed to be, to save
+her life and Trafford's from a common disaster....
+
+It particularly appealed to her that they were to walk among
+mountains....
+
+But it is hard to make a change in the colour of one's life amidst the
+routine one has already established about oneself, in the house that is
+grooved by one's weaknesses, amidst hangings and ornaments living and
+breathing with the life of an antagonistic and yet insidiously congenial
+ideal. A great desire came upon Marjorie to go away with Trafford for a
+time, out of their everyday life into strange and cool and spacious
+surroundings. She wanted to leave London and its shops, and the home and
+the movements and the callers and rivalries, and even dimpled little
+Margharita's insistent claims, and get free and think. It was the first
+invasion of their lives by this conception, a conception that was ever
+afterwards to leave them altogether, of retreat and reconstruction. She
+knelt upon the white sheepskin hearthrug at Trafford's feet one night,
+and told him of her desire. He, too, was tired of his work and his
+vexations, and ripe for this suggestion of an altered life. The Easter
+holiday was approaching, and nearly twenty unencumbered days. Mrs.
+Trafford, they knew, would come into the house, meanwhile, and care for
+Margharita. They would go away somewhere together and walk, no luggage
+but a couple of knapsacks, no hotel but some homely village inn. They
+would be in the air all day, until they were saturated with sweet air
+and spirit of clean restraints. They would plan out their new rule,
+concentrate their aims. "And I could think," said Trafford, "of this new
+work I can't begin here. I might make some notes." Presently came the
+question of where the great walk should be. Manifestly, it must be among
+mountains, manifestly, and Marjorie's eye saw those mountains with snow
+upon their summits and cold glaciers on their flanks. Could they get to
+Switzerland? If they travelled second class throughout, and took the
+cheaper way, as Samurai should?...
+
+
+§ 10
+
+That holiday seemed to Marjorie as if they had found a lost and
+forgotten piece of honeymoon. She had that same sense of fresh
+beginnings that had made their first walk in Italian Switzerland so
+unforgettable. She was filled with the happiness of recovering Trafford
+when he had seemed to be slipping from her. All day they talked of their
+outlook, and how they might economise away the need of his extra work,
+and so release him for his search again. For the first time he talked of
+his work to her, and gave her some intimation of its scope and quality.
+He became enthusiastic with the sudden invention of experimental
+devices, so that it seemed to her almost worth while if instead of going
+on they bolted back, he to his laboratory and she to her nursery, and
+so at once inaugurated the new régime. But they went on, to finish the
+holiday out. And the delight of being together again with unfettered
+hours of association! They rediscovered each other, the same--and a
+little changed. If their emotions were less bright and intense, their
+interest was far wider and deeper.
+
+The season was too early for high passes, and the weather was
+changeable. They started from Fribourg and walked to Thun and then back
+to Bulle, and so to Bultigen, Saanen, Montbovon and the Lake of Geneva.
+They had rain several days, the sweet, soft, windless mountain rain that
+seemed so tolerable to those who are accustomed to the hard and driven
+downpours of England, and in places they found mud and receding snow;
+the inns were at their homeliest, and none the worse for that, and there
+were days of spring sunshine when a multitude of minute and delightful
+flowers came out as it seemed to meet them--it was impossible to suppose
+so great a concourse universal--and spread in a scented carpet before
+their straying feet. The fruit trees in the valleys were powdered with
+blossom, and the new grass seemed rather green-tinted sunlight than
+merely green. And they walked with a sort of stout leisureliness,
+knapsacks well-hung and cloaks about them, with their faces fresh and
+bright under the bracing weather, and their lungs deep charged with
+mountain air, talking of the new austerer life that was now beginning.
+With great snow-capped mountains in the background, streaming precipices
+overhead, and a sward of flowers to go upon, that strenuous prospect was
+altogether delightful. They went as it pleased them, making detours into
+valleys, coming back upon their steps. The interludes of hot, bright
+April sunshine made them indolent, and they would loiter and halt where
+some rock or wall invited, and sit basking like happy, animals, talking
+very little, for long hours together. Trafford seemed to have forgotten
+all the strain and disappointment of the past two years, to be amazed
+but in no wise incredulous at this enormous change in her and in their
+outlook; it filled her with a passion of pride and high resolve to think
+that so she could recover and uplift him.
+
+He was now very deeply in love with her again. He talked indeed of his
+research, but so that it might interest her, and when he thought alone,
+he thought, not of it, but of her, making again the old discoveries, his
+intense delight in the quality of her voice, his joy in a certain
+indescribable gallantry in her bearing. He pitied all men whose wives
+could not carry themselves, and whose voices failed and broke under the
+things they had to say. And then again there was the way she moved her
+arms, the way her hands took hold of things, the alert lucidity of her
+eyes, and then that faint, soft shadow of a smile upon her lips when she
+walked thinking or observant, all unaware that he was watching her.
+
+It rained in the morning of their eleventh day and then gave way to
+warmth and sunshine, so that they arrived at Les Avants in the afternoon
+a little muddy and rather hot. At one of the tables under the trees
+outside the Grand Hotel was a small group of people dressed in the
+remarkable and imposing costume which still in those days distinguished
+the motorist. They turned from their tea to a more or less frank
+inspection of the Traffords, and suddenly broke out into cries of
+recognition and welcome. Solomonson--for the most part brown
+leather--emerged with extended hands, and behind him, nestling in the
+midst of immense and costly furs, appeared the kindly salience and
+brightness of his Lady's face. "Good luck!" cried Solomonson. "Good
+luck! Come and have tea with us! But this is a happy encounter!"
+
+"We're dirty--but so healthy!" cried Marjorie, saluting Lady Solomonson.
+
+"You look, oh!--splendidly well," that Lady responded.
+
+"We've been walking."
+
+"With just that knapsack!"
+
+"It's been glorious."
+
+"But the courage!" said Lady Solomonson, and did not add, "the tragic
+hardship!" though her tone conveyed it. She had all the unquestioning
+belief of her race in the sanity of comfort. She had ingrained in her
+the most definite ideas of man's position and woman's, and that any one,
+man or woman, should walk in mud except under dire necessity, was
+outside the range of her philosophy. She thought Marjorie's thick boots
+and short skirts quite the most appalling feminine costume she had ever
+seen. She saw only a ruined complexion and damaged womanhood in
+Marjorie's rain-washed, sun-bit cheek. Her benevolent heart rebelled at
+the spectacle. It was dreadful, she thought, that nice young people like
+the Traffords should have come to this.
+
+The rest of the party were now informally introduced. They were all very
+splendid and disconcertingly free from mud. One was Christabel Morrison,
+the actress, a graceful figure in a green baize coat and brown fur, who
+looked ever so much more charming than her innumerable postcards and
+illustrated-paper portraits would have led one to expect; her neighbour
+was Solomonson's cousin Lee, the organizer of the Theatre Syndicate, a
+brown-eyed, attenuated, quick-minded little man with an accent that
+struck Trafford as being on the whole rather Dutch, and the third lady
+was Lady Solomonson's sister, Mrs. Lee. It appeared they were all
+staying at Lee's villa above Vevey, part of an amusing assembly of
+people who were either vividly rich or even more vividly clever, an
+accumulation which the Traffords in the course of the next twenty
+minutes were three times invited, with an increasing appreciation and
+earnestness, to join.
+
+From the first our two young people were not indisposed to do so. For
+eleven days they had maintained their duologue at the very highest
+level; seven days remained to them before they must go back to begin the
+hard new life in England, and there was something very attractive--they
+did not for a moment seek to discover the elements of that
+attractiveness--in this proposal of five or six days of luxurious
+indolence above the lake, a sort of farewell to the worldly side of
+worldly things, before they set forth upon the high and narrow path they
+had resolved to tread.
+
+"But we've got no clothes," cried Marjorie, "no clothes at all! We've
+these hobnail boots and a pair each of heelless slippers."
+
+"My dear!" cried Lady Solomonson in real distress, and as much aside as
+circumstances permitted, "my dear! My sister can manage all that!" Her
+voice fell to earnest undertones. "We can really manage all that. The
+house is packed with things. We'll come to dinner in fancy dress. And
+Scott, my maid, is so clever."
+
+"But really!" said Marjorie.
+
+"My dear!" said Lady Solomonson. "Everything." And she changed places
+with Lee in order to be perfectly confidential and explicit. "Rachel!"
+she cried, and summoned her sister for confirmatory assurances....
+
+"But my husband!" Marjorie became audible.
+
+"We've long Persian robes," said Mrs. Lee, with a glance of undisguised
+appraisement. "He'll be splendid. He'll look like a Soldan...."
+
+The rest of the company forced a hectic conversation in order not to
+seem to listen, and presently Lady Solomonson and her sister were
+triumphant. They packed Marjorie into the motor car, and Trafford and
+Solomonson returned to Vevey by train and thence up to the villa by a
+hired automobile.
+
+
+§ 11
+
+They didn't go outside the magic confines of the Lees' villa for three
+days, and when they did they were still surrounded by their host's
+service and possessions; they made an excursion to Chillon in his
+motor-cars, and went in his motor-boat to lunch with the Maynards in
+their lake-side villa close to Geneva. During all that time they seemed
+lifted off the common earth into a world of fine fabrics, agreeable
+sounds, noiseless unlimited service, and ample untroubled living. It had
+an effect of enchantment, and the long healthy arduous journey thither
+seemed a tale of incredible effort amidst these sunny excesses. The
+weather had the whim to be serenely fine, sunshine like summer and the
+bluest of skies shone above the white wall and the ilex thickets and
+cypresses that bounded them in from the great world of crowded homes and
+sous and small necessities. And through the texture of it all for
+Trafford ran a thread of curious new suggestion. An intermittent
+discussion of economics and socialism was going on between himself and
+Solomonson and an agreeable little stammering man in brown named Minter,
+who walked up in the afternoon from Vevey,--he professed to be writing a
+novel--during the earlier half of the day. Minter displayed the keenest
+appreciation of everything in his entertainment, and blinked cheerfully
+and expressed opinions of the extremest socialistic and anarchistic
+flavour to an accompaniment of grateful self-indulgence. "Your port-wine
+is wonderful, Lee," he would say, sipping it. "A terrible retribution
+will fall upon you some day for all this."
+
+The villa had been designed by Lee to please his wife, and if it was
+neither very beautiful nor very dignified, it was at any rate very
+pretty and amusing. It might have been built by a Parisian
+dressmaker--in the châteauesque style. It was of greyish-white stone,
+with a roof of tiles. It had little balconies and acutely roofed
+turrets, and almost burlesque buttresses, pierced by doors and gates;
+and sun-trap loggias, as pleasantly casual as the bows and embroideries
+of a woman's dress; and its central hall, with an impluvium that had
+nothing to do with rain-water, and its dining-room, to which one
+ascended from this hall between pillars up five broad steps, were
+entirely irrelevant to all its exterior features. Unobtrusive
+men-servants in grey with scarlet facings hovered serviceably.
+
+From the little terrace, all set with orange-trees in tubs, one could
+see, through the branches and stems of evergreens and over a foreground
+of budding, starting vineyard, the clustering roofs of Vevey below, an
+agglomeration veiled ever so thinly in the morning by a cobweb of wood
+smoke, against the blue background of lake with its winged
+sailing-boats, and sombre Alpine distances. Minter made it all
+significant by a wave of the hand. "All this," he said, and of the
+crowded work-a-day life below, "all that."
+
+"All this," with its rich litter of stuffs and ornaments, its fine
+profusion, its delicacies of flower and food and furniture, its frequent
+inconsecutive pleasures, its noiseless, ready service, was remarkably
+novel and yet remarkably familiar to Trafford. For a time he could not
+understand this undertone of familiarity, and then a sunlit group of
+hangings in one of the small rooms that looked out upon the lake took
+his mind back to his own dining-room, and the little inadequate, but
+decidedly good, Bokhara embroidery that dominated it like a flag, that
+lit it, and now lit his understanding, like a confessed desire. Of
+course, Mrs. Lee--happy woman!--was doing just everything that Marjorie
+would have loved to do. Marjorie had never confessed as much, perhaps
+she had never understood as much, but now in the presence of Mrs. Lee's
+ćsthetic exuberances, Trafford at least understood. He surveyed the
+little room, whose harmonies he had at first simply taken for granted,
+noted the lustre-ware that answered to the gleaming Persian tiles, the
+inspiration of a metallic thread in the hangings, and the exquisite
+choice of the deadened paint upon the woodwork, and realized for the
+first time how little aimless extravagance can be, and all the timid,
+obstinately insurgent artistry that troubled his wife. He stepped
+through the open window into a little loggia, and stared unseeingly over
+glittering, dark-green leaves to the mysteries of distance in the great
+masses above St. Gingolph, and it seemed for the first time that perhaps
+in his thoughts he had done his wife a wrong. He had judged her fickle,
+impulsive, erratic, perhaps merely because her mind followed a different
+process from his, because while he went upon the lines of constructive
+truth, her guide was a more immediate and instinctive sense of beauty.
+
+He was very much alive to her now, and deeply in love with her. He had
+reached Les Avants with all his sense of their discordance clean washed
+and walked out of his mind, by rain and sun and a flow of high
+resolutions, and the brotherly swing of their strides together. They had
+come to the Lee's villa, mud-splashed, air-sweet comrades, all unaware
+of the subtle differences of atmosphere they had to encounter. They had
+no suspicion that it was only about half of each other that had
+fraternized. Now here they were in a company that was not only
+altogether alien to their former mood, but extremely interesting and
+exciting and closely akin to the latent factors in Marjorie's
+composition. Their hostess and her sister had the keen, quick ćsthetic
+sensibilities of their race, with all that freedom of reading and
+enfranchisement of mind which is the lot of the Western women. Lee had
+an immense indulgent affection for his wife, he regarded her
+arrangements and exploits with an admiration that was almost American.
+And Mrs. Lee's imagination had run loose in pursuit of beautiful and
+remarkable people and splendours rather than harmonies of line and
+colour. Lee, like Solomonson, had that inexplicable alchemy of mind
+which distils gold from the commerce of the world ("All this," said
+Minter to Trafford, "is an exhalation from all that"); he accumulated
+wealth as one grows a beard, and found his interest in his uxorious
+satisfactions, and so Mrs. Lee, with her bright watchful eyes, quick
+impulsive movements and instinctive command had the utmost freedom to
+realize her ideals.
+
+In the world at large Lee and Solomonson seemed both a little short and
+a little stout, and a little too black and bright for their entirely
+conventional clothing, but for the dinner and evening of the villa they
+were now, out of consideration for Trafford, at their ease, and far more
+dignified in Oriental robes. Trafford was accommodated with a long,
+black, delicately embroidered garment that reached to his feet, and
+suited something upstanding and fine in his bearing; Minter, who had
+stayed on from an afternoon call, was gorgeous in Chinese embroidery.
+The rest of the men clung boldly or bashfully to evening dress....
+
+On the evening of his arrival Trafford, bathed and robed, found the rest
+of the men assembling about an open wood fire in the smaller hall at the
+foot of the main staircase. Lee was still upstairs, and Solomonson, with
+a new grace of gesture begotten by his costume, made the necessary
+introductions; a little man with fine-cut features and a Galway accent
+was Rex the playwright; a tall, grey-haired, clean-shaven man was Bright
+from the New York Central Museum; and a bearded giant with a roof of red
+hair and a remote eye was Radlett Barns, the great portrait-painter, who
+consents to paint your portrait for posterity as the King confers a
+knighthood. These were presently joined by Lee and Pacey, the
+blond-haired musician, and Mottersham, whose patents and inventions
+control electric lighting and heating all over the world, and then, with
+the men duly gathered and expectant, the women came down the wide
+staircase.
+
+The staircase had been planned and lit for these effects, and Mrs. Lee
+meant to make the most of her new discovery. Her voice could be heard in
+the unseen corridor above arranging the descent: "You go first, dear.
+Will you go with Christabel?" The conversation about the fire checked
+and ceased with the sound of voices above and the faint rustle of
+skirts. Then came Christabel Morrison, her slender grace beautifully
+contrasted with the fuller beauties of that great lady of the stage,
+Marion Rufus. Lady Solomonson descended confidently in a group of three,
+with Lady Mottersham and sharp-tongued little Mrs. Rex, all very rich
+and splendid. After a brief interval their hostess preceded Marjorie,
+and was so much of an artist that she had dressed herself merely as a
+foil to this new creation. She wore black and scarlet, that made the
+white face and bright eyes under her sombre hair seem the face of an
+inspiring spirit. A step behind her and to the right of her came
+Marjorie, tall and wonderful, as if she were the queen of earth and
+sunshine, swathed barbarically in gold and ruddy brown, and with her
+abundant hair bound back by a fillet of bloodstones and gold. Radlett
+Barns exclaimed at the sight of her. She was full of the manifest
+consciousness of dignity as she descended, quite conscious and quite
+unembarrassed; two borrowed golden circlets glittered on her shining
+arm, and a thin chain of gold and garnets broke the contrast of the
+warm, sun-touched neck above, with the unsullied skin below.
+
+She sought and met her husband's astonishment with the faintest,
+remotest of smiles. It seemed to him that never before had he
+appreciated her beauty. His daily companion had become this splendour in
+the sky. She came close by him with hand extended to greet Sir Philip
+Mottersham. He was sensible of the glow of her, as it were of a scented
+aura about her. He had a first full intimation of the cult and worship
+of woman and the magnificence of women, old as the Mediterranean and its
+goddesses, and altogether novel to his mind....
+
+Christabel Morrison found him a pleasant but not very entertaining or
+exciting neighbor at the dinner-table, and was relieved when the time
+came for her to turn an ear to the artistic compliments of Radlett
+Barns. But Trafford was too interested and amused by the general effect
+of the dinner to devote himself to the rather heavy business of really
+exhilarating Christabel. He didn't give his mind to her. He found the
+transformation of Sir Rupert into a turbanned Oriental who might have
+come out of a picture by Carpaccio, gently stimulating and altogether
+delightful. His attention returned again and again to that genial
+swarthiness. Mrs. Lee on his left lived in her eyes, and didn't so much
+talk to him as rattle her mind at him almost absent-mindedly, as one
+might dangle keys at a baby while one talked to its mother. Yet it was
+evident she liked the look of him. Her glance went from his face to his
+robe, and up and down the table, at the bright dresses, the shining
+arms, the glass and light and silver. She asked him to tell her just
+where he had tramped and just what he had seen, and he had scarcely
+begun answering her question before her thoughts flew off to three
+trophies of china and silver, struggling groups of china boys bearing up
+great silver shells of fruit and flowers that stood down the centre of
+the table. "What do you think of my chubby boys?" she asked. "They're
+German work. They came from a show at Düsseldorf last week. Ben saw I
+liked them, and sent back for them secretly, and here they, are! I
+thought they might be too colourless. But are they?"
+
+"No," said Trafford, "they're just cool. Under that glow of fruit. Is
+this salt-cellar English cut glass?"
+
+"Old Dutch," said Mrs. Lee. "Isn't it jolly?" She embarked with a roving
+eye upon the story of her Dutch glass, which was abundant and admirable,
+and broke off abruptly to say, "Your wife is wonderful."
+
+"Her hair goes back," she said, "like music. You know what I mean--a
+sort of easy rhythm. You don't mind my praising your wife?"
+
+Trafford said he didn't.
+
+"And there's a sort of dignity about her. All my life, Mr. Trafford,
+I've wanted to be tall. It stopped my growth."
+
+She glanced off at a tangent. "Tell me, Mr. Trafford," she asked, "was
+your wife beautiful like this when you married her? I mean--of course
+she was a beautiful girl and adorable and all that; but wasn't she just
+a slender thing?"
+
+She paused, but if she had a habit of asking disconcerting questions she
+did not at any rate insist upon answers, and she went on to confess that
+she believed she would be a happier woman poor than rich--"not that Ben
+isn't all he should be"--but that then she would have been a fashionable
+dressmaker. "People want help," she said, "so much more help than they
+get. They go about with themselves--what was it Mr. Radlett Barns said
+the other night--oh!--like people leading horses they daren't ride. I
+think he says such good things at times, don't you? So wonderful to be
+clever in two ways like that. Just look _now_ at your wife--now I mean,
+that they've drawn that peacock-coloured curtain behind her. My
+brother-in-law has been telling me you keep the most wonderful and
+precious secrets locked up in your breast, that you know how to make
+gold and diamonds and all sorts of things. If I did,--I should make
+them."
+
+She pounced suddenly upon Rex at her left with questions about the
+Keltic Renascence, was it still going on--or what? and Trafford was at
+liberty for a time to enjoy the bright effects about him, the shadowed
+profile and black hair of Christabel to the right of him, and the
+coruscating refractions and reflections of Lady Solomonson across the
+white and silver and ivory and blossom of the table. Then Mrs. Lee
+dragged him into a sudden conflict with Rex, by saying abruptly--
+
+"Of course, Mr. Trafford wouldn't believe that."
+
+He looked perhaps a little lost.
+
+"I was telling Mrs. Lee," said Rex, "that I don't believe there's any
+economy of human toil in machinery whatever. I mean that the machine
+itself really embodies all the toil it seems to save, toil that went to
+the making of it and preparing it and getting coal for it...."
+
+
+§ 12
+
+Next morning they found their hostess at breakfast in the dining-room
+and now the sun was streaming through a high triple window that had been
+curtained overnight, and they looked out through clean, bright
+plate-glass upon mountains half-dissolved in a luminous mist, and a
+mist-veiled lake below. Great stone jars upon the terrace bore a blaze
+of urged and early blossom, and beyond were cypresses. Their hostess
+presided at one of two round tables, at a side table various breakfast
+dishes kept warm over spirit lamps, and two men servants dispensed tea
+and coffee. In the bay of the window was a fruit table, with piled
+fruit-plates and finger-bowls.
+
+Mrs. Lee waved a welcoming hand, and drew Marjorie to a seat beside her.
+Rex was consuming trout and Christabel peaches, and Solomonson, all his
+overnight Orientalism abandoned, was in outspoken tweeds and quite under
+the impression that he was interested in golf. Trafford got frizzled
+bacon for Marjorie and himself, and dropped into a desultory
+conversation, chiefly sustained by Christabel, about the peculiarly
+exalting effect of beautiful scenery on Christabel's mind. Mrs. Lee was
+as usual distraught, and kept glancing towards the steps that led up
+from the hall. Lady Solomonson appeared with a rustle in a wrapper of
+pink Chinese silk. "I came down after all," she said. "I lay in bed
+weighing rolls and coffee and relaxed muscles against your English
+breakfast downstairs. And suddenly I remembered your little sausages!"
+
+She sat down with a distribution of handkerchief, bag, letters, a gold
+fountain pen and suchlike equipments, and Trafford got her some of the
+coveted delicacies. Mrs. Lee suddenly cried out, "_Here_ they come!
+_Here_ they come!" and simultaneously the hall resonated with children's
+voices and the yapping of a Skye terrier.
+
+Then a gay little procession appeared ascending the steps. First came a
+small but princely little boy of three, with a ruddy face and curly
+black hair, behind him was a slender, rather awkward girl of perhaps
+eleven, and a sturdier daughter of Israel of nine. A nurse in artistic
+purple followed, listening inattentively to some private whisperings of
+a knickerbockered young man of five, and then came another purple-robed
+nurse against contingencies, and then a nurse of a different,
+white-clad, and more elaborately costumed sort, carrying a sumptuous
+baby of eight or nine months. "Ah! the _darlings!_" cried Christabel,
+springing up quite beautifully, and Lady Solomonson echoed the cry. The
+procession broke against the tables and split about the breakfast party.
+The small boy in petticoats made a confident rush for Marjorie,
+Christabel set herself to fascinate his elder brother, the young woman
+of eleven scrutinized Trafford with speculative interest and edged
+towards him coyly, and Mrs. Lee interviewed her youngest born. The
+amiable inanities suitable to the occasion had scarcely begun before a
+violent clapping of hands announced the appearance of Lee.
+
+It was Lee's custom, Mrs. Lee told Marjorie over her massively robed
+baby, to get up very early and work on rolls and coffee; he never
+breakfasted nor joined them until the children came. All of them rushed
+to him for their morning kiss, and it seemed to Trafford that Lee at
+least was an altogether happy creature as he accepted the demonstrative
+salutations of this struggling, elbowing armful of offspring, and
+emerged at last like a man from a dive, flushed and ruffled and smiling,
+to wish his adult guests good morning.
+
+"Come upstairs with us, daddy," cried the children, tugging at him.
+"Come upstairs!"
+
+Mrs. Lee ran her eye about her table and rose. "It's the children's
+hour," she said to Marjorie. "You don't I hope, mind children?"
+
+"But," said Trafford incredulous, and with a friendly arm about his
+admirer, "is this tall young woman yours?"
+
+The child shot him a glance of passionate appreciation for this scrap of
+flattery.
+
+"We began young," said Mrs. Lee, with eyes of uncritical pride for the
+ungainly one, and smiled at her husband.
+
+"Upstairs," cried the boy of five and the girl of nine. "Upstairs."
+
+"May we come?" asked Marjorie.
+
+"May we all come?" asked Christabel, determined to be in the movement.
+
+Rex strolled towards the cigars, with disentanglement obviously in his
+mind.
+
+"Do you really care?" asked Mrs. Lee. "You know, I'm so proud of their
+nursery. Would you care----? Always I go up at this time."
+
+"I've my little nursery, too," said Marjorie.
+
+"Of course!" cried Mrs. Lee, "I forgot. Of course;" and overwhelmed
+Marjorie with inquiries as she followed her husband. Every one joined
+the nurseryward procession except Rex, who left himself behind with an
+air of inadvertency, and escaped to the terrace and a cigar....
+
+It was a wonderful nursery, a suite of three bedrooms, a green and
+white, well-lit schoolroom and a vast playroom, and hovering about the
+passage Trafford remarked a third purple nurse and a very efficient and
+serious-looking Swiss governess. The schoolroom and the nursery
+displayed a triumph of judicious shopping and arrangement, the best of
+German and French and English things had been blended into a harmony at
+once hygienic and pedagogic and humanly charming. For once Marjorie had
+to admire the spending of another woman, and admit to herself that even
+she could not have done better with the money.
+
+There were clever little desks for the elder children to work at,
+adjustable desks scientifically lit so that they benefited hands and
+shoulders and eyes; there were artistically coloured and artistically
+arranged pictures, and a little library held all the best of Lang and
+Lucas, rare good things like "Uncle Lubin," Maurice Baring's story of
+"Forget-me-not," "Johnny Crow's Garden," "The Bad Child's Book of
+Beasts," animal books and bird books, costume books and story books,
+colour books and rhyme books, abundant, yet every one intelligently
+chosen, no costly meretricious printed rubbish such as silly Gentile
+mothers buy. Then in the great nursery, with its cork carpet on which
+any toy would stand or run, was an abundance of admirable possessions
+and shelving for everything, and great fat cloth elephants to ride, and
+go-carts, and hooks for a swing. Marjorie's quick eye saw, and she
+admired effusively and envied secretly, and Mrs. Lee appreciated her
+appreciation. A skirmishing romp of the middle children and Lee went on
+about the two of them, and Trafford was led off by his admirer into a
+cubby-house in one corner (with real glass windows made to open) and the
+muslin curtains were drawn while he was shown a secret under vows. Lady
+Solomonson discovered some soldiers, and was presently on her knees in a
+corner with the five-year old boy.
+
+"These are like my Teddy's," she was saying. "My Billy has some of
+these."
+
+Trafford emerged from the cubby-house, which was perhaps a little
+cramped for him, and surveyed the room, with his admirer lugging at his
+arm unheeded, and whispering: "Come back with me."
+
+Of course this was the clue to Lee and Solomonson. How extremely happy
+Lee appeared to be! Enormous vistas of dark philoprogenitive parents and
+healthy little Jews and Jewesses seemed to open out to Trafford,
+hygienically reared, exquisitely trained and educated. And he and
+Marjorie had just one little daughter--with a much poorer educational
+outlook. She had no cloth elephant to ride, no elaborate cubby-house to
+get into, only a half-dozen picture books or so, and later she wouldn't
+when she needed it get that linguistic Swiss.
+
+He wasn't above the normal human vanity of esteeming his own race and
+type the best, and certain vulgar aspects of what nowadays one calls
+Eugenics crossed his mind.
+
+
+§ 13
+
+During those few crowded days of unfamiliar living Trafford accumulated
+a vast confused mass of thoughts and impressions. He realized acutely
+the enormous gulf between his attitudes towards women and those of his
+host and Solomonson--and indeed of all the other men. It had never
+occurred to him before that there was any other relationship possible
+between a modern woman and a modern man but a frank comradeship and
+perfect knowledge, helpfulness, and honesty. That had been the continual
+implication of his mother's life, and of all that he had respected in
+the thought and writing of his time. But not one of these men in their
+place--with the possible exception of Minter, who remained brilliant but
+ambiguous--believed anything of the sort. It necessarily involved in
+practice a share of hardship for women, and it seemed fundamental to
+them that women should have no hardship. He sought for a word, and hung
+between chivalry and orientalism. He inclined towards chivalry. Their
+women were lifted a little off the cold ground of responsibility. Charm
+was their obligation. "A beautiful woman should be beautifully dressed,"
+said Radlett Barns in the course of the discussion of a contemporary
+portrait painter. Lee nodded to endorse an obvious truth. "But she ought
+to dress herself," said Barns. "It ought to be herself to the points of
+the old lace--chosen and assimilated. It's just through not being that,
+that so many rich women are--detestable. Heaps of acquisition.
+Caddis-women...."
+
+Trafford ceased to listen, he helped himself to a cigar and pinched its
+end and lit it, while his mind went off to gnaw at: "A beautiful woman
+should be beautifully dressed," as a dog retires with a bone. He
+couldn't escape from its shining truth, and withal it was devastating to
+all the purposes of his life.
+
+He rejected the word orientalism; what he was dealing with here was
+chivalry. "All this," was indeed, under the thinnest of disguises, the
+castle and the pavilion, and Lee and Solomonson were valiant knights,
+who entered the lists not indeed with spear and shield but with
+prospectus and ingenious enterprise, who drew cheques instead of swords
+for their ladies' honour, who held "all that" in fee and subjection that
+these exquisite and wonderful beings should flower in rich perfection.
+All these women lived in a magic security and abundance, far above the
+mire and adventure of the world; their knights went upon quests for them
+and returned with villas and pictures and diamonds and historical
+pearls. And not one of them all was so beautiful a being as his
+Marjorie, whom he made his squaw, whom he expected to aid and follow
+him, and suffer uncomplainingly the rough services of the common life.
+Not one was half so beautiful as Marjorie, nor half so sweet and
+wonderful....
+
+If such thoughts came in Lee's villa, they returned with redoubled force
+when Trafford found himself packed painfully with Marjorie in the night
+train to Paris. His head ached with the rattle and suffocation of the
+train, and he knew hers must ache more. The windows of the compartment
+and the door were all closed, the litigious little commercial traveller
+in shiny grey had insisted upon that, there was no corner seat either
+for Marjorie or himself, the dim big package over her head swayed
+threateningly. The green shade over the light kept opening with the
+vibration of the train, the pallid old gentleman with the beard had
+twisted himself into a ghastly resemblance to a broken-necked corpse,
+and pressed his knees hard and stiffly against Trafford, and the small,
+sniffing, bow-legged little boy beside the rusty widow woman in the
+corner smelt mysteriously and penetratingly of Roquefort cheese. For the
+seventeenth time the little commercial traveller jumped up with an
+unbecoming expletive, and pulled the shade over the light, and the
+silent young man in the fourth corner stirred and readjusted his legs.
+
+For a time until the crack of light overhead had widened again every one
+became a dark head-dangling outline....
+
+He watched the dim shape before him and noted the weary droop of her
+pose. He wished he had brought water. He was intolerably thirsty, and
+his thirst gave him the measure of hers. This jolting foetid
+compartment was a horrible place for her, an intolerably horrible place.
+And she was standing it, for all her manifest suffering, with infinite
+gallantry and patience. What a gallant soul indeed she was! Whatever
+else she did she never failed to rise to a challenge. Her very
+extravagance that had tried their lives so sorely was perhaps just one
+aspect of that same quality. It is so easy to be saving if one is timid;
+so hard if one is unaccustomed to fear. How beautiful she had shone at
+times in the lights and glitter of that house behind there, and now she
+was back in her weather-stained tweeds again, like a shining sword
+thrust back into a rusty old sheath.
+
+Was it fair that she should come back into the sheath because of this
+passion of his for a vast inexhaustible research?
+
+He had never asked himself before if it was fair to assume she would
+follow his purpose and his fortunes. He had taken that for granted. And
+she too had taken that for granted, which was so generously splendid of
+her. All her disloyalties had been unintentional, indeed almost
+instinctive, breaches of her subordination to this aim which was his
+alone. These breaches he realized had been the reality of her nature
+fighting against her profoundest resolutions.
+
+He wondered what Lee must think of this sort of married life. How ugly
+and selfish it must seem from that point of view.
+
+He perceived for the first time the fundamental incongruity of
+Marjorie's position, she was made to shine, elaborately prepared and
+trained to shine, desiring keenly to shine, and then imprisoned and
+hidden in the faded obscurity of a small, poor home. How conspicuously,
+how extremely he must be wanting in just that sort of chivalry in which
+Lee excelled! Those business men lived for their women to an extent he
+had hitherto scarcely dreamt of doing....
+
+His want of chivalry was beyond dispute. And was there not also an
+extraordinary egotism in this concentration upon his own purposes, a
+self-esteem, a vanity? Had her life no rights? Suppose now he were to
+give her--two years, three years perhaps of his life--altogether. Or
+even four. Was it too much to grudge her four? Solomonson had been at
+his old theme with him, a theme the little man had never relinquished
+since their friendship first began years ago, possibilities of a
+business alliance and the application of a mind of exceptional freshness
+and penetration to industrial development. Why shouldn't that be tried?
+Why not "make money" for a brief strenuous time, and then come back,
+when Marjorie's pride and comfort were secure?...
+
+(Poor dear, how weary she looked!)
+
+He wondered how much more remained of this appalling night. It would
+have made so little difference if they had taken the day train and
+travelled first-class. Wasn't she indeed entitled to travel first-class?
+Pictures of the immense spaciousness, the softness, cleanliness and
+dignity of first-class compartments appeared in his mind....
+
+He would have looked at his watch, but to get at it would mean
+disturbing the silent young man on his left.
+
+Outside in the corridor there broke out a noisy dispute about a missing
+coupon, a dispute in that wonderful language that is known to the
+facetious as _entente cordiale_, between an Englishman and the conductor
+of the train....
+
+
+§ 14
+
+In Paris there was a dispute with an extortionate cabman, and the
+crossing from Dieppe to Newhaven was rough and bitterly cold. They were
+both ill. They reached home very dirty and weary, and among the pile of
+letters and papers on Trafford's desk was a big bundle of Science Note
+proofs, and two letters from Croydon and Pinner to alter the hours of
+his lectures for various plausible and irritating reasons.
+
+The little passage looked very small and rather bare as the door shut
+behind them, and the worn places that had begun to be conspicuous during
+the last six months, and which they had forgotten during the Swiss
+holiday, reasserted themselves. The dining-room, after spacious rooms
+flooded with sunshine, betrayed how dark it was, and how small. Those
+Bokhara embroideries that had once shone so splendid, now, after Mrs.
+Lee's rich and unlimited harmonies, seemed skimpy and insufficient, mere
+loin-cloths for the artistic nakedness of the home. They felt, too, they
+were beginning to find out their post-impressionist picture. They had
+not remembered it as nearly so crude as it now appeared. The hole a
+flying coal had burnt in the unevenly faded dark-blue carpet looked
+larger than it had ever done before, and was indeed the only thing that
+didn't appear faded and shrunken.
+
+
+§ 15
+
+The atmosphere of the Lees' villa had disturbed Marjorie's feelings and
+ideas even more than it had Trafford's. She came back struggling to
+recover those high resolves that had seemed so secure when they had
+walked down to Les Avantes. There was a curiously tormenting memory of
+that vast, admirable nursery, and the princely procession of children
+that would not leave her mind. No effort of her reason could reconcile
+her to the inferiority of Margharita's equipment. She had a detestable
+craving for a uniform for May. But May was going....
+
+But indeed she was not so sure that May was going.
+
+She was no longer buoyantly well, she was full of indefinable
+apprehensions of weakness and failure. She struggled to control an
+insurgence of emotions that rose out of the deeps of her being. She had
+now, she knew, to take on her share of the burden, to become one of the
+Samurai, to show her love no longer as a demand but as a service. Yet
+from day to day she procrastinated under the shadow of apprehended
+things; she forebore to dismiss May, to buy that second-hand typewriter
+she needed, to take any irrevocable step towards the realization of the
+new way of living. She tried to think away her fears, but they would not
+leave her. She felt that Trafford watched her pale face with a furtive
+solicitude and wondered at her hesitations; she tried in vain to seem
+cheerful and careless in his presence, with an anxiety, with
+premonitions that grew daily.
+
+There was no need to worry him unduly....
+
+But soon the matter was beyond all doubting. One night she gathered her
+courage together suddenly and came down into his study in her
+dressing-gown with her hair about her shoulders. She opened the door
+and her heart failed her.
+
+"Rag," she whispered.
+
+"Yes," he said busily from his desk, without looking round.
+
+"I want to speak to you," she answered, and came slowly, and stood
+beside him silently.
+
+"Well, old Marjorie?" he said presently, drawing a little intricate
+pattern in the corner of his blotting paper, and wondering whether this
+was a matter of five pounds or ten.
+
+"I meant so well," she said and caught herself back into silence again.
+
+He started at the thought, at a depth and meaning in her voice, turned
+his chair about to look at her, and discovered she was weeping and
+choking noiselessly. He stood up close to her, moving very slowly and
+silently, his eyes full of this new surmise, and now without word or
+gesture from her he knew his thought was right. "My dear," he whispered.
+
+She turned her face from him. "I meant so well," she sobbed. "My dear! I
+meant so well." Still with an averted face her arms came out to him in a
+desperate, unreasoning appeal for love. He took her and held her close
+to him. "Never mind, dear," he said. "Don't mind." Her passion now was
+unconstrained. "I thought--" he began, and left the thing unsaid.
+
+"But your work," she said; "your research?"
+
+"I must give up research," he said.
+
+"Oh, my dearest!"
+
+"I must give up research," he repeated. "I've been seeing it for days.
+Clearer and clearer. _This_ dear, just settles things. Even--as we were
+coming home in the train--I was making up my mind. At Vevey I was
+talking to Solomonson."
+
+"My dear," she whispered, clinging to him.
+
+"I talked to Solomonson. He had ideas--a proposal."
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I've left the thing too long."
+
+He repeated. "I must give up research--for years. I ought to have done
+it long before."
+
+"I had meant so well," she said. "I meant to work. I meant to deny
+myself...."
+
+"I'm glad," he whispered. "Glad! Why should you weep?" It seemed nothing
+to him then, that so he should take a long farewell to the rare, sweet
+air of that wonderland his mind had loved so dearly. All he remembered
+was that Marjorie was very dear to him, very dear to him, and that all
+her being was now calling out for him and his strength. "I had thought
+anyhow of giving up research," he repeated. "This merely decides. It
+happens to decide. I love you, dear. I put my research at your feet.
+Gladly. This is the end, and I do not care, my dear, at all. I do not
+care at all--seeing I have you...."
+
+He stood beside her for a moment, and then sat down again, sideways,
+upon his chair.
+
+"It isn't you, my dear, or me," he said, "but life that beats us--that
+beautiful, irrational mother.... Life does not care for research or
+knowledge, but only for life. Oh! the world has to go on yet for tens of
+thousands of years before--before we are free for that. I've got to
+fight--as other men fight...."
+
+He thought in silence for a time, oddly regardless of her. "But if it
+was not you," he said, staring at the fireplace with knitted brows, "if
+I did not love you.... Thank God, I love you, dear! Thank God, our
+children are love children! I want to live--to my finger-tips, but if I
+didn't love you--oh! love you! then I think now--I'd be glad--I'd be
+glad, I think, to cheat life of her victory."
+
+"Oh, my dear!" she cried, and clung weeping to him, and caught at him
+and sat herself upon his knees, and put her arms about his head, and
+kissed him passionately with tear-salt lips, with her hair falling upon
+his face.
+
+"My dear," she whispered....
+
+
+§ 16
+
+So soon as Trafford could spare an afternoon amidst his crowded
+engagements he went to talk to Solomonson, who was now back in London.
+"Solomonson," he said, "you were talking about rubber at Vevey."
+
+"I remember," said Solomonson with a note of welcome.
+
+"I've thought it over."
+
+"I _thought_ you would."
+
+"I've thought things over. I'm going to give up my professorship--and
+science generally, and come into business--if that is what you are
+meaning."
+
+Solomonson turned his paper-weight round very carefully before replying.
+Then he said: "You mustn't give up your professorship yet, Trafford. For
+the rest--I'm glad."
+
+He reflected, and then his bright eyes glanced up at Trafford. "I knew,"
+he said, "you would."
+
+"I didn't," said Trafford. "Things have happened since."
+
+"Something was bound to happen. You're too good--for what it gave you. I
+didn't talk to you out there for nothing. I saw things.... Let's go
+into the other room, and smoke and talk it over." He stood up as he
+spoke.
+
+"I thought you would," he repeated, leading the way. "I knew you would.
+You see,--one _has_ to. You can't get out of it."
+
+"It was all very well before you were married," said Solomonson,
+stopping short to say it, "but when a man's married he's got to think.
+He can't go on devoting himself to his art and his science and all
+that--not if he's married anything worth having. No. Oh, I understand.
+He's got to look about him, and forget the distant prospect for a bit. I
+saw you'd come to it. _I_ came to it. Had to. I had ambitions--just as
+you have. I've always had an inclination to do a bit of research on my
+own. I _like_ it, you know. Oh! I could have done things. I'm sure I
+could have done things. I'm not a born money-maker. But----." He became
+very close and confidential. "It's----_them_. You said good-bye to
+science for a bit when you flopped me down on that old croquet-lawn,
+Trafford." He went off to reminiscences. "Lord, how we went over! No
+more aviation for me, Trafford!"
+
+He arranged chairs, and produced cigars. "After all--this of
+course--it's interesting. Once you get into the movement of it, it takes
+hold of you. It's a game."
+
+"I've thought over all you said," Trafford began, using premeditated
+phrases. "Bluntly--I want three thousand a year, and I don't make eight
+hundred. It's come home to me. I'm going to have another child."
+
+Solomonson gesticulated a congratulation.
+
+"All the same, I hate dropping research. It's stuff I'm made to do.
+About that, Solomonson, I'm almost superstitious. I could say I had a
+call.... It's the maddest state of affairs! Now that I'm doing
+absolutely my best work for mankind, work I firmly believe no one else
+can do, I just manage to get six hundred--nearly two hundred of my eight
+hundred is my own. What does the world think I could do better--that
+would be worth four times as much."
+
+"The world doesn't think anything at all about it," said Solomonson.
+
+"Suppose it did!"
+
+The thought struck Sir Rupert. He knitted his brows and looked hard
+obliquely at the smoke of his cigar. "Oh, it won't," he said, rejecting
+a disagreeable idea. "There isn't any world--not in that sense. That's
+the mistake you make, Trafford."
+
+"It's not what your work is worth," he explained. "It's what your
+advantages can get for you. People are always going about
+supposing--just what you suppose--that people ought to get paid in
+proportion to the good they do. It's forgetting what the world is, to do
+that. Very likely some day civilization will get to that, but it hasn't
+got to it yet. It isn't going to get to it for hundreds and hundreds of
+years."
+
+His manner became confidential. "Civilization's just a fight,
+Trafford--just as savagery is a fight, and being a wild beast is a
+fight,--only you have paddeder gloves on and there's more rules. We
+aren't out for everybody, we're out for ourselves--and a few friends
+perhaps--within limits. It's no good hurrying ahead and pretending
+civilization's something else, when it isn't. That's where all these
+socialists and people come a howler. Oh, _I_ know the Socialists. I see
+'em at my wife's At Homes. They come along with the literary people and
+the artists' wives and the actors and actresses, and none of them take
+much account of me because I'm just a business man and rather dark and
+short, and so I get a chance of looking at them from the side that isn't
+on show while the other's turned to the women, and they're just as
+fighting as the rest of us, only they humbug more and they don't seem to
+me to have a decent respect for any of the common rules. And that's
+about what it all comes to, Trafford."
+
+Sir Rupert paused, and Trafford was about to speak when the former
+resumed again, his voice very earnest, his eyes shining with purpose. He
+liked Trafford, and he was doing his utmost to make a convincing
+confession of the faith that was in him. "It's when it comes to the
+women," said Sir Rupert, "that one finds it out. That's where _you've_
+found it out. You say, I'm going to devote my life to the service of
+Humanity in general. You'll find Humanity in particular, in the shape of
+all the fine, beautiful, delightful and desirable women you come across,
+preferring a narrower turn of devotion. See? That's all. _Caeteris
+paribus_, of course. That's what I found out, and that's what you've
+found out, and that's what everybody with any sense in his head finds
+out, and there you are."
+
+"You put it--graphically," said Trafford.
+
+"I feel it graphically. I may be all sorts of things, but I do know a
+fact when I see it. I'm here with a few things I want and a woman or so
+I have and want to keep, and the kids upstairs, bless 'em! and I'm in
+league with all the others who want the same sort of things. Against any
+one or anything that upsets us. We stand by the law and each other, and
+that's what it all amounts to. That's as far as my patch of Humanity
+goes. Humanity at large! Humanity be blowed! _Look_ at it! It isn't that
+I'm hostile to Humanity, mind you, but that I'm not disposed to go
+under as I should do if I didn't say that. So I say it. And that's about
+all it is, and there you are."
+
+He regarded Trafford over his cigar, drawing fiercely at it for some
+moments. Then seeing Trafford on the point of speaking, he snatched it
+from his lips, demanded silence by waving it at his hearer, and went on.
+
+"I say all this in order to dispose of any idea that you can keep up the
+open-minded tell-everybody-every-thing scientific attitude if you come
+into business. You can't. Put business in two words and what is it?
+Keeping something from somebody else, and making him pay for it--"
+
+"Oh, look here!" protested Trafford. "That's not the whole of business."
+
+"There's making him want it, of course, advertisement and all that, but
+that falls under making him pay for it, really."
+
+"But a business man organizes public services, consolidates,
+economizes."
+
+Sir Rupert made his mouth look very wide by sucking in the corners.
+"Incidentally," he said, and added after a judicious pause:
+"Sometimes ... I thought we were talking of making money."
+
+"Go on," said Trafford.
+
+"You set me thinking," said Solomonson. "It's the thing I always like
+about you. I tell you, Trafford, I don't believe that the majority of
+people who make money help civilization forward any more than the smoke
+that comes out of the engine helps the train forward. If you put it to
+me, I don't. I've got no illusions of that sort. They're about as much
+help as--fat. They accumulate because things happen to be arranged so."
+
+"Things will be arranged better some day."
+
+"They aren't arranged better now. Grip that! _Now_, it's a sort of
+paradox. If you've got big gifts and you choose to help forward the
+world, if you choose to tell all you know and give away everything you
+can do in the way of work, you've got to give up the ideas of wealth and
+security, and that means fine women and children. You've got to be a
+_deprived_ sort of man. 'All right,' you say, 'That's me!' But how about
+your wife being a deprived sort of woman? Eh? That's where it gets you!
+And meanwhile, you know, while _you_ make your sacrifices and do your
+researches, there'll be little mean sharp active beasts making money all
+over you like maggots on a cheese. And if everybody who'd got gifts and
+altruistic ideas gave themselves up to it, then evidently only the mean
+and greedy lot would breed and have the glory. They'd get everything.
+Every blessed thing. There wouldn't be an option they didn't hold. And
+the other chaps would produce the art and the science and the
+literature, as far as the men who'd got hold of things would let 'em,
+and perish out of the earth altogether.... There you are! Still, that's
+how things are made...."
+
+"But it isn't worth it. It isn't worth extinguishing oneself in order to
+make a world for those others, anyhow. Them and their children. Is it?
+Eh? It's like building a temple for flies to buzz in.... There is such a
+thing as a personal side to Eugenics, you know."
+
+Solomonson reflected over the end of his cigar. "It isn't good enough,"
+he concluded.
+
+"You're infernally right," said Trafford.
+
+"Very well," said Solomonson, "and now we can get to business."
+
+
+§ 17
+
+The immediate business was the systematic exploitation of the fact that
+Trafford had worked out the problem of synthesizing indiarubber. He had
+done so with an entire indifference to the commercial possibilities of
+the case, because he had been irritated by the enormous publicity given
+to Behrens' assertion that he had achieved this long-sought end. Of
+course the production of artificial rubbers and rubber-like substances
+had been one of the activities of the synthetic chemist for many years,
+from the appearance of Tilden's isoprene rubber onward, and there was
+already a formidable list of collaterals, dimethybutadiene, and so
+forth, by which the coveted goal could be approached. Behrens had boldly
+added to this list as his own a number of variations upon a theme of
+Trafford's, originally designed to settle certain curiosities about
+elasticity. Behrens' products were not only more massively rubber-like
+than anything that had gone before them, but also extremely cheap to
+produce, and his bold announcement of success had produced a check in
+rubber sales and widespread depression in the quiveringly sensitive
+market of plantation shares. Solomonson had consulted Trafford about
+this matter at Vevey, and had heard with infinite astonishment that
+Trafford had already roughly prepared and was proposing to complete and
+publish, unpatented and absolutely unprotected, first a smashing
+demonstration of the unsoundness of Behrens' claim and then a lucid
+exposition of just what had to be done and what could be done to make an
+indiarubber absolutely indistinguishable from the natural product. The
+business man could not believe his ears.
+
+"My dear chap, positively--you mustn't," Solomonson had screamed, and
+he had opened his fingers and humped his shoulders and for all his
+public school and university training lapsed undisguisedly into the
+Oriental. "Don't you _see_ all you are throwing away?" he squealed.
+
+"I suppose it's our quality to throw such things away," said Trafford,
+when at last Solomonson's point of view became clear to him. They had
+embarked upon a long rambling discussion of that issue of publication, a
+discussion they were now taking up again. "When men dropped that idea of
+concealing knowledge, alchemist gave place to chemist," said Trafford,
+"and all that is worth having in modern life, all that makes it better
+and safer and more hopeful than the ancient life, began."
+
+"My dear fellow," said Solomonson, "I know, I know. But to give away the
+synthesis of rubber! To just shove it out of the window into the street!
+_Gare l'eau!_ O! And when you could do with so much too!"....
+
+Now they resumed the divergent threads of that Vevey talk.
+
+Solomonson had always entertained the warmest friendship and admiration
+for Trafford, and it was no new thing that he should desire a business
+co-operation. He had been working for that in the old days at Riplings;
+he had never altogether let the possibility drop out of sight between
+them in spite of Trafford's repudiations. He believed himself to be a
+scientific man turned to business, but indeed his whole passion was for
+organization and finance. He knew he could do everything but originate,
+and in Trafford he recognized just that rare combination of an obstinate
+and penetrating simplicity with constructive power which is the
+essential blend in the making of great intellectual initiatives. To
+Trafford belonged the secret of novel and unsuspected solutions; what
+were fixed barriers and unsurmountable conditions to trained
+investigators and commonplace minds, would yield to his gift of magic
+inquiry. He could startle the accepted error into self-betrayal. Other
+men might play the game of business infinitely better than
+he--Solomonson knew, indeed, quite well that he himself could play the
+game infinitely better than Trafford--but it rested with Trafford by
+right divine of genius to alter the rules. If only he could be induced
+to alter the rules secretly, unostentatiously, on a business footing,
+instead of making catastrophic plunges into publicity! And everything
+that had made Trafford up to the day of his marriage was antagonistic to
+such strategic reservations. The servant of science has as such no
+concern with personal consequences; his business is the steady,
+relentless clarification of knowledge. The human affairs he changes, the
+wealth he makes or destroys, are no concern of his; once these things
+weigh with him, become primary, he has lost his honour as a scientific
+man.
+
+"But you _must_ think of consequences," Solomonson had cried during
+those intermittent talks at Vevey. "Here you are, shying this cheap
+synthetic rubber of yours into the world--for it's bound to be cheap!
+any one can see that--like a bomb into a market-place. What's the good
+of saying you don't care about the market-place, that _your_ business is
+just to make bombs and drop them out of the window? You smash up things
+just the same. Why! you'll ruin hundreds and thousands of people, people
+living on rubber shares, people working in plantations, old, inadaptable
+workers in rubber works...."
+
+Sir Rupert was now still a little incredulous of Trafford's change of
+purpose, and for a time argued conceded points. Then slowly he came to
+the conditions and methods of the new relationship. He sketched out a
+scheme of co-operation and understandings between his firm and Trafford,
+between them both and his associated group in the city.
+
+Behrens was to have rope and produce his slump in plantation shares,
+then Trafford was to publish his criticism of Behrens, reserving only
+that catalytic process which was his own originality, the process that
+was to convert the inert, theoretically correct synthetic rubber, with a
+mysterious difference in the quality of its phases, into the real right
+thing. With Behrens exploded, plantation shares would recover, and while
+their friends in the city manipulated that, Trafford would resign his
+professorship and engage himself to an ostentatious promotion syndicate
+for the investigation of synthetic rubber. His discovery would follow
+immediately the group had cleared itself of plantation shares; indeed he
+could begin planning the necessary works forthwith; the large scale
+operations in the process were to be protected as far as possible by
+patents, but its essential feature, the addition of a specific catalytic
+agent, could be safely dealt with as a secret process.
+
+"I hate secrecy," said Trafford.
+
+"Business," interjected Solomonson, and went on with his exposition of
+the relative advantages of secrecy and patent rights. It was all a
+matter of just how many people you had to trust. As that number
+increased, the more and more advisable did it become to put your cards
+on the table and risk the complex uncertain protection of the patent
+law. They went into elaborate calculations, clerks were called upon to
+hunt up facts and prices, and the table was presently littered with
+waste arithmetic.
+
+"I believe we can do the stuff at tenpence a pound," said Solomonson,
+leaning back in his chair at last, and rattling his fountain pen between
+his teeth, "so soon, that is, as we deal in quantity. Tenpence! We can
+lower the price and spread the market, sixpence by sixpence. In the
+end--there won't be any more plantations. Have to grow tea.... I say,
+let's have an invalid dinner of chicken and champagne, and go on with
+this. It's fascinating. You can telephone."
+
+They dined together, and Solomonson on champagne rather than chicken.
+His mind, which had never shown an instant's fatigue, began to glow and
+sparkle. This enterprise, he declared, was to be only the first of a
+series of vigorous exploitations. The whole thing warmed him. He would
+rather make ten thousand by such developments, than a hundred thousand
+by mere speculation. Trafford had but scratched the surface of his mine
+of knowledge. "Let's think of other things," said Sir Rupert Solomonson.
+"Diamonds! No! They've got too many tons stowed away already. A diamond
+now--it's an absolutely artificial value. At any time a new discovery
+and one wild proprietor might bust that show. Lord!--diamonds! Metals?
+Of course you've worked the colloids chiefly. I suppose there's been
+more done in metals and alloys than anywhere. There's a lot of other
+substances. Business has hardly begun to touch substances yet, you know,
+Trafford--flexible glass, for example, and things like that. So far
+we've always taken substances for granted. On our side, I mean. It's
+extraordinary how narrow the outlook of business and finance is--still.
+It never seems to lead to things, never thinks ahead. In this case of
+rubber, for example----"
+
+"When men fight for their own hands and for profit and position in the
+next ten years or so, I suppose they tend to become narrow."
+
+"I suppose they must." Sir Rupert's face glowed with a new idea, and his
+voice dropped a little lower. "But what a pull they get, Trafford, if
+perhaps--they don't, eh?"
+
+"No," said Trafford with a smile and a sigh, "the other sort gets the
+pull."
+
+"Not _this_ time," said Solomonson; "not with you to spot processes and
+me to figure out the cost--" he waved his hands to the litter that had
+been removed to a side table--"and generally see how the business end of
+things is going...."
+
+
+
+
+    BOOK THE THIRD
+    MARJORIE AT LONELY HUT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIRST
+
+SUCCESSES
+
+
+§ 1
+
+I find it hard to trace the accumulation of moods and feelings that led
+Trafford and Marjorie at last to make their extraordinary raid upon
+Labrador. In a week more things happen in the thoughts of such a man as
+Trafford, changes, revocations, deflections, than one can chronicle in
+the longest of novels. I have already in an earlier passage of this
+story sought to give an image of the confused content of a modern human
+mind, but that pool was to represent a girl of twenty, and Trafford now
+was a man of nearly thirty-five, and touching life at a hundred points
+for one of the undergraduate Marjorie's. Perhaps that made him less
+confused, but it certainly made him fuller. Let me attempt therefore
+only the broad outline of his changes of purpose and activity until I
+come to the crucial mood that made these two lives a little worth
+telling about, amidst the many thousands of such lives that people are
+living to-day....
+
+It took him seven years from his conclusive agreement with Solomonson to
+become a rich and influential man. It took him only seven years, because
+already by the mere accidents of intellectual interest he was in
+possession of knowledge of the very greatest economic importance, and
+because Solomonson was full of that practical loyalty and honesty that
+distinguishes his race. I think that in any case Trafford's vigor and
+subtlety of mind would have achieved the prosperity he had found
+necessary to himself, but it might have been, under less favorable
+auspices, a much longer and more tortuous struggle. Success and security
+were never so abundant nor so easily attained by men with capacity and a
+sense of proportion as they are in the varied and flexible world of
+to-day. We live in an affluent age with a nearly incredible continuous
+fresh increment of power pouring in from mechanical invention, and
+compared with our own, most other periods have been meagre and anxious
+and hard-up times. Our problems are constantly less the problems of
+submission and consolation and continually more problems of
+opportunity....
+
+Trafford found the opening campaign, the operation with the plantation
+shares and his explosion of Behrens' pretensions extremely uncongenial.
+It left upon his mind a confused series of memories of interviews and
+talks in offices for the most part dingy and slovenly, of bales of
+press-cuttings and blue-pencilled financial publications, of unpleasing
+encounters with a number of bright-eyed, flushed, excitable and
+extremely cunning men, of having to be reserved and limited in his talk
+upon all occasions, and of all the worst aspects of Solomonson. All that
+part of the new treatment of life that was to make him rich gave him
+sensations as though he had ceased to wash himself mentally, until he
+regretted his old life in his laboratory as a traveller in a crowded
+night train among filthy people might regret the bathroom he had left
+behind him....
+
+But the development of his manufacture of rubber was an entirely
+different business, and for a time profoundly interesting. It took him
+into a new astonishing world, the world of large-scale manufacture and
+industrial organization. The actual planning of the works was not in
+itself anything essentially new to him. So far as all that went it was
+scarcely more than the problem of arranging an experiment upon a huge
+and permanent scale, and all that quick ingenuity, that freshness and
+directness of mind that had made his purely scientific work so admirable
+had ample and agreeable scope. Even the importance of cost and economy
+at every point in the process involved no system of considerations that
+was altogether novel to him. The British investigator knows only too
+well the necessity for husbanded material and inexpensive substitutes.
+But strange factors came in, a new region of interest was opened with
+the fact that instead of one experimenter working with the alert
+responsive assistance of Durgan, a multitude of human beings--even in
+the first drafts of his project they numbered already two hundred,
+before the handling and packing could be considered--had to watch,
+control, assist or perform every stage in a long elaborate synthesis.
+For the first time in his life Trafford encountered the reality of
+Labour, as it is known to the modern producer.
+
+It will be difficult in the future, when things now subtly or widely
+separated have been brought together by the receding perspectives of
+time, for the historian to realize just how completely out of the
+thoughts of such a young man as Trafford the millions of people who live
+and die in organized productive industry had been. That vast world of
+toil and weekly anxiety, ill-trained and stupidly directed effort and
+mental and moral feebleness, had been as much beyond the living circle
+of his experience as the hosts of Genghis Khan or the social life of the
+Forbidden City. Consider the limitations of his world. In all his life
+hitherto he had never been beyond a certain prescribed area of London's
+immensities, except by the most casual and uninstructive straying. He
+knew Chelsea and Kensington and the north bank and (as a boy) Battersea
+Park, and all the strip between Kensington and Charing Cross, with some
+scraps of the Strand as far as the Law Courts, a shop or so in Tottenham
+Court Road and fragments about the British Museum and Holborn and
+Regent's Park, a range up Edgware Road to Maida Vale, the routes west
+and south-west through Uxbridge and Putney to the country, and Wimbledon
+Common and Putney Heath. He had never been on Hampstead Heath nor
+visited the Botanical Gardens nor gone down the Thames below London
+Bridge, nor seen Sydenham nor Epping Forest nor the Victoria Park. Take
+a map and blot all he knew and see how vast is the area left untouched.
+All industrial London, all wholesale London, great oceans of human
+beings fall into that excluded area. The homes he knew were comfortable
+homes, the poor he knew were the parasitic and dependent poor of the
+West, the shops, good retail shops, the factories for the most part
+engaged in dressmaking.
+
+Of course he had been informed about this vast rest of London. He knew
+that as a matter of fact it existed, was populous, portentous, puzzling.
+He had heard of "slums," read "Tales of Mean Streets," and marvelled in
+a shallow transitory way at such wide wildernesses of life, apparently
+supported by nothing at all in a state of grey, darkling but prolific
+discomfort. Like the princess who wondered why the people having no
+bread did not eat cake, he could never clearly understand why the
+population remained there, did not migrate to more attractive
+surroundings. He had discussed the problems of those wildernesses as
+young men do, rather confidently, very ignorantly, had dismissed them,
+recurred to them, and forgotten them amidst a press of other interests,
+but now it all suddenly became real to him with the intensity of a
+startling and intimate contact. He discovered this limitless, unknown,
+greater London, this London of the majority, as if he had never thought
+of it before. He went out to inspect favourable sites in regions whose
+very names were unfamiliar to him, travelled on dirty little intraurban
+railway lines to hitherto unimagined railway stations, found parks,
+churches, workhouses, institutions, public-houses, canals, factories,
+gas-works, warehouses, foundries and sidings, amidst a multitudinous
+dinginess of mean houses, shabby back-yards, and ill-kept streets. There
+seemed to be no limits to this thread-bare side of London, it went on
+northward, eastward, and over the Thames southward, for mile after
+mile--endlessly. The factories and so forth clustered in lines and banks
+upon the means of communication, the homes stretched between, and
+infinitude of parallelograms of grimy boxes with public-houses at the
+corners and churches and chapels in odd places, towering over which rose
+the council schools, big, blunt, truncated-looking masses, the means to
+an education as blunt and truncated, born of tradition and confused
+purposes, achieving by accident what they achieve at all.
+
+And about this sordid-looking wilderness went a population that seemed
+at first as sordid. It was in no sense a tragic population. But it saw
+little of the sun, felt the wind but rarely, and so had a white, dull
+skin that looked degenerate and ominous to a West-end eye. It was not
+naked nor barefooted, but it wore cheap clothes that were tawdry when
+new, and speedily became faded, discoloured, dusty, and draggled. It was
+slovenly and almost wilfully ugly in its speech and gestures. And the
+food it ate was rough and coarse if abundant, the eggs it consumed
+"tasted"--everything "tasted"; its milk, its beer, its bread was
+degraded by base adulterations, its meat was hacked red stuff that hung
+in the dusty air until it was sold; east of the city Trafford could find
+no place where by his standards he could get a tolerable meal tolerably
+served. The entertainment of this eastern London was jingle, its
+religion clap-trap, its reading feeble and sensational rubbish without
+kindliness or breadth. And if this great industrial multitude was
+neither tortured nor driven nor cruelly treated--as the slaves and
+common people of other days have been--yet it was universally anxious,
+perpetually anxious about urgent small necessities and petty
+dissatisfying things....
+
+That was the general effect of this new region in which he had sought
+out and found the fortunate site for his manufacture of rubber, and
+against this background it was that he had now to encounter a crowd of
+selected individuals, and weld them into a harmonious and successful
+"process." They came out from their millions to him, dingy, clumsy, and
+at first it seemed without any individuality. Insensibly they took on
+character, rounded off by unaccustomed methods into persons as marked
+and distinctive as any he had known.
+
+There was Dowd, for instance, the technical assistant, whom he came to
+call in his private thoughts Dowd the Disinherited. Dowd had seemed a
+rather awkward, potentially insubordinate young man of unaccountably
+extensive and curiously limited attainments. He had begun his career in
+a crowded home behind and above a baker's shop in Hoxton, he had gone as
+a boy into the works of a Clerkenwell electric engineer, and there he
+had developed that craving for knowledge which is so common in poor men
+of the energetic type. He had gone to classes, read with a sort of
+fury, feeding his mind on the cheap and adulterated instruction of
+grant-earning crammers and on stale, meretricious and ill-chosen books;
+his mental food indeed was the exact parallel of the rough, abundant,
+cheap and nasty groceries and meat that gave the East-ender his spots
+and dyspeptic complexion, the cheap text-books were like canned meat and
+dangerous with intellectual ptomaines, the rascally encyclopćdias like
+weak and whitened bread, and Dowd's mental complexion, too, was leaden
+and spotted. Yet essentially he wasn't, Trafford found, by any means bad
+stuff; where his knowledge had had a chance of touching reality it
+became admirable, and he was full of energy in his work and a sort of
+honest zeal about the things of the mind. The two men grew from an acute
+mutual criticism into a mutual respect.
+
+At first it seemed to Trafford that when he met Dowd he was only meeting
+Dowd, but a time came when it seemed to him that in meeting Dowd he was
+meeting all that vast new England outside the range of ruling-class
+dreams, that multitudinous greater England, cheaply treated, rather out
+of health, angry, energetic and now becoming intelligent and critical,
+that England which organized industrialism has created. There were
+nights when he thought for hours about Dowd. Other figures grouped
+themselves round him--Markham, the head clerk, the quintessence of
+East-end respectability, who saw to the packing; Miss Peckover, an
+ex-telegraph operator, a woman so entirely reliable and unobservant that
+the most betraying phase of the secret process could be confidently
+entrusted to her hands. Behind them were clerks, workmen, motor-van men,
+work-girls, a crowd of wage-earners, from amidst which some individual
+would assume temporary importance and interest by doing something
+wrong, getting into trouble, becoming insubordinate, and having
+contributed a little vivid story to Trafford's gathering impressions of
+life, drop back again into undistinguished subordination.
+
+Dowd became at last entirely representative.
+
+When first Trafford looked Dowd in the eye, he met something of the
+hostile interest one might encounter in a swordsman ready to begin a
+duel. There was a watchfulness, an immense reserve. They discussed the
+work and the terms of their relationship, and all the while Trafford
+felt there was something almost threateningly not mentioned.
+
+Presently he learnt from a Silvertown employer what that concealed
+aspect was. Dowd was "that sort of man who makes trouble," disposed to
+strike rather than not upon a grievance, with a taste for open-air
+meetings, a member, obstinately adherent in spite of friendly
+remonstrance, of the Social Democratic Party. This in spite of his clear
+duty to a wife and two small white knobby children. For a time he would
+not talk to Trafford of anything but business--Trafford was so
+manifestly the enemy, not to be trusted, the adventurous plutocrat, the
+exploiter--when at last Dowd did open out he did so defiantly, throwing
+opinions at Trafford as a mob might hurl bricks at windows. At last they
+achieved a sort of friendship and understanding, an amiability as it
+were, in hostility, but never from first to last would he talk to
+Trafford as one gentleman to another; between them, and crossed only by
+flimsy, temporary bridges, was his sense of incurable grievances and
+fundamental injustice. He seemed incapable of forgetting the
+disadvantages of his birth and upbringing, the inferiority and disorder
+of the house that sheltered him, the poor food that nourished him, the
+deadened air he breathed, the limited leisure, the inadequate books.
+Implicit in his every word and act was the assurance that but for this
+handicap he could have filled Trafford's place, while Trafford would
+certainly have failed in his.
+
+For all these things Dowd made Trafford responsible; he held him to that
+inexorably.
+
+"_You_ sweat us," he said, speaking between his teeth; "_you_ limit us,
+_you_ stifle us, and away there in the West-end, _you_ and the women you
+keep waste the plunder."
+
+Trafford attempted palliation. "After all," he said, "it's not me so
+particularly----"
+
+"But it is," said Dowd.
+
+"It's the system things go upon."
+
+"You're the responsible part of it. _You_ have freedom, _you_ have power
+and endless opportunity--"
+
+Trafford shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It's because your sort wants too much," said Dowd, "that my sort hasn't
+enough."
+
+"Tell me how to organize things better."
+
+"Much you'd care. They'll organize themselves. Everything is drifting to
+class separation, the growing discontent, the growing hardship of the
+masses.... Then you'll see."
+
+"Then what's going to happen?"
+
+"Overthrow. And social democracy."
+
+"How is that going to work?"
+
+Dowd had been cornered by that before. "I don't care if it _doesn't_
+work," he snarled, "so long as we smash up this. We're getting too sick
+to care what comes after."
+
+"Dowd," said Trafford abruptly, "_I'm_ not so satisfied with things."
+
+Dowd looked at him askance. "You'll get reconciled to it," he said. "It's
+ugly here--but it's all right there--at the spending end.... Your sort
+has got to grab, your sort has got to spend--until the thing works out
+and the social revolution makes an end of you."
+
+"And then?"
+
+Dowd became busy with his work.
+
+Trafford stuck his hands in his pockets and stared out of the dingy
+factory window.
+
+"I don't object so much to your diagnosis," he said, "as to your remedy.
+It doesn't strike me as a remedy."
+
+"It's an end," said Dowd, "anyhow. My God! When I think of all the women
+and shirkers flaunting and frittering away there in the West, while here
+men and women toil and worry and starve...." He stopped short like one
+who feels too full for controlled speech.
+
+"Dowd," said Trafford after a fair pause, "What would you do if you were
+me?"
+
+"Do?" said Dowd.
+
+"Yes," said Trafford as one who reconsiders it, "what would you do?"
+
+"Now that's a curious question, Mr. Trafford," said Dowd, turning to
+regard him. "Meaning--if I were in your place?"
+
+"Yes," said Trafford. "What would you do in my place?"
+
+"I should sell out of this place jolly quick," he said.
+
+"_Sell!_" said Trafford softly.
+
+"Yes--sell. And start a socialist daily right off. An absolutely
+independent, unbiassed socialist daily."
+
+"And what would that do?"
+
+"It would stir people up. Every day it would stir people up."
+
+"But you see I can't edit. I haven't the money for half a year of a
+socialist daily.... And meanwhile people want rubber."
+
+Dowd shook his head. "You mean that you and your wife want to have the
+spending of six or eight thousand a year," he said.
+
+"I don't make half of that," said Trafford.
+
+"Well--half of that," pressed Dowd. "It's all the same to me."
+
+Trafford reflected. "The point where I don't agree with you," he said,
+"is in supposing that my scale of living--over there, is directly
+connected with the scale of living--about here."
+
+"Well, isn't it?"
+
+"'Directly,' I said. No. If we just stopped it--over there--there'd be
+no improvement here. In fact, for a time it would mean dislocations. It
+might mean permanent, hopeless, catastrophic dislocation. You know that
+as well as I do. Suppose the West-end became--Tolstoyan; the East would
+become chaos."
+
+"Not much likelihood," sneered Dowd.
+
+"That's another question. That we earn together here and that I spend
+alone over there, it's unjust and bad, but it isn't a thing that admits
+of any simple remedy. Where we differ, Dowd, is about that remedy. I
+admit the disease as fully as you do. I, as much as you, want to see the
+dawn of a great change in the ways of human living. But I don't think
+the diagnosis is complete and satisfactory; our problem is an intricate
+muddle of disorders, not one simple disorder, and I don't see what
+treatment is indicated."
+
+"Socialism," said Dowd, "is indicated."
+
+"You might as well say that health is indicated," said Trafford with a
+note of impatience in his voice. "Does any one question that if we
+could have this socialist state in which every one is devoted and every
+one is free, in which there is no waste and no want, and beauty and
+brotherhood prevail universally, we wouldn't? But----. You socialists
+have no scheme of government, no scheme of economic organization, no
+intelligible guarantees of personal liberty, no method of progress, no
+ideas about marriage, no plan--except those little pickpocket plans of
+the Fabians that you despise as much as I do--for making this order into
+that other order you've never yet taken the trouble to work out even in
+principle. Really you know, Dowd, what is the good of pointing at my
+wife's dresses and waving the red flag at me, and talking of human
+miseries----"
+
+"It seems to wake you up a bit," said Dowd with characteristic
+irrelevance.
+
+
+§ 2
+
+The accusing finger of Dowd followed Trafford into his dreams.
+
+Behind it was his grey-toned, intelligent, resentful face, his
+smouldering eyes, his slightly frayed collar and vivid, ill-chosen tie.
+At times Trafford could almost hear his flat insistent voice, his
+measured h-less speech. Dowd was so penetratingly right,--and so
+ignorant of certain essentials, so wrong in his forecasts and ultimates.
+It was true beyond disputing that Trafford as compared with Dowd had
+opportunity, power of a sort, the prospect and possibility of leisure.
+He admitted the liability that followed on that advantage. It expressed
+so entirely the spirit of his training that with Trafford the noble
+maxim of the older socialists; "from each according to his ability, to
+each according to his need," received an intuitive acquiescence. He had
+no more doubt than Dowd that Dowd was the victim of a subtle evasive
+injustice, innocently and helplessly underbred, underfed, cramped and
+crippled, and that all his own surplus made him in a sense Dowd's
+debtor.
+
+But Dowd's remedies!
+
+Trafford made himself familiar with the socialist and labor newspapers,
+and he was as much impressed by their honest resentments and their
+enthusiastic hopefulness as he was repelled by their haste and
+ignorance, their cocksure confidence in untried reforms and impudent
+teachers, their indiscriminating progressiveness, their impulsive lapses
+into hatred, misrepresentation and vehement personal abuse. He was in no
+mood for the humours of human character, and he found the ill-masked
+feuds and jealousies of the leaders, the sham statecraft of G. B.
+Magdeberg, M.P., the sham Machiavellism of Dorvil, the sham persistent
+good-heartedness of Will Pipes, discouraging and irritating. Altogether
+it seemed to him the conscious popular movement in politics, both in and
+out of Parliament, was a mere formless and indeterminate aspiration. It
+was a confused part of the general confusion, symptomatic perhaps, but
+exercising no controls and no direction.
+
+His attention passed from the consideration of this completely
+revolutionary party to the general field of social reform. With the
+naďve directness of a scientific man, he got together the published
+literature of half a dozen flourishing agitations and philanthropies,
+interviewed prominent and rather embarrassed personages, attended
+meetings, and when he found the speeches too tiresome to follow watched
+the audience about him. He even looked up Aunt Plessington's Movement,
+and filled her with wild hopes and premature boastings about a
+promising convert. "Marjorie's brought him round at last!" said Aunt
+Plessington. "I knew I could trust my little Madge!" His impression was
+not the cynic's impression of these wide shallows of activity. Progress
+and social reform are not, he saw, mere cloaks of hypocrisy; a wealth of
+good intention lies behind them in spite of their manifest futility.
+There is much dishonesty due to the blundering desire for consistency in
+people of hasty intention, much artless and a little calculated
+self-seeking, but far more vanity and amiable feebleness of mind in
+their general attainment of failure. The Plessingtons struck him as
+being after all very typical of the publicist at large, quite devoted,
+very industrious, extremely presumptuous and essentially thin-witted.
+They would cheat like ill-bred children for example, on some petty point
+of reputation, but they could be trusted to expend, ineffectually
+indeed, but with the extremest technical integrity, whatever sums of
+money their adherents could get together....
+
+He emerged from this inquiry into the proposed remedies and palliatives
+for Dowd's wrongs with a better opinion of people's hearts and a worse
+one of their heads than he had hitherto entertained.
+
+Pursuing this line of thought he passed from the politicians and
+practical workers to the economists and sociologists. He spent the
+entire leisure of the second summer after the establishment of the
+factory upon sociological and economic literature. At the end of that
+bout of reading he attained a vivid realization of the garrulous badness
+that rules in this field of work, and the prevailing slovenliness and
+negligence in regard to it. He chanced one day to look up the article on
+Socialism in the new Encyclopćdia Britannica, and found in its entire
+failure to state the case for or against modern Socialism, to trace its
+origins, or to indicate any rational development in the movement, a
+symptom of the universal laxity of interest in these matters. Indeed,
+the writer did not appear to have heard of modern Socialism at all; he
+discussed collective and individualist methods very much as a rather
+ill-read schoolgirl in a hurry for her college debating society might
+have done. Compared with the treatment of engineering or biological
+science in the same compilation, this article became almost symbolical
+of the prevailing habitual incompetence with which all this system of
+questions is still handled. The sciences were done scantily and
+carelessly enough, but they admitted at any rate the possibility of
+completeness; this did not even pretend to thoroughness.
+
+One might think such things had no practical significance. And at the
+back of it all was Dowd, remarkably more impatient each year, confessing
+the failure of parliamentary methods, of trades unionism, hinting more
+and more plainly at the advent of a permanent guerilla war against
+capital, at the general strike and sabotage.
+
+"It's coming to that," said Dowd; "it's coming to that."
+
+"_What's the good of it?_" he said, echoing Trafford's words. "It's a
+sort of relief to the feelings. Why shouldn't we?"
+
+
+§ 3
+
+But you must not suppose that at any time these huge grey problems of
+our social foundations and the riddle of intellectual confusion one
+reaches through them, and the yet broader riddles of human purpose that
+open beyond, constitute the whole of Trafford's life during this time.
+When he came back to Marjorie and his home, a curtain of unreality fell
+between him and all these things. It was as if he stepped through such
+boundaries as Alice passed to reach her Wonderland; the other world
+became a dream again; as if he closed the pages of a vivid book and
+turned to things about him. Or again it was as if he drew down the blind
+of a window that gave upon a landscape, grave, darkling, ominous, and
+faced the warm realities of a brightly illuminated room....
+
+In a year or so he had the works so smoothly organized and Dowd so
+reconciled, trained and encouraged that his own daily presence was
+unnecessary, and he would go only three and then only two mornings a
+week to conduct those secret phases in the preparation of his catalytic
+that even Dowd could not be trusted to know. He reverted more and more
+completely to his own proper world.
+
+And the first shock of discovering that greater London which "isn't in
+it" passed away by imperceptible degrees. Things that had been as vivid
+and startling as new wounds became unstimulating and ineffective with
+repetition. He got used to the change from Belgravia to East Ham, from
+East Ham to Belgravia. He fell in with the unusual persuasion in
+Belgravia, that, given a firm and prompt Home Secretary, East Ham could
+be trusted to go on--for quite a long time anyhow. One cannot sit down
+for all one's life in the face of insoluble problems. He had a motor-car
+now that far outshone Magnet's, and he made the transit from west to
+east in the minimum of time and with the minimum of friction. It ceased
+to be more disconcerting that he should have workers whom he could
+dismiss at a week's notice to want or prostitution than that he should
+have a servant waiting behind his chair. Things were so. The main
+current of his life--and the main current of his life flowed through
+Marjorie and his home--carried him on. Rubber was his, but there were
+still limitless worlds to conquer. He began to take up, working under
+circumstances of considerable secrecy at Solomonson's laboratories at
+Riplings, to which he would now go by motor-car for two or three days at
+a time, the possibility of a cheap, resilient and very tough substance,
+rubber glass, that was to be, Solomonson was assured, the road surface
+of the future.
+
+
+§ 4
+
+The confidence of Solomonson had made it impossible for Trafford to
+alter his style of living almost directly upon the conclusion of their
+agreement. He went back to Marjorie to broach a financially emancipated
+phase. They took a furnished house at Shackleford, near Godalming in
+Surrey, and there they lived for nearly a year--using their Chelsea home
+only as a town apartment for Trafford when business held him in London.
+And there it was, in the pretty Surrey country, with the sweet air of
+pine and heather in Marjorie's blood, that their second child was born.
+It was a sturdy little boy, whose only danger in life seemed to be the
+superfluous energy with which he resented its slightest disrespect of
+his small but important requirements.
+
+When it was time for Marjorie to return to London, spring had come round
+again, and Trafford's conceptions of life were adapting themselves to
+the new scale upon which they were now to do things. While he was busy
+creating his factory in the East End, Marjorie was displaying an equal
+if a less original constructive energy in Sussex Square, near Lancaster
+Gate, for there it was the new home was to be established. She set
+herself to furnish and arrange it so as to produce the maximum of
+surprise and chagrin in Daphne, and she succeeded admirably. The Magnets
+now occupied a flat in Whitehall Court, the furniture Magnet had
+insisted upon buying himself with all the occult cunning of the humorist
+in these matters, and not even Daphne could blind herself to the
+superiority both in arrangement and detail of Marjorie's home. That was
+very satisfactory, and so too was the inevitable exaggeration of
+Trafford's financial importance. "He can do what he likes in the rubber
+world," said Marjorie. "In Mincing Lane, where they deal in rubber
+shares, they used to call him and Sir Rupert the invaders; now they call
+them the Conquering Heroes.... Of course, it's mere child's play to
+Godwin, but, as he said, 'We want money.' It won't really interfere with
+his more important interests...."
+
+I do not know why both those sisters were more vulgarly competitive with
+each other than with any one else; I have merely to record the fact that
+they were so.
+
+The effect upon the rest of Marjorie's family was equally gratifying.
+Mr. Pope came to the house-warming as though he had never had the
+slightest objection to Trafford's antecedents, and told him casually
+after dinner that Marjorie had always been his favourite daughter, and
+that from the first he had expected great things of her. He told Magnet,
+who was the third man of the party, that he only hoped Syd and Rom would
+do as well as their elder sisters. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, he
+whacked Marjorie suddenly and very startlingly on the shoulder-blade--it
+was the first bruise he had given her since Buryhamstreet days. "You've
+made a man of him, Maggots," he said.
+
+The quiet smile of the Christian Scientist was becoming now the fixed
+expression of Mrs. Pope's face, and it scarcely relaxed for a moment as
+she surveyed her daughter's splendours. She had triumphantly refused to
+worry over a rather serious speculative disappointment, but her faith in
+her prophet's spiritual power had been strengthened rather than weakened
+by the manifest insufficiency of his financial prestidigitations, and
+she was getting through life quite radiantly now, smiling at (but not,
+of course, giving way to) beggars, smiling at toothaches and headaches,
+both her own and other people's, smiling away doubts, smiling away
+everything that bows the spirit of those who are still in the bonds of
+the flesh....
+
+Afterwards the children came round, Syd and Rom now with skirts down and
+hair up, and rather stiff in the fine big rooms, and Theodore in a high
+collar and very anxious to get Trafford on his side in his ambition to
+chuck a proposed bank clerkship and go in for professional aviation....
+
+It was pleasant to be respected by her family again, but the mind of
+Marjorie was soon reaching out to the more novel possibilities of her
+changed position. She need no longer confine herself to teas and
+afternoons. She could now, delightful thought! give dinners. Dinners are
+mere vulgarities for the vulgar, but in the measure of your brains does
+a dinner become a work of art. There is the happy blending of a modern
+and distinguished simplicity with a choice of items essentially good and
+delightful and just a little bit not what was expected. There is the
+still more interesting and difficult blending and arrangement of the
+diners. From the first Marjorie resolved on a round table, and the
+achievement of that rare and wonderful thing, general conversation. She
+had a clear centre, with a circle of silver bowls filled with short cut
+flowers and low shaded, old silver candlesticks adapted to the electric
+light. The first dinner was a nervous experience for her, but happily
+Trafford seemed unconscious of the importance of the occasion and talked
+very easily and well; at last she attained her old ambition to see Sir
+Roderick Dover in her house, and there was Remington, the editor of the
+_Blue Weekly_ and his silent gracious wife; Edward Crampton, the
+historian, full of surprising new facts about Kosciusko; the Solomonsons
+and Mrs. Millingham, and Mary Gasthorne the novelist. It was a good
+talking lot. Remington sparred agreeably with the old Toryism of Dover,
+flank attacks upon them both were delivered by Mrs. Millingham and
+Trafford, Crampton instanced Hungarian parallels, and was happily
+averted by Mary Gasthorne with travel experiences in the Carpathians;
+the diamonds of Lady Solomonson and Mrs. Remington flashed and winked
+across the shining table, as their wearers listened with unmistakable
+intelligence, and when the ladies had gone upstairs Sir Rupert
+Solomonson told all the men exactly what he thought of the policy of the
+_Blue Weekly_, a balanced, common-sense judgment. Upstairs Lady
+Solomonson betrayed a passion of admiration for Mrs. Remington, and Mrs.
+Millingham mumbled depreciation of the same lady's intelligence in Mary
+Gasthorne's unwilling ear. "She's _passive_," said Mrs. Millingham. "She
+bores him...."
+
+For a time Marjorie found dinner-giving delightful--it is like picking
+and arranging posies of human flowers--and fruits--and perhaps a little
+dried grass, and it was not long before she learnt that she was esteemed
+a success as a hostess. She gathered her earlier bunches in the Carmel
+and Solomonson circle, with a stiffening from among the literary and
+scientific friends of Trafford and his mother, and one or two casual and
+undervalued blossoms from Aunt Plessington's active promiscuities. She
+had soon a gaily flowering garden of her own to pick from. Its strength
+and finest display lay in its increasing proportion of political
+intellectuals, men in and about the House who relaxed their minds from
+the tense detailed alertness needed in political intrigues by
+conversation that rose at times to the level of the smarter sort of
+article in the half-crown reviews. The women were more difficult than
+the men, and Marjorie found herself wishing at times that girl novelists
+and playwrights were more abundant, or women writers on the average
+younger. These talked generally well, and one or two capable women of
+her own type talked and listened with an effect of talking; so many
+other women either chattered disturbingly, or else did not listen, with
+an effect of not talking at all, and so made gaps about the table. Many
+of these latter had to be asked because they belonged to the class of
+inevitable wives, _sine-qua-nons_, and through them she learnt the value
+of that priceless variety of kindly unselfish men who can create the
+illusion of attentive conversation in the most uncomfortable and
+suspicious natures without producing backwater and eddy in the general
+flow of talk.
+
+Indisputably Marjorie's dinners were successful. Of course, the
+abundance and ćsthetic achievements of Mrs. Lee still seemed to her
+immeasurably out of reach, but it was already possible to show Aunt
+Plessington how the thing ought really to be done, Aunt Plessington with
+her narrow, lank, austerely served table, with a sort of quarter-deck at
+her own end and a subjugated forecastle round Hubert. And accordingly
+the Plessingtons were invited and shown, and to a party, too, that
+restrained Aunt Plessington from her usual conversational prominence....
+
+These opening years of Trafford's commercial phase were full of an
+engaging activity for Marjorie as for him, and for her far more
+completely than for him were the profounder solicitudes of life lost
+sight of in the bright succession of immediate events.
+
+Marjorie did not let her social development interfere with her duty to
+society in the larger sense. Two years after the vigorous and resentful
+Godwin came a second son, and a year and a half later a third. "That's
+enough," said Marjorie, "now we've got to rear them." The nursery at
+Sussex Square had always been a show part of the house, but it became
+her crowning achievement. She had never forgotten the Lee display at
+Vevey, the shining splendours of modern maternity, the books, the
+apparatus, the space and light and air. The whole second floor was
+altered to accommodate these four triumphant beings, who absorbed the
+services of two nurses, a Swiss nursery governess and two
+housemaids--not to mention those several hundred obscure individuals who
+were yielding a sustaining profit in the East End. At any rate, they
+were very handsome and promising children, and little Margharita could
+talk three languages with a childish fluency, and invent and write a
+short fable in either French or German--with only as much misspelling as
+any child of eight may be permitted....
+
+Then there sprang up a competition between Marjorie and the able, pretty
+wife of Halford Wallace, most promising of under-secretaries. They gave
+dinners against each other, they discovered young artists against each
+other, they went to first-nights and dressed against each other.
+Marjorie was ruddy and tall, Mrs. Halford Wallace dark and animated;
+Halford Wallace admired Marjorie, Trafford was insensible to Mrs.
+Halford Wallace. They played for points so vague that it was impossible
+for any one to say which was winning, but none the less they played like
+artists, for all they were worth....
+
+Trafford's rapid prosperity and his implicit promise of still wider
+activities and successes brought him innumerable acquaintances and many
+friends. He joined two or three distinguished clubs, he derived an
+uncertain interest from a series of week-end visits to ample,
+good-mannered households, and for a time he found a distraction in
+little flashes of travel to countries that caught at his imagination,
+Morocco, Montenegro, Southern Russia.
+
+I do not know whether Marjorie might not have been altogether happy
+during this early Sussex Square period, if it had not been for an
+unconquerable uncertainty about Trafford. But ever and again she became
+vaguely apprehensive of some perplexing unreality in her position. She
+had never had any such profundity of discontent as he experienced. It
+was nothing clear, nothing that actually penetrated, distressing her. It
+was at most an uneasiness. For him the whole fabric of life was, as it
+were, torn and pieced by a provocative sense of depths unplumbed that
+robbed it of all its satisfactions. For her these glimpses were as yet
+rare, mere moments of doubt that passed again and left her active and
+assured.
+
+
+§ 5
+
+It was only after they had been married six or seven years that Trafford
+began to realize how widely his attitudes to Marjorie varied. He emerged
+slowly from a naďve unconsciousness of his fluctuations,--a naďve
+unconsciousness of inconsistency that for most men and women remains
+throughout life. His ruling idea that she and he were friends, equals,
+confederates, knowing everything about each other, co-operating in
+everything, was very fixed and firm. But indeed that had become the
+remotest rendering of their relationship. Their lives were lives of
+intimate disengagement. They came nearest to fellowship in relation to
+their children; there they shared an immense common pride. Beyond that
+was a less confident appreciation of their common house and their joint
+effect. And then they liked and loved each other tremendously. They
+could play upon each other and please each other in a hundred different
+ways, and they did so, quite consciously, observing each other with the
+completest externality. She was still in many ways for him the bright
+girl he had admired in the examination, still the mysterious dignified
+transfiguration of that delightful creature on the tragically tender
+verge of motherhood; these memories were of more power with him than the
+present realities of her full-grown strength and capacity. He petted and
+played with the girl still; he was still tender and solicitous for that
+early woman. He admired and co-operated also with the capable, narrowly
+ambitious, beautiful lady into which Marjorie had developed, but those
+remoter experiences it was that gave the deeper emotions to their
+relationship.
+
+The conflict of aims that had at last brought Trafford from scientific
+investigation into business, had left behind it a little scar of
+hostility. He felt his sacrifice. He felt that he had given something
+for her that she had had no right to exact, that he had gone beyond the
+free mutualities of honest love and paid a price for her; he had
+deflected the whole course of his life for her and he was entitled to
+repayments. Unconsciously he had become a slightly jealous husband. He
+resented inattentions and absences. He felt she ought to be with him and
+orient all her proceedings towards him. He did not like other people to
+show too marked an appreciation of her. She had a healthy love of
+admiration, and in addition her social ambitions made it almost
+inevitable that at times she should use her great personal charm to
+secure and retain adherents. He was ashamed to betray the resentments
+thus occasioned, and his silence widened the separation more than any
+protest could have done....
+
+For his own part he gave her no cause for a reciprocal jealousy. Other
+women did not excite his imagination very greatly, and he had none of
+the ready disposition to lapse to other comforters which is so frequent
+a characteristic of the husband out of touch with his life's companion.
+He was perhaps an exceptional man in his steadfast loyalty to his wife.
+He had come to her as new to love as she had been. He had never in his
+life taken that one decisive illicit step which changes all the aspects
+of sexual life for a man even more than for a woman. Love for him was a
+thing solemn, simple, and unspoilt. He perceived that it was not so for
+most other men, but that did little to modify his own private attitude.
+In his curious scrutiny of the people about him, he did not fail to note
+the drift of adventures and infidelities that glimmers along beneath the
+even surface of our social life. One or two of his intimate friends,
+Solomonson was one of them, passed through "affairs." Once or twice
+those dim proceedings splashed upward to the surface in an open scandal.
+There came Remington's startling elopement with Isabel Rivers, the
+writer, which took two brilliant and inspiring contemporaries suddenly
+and distressingly out of Trafford's world. Trafford felt none of that
+rage and forced and jealous contempt for the delinquents in these
+matters which is common in the ill-regulated, virtuous mind. Indeed, he
+was far more sympathetic with than hostile to the offenders. He had
+brains and imagination to appreciate the grim pathos of a process that
+begins as a hopeful quest, full of the suggestion of noble
+possibilities, full of the craving for missed intensities of fellowship
+and realization, that loiters involuntarily towards beauties and
+delights, and ends at last too often after gratification of an appetite,
+in artificially hideous exposures, and the pelting misrepresentations of
+the timidly well-behaved vile. But the general effect of pitiful
+evasions, of unavoidable meannesses, of draggled heroics and tortuously
+insincere explanations confirmed him in his aversion from this
+labyrinthine trouble of extraneous love....
+
+But if Trafford was a faithful husband, he ceased to be a happy and
+confident one. There grew up in him a vast hinterland of thoughts and
+feelings, an accumulation of unspoken and largely of unformulated things
+in which his wife had no share. And it was in that hinterland that his
+essential self had its abiding place....
+
+It came as a discovery; it remained for ever after a profoundly
+disturbing perplexity that he had talked to Marjorie most carelessly,
+easily and seriously, during their courtship and their honeymoon. He
+remembered their early intercourse now as an immense happy freedom in
+love. Then afterwards a curtain had fallen. That almost delirious sense
+of escaping from oneself, of having at last found some one from whom
+there need be no concealment, some one before whom one could stand
+naked-souled and assured of love as one stands before one's God, faded
+so that he scarce observed its passing, but only discovered at last
+that it had gone. He misunderstood and met misunderstanding. He found he
+could hurt her by the things he said, and be exquisitely hurt by her
+failure to apprehend the spirit of some ill-expressed intention. And it
+was so vitally important not to hurt, not to be hurt. At first he only
+perceived that he reserved himself; then there came the intimation of
+the question, was she also perhaps in such another hinterland as his,
+keeping herself from him?
+
+He had perceived the cessation of that first bright outbreak of
+self-revelation, this relapse into the secrecies of individuality, quite
+early in their married life. I have already told of his first efforts to
+bridge their widening separation by walks and talks in the country, and
+by the long pilgrimage among the Alps that had ended so unexpectedly at
+Vevey. In the retrospect the years seemed punctuated with phases when
+"we must talk" dominated their intercourse, and each time the impulse of
+that recognized need passed away by insensible degrees again--with
+nothing said.
+
+
+§ 6
+
+Marjorie cherished an obstinate hope that Trafford would take up
+political questions and go into Parliament. It seemed to her that there
+was something about him altogether graver and wider than most of the
+active politicians she knew. She liked to think of those gravities
+assuming a practical form, of Trafford very rapidly and easily coming
+forward into a position of cardinal significance. It gave her general
+expenditure a quality of concentration without involving any uncongenial
+limitation to suppose it aimed at the preparation of a statesman's
+circle whenever Trafford chose to adopt that assumption. Little men in
+great positions came to her house and talked with opaque
+self-confidence at her table; she measured them against her husband
+while she played the admiring female disciple to their half-confidential
+talk. She felt that he could take up these questions and measures that
+they reduced to trite twaddle, open the wide relevancies behind them,
+and make them magically significant, sweep away the encrusting
+pettiness, the personalities and arbitrary prejudices. But why didn't he
+begin to do it? She threw out hints he seemed blind towards, she
+exercised miracles of patience while he ignored her baits. She came near
+intrigue in her endeavor to entangle him in political affairs. For a
+time it seemed to her that she was succeeding--I have already told of
+his phase of inquiry and interest in socio-political work--and then he
+relapsed into a scornful restlessness, and her hopes weakened again.
+
+But he could not concentrate his mind, he could not think where to
+begin. Day followed day, each with its attacks upon his intention, its
+petty just claims, its attractive novelties of aspect. The telephone
+bell rang, the letters flopped into the hall, Malcom the butler seemed
+always at hand with some distracting oblong on his salver. Dowd was
+developing ideas for a reconstructed organization of the factory,
+Solomonson growing enthusiastic about rubber-glass, his house seemed
+full of women, Marjorie had an engagement for him to keep or the
+children were coming in to say good-night. To his irritated brain the
+whole scheme of his life presented itself at last as a tissue of
+interruptions which prevented his looking clearly at reality. More and
+more definitely he realized he wanted to get away and think. His former
+life of research became invested with an effect of immense dignity and
+of a steadfast singleness of purpose....
+
+But Trafford was following his own lights, upon his own lines. He was
+returning to that faith in the supreme importance of thought and
+knowledge, upon which he had turned his back when he left pure research
+behind him. To that familiar end he came by an unfamiliar route, after
+his long, unsatisfying examination of social reform movements and social
+and political theories. Immaturity, haste and presumption vitiated all
+that region, and it seemed to him less and less disputable that the only
+escape for mankind from a continuing extravagant futility lay through
+the attainment of a quite unprecedented starkness and thoroughness of
+thinking about all these questions. This conception of a needed
+Renascence obsessed him more and more, and the persuasion, deeply felt
+if indistinctly apprehended, that somewhere in such an effort there was
+a part for him to play....
+
+Life is too great for us or too petty. It gives us no tolerable middle
+way between baseness and greatness. We must die daily on the levels of
+ignoble compromise or perish tragically among the precipices. On the one
+hand is a life--unsatisfying and secure, a plane of dulled
+gratifications, mean advantages, petty triumphs, adaptations,
+acquiescences and submissions, and on the other a steep and terrible
+climb, set with sharp stones and bramble thickets and the possibilities
+of grotesque dislocations, and the snares of such temptation as comes
+only to those whose minds have been quickened by high desire, and the
+challenge of insoluble problems and the intimations of issues so complex
+and great, demanding such a nobility of purpose, such a steadfastness,
+alertness and openness of mind, that they fill the heart of man with
+despair....
+
+There were moods when Trafford would, as people say, pull himself
+together, and struggle with his gnawing discontent. He would compare his
+lot with that of other men, reproach himself for a monstrous greed and
+ingratitude. He remonstrated with himself as one might remonstrate with
+a pampered child refusing to be entertained by a whole handsome nursery
+full of toys. Other men did their work in the world methodically and
+decently, did their duty by their friends and belongings, were
+manifestly patient through dullness, steadfastly cheerful, ready to meet
+vexations with a humorous smile, and grateful for orderly pleasures. Was
+he abnormal? Or was he in some unsuspected way unhealthy? Trafford
+neglected no possible explanations. Did he want this great Renascence of
+the human mind because he was suffering from some subtle form of
+indigestion? He invoked, independently of each other, the aid of two
+distinguished specialists. They both told him in exactly the same voice
+and with exactly the same air of guineas well earned: "What you want,
+Mr. Trafford, is a change."
+
+Trafford brought his mind to bear upon the instances of contentment
+about him. He developed an opinion that all men and many women were
+potentially at least as restless as himself. A huge proportion of the
+usage and education in modern life struck upon him now as being a
+training in contentment. Or rather in keeping quiet and not upsetting
+things. The serious and responsible life of an ordinary prosperous man
+fulfilling the requirements of our social organization fatigues and
+neither completely satisfies nor completely occupies. Still less does
+the responsible part of the life of a woman of the prosperous classes
+engage all her energies or hold her imagination. And there has grown up
+a great informal organization of employments, games, ceremonies, social
+routines, travel, to consume these surplus powers and excessive
+cravings, which might otherwise change or shatter the whole order of
+human living. He began to understand the forced preoccupation with
+cricket and golf, the shooting, visiting, and so forth, to which the
+young people of the economically free classes in the community are
+trained. He discovered a theory for hobbies and specialized interests.
+He began to see why people go to Scotland to get away from London, and
+come to London to get away from Scotland, why they crowd to and fro
+along the Riviera, swarm over Switzerland, shoot, yacht, hunt, and
+maintain an immense apparatus of racing and motoring. Because so they
+are able to remain reasonably contented with the world as it is. He
+perceived, too, that a man who has missed or broken through the training
+to this kind of life, does not again very readily subdue himself to the
+security of these systematized distractions. His own upbringing had been
+antipathetic to any such adaptations; his years of research had given
+him the habit of naked intimacy with truth, filled him with a craving
+for reality and the destructive acids of a relentless critical method.
+
+He began to understand something of the psychology of vice, to
+comprehend how small a part mere sensuality, how large a part the spirit
+of adventure and the craving for illegality, may play, in the career of
+those who are called evil livers. Mere animal impulses and curiosities
+it had always seemed possible to him to control, but now he was
+beginning to apprehend the power of that passion for escape, at any
+cost, in any way, from the petty, weakly stimulating, competitive
+motives of low-grade and law-abiding prosperity....
+
+For a time Trafford made an earnest effort to adjust himself to the
+position in which he found himself, and make a working compromise with
+his disturbing forces. He tried to pick up the scientific preoccupation
+of his earlier years. He made extensive schemes, to Solomonson's great
+concern, whereby he might to a large extent disentangle himself from
+business. He began to hunt out forgotten note-books and yellowing sheets
+of memoranda. He found the resumption of research much more difficult
+than he had ever supposed possible. He went so far as to plan a
+laboratory, and to make some inquiries as to site and the cost of
+building, to the great satisfaction not only of Marjorie but of his
+mother. Old Mrs. Trafford had never expressed her concern at his
+abandonment of molecular physics for money-making, but now in her
+appreciation of his return to pure investigation she betrayed her sense
+of his departure.
+
+But in his heart he felt that this methodical establishment of virtue by
+limitation would not suffice for him. He said no word of this scepticism
+as it grew in his mind. Marjorie was still under the impression that he
+was returning to research, and that she was free to contrive the steady
+preparation for that happier day when he should assume his political
+inheritance. And then presently a queer little dispute sprang up between
+them. Suddenly, for the first time since he took to business, Trafford
+found himself limiting her again. She was disposed, partly through the
+natural growth of her circle and her setting and partly through a
+movement on the part of Mrs. Halford Wallace, to move from Sussex Square
+into a larger, more picturesquely built house in a more central
+position. She particularly desired a good staircase. He met her
+intimations of this development with a curious and unusual irritation.
+The idea of moving bothered him. He felt that exaggerated annoyance
+which is so often a concomitant of overwrought nerves. They had a
+dispute that was almost a quarrel, and though Marjorie dropped the
+matter for a time, he could feel she was still at work upon it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SECOND
+
+TRAFFORD DECIDES TO GO
+
+
+§ 1
+
+A haunting desire to go away into solitude grew upon Trafford very
+steadily. He wanted intensely to think, and London and Marjorie would
+not let him think. He wanted therefore to go away out of London and
+Marjorie's world. He wanted, he felt, to go away alone and face God, and
+clear things up in his mind. By imperceptible degrees this desire
+anticipated its realization. His activities were affected more and more
+by intimations of a determined crisis. One eventful day it seemed to him
+that his mind passed quite suddenly from desire to resolve. He found
+himself with a project, already broadly definite. Hitherto he hadn't
+been at all clear where he could go. From the first almost he had felt
+that this change he needed, the change by which he was to get out of the
+thickets of work and perplexity and distraction that held him captive,
+must be a physical as well as a mental removal; he must go somewhere,
+still and isolated, where sustained detached thinking was possible....
+His preference, if he had one, inclined him to some solitude among the
+Himalaya Mountains. That came perhaps from Kim and the precedent of the
+Hindoo's religious retreat from the world. But this retreat he
+contemplated was a retreat that aimed at a return, a clarified and
+strengthened resumption of the world. And then suddenly, as if he had
+always intended it, Labrador flashed through his thoughts, like a
+familiar name that had been for a time quite unaccountably forgotten.
+
+The word "Labrador" drifted to him one day from an adjacent table as he
+sat alone at lunch in the Liberal Union Club. Some bore was reciting the
+substance of a lecture to a fellow-member. "Seems to be a remarkable
+country," said the speaker. "Mineral wealth hardly glanced at, you know.
+Furs and a few score Indians. And at our doors. Practically--at our
+doors."
+
+Trafford ceased to listen. His mind was taking up this idea of Labrador.
+He wondered why he had not thought of Labrador before.
+
+He had two or three streams of thought flowing in his mind, as a man who
+muses alone is apt to do. Marjorie's desire to move had reappeared; a
+particular group of houses between Berkeley Square and Park Lane had
+taken hold of her fancy, she had urged the acquisition of one upon him
+that morning, and this kept coming up into consciousness like a wrong
+thread in a tapestry. Moreover, he was watching his fellow-members with
+a critical rather than a friendly eye. A half-speculative, half-hostile
+contemplation of his habitual associates was one of the queer aspects of
+this period of unsettlement. They exasperated him by their massive
+contentment with the surface of things. They came in one after another
+patting their ties, or pulling at the lapels of their coats, and looked
+about them for vacant places with a conscious ease of manner that
+irritated his nerves. No doubt they were all more or less successful and
+distinguished men, matter for conversation and food for anecdotes, but
+why did they trouble to give themselves the air of it? They halted or
+sat down by friends, enunciated vapid remarks in sonorous voices, and
+opened conversations in trite phrases, about London architecture, about
+the political situation or the morning's newspaper, conversations that
+ought, he felt, to have been thrown away unopened, so stale and needless
+they seemed to him. They were judges, lawyers of all sorts, bankers,
+company promoters, railway managers, stockbrokers, pressmen,
+politicians, men of leisure. He wondered if indeed they were as opaque
+as they seemed, wondered with the helpless wonder of a man of
+exceptional mental gifts whether any of them at any stage had had such
+thoughts as his, had wanted as acutely as he did now to get right out of
+the world. Did old Booch over there, for example, guzzling oysters, cry
+at times upon the unknown God in the vast silences of the night? But
+Booch, of course, was a member or something of the House of Laymen, and
+very sound on the thirty-nine articles--a man who ate oysters like that
+could swallow anything--and in the vast silences of the night he was
+probably heavily and noisily asleep....
+
+Blenkins, the gentlemanly colleague of Denton in the control of the _Old
+Country Gazette_, appeared on his way to the pay-desk, gesticulating
+amiably _en-route_ to any possible friend. Trafford returned his
+salutation, and pulled himself together immediately after in fear that
+he had scowled, for he hated to be churlish to any human being.
+Blenkins, too, it might be, had sorrow and remorse and periods of
+passionate self-distrust and self-examination; maybe Blenkins could weep
+salt tears, as Blenkins no doubt under suitable sword-play would reveal
+heart and viscera as quivering and oozy as any man's.
+
+But to Trafford's jaundiced eyes just then, it seemed that if you
+slashed Blenkins across he would probably cut like a cheese....
+
+Now, in Labrador----....
+
+So soon as Blenkins had cleared, Trafford followed him to the pay-desk,
+and went on upstairs to the smoking-room, thinking of Labrador. Long
+ago he had read the story of Wallace and Hubbard in that wilderness.
+
+There was much to be said for a winter in Labrador. It was cold, it was
+clear, infinitely lonely, with a keen edge of danger and hardship and
+never a letter or a paper.
+
+One could provision a hut and sit wrapped in fur, watching the Northern
+Lights....
+
+"I'm off to Labrador," said Trafford, and entered the smoking-room.
+
+It was, after all, perfectly easy to go to Labrador. One had just to
+go....
+
+As he pinched the end of his cigar, he became aware of Blenkins, with a
+gleam of golden glasses and a flapping white cuff, beckoning across the
+room to him. With that probable scowl on his conscience Trafford was
+moved to respond with an unreal warmth, and strolled across to Blenkins
+and a group of three or four other people, including that vigorous young
+politician, Weston Massinghay, and Hart, K.C., about the further
+fireplace. "We were talking of you," said Blenkins. "Come and sit down
+with us. Why don't you come into Parliament?"
+
+"I've just arranged to go for some months to Labrador."
+
+"Industrial development?" asked Blenkins, all alive.
+
+"No. Holiday."
+
+No Blenkins believes that sort of thing, but of course, if Trafford
+chose to keep his own counsel----
+
+"Well, come into Parliament as soon as you get back."
+
+Trafford had had that old conversation before. He pretended
+insensibility when Blenkins gestured to a vacant chair. "No," he said,
+still standing, "we settled all that. And now I'm up to my neck
+in--detail about Labrador. I shall be starting--before the month is
+out."
+
+Blenkins and Hart simulated interest. "It's immoral," said Blenkins,
+"for a man of your standing to keep out of politics."
+
+"It's more than immoral," said Hart; "it's American."
+
+"Solomonson comes in to represent the firm," smiled Trafford, signalled
+the waiter for coffee, and presently disentangled himself from their
+company.
+
+For Blenkins Trafford concealed an exquisite dislike and contempt; and
+Blenkins had a considerable admiration for Trafford, based on extensive
+misunderstandings. Blenkins admired Trafford because he was good-looking
+and well-dressed, with a beautiful and successful wife, because he had
+become reasonably rich very quickly and easily, was young and a Fellow
+of the Royal Society with a reputation that echoed in Berlin, and very
+perceptibly did not return Blenkins' admiration. All these things filled
+Blenkins with a desire for Trafford's intimacy, and to become the
+associate of the very promising political career that it seemed to him,
+in spite of Trafford's repudiations, was the natural next step in a
+deliberately and honourably planned life. He mistook Trafford's silences
+and detachment for the marks of a strong, silent man, who was scheming
+the immense, vulgar, distinguished-looking achievements that appeal to
+the Blenkins mind. Blenkins was a sentimentally loyal party Liberal, and
+as he said at times to Hart and Weston Massinghay: "If those other
+fellows get hold of him----!"
+
+Blenkins was the fine flower of Oxford Liberalism and the Tennysonian
+days. He wanted to be like King Arthur and Sir Galahad, with the merest
+touch of Launcelot, and to be perfectly upright and splendid and very,
+very successful. He was a fair, tenoring sort of person with an
+Arthurian moustache and a disposition to long frock coats. It had been
+said of him that he didn't dress like a gentleman, but that he dressed
+more like a gentleman than a gentleman ought to dress. It might have
+been added that he didn't behave like a gentleman, but that he behaved
+more like a gentleman than a gentleman ought to behave. He didn't think,
+but he talked and he wrote more thoughtfully in his leaders, and in the
+little dialogues he wrote in imitation of Sir Arthur Helps, than any
+other person who didn't think could possibly do. He was an orthodox
+Churchman, but very, very broad; he held all the doctrines, a
+distinguished sort of thing to do in an age of doubt, but there was a
+quality about them as he held them--as though they had been run over by
+something rather heavy. It was a flattened and slightly obliterated
+breadth--nothing was assertive, but nothing, under examination, proved
+to be altogether gone. His profuse thoughtfulness was not confined to
+his journalistic and literary work, it overflowed into Talks. He was a
+man for Great Talks, interminable rambling floods of boyish observation,
+emotional appreciation, and silly, sapient comment. He loved to discuss
+"Who are the Best Talkers now Alive?" He had written an essay, _Talk in
+the Past_. He boasted of week-ends when the Talk had gone on from the
+moment of meeting in the train to the moment of parting at Euston, or
+Paddington, or Waterloo; and one or two hostesses with embittered
+memories could verify his boasting. He did his best to make the club a
+Talking Club, and loved to summon men to a growing circle of chairs....
+
+Trafford had been involved in Talks on one or two occasions, and now, as
+he sat alone in the corridor and smoked and drank his coffee, he could
+imagine the Talk he had escaped, the Talk that was going on in the
+smoking room--the platitudes, the sagacities, the digressions, the
+sudden revelation of deep, irrational convictions. He reflected upon the
+various Talks at which he had assisted. His chief impression of them all
+was of an intolerable fluidity. Never once had he known a Talk thicken
+to adequate discussion; never had a new idea or a new view come to him
+in a Talk. He wondered why Blenkins and his like talked at all.
+Essentially they lived for pose, not for expression; they did not
+greatly desire to discover, make, or be; they wanted to seem and
+succeed. Talking perhaps was part of their pose of great intellectual
+activity, and Blenkins was fortunate to have an easy, unforced running
+of mind....
+
+Over his cigar Trafford became profoundly philosophical about Talk. And
+after the manner of those who become profoundly philosophical he spread
+out the word beyond its original and proper intentions to all sorts of
+kindred and parallel things. Blenkins and his miscellany of friends in
+their circle of chairs were, after all, only a crude rendering of very
+much of intellectual activity of mankind. Men talked so often as dogs
+bark. Those Talkers never came to grips, fell away from topic to topic,
+pretended depth and evaded the devastating horrors of sincerity.
+Listening was a politeness amongst them that was presently rewarded with
+utterance. Tremendously like dogs they were, in a dog-fancying
+neighborhood on a summer week-day afternoon. Fluidity, excessive
+abundance, inconsecutiveness; these were the things that made Talk
+hateful to Trafford.
+
+Wasn't most literature in the same class? Wasn't nearly all present
+philosophical and sociological discussion in the world merely a Blenkins
+circle on a colossal scale, with every one looming forward to get in a
+deeply thoughtful word edgeways at the first opportunity? Imagine any
+one in distress about his soul or about mankind, going to a professor of
+economics or sociology or philosophy! He thought of the endless, big,
+expensive, fruitless books, the windy expansions of industrious pedantry
+that mocked the spirit of inquiry. The fields of physical and biological
+science alone had been partially rescued from the floods of human
+inconsecutiveness. There at least a man must, on the whole, join on to
+the work of other men, stand a searching criticism, justify himself.
+Philosophically this was an age of relaxed schoolmen. He thought of
+Doctor Codger at Cambridge, bubbling away with his iridescent
+Hegelianism like a salted snail; of Doctor Quiller at Oxford, ignoring
+Bergson and fulminating a preposterous insular Pragmatism. Each
+contradicted the other fundamentally upon matters of universal concern;
+neither ever joined issue with the other. Why in the name of humanity
+didn't some one take hold of those two excellent gentlemen, and bang
+their busy heads together hard and frequently until they either
+compromised or cracked?
+
+
+§ 2
+
+He forgot these rambling speculations as he came out into the spring
+sunshine of Pall Mall, and halting for a moment on the topmost step,
+regarded the tidy pavements, the rare dignified shops, the waiting
+taxicabs, the pleasant, prosperous passers-by. His mind lapsed back to
+the thought that he meant to leave all this and go to Labrador. His mind
+went a step further, and reflected that he would not only go to
+Labrador, but--it was highly probable--come back again.
+
+And then?
+
+Why, after all, should he go to Labrador at all? Why shouldn't he make a
+supreme effort here?
+
+Something entirely irrational within him told him with conclusive
+emphasis that he had to go to Labrador....
+
+He remembered there was this confounded business of the proposed house
+in Mayfair to consider....
+
+
+§ 3
+
+It occurred to him that he would go a little out of his way, and look at
+the new great laboratories at the Romeike College, of which his old
+bottle-washer Durgan was, he knew, extravagantly proud. Romeike's widow
+was dead now and her will executed, and her substance half turned
+already to bricks and stone and glazed tiles and all those excesses of
+space and appliance which the rich and authoritative imagine must needs
+give us Science, however ill-selected and underpaid and slighted the
+users of those opportunities may be. The architects had had great fun
+with the bequest; a quarter of the site was devoted to a huge square
+surrounded by dignified, if functionless, colonnades, and adorned with
+those stone seats of honour which are always so chill and unsatisfactory
+as resting places in our island climate. The Laboratories, except that
+they were a little shaded by the colonnades, were everything a
+laboratory should be; the benches were miracles of convenience, there
+wasn't anything the industrious investigator might want, steam, high
+pressures, electric power, that he couldn't get by pressing a button or
+turning a switch, unless perhaps it was inspiring ideas. And the new
+library at the end, with its greys and greens, its logarithmic
+computators at every table, was a miracle of mental convenience.
+
+Durgan showed his old professor the marvels.
+
+"If he _chooses_ to do something here," said Durgan not too hopefully,
+"a man can...."
+
+"What's become of the little old room where we two used to work?" asked
+Trafford.
+
+"They'll turn 'em all out presently," said Durgan, "when this part is
+ready, but just at present it's very much as you left it. There's been
+precious little research done there since you went away--not what _I_
+call research. Females chiefly--and boys. Playing at it. Making
+themselves into D.Sc.'s by a baby research instead of a man's
+examination. It's like broaching a thirty-two gallon cask full of Pap to
+think of it. Lord, sir, the swill! Research! Counting and weighing
+things! Professor Lake's all right, I suppose, but his work was mostly
+mathematical; he didn't do much of it here. No, the old days ended, sir,
+when you...."
+
+He arrested himself, and obviously changed his words. "Got busy with
+other things."
+
+Trafford surveyed the place; it seemed to him to have shrunken a little
+in the course of the three years that had intervened since he resigned
+his position. On the wall at the back there still hung, fly-blown and a
+little crumpled, an old table of constants he had made for his
+elasticity researches. Lake had kept it there, for Lake was a man of
+generous appreciations, and rather proud to follow in the footsteps of
+an investigator of Trafford's subtlety and vigor. The old sink in the
+corner where Trafford had once swilled his watch glasses and filled his
+beakers had been replaced by one of a more modern construction, and the
+combustion cupboard was unfamiliar, until Durgan pointed out that it had
+been enlarged. The ground-glass window at the east end showed still the
+marks of an explosion that had banished a clumsy student from this
+sanctuary at the very beginning of Trafford's career.
+
+"By Jove!" he said after a silence, "but I did some good work here."
+
+"You did, sir," said Durgan.
+
+"I wonder--I may take it up again presently."
+
+"I doubt it, sir," said Durgan.
+
+"Oh! But suppose I come back?"
+
+"I don't think you would find yourself coming back, sir," said Durgan
+after judicious consideration.
+
+He adduced no shadow of a reason for his doubt, but some mysterious
+quality in his words carried conviction to Trafford's mind. He knew that
+he would never do anything worth doing in molecular physics again. He
+knew it now conclusively for the first time.
+
+
+§ 4
+
+He found himself presently in Bond Street. The bright May day had
+brought out great quantities of people, so that he had to come down from
+altitudes of abstraction to pick his way among them.
+
+He was struck by the prevailing interest and contentment in the faces he
+passed. There was no sense of insecurity betrayed, no sense of the deeps
+and mysteries upon which our being floats like a film. They looked
+solid, they looked satisfied; surely never before in the history of the
+world has there been so great a multitude of secure-feeling,
+satisfied-looking, uninquiring people as there is to-day. All the tragic
+great things of life seem stupendously remote from them; pain is rare,
+death is out of sight, religion has shrunken to an inconsiderable,
+comfortable, reassuring appendage of the daily life. And with the
+bright small things of immediacy they are so active and alert. Never
+before has the world seen such multitudes, and a day must come when it
+will cease to see them for evermore.
+
+As he shouldered his way through the throng before the Oxford Street
+shop windows he appreciated a queer effect, almost as it were of
+insanity, about all this rich and abundant and ultimately aimless life,
+this tremendous spawning and proliferation of uneventful humanity. These
+individual lives signified no doubt enormously to the individuals, but
+did all the shining, reflecting, changing existence that went by like
+bubbles in a stream, signify collectively anything more than the
+leaping, glittering confusion of shoaling mackerel on a sunlit
+afternoon? The pretty girl looking into the window schemed picturesque
+achievements with lace and ribbon, the beggar at the curb was alert for
+any sympathetic eye, the chauffeur on the waiting taxi-cab watched the
+twopences ticking on with a quiet satisfaction; each followed a keenly
+sought immediate end, but altogether? Where were they going altogether?
+Until he knew that, where was the sanity of statecraft, the excuse of
+any impersonal effort, the significance of anything beyond a life of
+appetites and self-seeking instincts?
+
+He found that perplexing suspicion of priggishness affecting him again.
+Why couldn't he take the gift of life as it seemed these people took it?
+Why was he continually lapsing into these sombre, dimly religious
+questionings and doubts? Why after all should he concern himself with
+these riddles of some collective and ultimate meaning in things? Was he
+for all his ability and security so afraid of the accidents of life that
+on that account he clung to this conception of a larger impersonal issue
+which the world in general seemed to have abandoned so cheerfully? At
+any rate he did cling to it--and his sense of it made the abounding
+active life of this stirring, bristling thoroughfare an almost
+unendurable perplexity....
+
+By the Marble Arch a little crowd had gathered at the pavement edge. He
+remarked other little knots towards Paddington, and then still others,
+and inquiring, found the King was presently to pass. They promised
+themselves the gratification of seeing the King go by. They would see a
+carriage, they would see horses and coachmen, perhaps even they might
+catch sight of a raised hat and a bowing figure. And this would be a
+gratification to them, it would irradiate the day with a sense of
+experiences, exceptional and precious. For that some of them had already
+been standing about for two or three hours.
+
+He thought of these waiting people for a time, and then he fell into a
+speculation about the King. He wondered if the King ever lay awake at
+three o'clock in the morning and faced the riddle of the eternities or
+whether he did really take himself seriously and contentedly as being in
+himself the vital function of the State, performed his ceremonies, went
+hither and thither through a wilderness of gaping watchers, slept well
+on it. Was the man satisfied? Was he satisfied with his empire as it was
+and himself as he was, or did some vision, some high, ironical
+intimation of the latent and lost possibilities of his empire and of the
+world of Things Conceivable that lies beyond the poor tawdry splendours
+of our present loyalties, ever dawn upon him?
+
+Trafford's imagination conjured up a sleepless King Emperor agonizing
+for humanity....
+
+He turned to his right out of Lancaster Gate into Sussex Square, and
+came to a stop at the pavement edge.
+
+From across the road he surveyed the wide white front and portals of the
+house that wasn't big enough for Marjorie.
+
+
+§ 5
+
+He let himself in with his latchkey.
+
+Malcolm, his man, hovered at the foot of the staircase, and came forward
+for his hat and gloves and stick.
+
+"Mrs. Trafford in?" asked Trafford.
+
+"She said she would be in by four, sir."
+
+Trafford glanced at his watch and went slowly upstairs.
+
+On the landing there had been a rearrangement of the furniture, and he
+paused to survey it. The alterations had been made to accommodate a big
+cloisonné jar, that now glowed a wonder of white and tinted whites and
+luminous blues upon a dark, deep-shining stand. He noted now the curtain
+of the window had been changed from something--surely it had been a
+reddish curtain!--to a sharp clear blue with a black border, that
+reflected upon and sustained and encouraged the jar tremendously. And
+the wall behind--? Yes. Its deep brown was darkened to an absolute black
+behind the jar, and shaded up between the lacquer cabinets on either
+hand by insensible degrees to the general hue. It was wonderful,
+perfectly harmonious, and so subtly planned that it seemed it all might
+have grown, as flowers grow....
+
+He entered the drawing-room and surveyed its long and handsome spaces.
+Post-impressionism was over and gone; three long pictures by young
+Rogerson and one of Redwood's gallant bronzes faced the tall windows
+between the white marble fireplaces at either end. There were two lean
+jars from India, a young boy's head from Florence, and in a great bowl
+in the remotest corner a radiant mass of azaleas....
+
+His mood of wondering at familiar things was still upon him. It came to
+him as a thing absurd and incongruous that this should be his home. It
+was all wonderfully arranged into one dignified harmony, but he felt now
+that at a touch of social earthquake, with a mere momentary lapse
+towards disorder, it would degenerate altogether into litter, lie heaped
+together confessed the loot it was. He came to a stop opposite one of
+the Rogersons, a stiffly self-conscious shop girl in her Sunday clothes,
+a not unsuccessful emulation of Nicholson's wonderful Mrs. Stafford of
+Paradise Row. Regarded as so much brown and grey and amber-gold, it was
+coherent in Marjorie's design, but regarded as a work of art, as a piece
+of expression, how madly irrelevant was its humour and implications to
+that room and the purposes of that room! Rogerson wasn't perhaps trying
+to say much, but at any rate he was trying to say something, and Redwood
+too was asserting freedom and adventure, and the thought of that
+Florentine of the bust, and the patient, careful Indian potter, and
+every maker of all the little casual articles about him, produced an
+effect of muffled, stifled assertions. Against this subdued and
+disciplined background of muted, inarticulate cries,--cries for beauty,
+for delight, for freedom, Marjorie and her world moved and rustled and
+chattered and competed--wearing the skins of beasts, the love-plumage of
+birds, the woven cocoon cases of little silkworms....
+
+"Preposterous," he whispered.
+
+He went to the window and stared out; turned about and regarded the
+gracious variety of that long, well-lit room again, then strolled
+thoughtfully upstairs. He reached the door of his study, and a sound of
+voices from the schoolroom--it had recently been promoted from the rank
+of day nursery to this level--caught his mood. He changed his mind,
+crossed the landing, and was welcomed with shouts.
+
+The rogues had been dressing up. Margharita, that child of the dreadful
+dawn, was now a sturdy and domineering girl of eight, and she was
+attired in a gilt paper mitre and her governess's white muslin blouse so
+tied at the wrists as to suggest long sleeves, a broad crimson band
+doing duty as a stole. She was Becket prepared for martyrdom at the foot
+of the altar. Godwin, his eldest son, was a hot-tempered,
+pretty-featured pleasantly self-conscious boy of nearly seven and very
+happy now in a white dragoon's helmet and rude but effective brown paper
+breastplate and greaves, as the party of assassin knights. A small
+acolyte in what was in all human probably one of the governess's more
+intimate linen garments assisted Becket, while the general congregation
+of Canterbury was represented by Edward, aged two, and the governess,
+disguised with a Union Jack tied over her head after the well-known
+fashion of the middle ages. After the children had welcomed their father
+and explained the bloody work in hand, they returned to it with solemn
+earnestness, while Trafford surveyed the tragedy. Godwin slew with
+admirable gusto, and I doubt if the actual Thomas of Canterbury showed
+half the stately dignity of Margharita.
+
+The scene finished, they went on to the penance of Henry the Second; and
+there was a tremendous readjustment of costumes, with much consultation
+and secrecy. Trafford's eyes went from his offspring to the long,
+white-painted room, with its gay frieze of ships and gulls and its
+rug-variegated cork carpet of plain brick red. Everywhere it showed his
+wife's quick cleverness, the clean serviceable decorativeness of it
+all, the pretty patterned window curtains, the writing desks, the little
+library of books, the flowers and bulbs in glasses, the counting blocks
+and bricks and jolly toys, the blackboard on which the children learnt
+to draw in bold wide strokes, the big, well-chosen German colour prints
+upon the walls. And the children did credit to their casket; they were
+not only full of vitality but full of ideas, even Edward was already a
+person of conversation. They were good stuff anyhow....
+
+It was fine in a sense, Trafford thought, to have given up his own
+motives and curiosities to afford this airy pleasantness of upbringing
+for them, and then came a qualifying thought. Would they in their turn
+for the sake of another generation have to give up fine occupations for
+mean occupations, deep thoughts for shallow? Would the world get them in
+turn? Would the girls be hustled and flattered into advantageous
+marriages, that dinners and drawing-rooms might still prevail? Would the
+boys, after this gracious beginning, presently have to swim submerged in
+another generation of Blenkinses and their Talk, toil in arduous
+self-seeking, observe, respect and manipulate shams, succeed or fail,
+and succeeding, beget amidst hope and beautiful emotions yet another
+generation doomed to insincerities and accommodations, and so die at
+last--as he must die?...
+
+He heard his wife's clear voice in the hall below, and went down to meet
+her. She had gone into the drawing-room, and he followed her in and
+through the folding doors to the hinder part of the room, where she
+stood ready to open a small bureau. She turned at his approach, and
+smiled a pleasant, habitual smile....
+
+She was no longer the slim, quick-moving girl who had come out of the
+world to him when he crawled from beneath the wreckage of Solomonson's
+plane, no longer the half-barbaric young beauty who had been revealed to
+him on the staircase of the Vevey villa. She was now a dignified,
+self-possessed woman, controlling her house and her life with a skilful,
+subtle appreciation of her every point and possibility. She was wearing
+now a simple walking dress of brownish fawn colour, and her hat was
+touched with a steely blue that made her blue eyes seem handsome and
+hard, and toned her hair to a merely warm brown. She had, as it were,
+subdued her fine colours into a sheath in order that she might presently
+draw them again with more effect.
+
+"Hullo, old man!" she said, "you home?"
+
+He nodded. "The club bored me--and I couldn't work."
+
+Her voice had something of a challenge and defiance in it. "I've been
+looking at a house," she said. "Alice Carmel told me of it. It isn't in
+Berkeley Square, but it's near it. It's rather good."
+
+He met her eye. "That's--premature," he said.
+
+"We can't go on living in this one."
+
+"I won't go to another."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"I just won't."
+
+"It isn't the money?"
+
+"No," said Trafford, with sudden fierce resentment. "I've overtaken you
+and beaten you there, Marjorie."
+
+She stared at the harsh bitterness of his voice. She was about to speak
+when the door opened, and Malcom ushered in Aunt Plessington and Uncle
+Hubert. Husband and wife hung for a moment, and then realized their talk
+was at an end....
+
+Marjorie went forward to greet her aunt, careless now of all that once
+stupendous Influence might think of her. She had long ceased to feel
+even the triumph of victory in her big house, her costly, dignified
+clothes, her assured and growing social importance. For five years Aunt
+Plessington had not even ventured to advise; had once or twice admired.
+All that business of Magnet was--even elaborately--forgotten....
+
+Seven years of feverish self-assertion had left their mark upon both the
+Plessingtons. She was leaner, more gauntly untidy, more aggressively
+ill-dressed. She no longer dressed carelessly, she defied the world with
+her clothes, waved her tattered and dingy banners in its face. Uncle
+Hubert was no fatter, but in some queer way he had ceased to be thin.
+Like so many people whose peripheries defy the manifest quaint purpose
+of Providence, he was in a state of thwarted adiposity, and with all the
+disconnectedness and weak irritability characteristic of his condition.
+He had developed a number of nervous movements, chin-strokings,
+cheek-scratchings, and incredulous pawings at his more salient features.
+
+"Isn't it a lark?" began Aunt Plessington, with something like a note of
+apprehension in her highpitched voice, and speaking almost from the
+doorway, "we're making a call together. I and Hubert! It's an attack in
+force."
+
+Uncle Hubert goggled in the rear and stroked his chin, and tried to get
+together a sort of facial expression.
+
+The Traffords made welcoming noises, and Marjorie advanced to meet her
+aunt.
+
+"We want you to do something for us," said Aunt Plessington, taking two
+hands with two hands....
+
+In the intervening years the Movement had had ups and downs; it had had
+a boom, which had ended abruptly in a complete loss of voice for Aunt
+Plessington--she had tried to run it on a patent non-stimulating food,
+and then it had entangled itself with a new cult of philanthropic
+theosophy from which it had been extracted with difficulty and in a
+damaged condition. It had never completely recovered from that unhappy
+association. Latterly Aunt Plessington had lost her nerve, and she had
+taken to making calls upon people with considerable and sometimes
+embarrassing demand for support, urging them to join committees, take
+chairs, stake reputations, speak and act as foils for her. If they
+refused she lost her temper very openly and frankly, and became
+industriously vindictive. She circulated scandals or created them. Her
+old assurance had deserted her; the strangulated contralto was losing
+its magic power, she felt, in this degenerating England it had ruled so
+long. In the last year or so she had become extremely snappy with Uncle
+Hubert. She ascribed much of the Movement's futility to the decline of
+his administrative powers and the increasing awkwardness of his
+gestures, and she did her utmost to keep him up to the mark. Her only
+method of keeping him up to the mark was to jerk the bit. She had now
+come to compel Marjorie to address a meeting that was to inaugurate a
+new phase in the Movement's history, and she wanted Marjorie because she
+particularly wanted a daring, liberal, and spiritually amorous bishop,
+who had once told her with a note of profound conviction that Marjorie
+was a very beautiful woman. She was so intent upon her purpose that she
+scarcely noticed Trafford. He slipped from the room unobserved under
+cover of her playful preliminaries, and went to the untidy little
+apartment overhead which served in that house as his study. He sat down
+at the big desk, pushed his methodically arranged papers back, and
+drummed on the edge with his fingers.
+
+"I'm damned if we have that bigger house," said Trafford.
+
+
+§ 6
+
+He felt he wanted to confirm and establish this new resolution, to go
+right away to Labrador for a year. He wanted to tell someone the thing
+definitely. He would have gone downstairs again to Marjorie, but she was
+submerged and swimming desperately against the voluble rapids of Aunt
+Plessington's purpose. It might be an hour before that attack withdrew.
+Presently there would be other callers. He decided to have tea with his
+mother and talk to her about this new break in the course of his life.
+
+Except that her hair was now grey and her brown eyes by so much contrast
+brighter, Mrs. Trafford's appearance had altered very little in the ten
+years of her only son's marriage. Whatever fresh realizations of the
+inevitably widening separation between parent and child these years had
+brought her, she had kept to herself. She had watched her
+daughter-in-law sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with perplexity,
+always with a jealous resolve to let no shadow of jealousy fall between
+them. Marjorie had been sweet and friendly to her, but after the first
+outburst of enthusiastic affection, she had neither offered nor invited
+confidences. Old Mrs. Trafford had talked of Marjorie to her son
+guardedly, and had marked and respected a growing indisposition on his
+part to discuss his wife. For a year or so after his marriage she had
+ached at times with a sense of nearly intolerable loneliness, and then
+the new interests she had found for herself had won their way against
+this depression. The new insurrectionary movement of women that had
+distinguished those years had attacked her by its emotion and repelled
+her by its crudity, and she had resolved, quite in the spirit of the
+man who had shaped her life, to make a systematic study of all the
+contributory strands that met in this difficult tangle. She tried to
+write, but she found that the poetic gift, the gift of the creative and
+illuminating phrase which alone justifies writing, was denied to her,
+and so she sought to make herself wise, to read and hear, and discuss
+and think over these things, and perhaps at last inspire and encourage
+writing in others.
+
+Her circle of intimates grew, and she presently remarked with a curious
+interest that while she had lost the confidences of her own son and his
+wife, she was becoming the confidant of an increasing number of other
+people. They came to her, she perceived, because she was receptive and
+sympathetic and without a claim upon them or any interest to complicate
+the freedoms of their speech with her. They came to her, because she did
+not belong to them nor they to her. It is, indeed, the defect of all
+formal and established relationship, that it embarrasses speech, and
+taints each phase in intercourse with the flavour of diplomacy. One can
+be far more easily outspoken to a casual stranger one may never see
+again than to that inseparable other, who may misinterpret, who may
+disapprove or misunderstand, and who will certainly in the measure of
+that discord remember....
+
+It became at last a matter of rejoicing to Mrs. Trafford that the ties
+of the old instinctive tenderness between herself and her son, the
+memories of pain and tears and the passionate conflict of childhood,
+were growing so thin and lax and inconsiderable, that she could even
+hope some day to talk to him again--almost as she talked to the young
+men and young women who drifted out of the unknown to her and sat in
+her little room and sought to express their perplexities and listened to
+her advice....
+
+It seemed to her that afternoon the wished-for day had come.
+
+Trafford found her just returned from a walk in Kensington Gardens and
+writing a note at her desk under the narrow sunlit window that looked
+upon the High Street. "Finish your letter, little mother," he said, and
+took possession of the hearthrug.
+
+When she had sealed and addressed her letter, she turned her head and
+found him looking at his father's portrait.
+
+"Done?" he asked, becoming aware of her eyes.
+
+She took her letter into the hall and returned to him, closing the door
+behind her.
+
+"I'm going away, little mother," he said with an unconvincing
+off-handedness. "I'm going to take a holiday."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Yes. I want a change. I'm going off somewhere--untrodden ground as near
+as one can get it nowadays--Labrador."
+
+Their eyes met for a moment.
+
+"Is it for long?"
+
+"The best part of a year."
+
+"I thought you were going on with your research work again."
+
+"No." He paused. "I'm going to Labrador."
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"I'm going to think."
+
+She found nothing to say for a moment. "It's good," she remarked, "to
+think." Then, lest she herself should seem to be thinking too
+enormously, she rang the bell to order the tea that was already on its
+way.
+
+"It surprises a mother," she said, when the maid had come and gone,
+"when her son surprises her."
+
+"You see," he repeated, as though it explained everything, "I want to
+think."
+
+Then after a pause she asked some questions about Labrador; wasn't it
+very cold, very desert, very dangerous and bitter, and he answered
+informingly. How was he going to stay there? He would go up the country
+with an expedition, build a hut and remain behind. Alone? Yes--thinking.
+Her eyes rested on his face for a time. "It will be--lonely," she said
+after a pause.
+
+She saw him as a little still speck against immense backgrounds of snowy
+wilderness.
+
+The tea-things came before mother and son were back at essentials again.
+Then she asked abruptly: "Why are you going away like this?"
+
+"I'm tired of all this business and finance," he said after a pause.
+
+"I thought you would be," she answered as deliberately.
+
+"Yes. I've had enough of things. I want to get clear. And begin again
+somehow."
+
+She felt they both hung away from the essential aspect. Either he or she
+must approach it. She decided that she would, that it was a less
+difficult thing for her than for him.
+
+"And Marjorie?" she asked.
+
+He looked into his mother's eyes very quietly. "You see," he went on
+deliberately disregarding her question, "I'm beached. I'm aground. I'm
+spoilt now for the old researches--spoilt altogether. And I don't like
+this life I'm leading. I detest it. While I was struggling it had a kind
+of interest. There was an excitement in piling up the first twenty
+thousand. But _now_--! It's empty, it's aimless, it's incessant...."
+
+He paused. She turned to the tea-things, and lit the spirit lamp under
+the kettle. It seemed a little difficult to do, and her hand trembled.
+When she turned on him again it was with an effort.
+
+"Does Marjorie like the life you are leading?" she asked, and pressed
+her lips together tightly.
+
+He spoke with a bitterness in his voice that astonished her. "Oh, _she_
+likes it."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"She won't like it without you."
+
+"Oh, that's too much! It's her world. It's what she's done--what she's
+made. She can have it; she can keep it. I've played my part and got it
+for her. But now--now I'm free to go. I will go. She's got everything
+else. I've done my half of the bargain. But my soul's my own. If I want
+to go away and think, I will. Not even Marjorie shall stand in the way
+of that."
+
+She made no answer to this outburst for a couple of seconds. Then she
+threw out, "Why shouldn't Marjorie think, too?"
+
+He considered that for some moments. "She doesn't," he said, as though
+the words came from the roots of his being.
+
+"But you two----"
+
+"We don't talk. It's astonishing--how we don't. We don't. We can't. We
+try to, and we can't. And she goes her way, and now--I will go mine."
+
+"And leave her?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"In London?"
+
+"With all the things she cares for."
+
+"Except yourself."
+
+"I'm only a means----"
+
+She turned her quiet face to him. "You know," she said, "that isn't
+true."...
+
+"No," she repeated, to his silent contradiction.
+
+"I've watched her," she went on. "You're _not_ a means. I'd have spoken
+long ago if I had thought that. Haven't I watched? Haven't I lain awake
+through long nights thinking about her and you, thinking over every
+casual mood, every little sign--longing to help--helpless." ... She
+struggled with herself, for she was weeping. "_It has come to this_,"
+she said in a whisper, and choked back a flood of tears.
+
+Trafford stood motionless, watching her. She became active. She moved
+round the table. She looked at the kettle, moved the cups needlessly,
+made tea, and stood waiting for a moment before she poured it out. "It's
+so hard to talk to you," she said, "and about all this.... I care so
+much. For her. And for you.... Words don't come, dear.... One says
+stupid things."
+
+She poured out the tea, and left the cups steaming, and came and stood
+before him.
+
+"You see," she said, "you're ill. You aren't just. You've come to an
+end. You don't know where you are and what you want to do. Neither does
+she, my dear. She's as aimless as you--and less able to help it. Ever so
+much less able."
+
+"But she doesn't show it. She goes on. She wants things and wants
+things----"
+
+"And you want to go away. It's the same thing. It's exactly the same
+thing. It's dissatisfaction. Life leaves you empty and craving--leaves
+you with nothing to do but little immediate things that turn to dust as
+you do them. It's her trouble, just as it's your trouble."
+
+"But she doesn't show it."
+
+"Women don't. Not so much. Perhaps even she doesn't know it. Half the
+women in our world don't know--and for a woman it's so much easier to go
+on--so many little things."...
+
+Trafford tried to grasp the intention of this. "Mother," he said, "I
+mean to go away."
+
+"But think of her!"
+
+"I've thought. Now I've got to think of myself."
+
+"You can't--without her."
+
+"I will. It's what I'm resolved to do."
+
+"Go right away?"
+
+"Right away."
+
+"And think?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Find out--what it all means, my boy?"
+
+"Yes. So far as I'm concerned."
+
+"And then----?"
+
+"Come back, I suppose. I haven't thought."
+
+"To her?"
+
+He didn't answer. She went and stood beside him, leaning upon the
+mantel. "Godwin," she said, "she'd only be further behind.... You've got
+to take her with you."
+
+He stood still and silent.
+
+"You've got to think things out with her. If you don't----"
+
+"I can't."
+
+"Then you ought to go away with her----" She stopped.
+
+"For good?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+They were both silent for a space. Then Mrs. Trafford gave her mind to
+the tea that was cooling in the cups, and added milk and sugar. She
+spoke again with the table between them.
+
+"I've thought so much of these things," she said with the milk-jug in
+her hand. "It's not only you two, but others. And all the movement about
+us.... Marriage isn't what it was. It's become a different thing because
+women have become human beings. Only----You know, Godwin, all these
+things are so difficult to express. Woman's come out of being a slave,
+and yet she isn't an equal.... We've had a sort of sham emancipation,
+and we haven't yet come to the real one."
+
+She put down the milk-jug on the tray with an air of grave deliberation.
+"If you go away from her and make the most wonderful discoveries about
+life and yourself, it's no good--unless she makes them too. It's no good
+at all.... You can't live without her in the end, any more than she can
+live without you. You may think you can, but I've watched you. You don't
+want to go away from her, you want to go away from the world that's got
+hold of her, from the dresses and parties and the competition and all
+this complicated flatness we have to live in.... It wouldn't worry you a
+bit, if it hadn't got hold of her. You don't want to get out of it for
+your own sake. You _are_ out of it. You are as much out of it as any one
+can be. Only she holds you in it, because she isn't out of it. Your
+going away will do nothing. She'll still be in it--and still have her
+hold on you.... You've got to take her away. Or else--if you go away--in
+the end it will be just like a ship, Godwin, coming back to its
+moorings."
+
+She watched his thoughtful face for some moments, then arrested herself
+just in time in the act of putting a second portion of sugar into each
+of the cups. She handed her son his tea, and he took it mechanically.
+"You're a wise little mother," he said. "I didn't see things in that
+light.... I wonder if you're right."
+
+"I know I am," she said.
+
+"I've thought more and more,--it was Marjorie."
+
+"It's the world."
+
+"Women made the world. All the dress and display and competition."
+
+Mrs. Trafford thought. "Sex made the world. Neither men nor women. But
+the world has got hold of the women tighter than it has the men. They're
+deeper in." She looked up into his face. "Take her with you," she said,
+simply.
+
+"She won't come," said Trafford, after considering it.
+
+Mrs. Trafford reflected. "She'll come--if you make her," she said.
+
+"She'll want to bring two housemaids."
+
+"I don't think you know Marjorie as well as I do."
+
+"But she can't----"
+
+"She can. It's you--you'll want to take two housemaids for her. Even
+you.... Men are not fair to women."
+
+Trafford put his untasted tea upon the mantelshelf, and confronted his
+mother with a question point blank. "Does Marjorie care for me?" he
+asked.
+
+"You're the sun of her world."
+
+"But she goes her way."
+
+"She's clever, she's full of life, full of activities, eager to make and
+arrange and order; but there's nothing she is, nothing she makes, that
+doesn't centre on you."
+
+"But if she cared, she'd understand!"
+
+"My dear, do _you_ understand?"
+
+He stood musing. "I had everything clear," he said. "I saw my way to
+Labrador...."
+
+Her little clock pinged the hour. "Good God!" he said, "I'm to be at
+dinner somewhere at seven. We're going to a first night. With the
+Bernards, I think. Then I suppose we'll have a supper. Always life is
+being slashed to tatters by these things. Always. One thinks in snatches
+of fifty minutes. It's dementia...."
+
+
+§ 7
+
+They dined at the Loretto Restaurant with the Bernards and Richard
+Hampden and Mrs. Godwin Capes, the dark-eyed, quiet-mannered wife of the
+dramatist, a woman of impulsive speech and long silences, who had
+subsided from an early romance (Capes had been divorced for her while
+she was still a mere girl) into a markedly correct and exclusive mother
+of daughters. Through the dinner Marjorie was watching Trafford and
+noting the deep preoccupation of his manner. He talked a little to Mrs.
+Bernard until it was time for Hampden to entertain her, then finding
+Mrs. Capes was interested in Bernard, he lapsed into thought. Presently
+Marjorie discovered his eyes scrutinizing herself.
+
+She hoped the play would catch his mind, but the play seemed devised to
+intensify his sense of the tawdry unreality of contemporary life.
+Bernard filled the intervals with a conventional enthusiasm. Capes
+didn't appear.
+
+"He doesn't seem to care to see his things," his wife explained.
+
+"It's so brilliant," said Bernard.
+
+"He has to do it," said Mrs. Capes slowly, her sombre eyes estimating
+the crowded stalls below. "It isn't what he cares to do."
+
+The play was in fact an admirable piece of English stagecraft, and it
+dealt exclusively with that unreal other world of beings the English
+theatre has for its own purposes developed. Just as Greece through the
+ages evolved and polished and perfected the idealized life of its
+Homeric poems, so the British mind has evolved their Stage Land to
+embody its more honourable dreams, full of heroic virtues, incredible
+honour, genial worldliness, childish villainies, profound but amiable
+waiters and domestics, pathetic shepherds and preposterous crimes.
+Capes, needing an income, had mastered the habits and customs of this
+imagined world as one learns a language; success endorsed his mastery;
+he knew exactly how deeply to underline an irony and just when it is fit
+and proper for a good man to call upon "God!" or cry out "Damn!" In this
+play he had invented a situation in which a charming and sympathetic
+lady had killed a gross and drunken husband in self-defence, almost but
+not quite accidentally, and had then appealed to the prodigious hero for
+assistance in the resulting complications. At a great cost of mental
+suffering to himself he had told his First and Only Lie to shield her.
+Then years after he had returned to England--the first act happened, of
+course in India--to find her on the eve of marrying, without any of the
+preliminary confidences common among human beings, an old school friend
+of his. (In plays all Gentlemen have been at school together, and one
+has been the other's fag.) The audience had to be interested in the
+problem of what the prodigious hero was to do in this prodigious
+situation. Should he maintain a colossal silence, continue his
+shielding, and let his friend marry the murderess saved by his perjury,
+or----?... The dreadful quandary! Indeed, the absolute--inconvenience!
+
+Marjorie watched Trafford in the corner of the box, as he listened
+rather contemptuously to the statement of the evening's Problem and then
+lapsed again into a brooding quiet. She wished she understood his moods
+better. She felt there was more in this than a mere resentment at her
+persistence about the new house....
+
+Why didn't he go on with things?...
+
+This darkling mood of his had only become manifest to her during the
+last three or four years of their life. Previously, of course, he had
+been irritable at times.
+
+Were they less happy now than they had been in the little house in
+Chelsea? It had really been a horrible little house. And yet there had
+been a brightness then--a nearness....
+
+She found her mind wandering away upon a sort of stock-taking
+expedition. How much of real happiness had she and Trafford had
+together? They ought by every standard to be so happy....
+
+She declined the Bernard's invitation to a chafing-dish supper, and
+began to talk so soon as she and Trafford had settled into the car.
+
+"Rag," she said, "something's the matter?"
+
+"Well--yes."
+
+"The house?"
+
+"Yes--the house."
+
+Marjorie considered through a little interval.
+
+"Old man, why are you so prejudiced against a bigger house?"
+
+"Oh, because the one we have bores me, and the next one will bore me
+more."
+
+"But try it."
+
+"I don't want to."
+
+"Well," she said and lapsed into silence.
+
+"And then," he asked, "what are we going to do?"
+
+"Going to do--when?"
+
+"After the new house----"
+
+"I'm going to open out," she said.
+
+He made no answer.
+
+"I want to open out. I want you to take your place in the world, the
+place you deserve."
+
+"A four-footman place?"
+
+"Oh! the house is only a means."
+
+He thought upon that. "A means," he asked, "to what? Look here,
+Marjorie, what do you think you are up to with me and yourself? What do
+you see me doing--in the years ahead?"
+
+She gave him a silent and thoughtful profile for a second or so.
+
+"At first I suppose you are going on with your researches."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Then----I must tell you what I think of you, Rag. Politics----"
+
+"Good Lord!"
+
+"You've a sort of power. You could make things noble."
+
+"And then? Office?"
+
+"Why not? Look at the little men they are."
+
+"And then perhaps a still bigger house?"
+
+"You're not fair to me."
+
+He pulled up the bearskin over his knees.
+
+"Marjorie!" he said. "You see----We aren't going to do any of those
+things at all.... _No!_..."
+
+"I can't go on with my researches," he explained. "That's what you don't
+understand. I'm not able to get back to work. I shall never do any good
+research again. That's the real trouble, Marjorie, and it makes all the
+difference. As for politics----I can't touch politics. I despise
+politics. I think this empire and the monarchy and Lords and Commons and
+patriotism and social reform and all the rest of it, silly, _silly_
+beyond words; temporary, accidental, foolish, a mere stop-gap--like a
+gipsey's roundabout in a place where one will presently build a
+house.... You don't help make the house by riding on the roundabout....
+There's no clear knowledge--no clear purpose.... Only research
+matters--and expression perhaps--I suppose expression is a sort of
+research--until we get that--that sufficient knowledge. And you see, I
+can't take up my work again. I've lost something...."
+
+She waited.
+
+"I've got into this stupid struggle for winning money," he went on, "and
+I feel like a woman must feel who's made a success of prostitution. I've
+been prostituted. I feel like some one fallen and diseased.... Business
+and prostitution; they're the same thing. All business is a sort of
+prostitution, all prostitution is a sort of business. Why should one
+sell one's brains any more than one sells one's body?... It's so easy to
+succeed if one has good brains and cares to do it, and doesn't let one's
+attention or imagination wander--and it's so degrading. Hopelessly
+degrading.... I'm sick of this life, Marjorie. _I_ don't want to buy
+things. I'm sick of buying. I'm at an end. I'm clean at an end. It's
+exactly as though suddenly in walking through a great house one came on
+a passage that ended abruptly in a door, which opened--on nothing!
+Nothing!"
+
+"This is a mood," she whispered to his pause.
+
+"It isn't a mood, it's a fact.... I've got nothing ahead, and I don't
+know how to get back. My life's no good to me any more. I've spent
+myself."
+
+She looked at him with dismayed eyes. "But," she said, "this _is_ a
+mood."
+
+"No," he said, "no mood, but conviction. I _know_...."
+
+He started. The car had stopped at their house, and Malcolm was opening
+the door of the car. They descended silently, and went upstairs in
+silence.
+
+He came into her room presently and sat down by her fireside. She had
+gone to her dressing-table and unfastened a necklace; now with this
+winking and glittering in her hand she came and stood beside him.
+
+"Rag," she said, "I don't know what to say. This isn't so much of a
+surprise.... I _felt_ that somehow life was disappointing you, that I
+was disappointing you. I've felt it endless times, but more so lately. I
+haven't perhaps dared to let myself know just how much.... But isn't it
+what life is? Doesn't every wife disappoint her husband? We're none of
+us inexhaustible. After all, we've had a good time; isn't it a little
+ungrateful to forget?..."
+
+"Look here, Rag," she said. "I don't know what to do. If I did know, I
+would do it.... What are we to do?"
+
+"Think," he suggested.
+
+"We've got to live as well as think."
+
+"It's the immense troublesome futility of--everything," he said.
+
+"Well--let us cease to be futile. Let us _do_. You say there is no grip
+for you in research, that you despise politics.... There's no end of
+trouble and suffering. Cannot we do social work, social reform, change
+the lives of others less fortunate than ourselves...."
+
+"Who are we that we should tamper with the lives of others?"
+
+"But one must do something."
+
+He thought that over.
+
+"No," he said "that's the universal blunder nowadays. One must do the
+right thing. And we don't know the right thing, Marjorie. That's the
+very heart of the trouble.... Does this life satisfy _you?_ If it did
+would you always be so restless?..."
+
+"But," she said, "think of the good things in life?"
+
+"It's just the good, the exquisite things in life, that make me rebel
+against this life we are leading. It's because I've seen the streaks of
+gold that I know the rest for dirt. When I go cheating and scheming to
+my office, and come back to find you squandering yourself upon a horde
+of chattering, overdressed women, when I think that that is our
+substance and everyday and what we are, then it is I remember most the
+deep and beautiful things.... It is impossible, dear, it is intolerable
+that life was made beautiful for us--just for these vulgarities."
+
+"Isn't there----" She hesitated. "Love--still?"
+
+"But----Has it been love? Love is a thing that grows. But we took it--as
+people take flowers out of a garden, cut them off, put them in water....
+How much of our daily life has been love? How much of it mere
+consequences of the love we've left behind us?... We've just cohabited
+and 'made love'--you and I--and thought of a thousand other things...."
+
+He looked up at her. "Oh, I love a thousand things about you," he said.
+"But do I love _you_, Marjorie? Have I got you? Haven't I lost
+you--haven't we both lost something, the very heart of it all? Do you
+think that we were just cheated by instinct, that there wasn't something
+in it we felt and thought was there? And where is it now? Where is that
+brightness and wonder, Marjorie, and the pride and the immense unlimited
+hope?"
+
+She was still for a moment, then knelt very swiftly before him and held
+out her arms.
+
+"Oh Rag!" she said, with a face of tender beauty. He took her finger
+tips in his, dropped them and stood up above her.
+
+"My dear," he cried, "my dear! why do you always want to turn love
+into--touches?... Stand up again. Stand up there, my dear; don't think
+I've ceased to love you, but stand up there and let me talk to you as
+one man to another. If we let this occasion slide to embraces...."
+
+He stopped short.
+
+She crouched before the fire at his feet. "Go on," she said, "go on."
+
+"I feel now that all our lives now, Marjorie----We have come to a
+crisis. I feel that now----_now_ is the time. Either we shall save
+ourselves now or we shall never save ourselves. It is as if something
+had gathered and accumulated and could wait no longer. If we do not
+seize this opportunity----Then our lives will go on as they have gone
+on, will become more and more a matter of small excitements and
+elaborate comforts and distraction...."
+
+He stopped this halting speech and then broke out again.
+
+"Oh! why _should_ the life of every day conquer us? Why should
+generation after generation of men have these fine beginnings, these
+splendid dreams of youth, attempt so much, achieve so much and then,
+then become--_this!_ Look at this room, this litter of little
+satisfactions! Look at your pretty books there, a hundred minds you have
+pecked at, bright things of the spirit that attracted you as jewels
+attract a jackdaw. Look at the glass and silver, and that silk from
+China! And we are in the full tide of our years, Marjorie. Now is the
+very crown and best of our lives. And this is what we do, we sample, we
+accumulate. For this we loved, for this we hoped. Do you remember when
+we were young--that life seemed so splendid--it was intolerable we
+should ever die?... The splendid dream! The intimations of greatness!...
+The miserable failure!"
+
+He raised clenched fists. "I won't stand it, Marjorie. I won't endure
+it. Somehow, in some way, I will get out of this life--and you with me.
+I have been brooding upon this and brooding, but now I know...."
+
+"But how?" asked Marjorie, with her bare arms about her knees, staring
+into the fire. "_How?_"
+
+"We must get out of its constant interruptions, its incessant vivid,
+petty appeals...."
+
+"We might go away--to Switzerland."
+
+"We _went_ to Switzerland. Didn't we agree--it was our second honeymoon.
+It isn't a honeymoon we need. No, we'll have to go further than that."
+
+A sudden light broke upon Marjorie's mind. She realized he had a plan.
+She lifted a fire-lit face to him and looked at him with steady eyes and
+asked----
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Ever so much further."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You do. You've planned something."
+
+"I don't know, Marjorie. At least--I haven't made up my mind. Where it
+is very lonely. Cold and remote. Away from all this----" His mind
+stopped short, and he ended with a cry: "Oh! God! how I want to get out
+of all this!"
+
+He sat down in her arm-chair, and bowed his face on his hands.
+
+Then abruptly he stood up and went out of the room.
+
+
+§ 8
+
+When in five minutes' time he came back into her room she was still upon
+her hearthrug before the fire, with her necklace in her hand, the red
+reflections of the flames glowing and winking in her jewels and in her
+eyes. He came and sat again in her chair.
+
+"I have been ranting," he said. "I feel I've been--eloquent. You make me
+feel like an actor-manager, in a play by Capes.... You are the most
+difficult person for me to talk to in all the world--because you mean so
+much to me."
+
+She moved impulsively and checked herself and crouched away from him. "I
+mustn't touch your hand," she whispered.
+
+"I want to explain."
+
+"You've got to explain."
+
+"I've got quite a definite plan.... But a sort of terror seized me. It
+was like--shyness."
+
+"I know. I knew you had a plan."
+
+"You see.... I mean to go to Labrador."
+
+He leant forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands extended,
+explanatory. He wanted intensely that she should understand and agree
+and his desire made him clumsy, now slow and awkward, now glibly and
+unsatisfyingly eloquent. But she comprehended his quality better than he
+knew. They were to go away to Labrador, this snowy desert of which she
+had scarcely heard, to camp in the very heart of the wilderness, two
+hundred miles or more from any human habitation----
+
+"But how long?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"The better part of a year."
+
+"And we are to talk?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "talk and think ourselves together--oh!--the old phrases
+carry it all--find God...."
+
+"It is what I dreamt of, Rag, years ago."
+
+"Will you come," he cried, "out of all this?"
+
+She leant across the hearthrug, and seized and kissed his hand....
+
+Then, with one of those swift changes of hers, she was in revolt. "But,
+Rag," she exclaimed, "this is dreaming. We are not free. There are the
+children! Rag! We cannot leave the children!"
+
+"We can," he said. "We must."
+
+"But, my dear!--our duty!"
+
+"_Is_ it a mother's duty always to keep with her children? They will be
+looked after, their lives are organized, there is my mother close at
+hand.... What is the good of having children at all--unless their world
+is to be better than our world?... What are we doing to save them from
+the same bathos as this--to which we have come? We give them food and
+health and pictures and lessons, that's all very well while they are
+just little children; but we've got no religion to give them, no aim, no
+sense of a general purpose. What is the good of bread and health--and no
+worship?... What can we say to them when they ask us why we brought them
+into the world?--_We_ happened--_you_ happened. What are we to tell them
+when they demand the purpose of all this training, all these lessons?
+When they ask what we are preparing them for? Just that _you_, too, may
+have children! Is that any answer? Marjorie, it's common-sense to try
+this over--to make this last supreme effort--just as it will be
+common-sense to separate if we can't get the puzzle solved together."
+
+"Separate!"
+
+"Separate. Why not? We can afford it. Of course, we shall separate."
+
+"But Rag!--separate!"
+
+He faced her protest squarely. "Life is not worth living," he said,
+"unless it has more to hold it together than ours has now. If we cannot
+escape together, then--_I will go alone_."...
+
+
+§ 9
+
+They parted that night resolved to go to Labrador together, with the
+broad outline of their subsequent journey already drawn. Each lay awake
+far into the small hours thinking of this purpose and of one another,
+with a strange sense of renewed association. Each woke to a morning of
+sunshine heavy-eyed. Each found that overnight decision remote and
+incredible. It was like something in a book or a play that had moved
+them very deeply. They came down to breakfast, and helped themselves
+after the wonted fashion of several years, Marjorie with a skilful eye
+to the large order of her household; the _Times_ had one or two
+characteristic letters which interested them both; there was the usual
+picturesque irruption of the children and a distribution of early
+strawberries among them. Trafford had two notes in his correspondence
+which threw a new light upon the reconstruction of the Norton-Batsford
+company in which he was interested; he formed a definite conclusion upon
+the situation, and went quite normally to his study and the telephone to
+act upon that.
+
+It was only as the morning wore on that it became real to him that he
+and Marjorie had decided to leave the world. Then, with the
+Norton-Batsford business settled, he sat at his desk and mused. His
+apathy passed. His imagination began to present first one picture and
+then another of his retreat. He walked along Oxford Street to his Club
+thinking--"soon we shall be out of all this." By the time he was at
+lunch in his Club, Labrador had become again the magic refuge it had
+seemed the day before. After lunch he went to work in the library,
+finding out books about Labrador, and looking up the details of the
+journey.
+
+But his sense of futility and hopeless oppression had vanished. He
+walked along the corridor and down the great staircase, and without a
+trace of the despairful hostility of the previous day, passed Blenkins,
+talking grey bosh with infinite thoughtfulness. He nodded easily to
+Blenkins. He was going out of it all, as a man might do who discovers
+after years of weary incarceration that the walls of his cell are made
+of thin paper. The time when Blenkins seemed part of a prison-house of
+routine and invincible stupidity seemed ten ages ago.
+
+In Pall Mall Trafford remarked Lady Grampians and the Countess of
+Claridge, two women of great influence, in a big green car, on the way
+no doubt to create or sustain or destroy; and it seemed to him that it
+was limitless ages since these poor old dears with their ridiculous hats
+and their ridiculous airs, their luncheons and dinners and dirty
+aggressive old minds, had sent tidal waves of competitive anxiety into
+his home....
+
+He found himself jostling through the shopping crowd on the sunny side
+of Regent Street. He felt now that he looked over the swarming,
+preoccupied heads at distant things. He and Marjorie were going out of
+it all, going clean out of it all. They were going to escape from
+society and shopping, and petty engagements and incessant triviality--as
+a bird flies up out of weeds.
+
+
+§ 10
+
+But Marjorie fluctuated more than he did.
+
+There were times when the expedition for which he was now preparing
+rapidly and methodically seemed to her the most adventurously-beautiful
+thing that had ever come to her, and times when it seemed the maddest
+and most hopeless of eccentricities. There were times when she had
+devastating premonitions of filth, hunger, strain and fatigue, damp and
+cold, when her whole being recoiled from the project, when she could
+even think of staying secure in London and letting him go alone. She
+developed complicated anxieties for the children; she found reasons for
+further inquiries, for delay. "Why not," she suggested, "wait a year?"
+
+"No," he said, "I won't. I mean we are to do this, and do it now, and
+nothing but sheer physical inability to do it will prevent my carrying
+it out.... And you? Of course you are to come. I can't drag you
+shrieking all the way to Labrador; short of that I'm going to _make_ you
+come with me."
+
+She sat and looked up at him with dark lights in her upturned eyes, and
+a little added warmth in her cheek. "You've never forced my will like
+this before," she said, in a low voice. "Never."
+
+He was too intent upon his own resolve to heed her tones.
+
+"It hasn't seemed necessary somehow," he said, considering her
+statement. "Now it does."
+
+"This is something final," she said.
+
+"It is final."
+
+She found an old familiar phrasing running through her head, as she sat
+crouched together, looking up at his rather gaunt, very intent face, the
+speech of another woman echoing to her across a vast space of years:
+"Whither thou goest I will go----"
+
+"In Labrador," he began....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRD
+
+THE PILGRIMAGE TO LONELY HUT
+
+
+§ 1
+
+Marjorie was surprised to find how easy it was at last to part from her
+children and go with Trafford.
+
+"I am not sorry," she said, "not a bit sorry--but I am fearfully afraid.
+I shall dream they are ill.... Apart from that, it's strange how you
+grip me and they don't...."
+
+In the train to Liverpool she watched Trafford with the queer feeling
+which comes to all husbands and wives at times that that other partner
+is indeed an undiscovered stranger, just beginning to show perplexing
+traits,--full of inconceivable possibilities.
+
+For some reason his tearing her up by the roots in this fashion had
+fascinated her imagination. She felt a strange new wonder at him that
+had in it just a pleasant faint flavour of fear. Always before she had
+felt a curious aversion and contempt for those servile women who are
+said to seek a master, to want to be mastered, to be eager even for the
+physical subjugations of brute force. Now she could at least understand,
+sympathize even with them. Not only Trafford surprised her but herself.
+She found she was in an unwonted perplexing series of moods. All her
+feelings struck her now as being incorrect as well as unexpected; not
+only had life become suddenly full of novelty but she was making novel
+responses. She felt that she ought to be resentful and tragically sorry
+for her home and children. She felt this departure ought to have the
+quality of an immense sacrifice, a desperate and heroic undertaking for
+Trafford's sake. Instead she could detect little beyond an adventurous
+exhilaration when presently she walked the deck of the steamer that was
+to take her to St. John's. She had visited her cabin, seen her luggage
+stowed away, and now she surveyed the Mersey and its shipping with a
+renewed freshness of mind. She was reminded of the day, now nearly nine
+years ago, when she had crossed the sea for the first time--to Italy.
+Then, too, Trafford had seemed a being of infinitely wonderful
+possibilities.... What were the children doing?--that ought to have been
+her preoccupation. She didn't know; she didn't care! Trafford came and
+stood beside her, pointed out this and that upon the landing stage, no
+longer heavily sullen, but alert, interested, almost gay....
+
+Neither of them could find any way to the great discussion they had set
+out upon, in this voyage to St. John's. But there was plenty of time
+before them. Plenty of time! They were both the prey of that uneasy
+distraction which seems the inevitable quality of a passenger steamship.
+They surveyed and criticized their fellow travellers, and prowled up and
+down through the long swaying days and the cold dark nights. They slept
+uneasily amidst fog-horn hootings and the startling sounds of waves
+swirling against the ports. Marjorie had never had a long sea voyage
+before; for the first time in her life she saw all the world, through a
+succession of days, as a circle of endless blue waters, with the stars
+and planets and sun and moon rising sharply from its rim. Until one has
+had a voyage no one really understands that old Earth is a watery
+globe.... They ran into thirty hours of storm, which subsided, and then
+came a slow time among icebergs, and a hooting, dreary passage through
+fog. The first three icebergs were marvels, the rest bores; a passing
+collier out of her course and pitching heavily, a lonely black and dirty
+ship with a manner almost derelict, filled their thoughts for half a
+day. Their minds were in a state of tedious inactivity, eager for such
+small interests and only capable of such small interests. There was no
+hurry to talk, they agreed, no hurry at all, until they were settled
+away ahead there among the snows. "There we shall have plenty of time
+for everything...."
+
+Came the landfall and then St. John's, and they found themselves side by
+side watching the town draw near. The thought of landing and
+transference to another ship refreshed them both....
+
+They were going, Trafford said, in search of God, but it was far more
+like two children starting out upon a holiday.
+
+
+§ 2
+
+There was trouble and procrastination about the half-breed guides that
+Trafford had arranged should meet them at St. John's, and it was three
+weeks from their reaching Newfoundland before they got themselves and
+their guides and equipment and general stores aboard the boat for Port
+Dupré. Thence he had planned they should go in the Gibson schooner to
+Manivikovik, the Marconi station at the mouth of the Green River, and
+thence past the new pulp-mills up river to the wilderness. There were
+delays and a few trivial, troublesome complications in carrying out this
+scheme, but at last a day came when Trafford could wave good-bye to the
+seven people and eleven dogs which constituted the population of Peter
+Hammond's, that last rude outpost of civilization twenty miles above the
+pulp-mill, and turn his face in good earnest towards the wilderness.
+
+Neither he nor Marjorie looked back at the headland for a last glimpse
+of the little settlement they were leaving. Each stared ahead over the
+broad, smooth sweep of water, broken by one transverse bar of foaming
+shallows, and scanned the low, tree-clad hills beyond that drew together
+at last in the distant gorge out of which the river came. The morning
+was warm and full of the promise of a hot noon, so that the veils they
+wore against the assaults of sand-flies and mosquitoes were already a
+little inconvenient. It seemed incredible in this morning glow that the
+wooded slopes along the shore of the lake were the border of a land in
+which nearly half the inhabitants die of starvation. The deep-laden
+canoes swept almost noiselessly through the water with a rhythmic
+alternation of rush and pause as the dripping paddles drove and
+returned. Altogether there were four long canoes and five Indian breeds
+in their party, and when they came to pass through shallows both
+Marjorie and Trafford took a paddle.
+
+They came to the throat of the gorge towards noon, and found strong
+flowing deep water between its high purple cliffs. All hands had to
+paddle again, and it was only when they came to rest in a pool to eat a
+mid-day meal and afterwards to land upon a mossy corner for a stretch and
+a smoke, that Marjorie discovered the peculiar beauty of the rock about
+them. On the dull purplish-grey surfaces played the most extraordinary
+mist of luminous iridescence. It fascinated her. Here was a land whose
+common substance had this gemlike opalescence. But her attention was
+very soon withdrawn from these glancing splendours.
+
+She had had to put aside her veil to eat, and presently she felt the
+vividly painful stabs of the black-fly and discovered blood upon her
+face. A bigger fly, the size and something of the appearance of a small
+wasp, with an evil buzz, also assailed her and Trafford. It was a bad
+corner for flies; the breeds even were slapping their wrists and
+swearing under the torment, and every one was glad to embark and push on
+up the winding gorge. It opened out for a time, and then the wooded
+shores crept in again, and in another half-hour they saw ahead of them a
+long rush of foaming waters among tumbled rocks that poured down from a
+brimming, splashing line of light against the sky. They crossed the
+river, ran the canoes into an eddy under the shelter of a big stone and
+began to unload. They had reached their first portage.
+
+The rest of the first day was spent in packing and lugging first the
+cargoes and then the canoes up through thickets and over boulders and
+across stretches of reindeer moss for the better part of two miles to a
+camping ground about half-way up the rapids. Marjorie and Trafford tried
+to help with the carrying, but this evidently shocked and distressed the
+men too much, so they desisted and set to work cutting wood and
+gathering moss for the fires and bedding for the camp. When the iron
+stove was brought up the man who had carried it showed them how to put
+it up on stakes and start a fire in it, and then Trafford went to the
+river to get water, and Marjorie made a kind of flour cake in the
+frying-pan in the manner an American woman from the wilderness had once
+shown her, and boiled water for tea. The twilight had deepened to night
+while the men were still stumbling up the trail with the last two
+canoes.
+
+It gave Marjorie a curiously homeless feeling to stand there in the open
+with the sunset dying away below the black scrubby outlines of the
+treetops uphill to the northwest, and to realize the nearest roof was
+already a day's toilsome journey away. The cool night breeze blew upon
+her bare face and arms--for now the insects had ceased from troubling
+and she had cast aside gloves and veil and turned up her sleeves to
+cook--and the air was full of the tumult of the rapids tearing seaward
+over the rocks below. Struggling through the bushes towards her was an
+immense, headless quadruped with unsteady legs and hesitating paces, two
+of the men carrying the last canoe. Two others were now assisting
+Trafford to put up the little tent that was to shelter her, and the
+fifth was kneeling beside her very solemnly and respectfully cutting
+slices of bacon for her to fry. The air was very sweet, and she wished
+she could sleep not in the tent but under the open sky.
+
+It was queer, she thought, how much of the wrappings of civilization had
+slipped from them already. Every day of the journey from London had
+released them or deprived them--she hardly knew which--of a multitude of
+petty comforts and easy accessibilities. The afternoon toil uphill
+intensified the effect of having clambered up out of things--to this
+loneliness, this twilight openness, this simplicity.
+
+The men ate apart at a fire they made for themselves, and after Trafford
+and Marjorie had supped on damper, bacon and tea, he smoked. They were
+both too healthily tired to talk very much. There was no moon but a
+frosty brilliance of stars, the air which had been hot and sultry at
+mid-day grew keen and penetrating, and after she had made him tell her
+the names of constellations she had forgotten, she suddenly perceived
+the wisdom of the tent, went into it--it was sweet and wonderful with
+sprigs of the Labrador tea-shrub--undressed, and had hardly rolled
+herself up into a cocoon of blankets before she was fast asleep.
+
+She was awakened by a blaze of sunshine pouring into the tent, a smell
+of fried bacon and Trafford's voice telling her to get up. "They've gone
+on with the first loads," he said. "Get up, wrap yourself in a blanket,
+and come and bathe in the river. It's as cold as ice."
+
+She blinked at him. "Aren't you stiff?" she asked.
+
+"I was stiffer before I bathed," he said.
+
+She took the tin he offered her. (They weren't to see china cups again
+for a year.) "It's woman's work getting tea," she said as she drank.
+
+"You can't be a squaw all at once," said Trafford.
+
+
+§ 3
+
+After Marjorie had taken her dip, dried roughly behind a bush, twisted
+her hair into a pigtail and coiled it under her hat, she amused herself
+and Trafford as they clambered up through rocks and willows to the tent
+again by cataloguing her apparatus of bath and toilette at Sussex Square
+and tracing just when and how she had parted from each item on the way
+to this place.
+
+"But I _say!_" she cried, with a sudden, sharp note of dismay, "we
+haven't soap! This is our last cake almost. I never thought of soap."
+
+"Nor I," said Trafford.
+
+He spoke again presently. "We don't turn back for soap," he said.
+
+"We don't turn back for anything," said Marjorie. "Still--I didn't count
+on a soapless winter."
+
+"I'll manage something," said Trafford, a little doubtfully. "Trust a
+chemist...."
+
+That day they finished the portage and came out upon a wide lake with
+sloping shores and a distant view of snow-topped mountains, a lake so
+shallow that at times their loaded canoes scraped on the glaciated rock
+below and they had to alter their course. They camped in a lurid sunset;
+the night was warm and mosquitoes were troublesome, and towards morning
+came a thunderstorm and wind and rain.
+
+The dawn broke upon a tearing race of waves and a wild drift of slanting
+rain sweeping across the lake before a gale. Marjorie peered out at this
+as one peers out under the edge of an umbrella. It was manifestly
+impossible to go on, and they did nothing that day but run up a canvas
+shelter for the men and shift the tent behind a thicket of trees out of
+the full force of the wind. The men squatted stoically, and smoked and
+yarned. Everything got coldly wet, and for the most part the Traffords
+sat under the tent and stared blankly at this summer day in Labrador.
+
+"Now," said Trafford, "we ought to begin talking."
+
+"There's nothing much to do else," said Marjorie.
+
+"Only one can't begin," said Trafford.
+
+He was silent for a time. "We're getting out of things," he said....
+
+The next day began with a fine drizzle through which the sun broke
+suddenly about ten o'clock. They made a start at once, and got a good
+dozen miles up the lake before it was necessary to camp again. Both
+Marjorie and Trafford felt stiff and weary and uncomfortable all day,
+and secretly a little doubtful now of their own endurance. They camped
+on an island on turf amidst slippery rocks, and the next day were in a
+foaming difficult river again, with glittering shallows that obliged
+every one to get out at times to wade and push. All through the
+afternoon they were greatly beset by flies. And so they worked their
+way on through a third days' journey towards the silent inland of
+Labrador.
+
+Day followed day of toilsome and often tedious travel; they fought
+rapids, they waited while the men stumbled up long portages under vast
+loads, going and returning, they camped and discussed difficulties and
+alternatives. The flies sustained an unrelenting persecution, until
+faces were scarred in spite of veils and smoke fires, until wrists and
+necks were swollen and the blood in a fever. As they got higher and
+higher towards the central plateau, the mid-day heat increased and the
+nights grew colder, until they would find themselves toiling, wet with
+perspiration, over rocks that sheltered a fringe of ice beneath their
+shadows. The first fatigues and lassitudes, the shrinking from cold
+water, the ache of muscular effort, gave place to a tougher and tougher
+endurance; skin seemed to have lost half its capacity for pain without
+losing a tithe of its discrimination, muscles attained a steely
+resilience; they were getting seasoned. "I don't feel philosophical,"
+said Trafford, "but I feel well."
+
+"We're getting out of things."
+
+"Suppose we are getting out of our problems!..."
+
+One day as they paddled across a mile-long pool, they saw three bears
+prowling in single file high up on the hillside. "Look," said the man,
+and pointed with his paddle at the big, soft, furry black shapes,
+magnified and startling in the clear air. All the canoes rippled to a
+stop, the men, at first still, whispered softly. One passed a gun to
+Trafford, who hesitated and looked at Marjorie.
+
+The air of tranquil assurance about these three huge loafing monsters
+had a queer effect on Marjorie's mind. They made her feel that they were
+at home and that she was an intruder. She had never in her life seen
+any big wild animals except in a menagerie. She had developed a sort of
+unconscious belief that all big wild animals were in menageries
+nowadays, and this spectacle of beasts entirely at large startled her.
+There was never a bar between these creatures, she felt, and her
+sleeping self. They might, she thought, do any desperate thing to feeble
+men and women who came their way.
+
+"Shall I take a shot?" asked Trafford.
+
+"No," said Marjorie, pervaded by the desire for mutual toleration. "Let
+them be."
+
+The big brutes disappeared in a gully, reappeared, came out against the
+skyline one by one and vanished.
+
+"Too long a shot," said Trafford, handing back the gun....
+
+Their journey lasted altogether a month. Never once did they come upon
+any human being save themselves, though in one place they passed the
+poles--for the most part overthrown--of an old Indian encampment. But
+this desolation was by no means lifeless. They saw great quantities of
+waterbirds, geese, divers, Arctic partridge and the like, they became
+familiar with the banshee cry of the loon. They lived very largely on
+geese and partridge. Then for a time about a string of lakes, the
+country was alive with migrating deer going south, and the men found
+traces of a wolf. They killed six caribou, and stayed to skin and cut
+them up and dry the meat to replace the bacon they had consumed, caught,
+fried and ate great quantities of trout, and became accustomed to the
+mysterious dance of the northern lights as the sunset afterglow faded.
+
+Everywhere, except in the river gorges, the country displayed the low
+hummocky lines and tarn-like pools of intensely glaciated land;
+everywhere it was carpeted with reindeer moss growing upon peat and
+variegated by bushes of flowering, sweet-smelling Labrador tea. In
+places this was starred with little harebells and diversified by
+tussocks of heather and rough grass, and over the rocks trailed delicate
+dwarf shrubs and a very pretty and fragrant pink-flowered plant of which
+neither she nor Trafford knew the name. There was an astonishing amount
+of wild fruit, raspberries, cranberries, and a white kind of strawberry
+that was very delightful. The weather, after its first outbreak,
+remained brightly serene....
+
+And at last it seemed fit to Trafford to halt and choose his winter
+quarters. He chose a place on the side of a low, razor-hacked rocky
+mountain ridge, about fifty feet above the river--which had now dwindled
+to a thirty-foot stream. His site was near a tributary rivulet that gave
+convenient water, in a kind of lap that sheltered between two rocky
+knees, each bearing thickets of willow and balsam. Not a dozen miles
+away from them now they reckoned was the Height of Land, the low
+watershed between the waters that go to the Atlantic and those that go
+to Hudson's Bay. Close beside the site he had chosen a shelf of rock ran
+out and gave a glimpse up the narrow rocky valley of the Green River's
+upper waters and a broad prospect of hill and tarn towards the
+south-east. North and north-east of them the country rose to a line of
+low crests, with here and there a yellowing patch of last year's snow,
+and across the valley were slopes covered in places by woods of stunted
+pine. It had an empty spaciousness of effect; the one continually living
+thing seemed to be the Green River, hurrying headlong, noisily,
+perpetually, in an eternal flight from this high desolation. Birds were
+rare here, and the insects that buzzed and shrilled and tormented among
+the rocks and willows in the gorge came but sparingly up the slopes to
+them.
+
+"Here presently," said Trafford, "we shall be in peace."
+
+"It is very lonely," said Marjorie.
+
+"The nearer to God."
+
+"Think! Not one of these hills has ever had a name."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It might be in some other planet."
+
+"Oh!--we'll christen them. That shall be Marjorie Ridge, and that Rag
+Valley. This space shall be--oh! Bayswater! Before we've done with it,
+this place and every feature of it will be as familiar as Sussex Square.
+More so,--for half the houses there would be stranger to us, if we could
+see inside them, than anything in this wilderness.... As familiar,
+say--as your drawing-room. That's better."
+
+Marjorie made no answer, but her eyes went from the reindeer moss and
+scrub and thickets of the foreground to the low rocky ridges that
+bounded the view north and east of them. The scattered boulders, the
+tangles of wood, the barren upper slopes, the dust-soiled survivals of
+the winter's snowfall, all contributed to an effect at once carelessly
+desert and hopelessly untidy. She looked westward, and her memory was
+full of interminable streaming rapids, wastes of ice-striated rocks,
+tiresome struggles through woods and wild, wide stretches of tundra and
+tarn, trackless and treeless, infinitely desolate. It seemed to her that
+the sea coast was but a step from London and ten thousand miles away
+from her.
+
+
+§ 4
+
+The men had engaged to build the framework of hut and store shed before
+returning, and to this under Trafford's direction they now set
+themselves. They were all half-breeds, mingling with Indian with
+Scottish or French blood, sober and experienced men. Three were named
+Mackenzie, two brothers and a cousin, and another, Raymond Noyes, was a
+relation and acquaintance of that George Elson who was with Wallace and
+Leonidas Hubbard, and afterwards guided Mrs. Hubbard in her crossing of
+Labrador. The fifth was a boy of eighteen named Lean. They were all
+familiar with the idea of summer travel in this country; quite a number,
+a score or so that is to say, of adventurous people, including three or
+four women, had ventured far in the wake of the Hubbards into these
+great wildernesses during the decade that followed that first tragic
+experiment in which Hubbard died. But that any one not of Indian or
+Esquimaux blood should propose to face out the Labrador winter was a new
+thing to them. They were really very sceptical at the outset whether
+these two highly civilized-looking people would ever get up to the
+Height of Land at all, and it was still with manifest incredulity that
+they set about the building of the hut and the construction of the
+sleeping bunks for which they had brought up planking. A stream of
+speculative talk had flowed along beside Marjorie and Trafford ever
+since they had entered the Green River; and it didn't so much come to an
+end as get cut off at last by the necessity of their departure.
+
+Noyes would stand, holding a hammer and staring at the narrow little
+berth he was fixing together.
+
+"You'll not sleep in this," he said.
+
+"I will," replied Marjorie.
+
+"You'll come back with us."
+
+"Not me."
+
+"There'll be wolves come and howl."
+
+"Let 'em."
+
+"They'll come right up to the door here. Winter makes 'em hidjus bold."
+
+Marjorie shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It's that cold I've known a man have his nose froze while he lay in
+bed," said Noyes.
+
+"Up here?"
+
+"Down the coast. But they say it's 'most as cold up here. Many's the man
+it's starved and froze."...
+
+He and his companions told stories,--very circumstantial and pitiful
+stories, of Indian disasters. They were all tales of weariness and
+starvation, of the cessation of food, because the fishing gave out,
+because the caribou did not migrate by the customary route, because the
+man of a family group broke his wrist, and then of the start of all or
+some of the party to the coast to get help and provisions, of the
+straining, starving fugitives caught by blizzards, losing the track,
+devouring small vermin raw, gnawing their own skin garments until they
+toiled half-naked in the snow,--becoming cannibals, becoming delirious,
+lying down to die. Once there was an epidemic of influenza, and three
+families of seven and twenty people just gave up and starved and died in
+their lodges, and were found, still partly frozen, a patient, pitiful
+company, by trappers in the spring....
+
+Such they said, were the common things that happened in a Labrador
+winter. Did the Traffords wish to run such risks?
+
+A sort of propagandist enthusiasm grew up in the men. They felt it
+incumbent upon them to persuade the Traffords to return. They reasoned
+with them rather as one does with wilful children. They tried to remind
+them of the delights and securities of the world they were deserting.
+Noyes drew fancy pictures of the pleasures of London by way of contrast
+to the bitter days before them. "You've got everything there,
+everything. Suppose you feel a bit ill, you go out, and every block
+there's a drug store got everything--all the new rem'dies--p'raps
+twenty, thirty sorts of rem'dy. Lit up, nice. And chaps in collars--like
+gentlemen. Or you feel a bit dully and you go into the streets and
+there's people. Why! when I was in New York I used to spend hours
+looking at the people. Hours! And everything lit up, too. Sky signs!
+Readin' everywhere. You can spend hours and hours in New York----"
+
+"London," said Marjorie.
+
+"Well, London--just going about and reading the things they stick up.
+Every blamed sort of thing. Or you say, let's go somewhere. Let's go out
+and be a bit lively. See? Up you get on a car and there you are! Great
+big restaurants, blazing with lights, and you can't think of a thing to
+eat they haven't got. Waiters all round you, dressed tremendous, fair
+asking you to have more. Or you say, let's go to a theatre. Very
+likely," said Noyes, letting his imagination soar, "you order up one of
+these automobillies."
+
+"By telephone," helped Trafford.
+
+"By telephone," confirmed Noyes. "When I was in New York there was a
+telephone in each room in the hotel. Each room. I didn't use it ever,
+except once when they didn't answer--but there it was. I know about
+telephones all right...."
+
+Why had they come here? None of the men were clear about that. Marjorie
+and Trafford would overhear them discussing this question at their fire
+night after night; they seemed to talk of nothing else. They indulged in
+the boldest hypotheses, even in the theory that Trafford knew of
+deposits of diamonds and gold, and would trust no one but his wife with
+the secret. They seemed also attracted by the idea that our two young
+people had "done something." Lean, with memories of some tattered
+sixpenny novel that had drifted into his hands from England, had even
+some notion of an elopement, of a pursuing husband or a vindictive wife.
+He was young and romantic, but it seemed incredible he should suggest
+that Marjorie was a royal princess. Yet there were moments when his
+manner betrayed a more than personal respect....
+
+One night after a hard day's portage Mackenzie was inspired by a
+brilliant idea. "They got no children," he said, in a hoarse,
+exceptionally audible whisper. "It worries them. Them as is Catholics
+goes pilgrimages, but these ain't Catholics. See?"
+
+"I can't stand that," said Marjorie. "It touches my pride. I've stood a
+good deal. Mr. Mackenzie!... Mr.... Mackenzie."
+
+The voice at the men's fire stopped and a black head turned around.
+"What is it, Mrs. Trafford?" asked Mackenzie.
+
+She held up four fingers. "Four!" she said.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Three sons and a daughter," said Marjorie.
+
+Mackenzie did not take it in until his younger brother had repeated her
+words.
+
+"And you've come from them to _this_.... Sir, what _have_ you come for?"
+
+"We want to be here," shouted Trafford to their listening pause. Their
+silence was incredulous.
+
+"We wanted to be alone together. There was too much--over there--too
+much everything."
+
+Mackenzie, in silhouette against the fire, shook his head, entirely
+dissatisfied. He could not understand how there could be too much of
+anything. It was beyond a trapper's philosophy.
+
+"Come back with us sir," said Noyes. "You'll weary of it...."
+
+Noyes clung to the idea of dissuasion to the end. "I don't care to leave
+ye," he said, and made a sort of byword of it that served when there was
+nothing else to say.
+
+He made it almost his last words. He turned back for another handclasp
+as the others under their light returning packs were filing down the
+hill.
+
+"I don't care to leave ye," he said.
+
+"Good luck!" said Trafford.
+
+"You'll need it," said Noyes, and looked at Marjorie very gravely and
+intently before he turned about and marched off after his fellows....
+
+Both Marjorie and Trafford felt a queer emotion, a sense of loss and
+desertion, a swelling in the throat, as that file of men receded over
+the rocky slopes, went down into a dip, reappeared presently small and
+remote cresting another spur, going on towards the little wood that hid
+the head of the rapids. They halted for a moment on the edge of the wood
+and looked back, then turned again one by one and melted stride by
+stride into the trees. Noyes was the last to go. He stood, in an
+attitude that spoke as plainly as words, "I don't care to leave ye."
+Something white waved and flickered; he had whipped out the letters they
+had given him for England, and he was waving them. Then, as if by an
+effort, he set himself to follow the others, and the two still watchers
+on the height above saw him no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FOURTH
+
+LONELY HUT
+
+
+§ 1
+
+Marjorie and Trafford walked slowly back to the hut. "There is much to
+do before the weather breaks," he said, ending a thoughtful silence.
+"Then we can sit inside there and talk about the things we need to talk
+about."
+
+He added awkwardly: "Since we started, there has been so much to hold
+the attention. I remember a mood--an immense despair. I feel it's still
+somewhere at the back of things, waiting to be dealt with. It's our
+essential fact. But meanwhile we've been busy, looking at fresh things."
+
+He paused. "Now it will be different perhaps...."
+
+For nearly four weeks indeed they were occupied very closely, and crept
+into their bunks at night as tired as wholesome animals who drop to
+sleep. At any time the weather might break; already there had been two
+overcast days and a frowning conference of clouds in the north. When at
+last storms began they knew there would be nothing for it but to keep in
+the hut until the world froze up.
+
+There was much to do to the hut. The absence of anything but stunted and
+impoverished timber and the limitation of time, had forbidden a log hut,
+and their home was really only a double framework, rammed tight between
+inner and outer frame with a mixture of earth and boughs and twigs of
+willow, pine and balsam. The floor was hammered earth carpeted with
+balsam twigs and a caribou skin. Outside and within wall and roof were
+faced with coarse canvas--that was Trafford's idea--and their bunks
+occupied two sides of the hut. Heating was done by the sheet-iron stove
+they had brought with them, and the smoke was carried out to the roof by
+a thin sheet-iron pipe which had come up outside a roll of canvas. They
+had made the roof with about the pitch of a Swiss châlet, and it was
+covered with nailed waterproof canvas, held down by a large number of
+big lumps of stone. Much of the canvassing still remained to do when the
+men went down, and then the Traffords used every scrap of packing-paper
+and newspaper that had come up with them and was not needed for lining
+the bunks in covering any crack or join in the canvas wall.
+
+Two decadent luxuries, a rubber bath and two rubber hot-water bottles,
+hung behind the door. They were almost the only luxuries. Kettles and
+pans and some provisions stood on a shelf over the stove; there was also
+a sort of recess cupboard in the opposite corner, reserve clothes were
+in canvas trunks under the bunks, they kept their immediate supply of
+wood under the eaves just outside the door, and there was a big can of
+water between stove and door. When the winter came they would have to
+bring in ice from the stream.
+
+This was their home. The tent that had sheltered Marjorie on the way up
+was erected close to this hut to serve as a rude scullery and outhouse,
+and they also made a long, roughly thatched roof with a canvas cover,
+supported on stakes, to shelter the rest of the stores. The stuff in
+tins and cases and jars they left on the ground under this; the
+rest--the flour, candles, bacon, dried caribou beef, and so forth, they
+hung, as they hoped, out of the reach of any prowling beast. And finally
+and most important was the wood pile. This they accumulated to the
+north and east of the hut, and all day long with a sort of ant-like
+perseverance Trafford added to it from the thickets below. Once or
+twice, however, tempted by the appearance of birds, he went shooting,
+and one day he got five geese that they spent a day upon, plucking,
+cleaning, boiling and putting up in all their store of empty cans,
+letting the fat float and solidify on the top to preserve this addition
+to their provision until the advent of the frost rendered all other
+preservatives unnecessary. They also tried to catch trout down in the
+river below, but though they saw many fish the catch was less than a
+dozen.
+
+It was a discovery to both of them to find how companionable these
+occupations were, how much more side by side they could be amateurishly
+cleaning out a goose and disputing about its cooking, than they had ever
+contrived to be in Sussex Square.
+
+"These things are so infernally interesting," said Trafford, surveying
+the row of miscellaneous cans upon the stove he had packed with
+disarticulated goose. "But we didn't come here to picnic. All this is
+eating us up. I have a memory of some immense tragic purpose----"
+
+"That tin's _boiling!_" screamed Marjorie sharply.
+
+He resumed his thread after an active interlude.
+
+"We'll keep the wolf from the door," he said.
+
+"Don't talk of wolves!" said Marjorie.
+
+"It is only when men have driven away the wolf from the door--oh!
+altogether away, that they find despair in the sky? I wonder----"
+
+"What?" asked Marjorie in his pause.
+
+"I wonder if there is nothing really in life but this, the food hunt and
+the love hunt. Is life just all hunger and need, and are we left with
+nothing--nothing at all--when these things are done?... We're
+infernally uncomfortable here."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" cried Marjorie.
+
+"Think of your carpets at home! Think of the great, warm, beautiful
+house that wasn't big enough!--And yet here, we're happy."
+
+"We _are_ happy," said Marjorie, struck by the thought. "Only----"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'm afraid. And I long for the children. And the wind _nips_."
+
+"It may be those are good things for us. No! This is just a lark as yet,
+Marjorie. It's still fresh and full of distractions. The discomforts are
+amusing. Presently we'll get used to it. Then we'll talk out--what we
+have to talk out.... I say, wouldn't it keep and improve this goose of
+ours if we put in a little brandy?"
+
+
+§ 2
+
+The weather broke at last. One might say it smashed itself over their
+heads. There came an afternoon darkness swift and sudden, a wild gale
+and an icy sleet that gave place in the night to snow, so that Trafford
+looked out next morning to see a maddening chaos of small white flakes,
+incredibly swift, against something that was neither darkness nor light.
+Even with the door but partly ajar a cruelty of cold put its claw
+within, set everything that was moveable swaying and clattering, and
+made Marjorie hasten shuddering to heap fresh logs upon the fire. Once
+or twice Trafford went out to inspect tent and roof and store-shed,
+several times wrapped to the nose he battled his way for fresh wood, and
+for the rest of the blizzard they kept to the hut. It was slumberously
+stuffy, but comfortingly full of flavours of tobacco and food. There
+were two days of intermission and a day of gusts and icy sleet again,
+turning with one extraordinary clap of thunder to a wild downpour of
+dancing lumps of ice, and then a night when it seemed all Labrador,
+earth and sky together, was in hysterical protest against inconceivable
+wrongs.
+
+And then the break was over; the annual freezing-up was accomplished,
+winter had established itself, the snowfall moderated and ceased, and an
+ice-bound world shone white and sunlit under a cloudless sky.
+
+
+§ 3
+
+Through all that time they got no further with the great discussion for
+which they had faced that solitude. They attempted beginnings.
+
+"Where had we got to when we left England?" cried Marjorie. "You
+couldn't work, you couldn't rest--you hated our life."
+
+"Yes, I know. I had a violent hatred of the lives we were leading. I
+thought--we had to get away. To think.... But things don't leave us
+alone here."
+
+He covered his face with his hands.
+
+"Why did we come here?" he asked.
+
+"You wanted--to get out of things."
+
+"Yes. But with you.... Have we, after all, got out of things at all? I
+said coming up, perhaps we were leaving our own problem behind. In
+exchange for other problems--old problems men have had before. We've got
+nearer necessity; that's all. Things press on us just as much. There's
+nothing more fundamental in wild nature, nothing profounder--only
+something earlier. One doesn't get out of life by going here or
+there.... But I wanted to get you away--from all things that had such a
+hold on you....
+
+"When one lies awake at nights, then one seems to get down into
+things...."
+
+He went to the door, opened it, and stood looking out. Against a wan
+daylight the snow was falling noiselessly and steadily.
+
+"Everything goes on," he said.... "Relentlessly...."
+
+
+§ 4
+
+That was as far as they had got when the storms ceased and they came out
+again into an air inexpressibly fresh and sharp and sweet, and into a
+world blindingly clean and golden white under the rays of the morning
+sun.
+
+"We will build a fire out here," said Marjorie; "make a great pile.
+There is no reason at all why we shouldn't live outside all through the
+day in such weather as this."
+
+
+§ 5
+
+One morning Trafford found the footmarks of some catlike creature in the
+snow near the bushes where he was accustomed to get firewood; they led
+away very plainly up the hill, and after breakfast he took his knife and
+rifle and snowshoes and went after the lynx--for that he decided the
+animal must be. There was no urgent reason why he should want to kill a
+lynx, unless perhaps that killing it made the store shed a trifle safer;
+but it was the first trail of any living thing for many days; it
+promised excitement; some primordial instinct perhaps urged him.
+
+The morning was a little overcast, and very cold between the gleams of
+wintry sunshine. "Good-bye, dear wife!" he said, and then as she
+remembered afterwards came back a dozen yards to kiss her. "I'll not be
+long," he said. "The beast's prowling, and if it doesn't get wind of me
+I ought to find it in an hour." He hesitated for a moment. "I'll not be
+long," he repeated, and she had an instant's wonder whether he hid from
+her the same dread of loneliness that she concealed. Or perhaps he only
+knew her secret. Up among the tumbled rocks he turned, and she was still
+watching him. "Good-bye!" he cried and waved, and the willow thickets
+closed about him.
+
+She forced herself to the petty duties of the day, made up the fire from
+the pile he had left for her, set water to boil, put the hut in order,
+brought out sheets and blankets to air and set herself to wash up. She
+wished she had been able to go with him. The sky cleared presently, and
+the low December sun lit all the world about her, but it left her spirit
+desolate.
+
+She did not expect him to return until mid-day, and she sat herself down
+on a log before the fire to darn a pair of socks as well as she could.
+For a time this unusual occupation held her attention and then her hands
+became slow and at last inactive, and she fell into reverie. She thought
+at first of her children and what they might be doing, in England across
+there to the east it would be about five hours later, four o'clock in
+the afternoon, and the children would be coming home through the warm
+muggy London sunshine with Fraulein Otto to tea. She wondered if they
+had the proper clothes, if they were well; were they perhaps quarrelling
+or being naughty or skylarking gaily across the Park. Of course Fraulein
+Otto was all right, quite to be trusted, absolutely trustworthy, and
+their grandmother would watch for a flushed face or an irrational
+petulance or any of the little signs that herald trouble with more than
+a mother's instinctive alertness. No need to worry about the children,
+no need whatever.... The world of London opened out behind these
+thoughts; it was so queer to think that she was in almost the same
+latitude as the busy bright traffic of the autumn season in Kensington
+Gore; that away there in ten thousand cleverly furnished drawing-rooms
+the ringing tea things were being set out for the rustling advent of
+smart callers and the quick leaping gossip. And there would be all sorts
+of cakes and little things; for a while her mind ran on cakes and little
+things, and she thought in particular whether it wasn't time to begin
+cooking.... Not yet. What was it she had been thinking about? Ah! the
+Solomonsons and the Capeses and the Bernards and the Carmels and the
+Lees. Would they talk of her and Trafford? It would be strange to go
+back to it all. Would they go back to it all? She found herself thinking
+intently of Trafford.
+
+What a fine human being he was! And how touchingly human! The thoughts
+of his moments of irritation, his baffled silences, filled her with a
+wild passion of tenderness. She had disappointed him; all that life
+failed to satisfy him. Dear master of her life! what was it he needed?
+She too wasn't satisfied with life, but while she had been able to
+assuage herself with a perpetual series of petty excitements, theatres,
+new books and new people, meetings, movements, dinners, shows, he had
+grown to an immense discontent. He had most of the things men sought,
+wealth, respect, love, children.... So many men might have blunted their
+heart-ache with--adventures. There were pretty women, clever women,
+unoccupied women. She felt she wouldn't have minded--_much_--if it made
+him happy.... It was so wonderful he loved her still.... It wasn't that
+he lacked occupation; on the whole he overworked. His business
+interests were big and wide. Ought he to go into politics? Why was it
+that the researches that had held him once, could hold him now no more?
+That was the real pity of it. Was she to blame for that? She couldn't
+state a case against herself, and yet she felt she was to blame. She had
+taken him away from those things, forced him to make money....
+
+She sat chin on hand staring into the fire, the sock forgotten on her
+knee.
+
+She could not weigh justice between herself and him. If he was unhappy
+it was her fault. She knew if he was unhappy it was no excuse that she
+had not known, had been misled, had a right to her own instincts and
+purposes. She had got to make him happy. But what was she to do, what
+was there for her to do?...
+
+Only he could work out his own salvation, and until he had light, all
+she could do was to stand by him, help him, cease to irritate him,
+watch, wait. Anyhow she could at least mend his socks as well as
+possible, so that the threads would not chafe him....
+
+She flashed to her feet. What was that?
+
+It seemed to her she had heard the sound of a shot, and a quick brief
+wake of echoes. She looked across the icy waste of the river, and then
+up the tangled slopes of the mountain. Her heart was beating very fast.
+It must have been up there, and no doubt he had killed his beast. Some
+shadow of doubt she would not admit crossed that obvious suggestion.
+
+This wilderness was making her as nervously responsive as a creature of
+the wild.
+
+Came a second shot; this time there was no doubt of it. Then the
+desolate silence closed about her again.
+
+She stood for a long time staring at the shrubby slopes that rose to the
+barren rock wilderness of the purple mountain crest. She sighed deeply
+at last, and set herself to make up the fire and prepare for the mid-day
+meal. Once far away across the river she heard the howl of a wolf.
+
+Time seemed to pass very slowly that day. She found herself going
+repeatedly to the space between the day tent and the sleeping hut from
+which she could see the stunted wood that had swallowed him up, and
+after what seemed a long hour her watch told her it was still only
+half-past twelve. And the fourth or fifth time that she went to look out
+she was set atremble again by the sound of a third shot. And then at
+regular intervals out of that distant brown purple jumble of thickets
+against the snow came two more shots. "Something has happened," she
+said, "something has happened," and stood rigid. Then she became active,
+seized the rifle that was always at hand when she was alone, fired into
+the sky and stood listening.
+
+Prompt come an answering shot.
+
+"He wants me," said Marjorie. "Something----Perhaps he has killed
+something too big to bring!"
+
+She was for starting at once, and then remembered this was not the way
+of the wilderness.
+
+She thought and moved very rapidly. Her mind catalogued possible
+requirements, rifle, hunting knife, the oilskin bag with matches, and
+some chunks of dry paper, the rucksack--and he would be hungry. She took
+a saucepan and a huge chunk of cheese and biscuit. Then a brandy flask
+is sometimes handy--one never knows. Though nothing was wrong, of
+course. Needles and stout thread, and some cord. Snowshoes. A waterproof
+cloak could be easily carried. Her light hatchet for wood. She cast
+about to see if there was anything else. She had almost forgotten
+cartridges--and a revolver. Nothing more. She kicked a stray brand or so
+into the fire, put on some more wood, damped the fire with an armful of
+snow to make it last longer, and set out towards the willows into which
+he had vanished.
+
+There was a rustling and snapping of branches as she pushed her way
+through the bushes, a little stir that died insensibly into quiet again;
+and then the camping place became very still....
+
+Scarcely a sound occurred, except for the little shuddering and stirring
+of the fire, and the reluctant, infrequent drip from the icicles along
+the sunny edge of the log hut roof. About one o'clock the amber sunshine
+faded out altogether, a veil of clouds thickened and became greyly
+ominous, and a little after two the first flakes of a snowstorm fell
+hissing into the fire. A wind rose and drove the multiplying snowflakes
+in whirls and eddies before it. The icicles ceased to drip, but one or
+two broke and fell with a weak tinkling. A deep soughing, a shuddering
+groaning of trees and shrubs, came ever and again out of the ravine, and
+the powdery snow blew like puffs of smoke from the branches.
+
+By four the fire was out, and the snow was piling high in the darkling
+twilight against tent and hut....
+
+
+§ 6
+
+Trafford's trail led Marjorie through the thicket of dwarf willows and
+down to the gully of the rivulet which they had called Marjorie Trickle;
+it had long since become a trough of snow-covered rotten ice; the trail
+crossed this and, turning sharply uphill, went on until it was clear of
+shrubs and trees, and in the windy open of the upper slopes it crossed a
+ridge and came over the lip of a large desolate valley with slopes of
+ice and icy snow. Here she spent some time in following his loops back
+on the homeward trail before she saw what was manifestly the final trail
+running far away out across the snow, with the spoor of the lynx, a
+lightly-dotted line, to the right of it. She followed this suggestion of
+the trail, put on her snowshoes, and shuffled her way across this
+valley, which opened as she proceeded. She hoped that over the ridge she
+would find Trafford, and scanned the sky for the faintest discolouration
+of a fire, but there was none. That seemed odd to her, but the wind was
+in her face, and perhaps it beat the smoke down. Then as her eyes
+scanned the hummocky ridge ahead, she saw something, something very
+intent and still, that brought her heart into her mouth. It was a big,
+grey wolf, standing with back haunched and head down, watching and
+winding something beyond there, out of sight.
+
+Marjorie had an instinctive fear of wild animals, and it still seemed
+dreadful to her that they should go at large, uncaged. She suddenly
+wanted Trafford violently, wanted him by her side. Also she thought of
+leaving the trail, going back to the bushes. She had to take herself in
+hand. In the wastes one did not fear wild beasts. One had no fear of
+them. But why not fire a shot to let him know she was near?
+
+The beast flashed round with an animal's instantaneous change of pose,
+and looked at her. For a couple of seconds, perhaps, woman and brute
+regarded one another across a quarter of a mile of snowy desolation.
+
+Suppose it came towards her!
+
+She would fire--and she would fire at it. She made a guess at the range
+and aimed very carefully. She saw the snow fly two yards ahead of the
+grisly shape, and then in an instant it had vanished over the crest.
+
+She reloaded, and stood for a moment waiting for Trafford's answer. No
+answer came. "Queer!" she whispered, "queer!"--and suddenly such a
+horror of anticipation assailed her that she started running and
+floundering through the snow to escape it. Twice she called his name,
+and once she just stopped herself from firing a shot.
+
+Over the ridge she would find him. Surely she would find him over the
+ridge.
+
+She found herself among rocks, and there was a beaten and trampled place
+where Trafford must have waited and crouched. Then on and down a slope
+of tumbled boulders. There came a patch where he had either thrown
+himself down or fallen.
+
+It seemed to her he must have been running....
+
+Suddenly, a hundred feet or so away, she saw a patch of violently
+disturbed snow--snow stained a dreadful colour, a snow of scarlet
+crystals! Three strides and Trafford was in sight.
+
+She had a swift conviction he was dead. He was lying in a crumpled
+attitude on a patch of snow between convergent rocks, and the lynx, a
+mass of blood smeared silvery fur, was in some way mixed up with him.
+She saw as she came nearer that the snow was disturbed round about them,
+and discoloured copiously, yellow widely, and in places bright red, with
+congealed and frozen blood. She felt no fear now, and no emotion; all
+her mind was engaged with the clear, bleak perception of the fact before
+her. She did not care to call to him again. His head was hidden by the
+lynx's body, it was as if he was burrowing underneath the creature; his
+legs were twisted about each other in a queer, unnatural attitude.
+
+Then, as she dropped off a boulder, and came nearer, Trafford moved. A
+hand came out and gripped the rifle beside him; he suddenly lifted a
+dreadful face, horribly scarred and torn, and crimson with frozen blood;
+he pushed the grey beast aside, rose on an elbow, wiped his sleeve
+across his eyes, stared at her, grunted, and flopped forward. He had
+fainted.
+
+She was now as clear-minded and as self-possessed as a woman in a shop.
+In another moment she was kneeling by his side. She saw, by the position
+of his knife and the huge rip in the beast's body, that he had stabbed
+the lynx to death as it clawed his head; he must have shot and wounded
+it and then fallen upon it. His knitted cap was torn to ribbons, and
+hung upon his neck. Also his leg was manifestly injured; how, she could
+not tell. It was chiefly evident he must freeze if he lay here. It
+seemed to her that perhaps he had pulled the dead brute over him to
+protect his torn skin from the extremity of cold. The lynx was already
+rigid, its clumsy paws asprawl--the torn skin and clot upon Trafford's
+face was stiff as she put her hands about his head to raise him. She
+turned him over on his back--how heavy he seemed!--and forced brandy
+between his teeth. Then, after a moment's hesitation, she poured a
+little brandy on his wounds.
+
+She glanced at his leg, which was surely broken, and back at his face.
+Then she gave him more brandy and his eyelids flickered. He moved his
+hand weakly. "The blood," he said, "kept getting in my eyes."
+
+She gave him brandy once again, wiped his face and glanced at his leg.
+Something ought to be done to that she thought. But things must be done
+in order.
+
+She stared up at the darkling sky with its grey promise of snow, and
+down the slopes of the mountain. Clearly they must stay the night here.
+They were too high for wood among these rocks, but three or four
+hundred yards below there were a number of dwarfed fir trees. She had
+brought an axe, so that a fire was possible. Should she go back to camp
+and get the tent?
+
+Trafford was trying to speak again. "I got----" he said.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Got my leg in that crack. Damn--damned nuisance."
+
+Was he able to advise her? She looked at him, and then perceived she
+must bind up his head and face. She knelt behind him and raised his head
+on her knee. She had a thick silk neck muffler, and this she
+supplemented by a band she cut and tore from her inner vest. She bound
+this, still warm from her body, about him, wrapped her cloak round him.
+The next thing was a fire. Five yards away, perhaps, a great mass of
+purple gabbro hung over a patch of nearly snowless moss. A hummock to
+the westward offered shelter from the weakly bitter wind, the icy
+draught, that was soughing down the valley. Always in Labrador, if you
+can, you camp against a rock surface; it shelters you from the wind,
+reflects your fire, guards your back.
+
+"Rag!" she said.
+
+"Rotten hole," said Trafford.
+
+"What?" she cried sharply.
+
+"Got you in a rotten hole," he said. "Eh?"
+
+"Listen," she said, and shook his shoulder. "Look! I want to get you up
+against that rock."
+
+"Won't make much difference," said Trafford, and opened his eyes.
+"Where?" he asked.
+
+"There."
+
+He remained quite quiet for a second perhaps. "Listen to me," he said.
+"Go back to camp."
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"Go back to camp. Make a pack of all the strongest
+food--strenthin'--strengthrin' food--you know?" He seemed troubled to
+express himself.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"Down the river. Down--down. Till you meet help."
+
+"Leave you?"
+
+He nodded his head and winced.
+
+"You're always plucky," he said. "Look facts in the face. Kiddies.
+Thought it over while you were coming." A tear oozed from his eye. "Not
+be a fool, Madge. Kiss me good-bye. Not be a fool. I'm done. Kids."
+
+She stared at him and her spirit was a luminous mist of tears. "You old
+_coward_," she said in his ear, and kissed the little patch of rough and
+bloody cheek beneath his eye. Then she knelt up beside him. "_I'm_ boss
+now, old man," she said. "I want to get you to that place there under
+the rock. If I drag, can you help?"
+
+He answered obstinately: "You'd better go."
+
+"I'll make you comfortable first," she answered, "anyhow."
+
+He made an enormous effort, and then with her quick help and with his
+back to her knee, had raised himself on his elbows.
+
+"And afterwards?" he asked.
+
+"Build a fire."
+
+"Wood?"
+
+"Down there."
+
+"Two bits of wood tied on my leg--splints. Then I can drag myself. See?
+Like a blessed old walrus."
+
+He smiled, and she kissed his bandaged face again.
+
+"Else it hurts," he apologized, "more than I can stand."
+
+She stood up again, thought, put his rifle and knife to his hand for
+fear of that lurking wolf, abandoning her own rifle with an effort, and
+went striding and leaping from rock to rock towards the trees below. She
+made the chips fly, and was presently towing three venerable pine
+dwarfs, bumping over rock and crevice, back to Trafford. She flung them
+down, stood for a moment bright and breathless, then set herself to hack
+off the splints he needed from the biggest stem. "Now," she said, coming
+to him.
+
+"A fool," he remarked, "would have made the splints down there.
+You're--_good_, Marjorie."
+
+She lugged his leg out straight, put it into the natural and least
+painful pose, padded it with moss and her torn handkerchief, and bound
+it up. As she did so a handful of snowflakes came whirling about them.
+She was now braced up to every possibility. "It never rains," she said
+grimly, "but it pours," and went on with her bone-setting. He was badly
+weakened by pain and shock, and once he swore at her sharply. "Sorry,"
+he said.
+
+She rolled him over on his chest, and left him to struggle to the
+shelter of the rock while she went for more wood.
+
+The sky alarmed her. The mountains up the valley were already hidden by
+driven rags of slaty snowstorms. This time she found a longer but easier
+path for dragging her boughs and trees; she determined she would not
+start the fire until nightfall, nor waste any time in preparing food
+until then. There were dead boughs for kindling--more than enough. It
+was snowing quite fast by the time she got up to him with her second
+load, and a premature twilight already obscured and exaggerated the
+rocks and mounds about her. She gave some of her cheese to Trafford, and
+gnawed some herself on her way down to the wood again. She regretted
+that she had brought neither candles nor lantern, because then she might
+have kept on until the cold of night stopped her, and she reproached
+herself bitterly because she had brought no tea. She could forgive
+herself the lantern, she had never expected to be out after dark, but
+the tea was inexcusable. She muttered self-reproaches while she worked
+like two men among the trees, panting puffs of mist that froze upon her
+lips and iced the knitted wool that covered her chin. Why don't they
+teach a girl to handle an axe?...
+
+When at last the wolfish cold of the Labrador night had come, it found
+Trafford and Marjorie seated almost warmly on a bed of pine boughs
+between the sheltering dark rock behind and a big but well husbanded
+fire in front, drinking a queer-tasting but not unsavory soup of
+lynx-flesh, that she had fortified with the remainder of the brandy.
+Then they tried roast lynx and ate a little, and finished with some
+scraps of cheese and deep draughts of hot water. Then--oh Tyburnia and
+Chelsea and all that is becoming!--they smoked Trafford's pipe for
+alternate minutes, and Marjorie found great comfort in it.
+
+The snowstorm poured incessantly out of the darkness to become flakes of
+burning fire in the light of the flames, flakes that vanished magically,
+but it only reached them and wetted them in occasional gusts. What did
+it matter for the moment if the dim snow-heaps rose and rose about them?
+A glorious fatigue, an immense self-satisfaction possessed Marjorie; she
+felt that they had both done well.
+
+"I am not afraid of to-morrow now," she said at last--a thought matured.
+"_No!_"
+
+Trafford had the pipe and did not speak for a moment. "Nor I," he said
+at last. "Very likely we'll get through with it." He added after a
+pause: "I thought I was done for. A man--loses heart. After a loss of
+blood."
+
+"The leg's better?"
+
+"Hot as fire." His humour hadn't left him. "It's a treat," he said. "The
+hottest thing in Labrador."
+
+"I've been a good squaw this time, old man?" she asked suddenly.
+
+He seemed not to hear her; then his lips twitched and he made a feeble
+movement for her hand. "I cursed you," he said....
+
+She slept, but on a spring as it were, lest the fire should fall. She
+replenished it with boughs, tucked in the half-burnt logs, and went to
+sleep again. Then it seemed to her that some invisible hand was pouring
+a thin spirit on the flames that made them leap and crackle and spread
+north and south until they filled the heavens. Her eyes were open and
+the snowstorm overpast, leaving the sky clear, and all the westward
+heaven alight with the trailing, crackling, leaping curtains of the
+Aurora, brighter than she had ever seen them before. Quite clearly
+visible beyond the smoulder of the fire, a wintry waste of rock and
+snow, boulder beyond boulder, passed into a dun obscurity. The mountain
+to the right of them lay long and white and stiff, a shrouded death. All
+earth was dead and waste and nothing, and the sky alive and coldly
+marvellous, signalling and astir. She watched the changing, shifting
+colours, and they made her think of the gathering banners of inhuman
+hosts, the stir and marshalling of icy giants for ends stupendous and
+indifferent to all the trivial impertinence of man's existence....
+
+That night the whole world of man seemed small and shallow and insecure
+to her, beyond comparison. One came, she thought, but just a little way
+out of its warm and sociable cities hither, and found this homeless
+wilderness; one pricked the thin appearances of life with microscope or
+telescope and came to an equal strangeness. All the pride and hope of
+human life goes to and fro in a little shell of air between this ancient
+globe of rusty nickel-steel and the void of space; faint specks we are
+within a film; we quiver between the atom and the infinite, being hardly
+more substantial than the glow within an oily skin that drifts upon the
+water. The wonder and the riddle of it! Here she and Trafford were!
+Phantasmal shapes of unsubstantial fluid thinly skinned against
+evaporation and wrapped about with woven wool and the skins of beasts,
+that yet reflected and perceived, suffered and sought to understand;
+that held a million memories, framed thoughts that plumbed the deeps of
+space and time,--and another day of snow or icy wind might leave them
+just scattered bones and torn rags gnawed by a famishing wolf!...
+
+She felt a passionate desire to pray....
+
+She glanced at Trafford beside her, and found him awake and staring. His
+face was very pale and strange in that livid, flickering light. She
+would have spoken, and then she saw his lips were moving, and something,
+something she did not understand, held her back from doing so.
+
+
+§ 7
+
+The bleak, slow dawn found Marjorie intently busy. She had made up the
+fire, boiled water and washed and dressed Trafford's wounds, and made
+another soup of lynx. But Trafford had weakened in the night, the stuff
+nauseated him, he refused it and tried to smoke and was sick, and then
+sat back rather despairfully after a second attempt to persuade her to
+leave him there to die. This failure of his spirit distressed her and a
+little astonished her, but it only made her more resolute to go through
+with her work. She had awakened cold, stiff and weary, but her fatigue
+vanished with movement; she toiled for an hour replenishing her pile of
+fuel, made up the fire, put his gun ready to his hand, kissed him,
+abused him lovingly for the trouble he gave her until his poor torn face
+lit in response, and then parting on a note of cheerful confidence set
+out to return to the hut. She found the way not altogether easy to make
+out, wind and snow had left scarcely a trace of their tracks, and her
+mind was full of the stores she must bring and the possibility of moving
+him nearer to the hut. She was startled to see by the fresh, deep spoor
+along the ridge how near the wolf had dared approach them in the
+darkness....
+
+Ever and again Marjorie had to halt and look back to get her direction
+right. As it was she came through the willow scrub nearly half a mile
+above the hut, and had to follow the steep bank of the frozen river
+down. At one place she nearly slipped upon an icy slope of rock.
+
+One possibility she did not dare to think of during that time; a
+blizzard now would cut her off absolutely from any return to Trafford.
+Short of that she believed she could get through.
+
+Her quick mind was full of all she had to do. At first she had thought
+chiefly of his immediate necessities, of food and some sort of shelter.
+She had got a list of things in her head--meat extract, bandages,
+corrosive sublimate by way of antiseptic, brandy, a tin of beef, some
+bread and so forth; she went over that several times to be sure of it,
+and then for a time she puzzled about a tent. She thought she could
+manage a bale of blankets on her back, and that she could rig a sleeping
+tent for herself and Trafford with one and some bent sticks. The big
+tent would be too much to strike and shift. And then her mind went on to
+a bolder enterprise, which was to get him home. The nearer she could
+bring him to the log hut, the nearer they would be to supplies. She cast
+about for some sort of sledge. The snow was too soft and broken for
+runners, especially among the trees, but if she could get a flat of
+smooth wood she thought she might be able to drag him. She decided to
+try the side of her bunk. She could easily get that off. She would have,
+of course, to run it edgewise through the thickets and across the
+ravine, but after that she would have almost clear going until she
+reached the steep place of broken rocks within two hundred yards of him.
+The idea of a sledge grew upon her, and she planned to nail a rope along
+the edge and make a kind of harness for herself.
+
+She found the camping-place piled high with drifted snow, which had
+invaded tent and hut, and that some beast, a wolverine she guessed, had
+been into the hut, devoured every candle-end and the uppers of
+Trafford's well-greased second boots, and had then gone to the corner of
+the store shed and clambered up to the stores. She made no account of
+its depredations there, but set herself to make a sledge and get her
+supplies together. There was a gleam of sunshine, but she did not like
+the look of the sky, and she was horribly afraid of what might be
+happening to Trafford. She carried her stuff through the wood and across
+the ravine, and returned for her improvised sledge. She was still
+struggling with that among the trees when it began to snow again.
+
+It was hard then not to be frantic in her efforts. As it was, she packed
+her stuff so loosely on the planking that she had to repack it, and she
+started without putting on her snowshoes, and floundered fifty yards
+before she discovered that omission. The snow was now falling fast,
+darkling the sky and hiding everything but objects close at hand, and
+she had to use all her wits to determine her direction; she knew she
+must go down a long slope and then up to the ridge, and it came to her
+as a happy inspiration that if she bore to the left she might strike
+some recognizable vestige of her morning's trail. She had read of people
+walking in circles when they have no light or guidance, and that
+troubled her until she bethought herself of the little compass on her
+watch chain. By that she kept her direction. She wished very much she
+had timed herself across the waste, so that she could tell when she
+approached the ridge.
+
+Soon her back and shoulders were aching violently, and the rope across
+her chest was tugging like some evil-tempered thing. But she did not
+dare to rest. The snow was now falling thick and fast, the flakes traced
+white spirals and made her head spin, so that she was constantly falling
+away to the south-westward and then correcting herself by the compass.
+She tried to think how this zig-zagging might affect her course, but the
+snow whirls confused her mind and a growing anxiety would not let her
+pause to think. She felt blinded; it seemed to be snowing inside her
+eyes so that she wanted to rub them. Soon the ground must rise to the
+ridge, she told herself; it must surely rise. Then the sledge came
+bumping at her heels and she perceived she was going down hill. She
+consulted the compass, and she found she was facing south. She turned
+sharply to the right again. The snowfall became a noiseless, pitiless
+torture to sight and mind.
+
+The sledge behind her struggled to hold her back, and the snow balled
+under her snowshoes. She wanted to stop and rest, take thought, sit for
+a moment. She struggled with herself and kept on. She tried walking
+with shut eyes, and tripped and came near sprawling. "Oh God!" she
+cried, "oh God!" too stupefied for more articulate prayers.
+
+Would the rise of the ground to the ribs of rock never come?
+
+A figure, black and erect, stood in front of her suddenly, and beyond
+appeared a group of black, straight antagonists. She staggered on
+towards them, gripping her rifle with some muddled idea of defence, and
+in another moment she was brushing against the branches of a stunted
+fir, which shed thick lumps of snow upon her feet. What trees were
+these? Had she ever passed any trees? No! There were no trees on her way
+to Trafford....
+
+She began whimpering like a tormented child. But even as she wept she
+turned her sledge about to follow the edge of the wood. She was too much
+downhill, she thought and she must bear up again.
+
+She left the trees behind, made an angle uphill to the right, and was
+presently among trees again. Again she left them and again came back to
+them. She screamed with anger at them and twitched her sledge away. She
+wiped at the snowstorm with her arm as though she would wipe it away.
+She wanted to stamp on the universe....
+
+And she ached, she ached....
+
+Something caught her eye ahead, something that gleamed; it was exactly
+like a long, bare rather pinkish bone standing erect on the ground. Just
+because it was strange and queer she ran forward to it. Then as she came
+nearer she perceived it was a streak of barked trunk; a branch had been
+torn off a pine tree and the bark stripped down to the root. And then
+her foot hit against a freshly hewn stump, and then came another, poking
+its pinkish wounds above the snow. And there were chips! This filled
+her with wonder. Some one had been cutting wood! There must be Indians
+or trappers near, she thought, and then realized the wood-cutter could
+be none other than herself.
+
+She turned to the right and saw the rocks rising steeply close at hand.
+"Oh Rag!" she cried, and fired her rifle in the air.
+
+Ten seconds, twenty seconds, and then so loud and near it amazed her,
+came his answering shot. It sounded like the hillside bursting.
+
+In another moment she had discovered the trail she had made overnight
+and that morning by dragging firewood. It was now a shallow soft white
+trench. Instantly her despair and fatigue had gone from her. Should she
+take a load of wood with her? she asked herself, in addition to the
+weight behind her, and had a better idea. She would unload and pile her
+stuff here, and bring him down on the sledge closer to the wood. She
+looked about and saw two rocks that diverged with a space between. She
+flashed schemes. She would trample the snow hard and flat, put her
+sledge on it, pile boughs and make a canopy of blanket overhead and
+behind. Then a fire in front.
+
+She saw her camp admirable. She tossed her provisions down and ran up
+the broad windings of her pine-tree trail to Trafford, with the unloaded
+sledge bumping behind her. She ran as lightly as though she had done
+nothing that day.
+
+She found him markedly recovered, weak and quiet, with snow drifting
+over his feet, his rifle across his knees, and his pipe alight. "Back
+already," he said, "but----"
+
+He hesitated. "No grub?"
+
+She knelt over him, gave his rough unshaven cheek a swift kiss, and very
+rapidly explained her plan.
+
+
+§ 8
+
+In three days' time they were back at the hut, and the last two days
+they wore blue spectacles because of the mid-day glare of the sunlit
+snow.
+
+It amazed Marjorie to discover as she lay awake in the camp on the edge
+of the ravine close to the hut to which she had lugged Trafford during
+the second day, that she was deeply happy. It was preposterous that she
+should be so, but those days of almost despairful stress were irradiated
+now by a new courage. She was doing this thing, against all Labrador and
+the snow-driving wind that blew from the polar wilderness, she was
+winning. It was a great discovery to her that hardship and effort almost
+to the breaking-point could ensue in so deep a satisfaction. She lay and
+thought how deep and rich life had become for her, as though in all this
+effort and struggle some unsuspected veil had been torn away. She
+perceived again, but now with no sense of desolation, that same infinite
+fragility of life which she had first perceived when she had watched the
+Aurora Borealis flickering up the sky. Beneath that realization and
+carrying it, as a river flood may carry scum, was a sense of herself as
+something deeper, greater, more enduring than mountain or wilderness or
+sky, or any of those monstrous forms of nature that had dwarfed her
+physical self to nothingness.
+
+She had a persuasion of self detachment and illumination, and withal of
+self-discovery. She saw her life of time and space for what it was. Away
+in London the children, with the coldest of noses and the gayest of
+spirits, would be scampering about their bedrooms in the mild morning
+sunlight of a London winter; Elsie, the parlourmaid, would be whisking
+dexterous about the dining-room, the bacon would be cooking and the
+coffee-mill at work, the letters of the morning delivery perhaps just
+pattering into the letter-box, and all the bright little household she
+had made, with all the furniture she had arranged, all the
+characteristic decoration she had given it, all the clever convenient
+arrangements, would be getting itself into action for another day--and
+_it wasn't herself!_ It was the extremest of her superficiality.
+
+She had come out of all that, and even so it seemed she had come out of
+herself; this weary woman lying awake on the balsam boughs with a brain
+cleared by underfeeding and this continuous arduous bath of toil in
+snow-washed, frost cleansed, starry air, this, too, was no more than a
+momentarily clarified window for her unknown and indefinable reality.
+What was that reality? what was she herself? She became interested in
+framing an answer to that, and slipped down from the peace of soul she
+had attained. Her serenity gave way to a reiteration of this question,
+reiterations increasing and at last oppressing like the snowflakes of a
+storm, perpetual whirling repetitions that at last confused her and hid
+the sky....
+
+She fell asleep....
+
+
+§ 9
+
+With their return to the hut, Marjorie had found herself encountering a
+new set of urgencies. In their absence that wretched little wolverine
+had found great plenty and happiness in the tent and store-shed; its
+traces were manifest nearly everywhere, and it had particularly assailed
+the candles, after a destructive time among the frozen caribou beef. It
+had clambered up on the packages of sardines and jumped thence on to a
+sloping pole that it could claw along into the frame of the roof. She
+rearranged the packages, but that was no good. She could not leave
+Trafford in order to track the brute down, and for a night or so she
+could not think of any way of checking its depredations. It came each
+night.... Trafford kept her close at home. She had expected that when he
+was back in his bunk, secure and warm, he would heal rapidly, but
+instead he suddenly developed all the symptoms of a severe feverish
+cold, and his scars, which had seemed healing, became flushed and
+ugly-looking. Moreover, there was something wrong with his leg, an
+ominous ache that troubled her mind. Every woman, she decided, ought to
+know how to set a bone. He was unable to sleep by reason of these
+miseries, though very desirous of doing so. He became distressingly weak
+and inert, he ceased to care for food, and presently he began ta talk to
+himself with a complete disregard of her presence. Hourly she regretted
+her ignorance of medicine that left her with no conceivable remedy for
+all the aching and gnawing that worried and weakened him, except bathing
+with antiseptics and a liberal use of quinine.
+
+And his face became strange to her, for over his flushed and sunken
+cheeks, under the raw spaces of the scar a blond beard bristled and
+grew. Presently, Trafford was a bearded man.
+
+Incidentally, however, she killed the wolverine by means of a trap of
+her own contrivance, a loaded rifle with a bait of what was nearly her
+last candles, rigged to the trigger.
+
+But this loss of the candles brought home to them the steady lengthening
+of the nights. Scarcely seven hours of day remained now in the black,
+cold grip of the darkness. And through those seventeen hours of chill
+aggression they had no light but the red glow of the stove. She had to
+close the door of the hut and bar every chink and cranny against the icy
+air, that became at last a murderous, freezing wind. Not only did she
+line the hut with every scrap of skin and paper she could obtain, but
+she went out with the spade toiling for three laborious afternoons in
+piling and beating snow against the outer frame. And now it was that
+Trafford talked at last, talked with something of the persistence of
+delirium, and she sat and listened hour by hour, silently, for he gave
+no heed to her or to anything she might say. He talked, it seemed, to
+God....
+
+
+§ 10
+
+Darkness about a sullen glow of red, and a voice speaking.
+
+The voice of a man, fevered and in pain, wounded and amidst hardship and
+danger, struggling with the unrelenting riddle of his being. Ever and
+again when a flame leapt she would see his face, haggard, bearded,
+changed, and yet infinitely familiar.
+
+His voice varied, now high and clear, now mumbling, now vexed and
+expostulating, now rich with deep feeling, now fagged and slow; his
+matter varied, too; now he talked like one who is inspired, and now like
+one lost and confused, stupidly repeating phrases, going back upon a
+misleading argument, painfully, laboriously beginning over and over
+again. Marjorie sat before the stove watching it burn and sink,
+replenishing it, preparing food, and outside the bitter wind moaned and
+blew the powdery snow before it, and the shortening interludes of
+pallid, diffused daylight which pass for days in such weather, came and
+went. Intense cold had come now with leaden snowy days and starless
+nights.
+
+Sometimes his speech filled her mind, seemed to fill all her world;
+sometimes she ceased to listen, following thoughts of her own.
+Sometimes she dozed; sometimes she awakened from sleep to find him
+talking. But slowly she realized a thread in his discourse, a progress
+and development.
+
+Sometimes he talked of his early researches, and then he would trace
+computations with his hands as if he were using a blackboard, and became
+distressed to remember what he had written. Sometimes he would be under
+the claws of the lynx again, and fighting for his eyes. "Ugh!" he said,
+"keep those hind legs still. Keep your hind legs still! Knife? Knife?
+Ah! got it. Gu--u--u, you _Beast!_"
+
+But the gist of his speech was determined by the purpose of his journey
+to Labrador. At last he was reviewing his life and hers, and all that
+their life might signify, even as he determined to do. She began to
+perceive that whatever else drifted into his mind and talk, this
+recurred and grew, that he returned to the conclusion he had reached,
+and not to the beginning of the matter, and went on from that....
+
+"You see," he said, "our lives are nothing--nothing in themselves. I
+know that; I've never had any doubts of that. We individuals just pick
+up a mixed lot of things out of the powers that begat us, and lay them
+down again presently a little altered, that's all--heredities,
+traditions, the finger nails of my grandfather, a great-aunt's lips, the
+faith of a sect, the ideas of one's time. We live and then we die, and
+the threads run, dispersing this way and that. To make other people
+again. Whatever's immortal isn't that, our looks or our habits, our
+thoughts or our memories--just the shapes, these are, of one immortal
+stuff.... One immortal stuff."...
+
+The voice died away as if he was baffled. Then it resumed.
+
+"But we ought to _partake_ of immortality; that's my point. We ought to
+partake of immortality.
+
+"I mean we're like the little elements in a magnet; ought not to lie
+higgledy-piggledy, ought to point the same way, bepolarized----Something
+microcosmic, you know, ought to be found in a man.
+
+"Analogies run away with one. Suppose the bar isn't magnetized yet!
+Suppose purpose has to come; suppose the immortal stuff isn't yet, isn't
+being but struggling to be. Struggling to be.... Gods! that morning! When
+the child was born! And afterwards she was there--with a smile on her
+lips, and a little flushed and proud--as if nothing had happened so very
+much out of the way. Nothing so wonderful. And we had another life
+besides our own!..."
+
+Afterwards he came back to that. "That was a good image," he said,
+"something trying to exist, which isn't substance, doesn't belong to
+space or time, something stifled and enclosed, struggling to get
+through. Just confused birth cries, eyes that hardly see, deaf ears,
+poor little thrusting hands. A thing altogether blind at first, a
+twitching and thrusting of protoplasm under the waters, and then the
+plants creeping up the beaches, the insects and reptiles on the margins
+of the rivers, beasts with a flicker of light in their eyes answering
+the sun. And at last, out of the long interplay of desire and fear, an
+ape, an ape that stared and wondered, and scratched queer pictures on a
+bone...."
+
+He lapsed into silent thought for a time, and Marjorie glanced at his
+dim face in the shadows.
+
+"I say nothing of ultimates," he said at last.
+
+He repeated that twice before his thoughts would flow again.
+
+"This is as much as I see, in time as I know it and space as I know
+it--_something struggling to exist_. It's true to the end of my limits.
+What can I say beyond that? It struggles to exist, becomes conscious,
+becomes now conscious of itself. That is where I come in, as a part of
+it. Above the beast in me is that--the desire to know better, to
+know--beautifully, and to transmit my knowledge. That's all there is in
+life for me beyond food and shelter and tidying up. This Being--opening
+its eyes, listening, trying to comprehend. Every good thing in man is
+that;--looking and making pictures, listening and making songs, making
+philosophies and sciences, trying new powers, bridge and engine, spark
+and gun. At the bottom of my soul, _that_. We began with
+bone-scratching. We're still--near it. I am just a part of this
+beginning--mixed with other things. Every book, every art, every
+religion is that, the attempt to understand and express--mixed with
+other things. Nothing else matters, nothing whatever. I tell
+you----Nothing whatever!
+
+"I've always believed that. All my life I've believed that.
+
+"Only I've forgotten."
+
+"Every man with any brains believes that at the bottom of his heart.
+Only he gets busy and forgets. He goes shooting lynxes and breaks his
+leg. Odd, instinctive, brutal thing to do--to go tracking down a lynx to
+kill it! I grant you that, Marjorie. I grant you that."
+
+"Grant me what?" she cried, startled beyond measure to hear herself
+addressed.
+
+"Grant you that it is rather absurd to go hunting a lynx. And what big
+paws it has--disproportionately big! I wonder if that's an adaptation to
+snow. Tremendous paws they are.... But the real thing, I was saying, the
+real thing is to get knowledge, and express it. All things lead up to
+that. Civilization, social order, just for that. Except for that, all
+the life of man, all his affairs, his laws and police, his morals and
+manners--nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Lynx hunts! Just ways of getting
+themselves mauled and clawed perhaps--into a state of understanding. Who
+knows?..."
+
+His voice became low and clear.
+
+"Understanding spreading like a dawn....
+
+"Logic and language, clumsy implements, but rising to our needs, rising
+to our needs, thought clarified, enriched, reaching out to every man
+alive--some day--presently--touching every man alive, harmonizing acts
+and plans, drawing men into gigantic co-operations, tremendous
+co-operations....
+
+"Until man shall stand upon this earth as upon a footstool and reach out
+his hand among the stars....
+
+"And then I went into the rubber market, and spent seven years of my
+life driving shares up and down and into a net!... Queer game indeed!
+Stupid ass Behrens was--at bottom....
+
+"There's a flaw in it somewhere...."
+
+He came back to that several times before he seemed able to go on from
+it.
+
+"There _is_ a collective mind," he said, "a growing general
+consciousness--growing clearer. Something put me away from that, but I
+know it. My work, my thinking, was a part of it. That's why I was so mad
+about Behrens."
+
+"Behrens?"
+
+"Of course. He'd got a twist, a wrong twist. It makes me angry now. It
+will take years, it will eat up some brilliant man to clean up after
+Behrens----"
+
+"Yes, but the point is"--his voice became acute--"why did I go making
+money and let Behrens in? Why generally and in all sorts of things does
+Behrens come in?..."
+
+He was silent for a long time, and then he began to answer himself. "Of
+course," he said, "I said it--or somebody said it--about this collective
+mind being mixed with other things. It's something arising out of
+life--not the common stuff of life. An exhalation.... It's like the
+little tongues of fire that came at Pentecost.... Queer how one comes
+drifting back to these images. Perhaps I shall die a Christian yet....
+The other Christians won't like me if I do. What was I saying?... It's
+what I reach up to, what I desire shall pervade me, not what I am. Just
+as far as I give myself purely to knowledge, to making feeling and
+thought clear in my mind and words, to the understanding and expression
+of the realities and relations of life, just so far do I achieve
+Salvation.... Salvation!...
+
+"I wonder, is Salvation the same for every one? Perhaps for one man
+Salvation is research and thought, and for another expression in art,
+and for another nursing lepers. Provided he does it in the spirit. He
+has to do it in the spirit...."
+
+There came a silence as though some difficulty baffled him, and he was
+feeling back to get his argument again.
+
+"This flame that arises out of life, that redeems life from purposeless
+triviality, _isn't_ life. Let me get hold of that. That's a point.
+That's a very important point."
+
+Something had come to him.
+
+"I've never talked of this to Marjorie. I've lived with her nine years
+and more, and never talked of religion. Not once. That's so queer of us.
+Any other couple in any other time would have talked religion no end....
+People ought to."
+
+Then he stuck out an argumentative hand. "You see, Marjorie _is_ life,"
+he said.
+
+"She took me."
+
+He spoke slowly, as though he traced things carefully. "Before I met her
+I suppose I wasn't half alive. No! Yet I don't remember I felt
+particularly incomplete. Women were interesting, of course; they excited
+me at times, that girl at Yonkers!--H'm. I stuck to my work. It was fine
+work, I forget half of it now, the half-concealed intimations I
+mean--queer how one forgets!--but I know I felt my way to wide, deep
+things. It was like exploring caves--monstrous, limitless caves. Such
+caves!... Very still--underground. Wonderful and beautiful.... They're
+lying there now for other men to seek. Other men will find them.... Then
+_she_ came, as though she was taking possession. The beauty of her, oh!
+the life and bright eagerness, and the incompatibility! That's the
+riddle! I've loved her always. When she came to my arms it seemed to me
+the crown of life. Caves indeed! Old caves! Nothing else seemed to
+matter. But something did. All sorts of things did. I found that out
+soon enough. And when that first child was born. That for a time was
+supreme.... Yes--she's the quintessence of life, the dear greed of her,
+the appetite, the clever appetite for things. She grabs. She's so damned
+clever! The light in her eyes! Her quick sure hands!... Only my work was
+crowded out of my life and ended, and she didn't seem to feel it, she
+didn't seem to mind it. There was a sort of disregard. Disregard. As
+though all that didn't really matter...."
+
+"_My dear!_" whispered Marjorie unheeded. She wanted to tell him it
+mattered now, mattered supremely, but she knew he had no ears for her.
+
+His voice flattened. "It's perplexing," he said. "The two different
+things."
+
+Then suddenly he cried out harshly: "I ought never to have married
+her--never, never! I had my task. I gave myself to her. Oh! the high
+immensities, the great and terrible things open to the mind of man! And
+we breed children and live in littered houses and play with our food and
+chatter, chatter, chatter. Oh, the chatter of my life! The folly! The
+women with their clothes. I can hear them rustle now, whiff the scent of
+it! The scandals--as though the things they did with themselves and each
+other mattered a rap; the little sham impromptu clever things, the
+trying to keep young--and underneath it all that continual cheating,
+cheating, cheating, damning struggle for money!...
+
+"Marjorie, Marjorie, Marjorie! Why is she so good and no better! Why
+wasn't she worth it altogether?...
+
+"No! I don't want to go on with it any more--ever. I want to go back.
+
+"I want my life over again, and to go back.
+
+"I want research, and the spirit of research that has died in me, and
+that still, silent room of mine again, that room, as quiet as a cell,
+and the toil that led to light. Oh! the coming of that light, the uprush
+of discovery, the solemn joy as the generalization rises like a sun upon
+the facts--floods them with a common meaning. That is what I want. That
+is what I have always wanted....
+
+"Give me my time oh God! again; I am sick of this life I have chosen. I
+am sick of it! This--busy death! Give me my time again.... Why did you
+make me, and then waste me like this? Why are we made for folly upon
+folly? Folly! and brains made to scale high heaven, smeared into the
+dust! Into the dust, into the dust. Dust!..."
+
+He passed into weak, wandering repetitions of disconnected sentences,
+that died into whispers and silence, and Marjorie watched him and
+listened to him, and waited with a noiseless dexterity upon his every
+need.
+
+
+§ 11
+
+One day, she did not know what day, for she had lost count of the days,
+Marjorie set the kettle to boil and opened the door of the hut to look
+out, and the snow was ablaze with diamonds, and the air was sweet and
+still. It occurred to her that it would be well to take Trafford out
+into that brief brightness. She looked at him and found his eyes upon
+the sunlight quiet and rather wondering eyes.
+
+"Would you like to get out into that?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"Yes," he said, and seemed disposed to get up.
+
+"You've got a broken leg," she cried, to arrest his movement, and he
+looked at her and answered: "Of course--I forgot."
+
+She was all atremble that he should recognize her and speak to her. She
+pulled her rude old sledge alongside his bunk, and kissed him, and
+showed him how to shift and drop himself upon the plank. She took him in
+her arms and lowered him. He helped weakly but understandingly, and she
+wrapped him up warmly on the planks and lugged him out and built up a
+big fire at his feet, wondering, but as yet too fearful to rejoice, at
+the change that had come to him.
+
+He said no more, but his eyes watched her move about with a kind of
+tired curiosity. He smiled for a time at the sun, and shut his eyes, and
+still faintly smiling, lay still. She had a curious fear that if she
+tried to talk to him this new lucidity would vanish again. She went
+about the business of the morning, glancing at him ever and again, until
+suddenly the calm of his upturned face smote her, and she ran to him
+and crouched down to him between hope and a terrible fear, and found
+that he was sleeping, and breathing very lightly, sleeping with the deep
+unconsciousness of a child....
+
+When he awakened the sun was red in the west. His eyes met hers, and he
+seemed a little puzzled.
+
+"I've been sleeping, Madge?" he said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"And dreaming? I've a vague sort of memory of preaching and preaching in
+a kind of black, empty place, where there wasn't anything.... A fury of
+exposition ... a kind of argument.... I say!--Is there such a thing in
+the world as a new-laid egg--and some bread-and-butter?"
+
+He seemed to reflect. "Of course," he said, "I broke my leg. Gollys! I
+thought that beast was going to claw my eyes out. Lucky, Madge, it
+didn't get my eyes. It was just a chance it didn't."
+
+He stared at her.
+
+"I say," he said, "you've had a pretty rough time! How long has this
+been going on?"
+
+He amazed her by rising himself on his elbow and sitting up.
+
+"Your leg!" she cried.
+
+He put his hand down and felt it. "Pretty stiff," he said. "You get me
+some food--there _were_ some eggs, Madge, frozen new-laid, anyhow--and
+then we'll take these splints off and feel about a bit. Eh! why not? How
+did you get me out of that scrape, Madge? I thought I'd got to be froze
+as safe as eggs. (Those eggs ought to be all right, you know. If you put
+them on in a saucepan and wait until they boil.) I've a sort of muddled
+impression.... By Jove, Madge, you've had a time! I say you _have_ had a
+time!"
+
+His eyes, full of a warmth of kindliness she had not seen for long
+weeks, scrutinized her face. "I say!" he repeated, very softly.
+
+All her strength went from her at his tenderness. "Oh, my dear," she
+wailed, kneeling at his side, "my dear, dear!" and still regardful of
+his leg, she yet contrived to get herself weeping into his coveted arms.
+
+He regarded her, he held her, he patted her back! The infinite luxury to
+her! He'd come back. He'd come back to her.
+
+"How long has it been?" he asked. "Poor dear! Poor dear! How long can it
+have been?"
+
+
+§ 12
+
+From that hour Trafford mended. He remained clear-minded, helpful,
+sustaining. His face healed daily. Marjorie had had to cut away great
+fragments of gangrenous frozen flesh, and he was clearly destined to
+have a huge scar over forehead and cheek, but in that pure, clear air,
+once the healing had begun it progressed swiftly. His leg had set, a
+little shorter than its fellow and with a lump in the middle of the
+shin, but it promised to be a good serviceable leg none the less. They
+examined it by the light of the stove with their heads together, and
+discussed when it would be wise to try it. How do doctors tell when a
+man may stand on his broken leg? She had a vague impression you must
+wait six weeks, but she could not remember why she fixed upon that time.
+
+"It seems a decent interval," said Trafford. "We'll try it."
+
+She had contrived a crutch for him against that momentous experiment,
+and he sat up in his bunk, pillowed up by a sack and her rugs, and
+whittled it smooth, and padded the fork with the skin of that
+slaughtered wolverine, poor victim of hunger!--while she knelt by the
+stove feeding it with logs, and gave him an account of their position.
+
+"We're somewhere in the middle of December," she said, "somewhere
+between the twelfth and the fourteenth,--yes! I'm as out as that!--and
+I've handled the stores pretty freely. So did that little beast until I
+got him." She nodded at the skin in his hand. "I don't see myself
+shooting much now, and so far I've not been able to break the ice to
+fish. It's too much for me. Even if it isn't too late to fish. This book
+we've got describes barks and mosses, and that will help, but if we
+stick here until the birds and things come, we're going to be precious
+short. We may have to last right into July. I've plans--but it may come
+to that. We ought to ration all the regular stuff, and trust to luck for
+a feast. The rations!--I don't know what they'll come to."
+
+"Right O," said Trafford admiring her capable gravity. "Let's ration."
+
+"Marjorie," he asked abruptly, "are you sorry we came?"
+
+Her answer came unhesitatingly. "_No!_"
+
+"Nor I."
+
+He paused. "I've found you out," he said. "Dear dirty living thing!...
+You _are_ dirty, you know."
+
+"I've found myself," she answered, thinking. "I feel as if I've never
+loved you until this hut. I suppose I have in my way----"
+
+"Lugano," he suggested. "Don't let's forget good things, Marjorie. Oh!
+And endless times!"
+
+"Oh, of course! As for _that_----! But now--now you're in my bones. We
+were just two shallow, pretty, young things--loving. It was sweet,
+dear--sweet as youth--but not this. Unkempt and weary--then one
+understands love. I suppose I _am_ dirty. Think of it! I've lugged you
+through the snow till my shoulders chafed and bled. I cried with pain,
+and kept on lugging----Oh, my dear! my dear!" He kissed her hair. "I've
+held you in my arms to keep you from freezing. (I'd have frozen myself
+first.) We've got to starve together perhaps before the end.... Dear, if
+I could make you, you should eat me.... I'm--I'm beginning to
+understand. I've had a light. I've begun to understand. I've begun to
+see what life has been for you, and how I've wasted--wasted."
+
+"_We've_ wasted!"
+
+"No," she said, "it was I."
+
+She sat back on the floor and regarded him. "You don't remember things
+you said--when you were delirious?"
+
+"No," he answered. "What did I say?"
+
+"Nothing?"
+
+"Nothing clearly. What did I say?"
+
+"It doesn't matter. No, indeed. Only you made me understand. You'd never
+have told me. You've always been a little weak with me there. But it's
+plain to me why we didn't keep our happiness, why we were estranged. If
+we go back alive, we go back--all that settled for good and all."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That discord. My dear, I've been a fool, selfish, ill-trained and
+greedy. We've both been floundering about, but I've been the mischief of
+it. Yes, I've been the trouble. Oh, it's had to be so. What are we
+women--half savages, half pets, unemployed things of greed and
+desire--and suddenly we want all the rights and respect of souls! I've
+had your life in my hands from the moment we met together. If I had
+known.... It isn't that we can make you or guide you--I'm not pretending
+to be an inspiration--but--but we can release you. We needn't press upon
+you; we can save you from the instincts and passions that try to waste
+you altogether on us.... Yes, I'm beginning to understand. Oh, my child,
+my husband, my man! You talked of your wasted life!... I've been
+thinking--since first we left the Mersey. I've begun to see what it is
+to be a woman. For the first time in my life. We're the responsible sex.
+And we've forgotten it. We think we've done a wonder if we've borne men
+into the world and smiled a little, but indeed we've got to bear them
+all our lives.... A woman has to be steadier than a man and more
+self-sacrificing than a man, because when she plunges she does more harm
+than a man.... And what does she achieve if she does plunge?
+Nothing--nothing worth counting. Dresses and carpets and hangings and
+pretty arrangements, excitements and satisfactions and competition and
+more excitements. We can't _do_ things. We don't bring things off! And
+you, you Monster! you Dream! you want to stick your hand out of all that
+is and make something that isn't, begin to be! That's the man----"
+
+"Dear old Madge!" he said, "there's all sorts of women and all sorts of
+men."
+
+"Well, our sort of women, then, and our sort of men."
+
+"I doubt even that."
+
+"I don't. I've found my place. I've been making my master my servant. We
+women--we've been looting all the good things in the world, and helping
+nothing. You've carried me on your back until you are loathing life.
+I've been making you fetch and carry for me, love me, dress me, keep me
+and my children, minister to my vanities and greeds.... No; let me go
+on. I'm so penitent, my dear, so penitent I want to kneel down here and
+marry you all over again, heal up your broken life and begin again."...
+
+She paused.
+
+"One doesn't begin again," she said. "But I want to take a new turn.
+Dear, you're still only a young man; we've thirty or forty years before
+us--forty years perhaps or more.... What shall we do with our years?
+We've loved, we've got children. What remains? Here we can plan it out,
+work it out, day after day. What shall we do with our lives and life?
+Tell me, make me your partner; it's you who know, what are we doing with
+life?"
+
+
+§ 13
+
+What are we doing with life?
+
+That question overtakes a reluctant and fugitive humanity. The Traffords
+were but two of a great scattered host of people, who, obeying all the
+urgencies of need and desire, struggling, loving, begetting, enjoying,
+do nevertheless find themselves at last unsatisfied. They have lived the
+round of experience, achieved all that living creatures have sought
+since the beginning of the world--security and gratification and
+offspring--and they find themselves still strong, unsatiated, with power
+in their hands and years before them, empty of purpose. What are they to
+do?
+
+The world presents such a spectacle of evasion as it has never seen
+before. Never was there such a boiling over and waste of vital energy.
+The Sphinx of our opportunity calls for the uttermost powers of heart
+and brain to read its riddle--the new, astonishing riddle of excessive
+power. A few give themselves to those honourable adventures that extend
+the range of man, they explore untravelled countries, climb remote
+mountains, conduct researches, risk life and limb in the fantastic
+experiments of flight, and a monstrous outpouring of labour and material
+goes on in the strenuous preparation for needless and improbable wars.
+The rest divert themselves with the dwarfish satisfactions of recognized
+vice, the meagre routine of pleasure, or still more timidly with sport
+and games--those new unscheduled perversions of the soul.
+
+We are afraid of our new selves. The dawn of human opportunity appals
+us. Few of us dare look upon this strange light of freedom and limitless
+resources that breaks upon our world.
+
+"Think," said Trafford, "while we sit here in this dark hut--think of
+the surplus life that wastes itself in the world for sheer lack of
+direction. Away there in England--I suppose that is westward"--he
+pointed--"there are thousands of men going out to-day to shoot. Think of
+the beautifully made guns, the perfected ammunition, the excellent
+clothes, the army of beaters, the carefully preserved woodland, the
+admirable science of it--all for that idiot massacre of half-tame birds!
+Just because man once had need to be a hunter! Think of the others
+again--golfing. Think of the big, elaborate houses from which they come,
+the furnishings, the service. And the women--dressing! Perpetually
+dressing. _You_, Marjorie--you've done nothing but dress since we
+married. No, let me abuse you, dear! It's insane, you know! You dress
+your minds a little to talk amusingly, you spread your minds out to
+backgrounds, to households, picturesque and delightful gardens,
+nurseries. Those nurseries! Think of our tremendously cherished and
+educated children! And when they grow up, what have we got for them? A
+feast of futility...."
+
+
+§ 14
+
+On the evening of the day when Trafford first tried to stand upon his
+leg, they talked far into the night. It had been a great and eventful
+day for them, full of laughter and exultation. He had been at first
+ridiculously afraid; he had clung to her almost childishly, and she had
+held him about the body with his weight on her strong right arm and his
+right arm in her left hand, concealing her own dread of a collapse under
+a mask of taunting courage. The crutch had proved admirable. "It's my
+silly knees!" Trafford kept on saying. "The leg's all right, but I get
+put out by my silly knees."
+
+They made the day a feast, a dinner of two whole day's rations and a
+special soup instead of supper. "The birds will come," they explained to
+each other, "ducks and geese, long before May. May, you know, is the
+latest."
+
+Marjorie confessed the habit of sharing his pipe was growing on her.
+"What shall we do in Tyburnia!" she said, and left it to the
+imagination.
+
+"If ever we get back there," he said.
+
+"I don't much fancy kicking a skirt before my shins again--and I'll be a
+black, coarse woman down to my neck at dinner for years to come!..."
+
+Then, as he lay back in his bunk and she crammed the stove with fresh
+boughs and twigs of balsam that filled the little space about them with
+warmth and with a faint, sweet smell of burning and with flitting red
+reflections, he took up a talk about religion they had begun some days
+before.
+
+"You see," he said, "I've always believed in Salvation. I suppose a
+man's shy of saying so--even to his wife. But I've always believed more
+or less distinctly that there was something up to which a life
+worked--always. It's been rather vague, I'll admit. I don't think I've
+ever believed in individual salvation. You see, I feel these are deep
+things, and the deeper one gets the less individual one becomes. That's
+why one thinks of those things in darkness and loneliness--and finds
+them hard to tell. One has an individual voice, or an individual
+birthmark, or an individualized old hat, but the soul--the soul's
+different.... It isn't me talking to you when it comes to that.... This
+question of what we are doing with life isn't a question to begin with
+for you and me as ourselves, but for you and me as mankind. Am I
+spinning it too fine, Madge?"
+
+"No," she said, intent; "go on."
+
+"You see, when we talk rations here, Marjorie, it's ourselves, but when
+we talk religion--it's mankind. You've either got to be Everyman in
+religion or leave it alone. That's my idea. It's no more presumptuous to
+think for the race than it is for a beggar to pray--though that means
+going right up to God and talking to Him. Salvation's a collective thing
+and a mystical thing--or there isn't any. Fancy the Almighty and me
+sitting up and keeping Eternity together! God and R. A. G. Trafford,
+F.R.S.--that's silly. Fancy a man in number seven boots, and a
+tailor-made suit in the nineteen-fourteen fashion, sitting before God!
+That's caricature. But God and Man! That's sense, Marjorie."...
+
+He stopped and stared at her.
+
+Marjorie sat red-lit, regarding him. "Queer things you say!" she said.
+"So much of this I've never thought out. I wonder why I've never done
+so.... Too busy with many things, I suppose. But go on and tell me more
+of these secrets you've kept from me!"
+
+"Well, we've got to talk of these things as mankind--or just leave them
+alone, and shoot pheasants."...
+
+"If I could shoot a pheasant now!" whispered Marjorie, involuntarily.
+
+"And where do we stand? What do we need--I mean the whole race of
+us--kings and beggars together? You know, Marjorie, it's this,--it's
+Understanding. That's what mankind has got to, the realization that it
+doesn't understand, that it can't express, that it's purblind. We
+haven't got eyes for those greater things, but we've got the
+promise--the intimation of eyes. We've come out of an unsuspecting
+darkness, brute animal darkness, not into sight, that's been the
+mistake, but into a feeling of illumination, into a feeling of light
+shining through our opacity....
+
+"I feel that man has now before all things to know. That's his supreme
+duty, to feel, realize, see, understand, express himself to the utmost
+limits of his power."
+
+He sat up, speaking very earnestly to her, and in that flickering light
+she realized for the first time how thin he had become, how bright and
+hollow his eyes, his hair was long over his eyes, and a rough beard
+flowed down to his chest. "All the religions," he said, "all the
+philosophies, have pretended to achieve too much. We've no language yet
+for religious truth or metaphysical truth; we've no basis yet broad
+enough and strong enough on which to build. Religion and philosophy have
+been impudent and quackish--quackish! They've been like the doctors, who
+have always pretended they could cure since the beginning of things,
+cure everything, and to this day even they haven't got more than the
+beginnings of knowledge on which to base a cure. They've lacked
+humility, they've lacked the honour to say they didn't know; the
+priests took things of wood and stone, the philosophers took little odd
+arrangements of poor battered words, metaphors, analogies, abstractions,
+and said: "That's it! Think of their silly old Absolute,--ab-solutus, an
+untied parcel. I heard Haldane at the Aristotelian once, go on for an
+hour--no! it was longer than an hour--as glib and slick as a well-oiled
+sausage-machine, about the different sorts of Absolute, and not a soul
+of us laughed out at him! The vanity of such profundities! They've no
+faith, faith in patience, faith to wait for the coming of God. And since
+we don't know God, since we don't know His will with us, isn't it plain
+that all our lives should be a search for Him and it? Can anything else
+matter,--after we are free from necessity? That is the work now that is
+before all mankind, to attempt understanding--by the perpetual finding
+of thought and the means of expression, by perpetual extension and
+refinement of science, by the research that every artist makes for
+beauty and significance in his art, by the perpetual testing and
+destruction and rebirth under criticism of all these things, and by a
+perpetual extension of this intensifying wisdom to more minds and more
+minds and more, till all men share in it, and share in the making of
+it.... There you have my creed, Marjorie; there you have the very marrow
+of me."...
+
+He became silent.
+
+"Will you go back to your work?" she said, abruptly. "Go back to your
+laboratory?"
+
+He stared at her for a moment without speaking. "Never," he said at
+last.
+
+"But," she said, and the word dropped from her like a stone that falls
+down a well....
+
+"My dear," he said, at last, "I've thought of that. But since I left
+that dear, dusty little laboratory, and all those exquisite subtle
+things--I've lived. I've left that man seven long years behind me. Some
+other man must go on--I think some younger man--with the riddles I found
+to work on then. I've grown--into something different. It isn't how
+atoms swing with one another, or why they build themselves up so and not
+so, that matters any more to me. I've got you and all the world in which
+we live, and a new set of riddles filling my mind, how thought swings
+about thought, how one man attracts his fellows, how the waves of motive
+and conviction sweep through a crowd and all the little drifting
+crystallizations of spirit with spirit and all the repulsions and eddies
+and difficulties, that one can catch in that turbulent confusion. I want
+to do a new sort of work now altogether.... Life has swamped me once,
+but I don't think it will get me under again;--I want to study men."
+
+He paused and she waited, with a face aglow.
+
+"I want to go back to watch and think--and I suppose write. I believe I
+shall write criticism. But everything that matters is criticism!... I
+want to get into contact with the men who are thinking. I don't mean to
+meet them necessarily, but to get into the souls of their books. Every
+writer who has anything to say, every artist who matters, is the
+stronger for every man or woman who responds to him. That's the great
+work--the Reality. I want to become a part of this stuttering attempt to
+express, I want at least to resonate, even if I do not help.... And you
+with me, Marjorie--you with me! Everything I write I want you to see and
+think about. I want you to read as I read.... Now after so long, now
+that, now that we've begun to talk, you know, talk again----"
+
+Something stopped his voice. Something choked them both into silence. He
+held out a lean hand, and she shuffled on her knees to take it....
+
+"Don't please make me," she stumbled through her thoughts, "one of those
+little parasitic, parroting wives--don't pretend too much about
+me--because you want me with you----. Don't forget a woman isn't a man."
+
+"Old Madge," he said, "you and I have got to march together. Didn't I
+love you from the first, from that time when I was a boy examiner and
+you were a candidate girl--because your mind was clear?"
+
+"And we will go back," she whispered, "with a work----"
+
+"With a purpose," he said.
+
+She disengaged herself from his arm, and sat close to him upon the
+floor. "I think I can see what you will do," she said. She mused. "For
+the first time I begin to see things as they may be for us. I begin to
+see a life ahead. For the very first time."
+
+Queer ideas came drifting into her head. Suddenly she cried out sharply
+in that high note he loved. "Good heavens!" she said. "The absurdity!
+The infinite absurdity!"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"I might have married Will Magnet----. That's all."
+
+She sprang to her feet. There came a sound of wind outside, a shifting
+of snow on the roof, and the door creaked. "Half-past eleven," she
+exclaimed looking at the watch that hung in the light of the stove door.
+"I don't want to sleep yet; do you? I'm going to brew some tea--make a
+convivial drink. And then we will go on talking. It's so good talking to
+you. So good!... I've an idea! Don't you think on this special day, it
+might run to a biscuit?" Her face was keenly anxious. He nodded. "One
+biscuit each," she said, trying to rob her voice of any note of
+criminality. "Just one, you know, won't matter."
+
+She hovered for some moments close to the stove before she went into the
+arctic corner that contained the tin of tea. "If we can really live like
+that!" she said. "When we are home again."
+
+"Why not?" he answered.
+
+She made no answer, but went across for the tea....
+
+He turned his head at the sound of the biscuit tin and watched her put
+out the precious discs.
+
+"I shall have another pipe," he proclaimed, with an agreeable note of
+excess. "Thank heaven for unstinted tobacco...."
+
+And now Marjorie's mind was teaming with thoughts of this new conception
+of a life lived for understanding. As she went about the preparation of
+the tea, her vividly concrete imagination was active with the
+realization of the life they would lead on their return. She could not
+see it otherwise than framed in a tall, fine room, a study, a study in
+sombre tones, with high, narrow, tall, dignified bookshelves and rich
+deep green curtains veiling its windows. There should be a fireplace of
+white marble, very plain and well proportioned, with furnishings of old
+brass, and a big desk towards the window beautifully lit by electric
+light, with abundant space for papers to lie. And she wanted some touch
+of the wilderness about it; a skin perhaps....
+
+The tea was still infusing when she had determined upon an enormous
+paper-weight of that iridescent Labradorite that had been so astonishing
+a feature of the Green River Valley. She would have it polished on one
+side only--the other should be rough to show the felspar in its natural
+state....
+
+It wasn't that she didn't feel and understand quite fully the intention
+and significance of all he had said, but that in these symbols of
+texture and equipment her mind quite naturally clothed itself. And
+while this room was coming into anticipatory being in her mind, she was
+making the tea very deftly and listening to Trafford's every word.
+
+
+§ 15
+
+That talk marked an epoch to Marjorie. From that day forth her
+imagination began to shape a new, ordered and purposeful life for
+Trafford and herself in London, a life not altogether divorced from
+their former life, but with a faith sustaining it and aims controlling
+it. She had always known of the breadth and power of his mind, but now
+as he talked of what he might do, what interests might converge and give
+results through him, it seemed she really knew him for the first time.
+In his former researches, so technical and withdrawn, she had seen
+little of his mind in action: now he was dealing in his own fashion with
+things she could clearly understand. There were times when his talk
+affected her like that joy of light one has in emerging into sunshine
+from a long and tedious cave. He swept things together, flashed
+unsuspected correlations upon her intelligence, smashed and scattered
+absurd yet venerated conventions of thought, made undreamt-of courses of
+action visible in a flare of luminous necessity. And she could follow
+him and help him. Just as she had hampered him and crippled him, so now
+she could release him--she fondled that word. She found a preposterous
+image in her mind that she hid like a disgraceful secret, that she tried
+to forget, and yet its stupendous, its dreamlike absurdity had something
+in it that shaped her delight as nothing else could do; she was, she
+told herself--hawking with an archangel!...
+
+These were her moods of exaltation. And she was sure she had never loved
+her man before, that this was indeed her beginning. It was as if she had
+just found him....
+
+Perhaps, she thought, true lovers keep on finding each other all through
+their lives.
+
+And he too had discovered her. All the host of Marjories he had known,
+the shining, delightful, seductive, wilful, perplexing aspects that had
+so filled her life, gave place altogether for a time to this steady-eyed
+woman, lean and warm-wrapped with the valiant heart and the
+frost-roughened skin. What a fine, strong, ruddy thing she was! How glad
+he was for this wild adventure in the wilderness, if only because it had
+made him lie among the rocks and think of her and wait for her and
+despair of her life and God, and at last see her coming back to him,
+flushed with effort and calling his name to him out of that whirlwind of
+snow.... And there was at least one old memory mixed up with all these
+new and overmastering impressions, the memory of her clear unhesitating
+voice as it had stabbed into his life again long years ago, minute and
+bright in the telephone: "_It's me, you know. It's Marjorie!_"
+
+Perhaps after all she had not wasted a moment of his life, perhaps every
+issue between them had been necessary, and it was good altogether to be
+turned from the study of crystals to the study of men and women....
+
+And now both their minds were Londonward, where all the tides and
+driftage and currents of human thought still meet and swirl together.
+They were full of what they would do when they got back. Marjorie
+sketched that study to him--in general terms and without the
+paper-weight--and began to shape the world she would have about it. She
+meant to be his squaw and body-servant first of all, and then--a
+mother. Children, she said, are none the worse for being kept a little
+out of focus. And he was rapidly planning out his approach to the new
+questions to which he was now to devote his life. "One wants something
+to hold the work together," he said, and projected a book. "One cannot
+struggle at large for plain statement and copious and free and
+courageous statement, one needs a positive attack."
+
+He designed a book, which he might write if only for the definition it
+would give him and with no ultimate publication, which was to be called:
+"The Limits of Language as a Means of Expression." ... It was to be a
+pragmatist essay, a sustained attempt to undermine the confidence of all
+that scholasticism and logic chopping which still lingers like the
+_sequelć_ of a disease in our University philosophy. "Those duffers sit
+in their studies and make a sort of tea of dry old words--and think
+they're distilling the spirit of wisdom," he said.
+
+He proliferated titles for a time, and settled at last on "From Realism
+to Reality." He wanted to get at that at once; it fretted him to have to
+hang in the air, day by day, for want of books to quote and opponents to
+lance and confute. And he wanted to see pictures, too and plays, read
+novels he had heard of and never read, in order to verify or correct the
+ideas that were seething in his mind about the qualities of artistic
+expression. His thought had come out to a conviction that the line to
+wider human understandings lies through a huge criticism and cleaning up
+of the existing methods of formulation, as a preliminary to the wider
+and freer discussion of those religious and social issues our generation
+still shrinks from. "It's grotesque," he said, "and utterly true that
+the sanity and happiness of all the world lies in its habits of
+generalization." There was not even paper for him to make notes or
+provisional drafts of the new work. He hobbled about the camp fretting
+at these deprivations.
+
+"Marjorie," he said, "we've done our job. Why should we wait here on
+this frosty shelf outside the world? My leg's getting sounder--if it
+wasn't for that feeling of ice in it. Why shouldn't we make another
+sledge from the other bunk and start down--"
+
+"To Hammond?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"But the way?"
+
+"The valley would guide us. We could do four hours a day before we had
+to camp. I'm not sure we couldn't try the river. We could drag and carry
+all our food...."
+
+She looked down the wide stretches of the valley. There was the hill
+they had christened Marjorie Ridge. At least it was familiar. Every
+night before nightfall if they started there would be a fresh camping
+place to seek among the snow-drifts, a great heap of wood to cut to last
+the night. Suppose his leg gave out--when they were already some days
+away, so that he could no longer go on or she drag him back to the
+stores. Plainly there would be nothing for it then but to lie down and
+die together....
+
+And a sort of weariness had come to her as a consequence of two months
+of half-starved days, not perhaps a failure so much as a reluctance of
+spirit.
+
+"Of course," she said, with a new aspect drifting before her mind,
+"then--we _could_ eat. We _could_ feed up before we started. We could
+feast almost!"
+
+
+§ 16
+
+"While you were asleep the other night," Trafford began one day as they
+sat spinning out their mid-day meal, "I was thinking how badly I had
+expressed myself when I talked to you the other day, and what a queer,
+thin affair I made of the plans I wanted to carry out. As a matter of
+fact, they're neither queer nor thin, but they are unreal in comparison
+with the common things of everyday life, hunger, anger, all the
+immediate desires. They must be. They only begin when those others are
+at peace. It's hard to set out these things; they're complicated and
+subtle, and one cannot simplify without falsehood. I don't want to
+simplify. The world has gone out of its way time after time through
+simplifications and short cuts. Save us from epigrams! And when one
+thinks over what one has said, at a little distance,--one wants to go
+back to it, and say it all again. I seem to be not so much thinking
+things out as reviving and developing things I've had growing in my mind
+ever since we met. It's as though an immense reservoir of thought had
+filled up in my mind at last and was beginning to trickle over and break
+down the embankment between us. This conflict that has been going on
+between our life together and my--my intellectual life; it's only just
+growing clear in my own mind. Yet it's just as if one turned up a light
+on something that had always been there....
+
+"It's a most extraordinary thing to think out, Marjorie, that
+antagonism. Our love has kept us so close together and always our
+purposes have been--like that." He spread divergent hands. "I've
+speculated again and again whether there isn't something incurably
+antagonistic between women (that's _you_ generalized, Marjorie) and men
+(that's me) directly we pass beyond the conditions of the
+individualistic struggle. I believe every couple of lovers who've ever
+married have felt that strain. Yet it's not a difference in kind between
+us but degree. The big conflict between us has a parallel in a little
+internal conflict that goes on; there's something of man in every woman
+and a touch of the feminine in every man. But you're nearer as woman to
+the immediate personal life of sense and reality than I am as man. It's
+been so ever since the men went hunting and fighting and the women kept
+hut, tended the children and gathered roots in the little cultivation
+close at hand. It's been so perhaps since the female carried and suckled
+her child and distinguished one male from another. It may be it will
+always be so. Men were released from that close, continuous touch with
+physical necessities long before women were. It's only now that women
+begin to be released. For ages now men have been wandering from field
+and home and city, over the hills and far away, in search of adventures
+and fresh ideas and the wells of mystery beyond the edge of the world,
+but it's only now that the woman comes with them too. Our difference
+isn't a difference in kind, old Marjorie; it's the difference between
+the old adventurer and the new feet upon the trail."
+
+"We've got to come," said Marjorie.
+
+"Oh! you've got to come. No good to be pioneers if the race does not
+follow. The women are the backbone of the race; the men are just the
+individuals. Into this Labrador and into all the wild and desolate
+places of thought and desire, if men come you women have to come
+too--and bring the race with you. Some day."
+
+"A long day, mate of my heart."
+
+"Who knows how long or how far? Aren't you at any rate here, dear woman
+of mine.... (_Surely you are here_)."
+
+He went off at a tangent. "There's all those words that seem to mean
+something and then don't seem to mean anything, that keep shifting to
+and fro from the deepest significance to the shallowest of claptrap,
+Socialism, Christianity.... You know,--they aren't anything really, as
+yet; they are something trying to be.... Haven't I said that before,
+Marjorie?"
+
+She looked round at him. "You said something like that when you were
+delirious," she answered, after a little pause. "It's one of the ideas
+that you're struggling with. You go on, old man, and _talk_. We've
+months--for repetitions."
+
+"Well, I mean that all these things are seeking after a sort of
+co-operation that's greater than our power even of imaginative
+realization; that's what I mean. The kingdom of Heaven, the communion of
+saints, the fellowship of men; these are things like high peaks far out
+of the common life of every day, shining things that madden certain
+sorts of men to climb. Certain sorts of us! I'm a religious man, I'm a
+socialistic man. These calls are more to me than my daily bread. I've
+got something in me more generalizing than most men. I'm more so than
+many other men and most other women, I'm more socialistic than you...."
+
+"You know, Marjorie, I've always felt you're a finer individual than me,
+I've never had a doubt of it. You're more beautiful by far than I, woman
+for my man. You've a keener appetite for things, a firmer grip on the
+substance of life. I love to see you do things, love to see you move,
+love to watch your hands; you've cleverer hands than mine by far.... And
+yet--I'm a deeper and bigger thing than you. I reach up to something you
+don't reach up to.... You're in life--and I'm a little out of it, I'm
+like one of those fish that began to be amphibian, I go out into
+something where you don't follow--where you hardly begin to follow.
+
+"That's the real perplexity between thousands of men and women....
+
+"It seems to me that the primitive socialism of Christianity and all the
+stuff of modern socialism that matters is really aiming--almost
+unconsciously, I admit at times--at one simple end, at the release of
+the human spirit from the individualistic struggle----
+
+"You used 'release' the other day, Marjorie? Of course, I remember. It's
+queer how I go on talking after you have understood."
+
+"It was just a flash," said Marjorie. "We have intimations. Neither of
+us really understands. We're like people climbing a mountain in a mist,
+that thins out for a moment and shows valleys and cities, and then
+closes in again, before we can recognize them or make out where we are."
+
+Trafford thought. "When I talk to you, I've always felt I mustn't be too
+vague. And the very essence of all this is a vague thing, something we
+shall never come nearer to it in all our lives than to see it as a
+shadow and a glittering that escapes again into a mist.... And yet it's
+everything that matters, everything, the only thing that matters truly
+and for ever through the whole range of life. And we have to serve it
+with the keenest thought, the utmost patience, inordinate veracity....
+
+"The practical trouble between your sort and my sort, Marjorie, is the
+trouble between faith and realization. You demand the outcome. Oh! and I
+hate to turn aside and realize. I've had to do it for seven years.
+Damnable years! Men of my sort want to understand. We want to
+understand, and you ask us to make. We want to understand atoms, ions,
+molecules, refractions. You ask us to make rubber and diamonds. I
+suppose it's right that incidentally we should make rubber and
+diamonds. Finally, I warn you, we will make rubber unnecessary and
+diamonds valueless. And again we want to understand how people react
+upon one another to produce social consequences, and you ask us to put
+it at once into a draft bill for the reform of something or other. I
+suppose life lies between us somewhere, we're the two poles of truth
+seeking and truth getting; with me alone it would be nothing but a
+luminous dream, with you nothing but a scramble in which sooner or later
+all the lamps would be upset.... But it's ever too much of a scramble
+yet, and ever too little of a dream. All our world over there is full of
+the confusion and wreckage of premature realizations. There's no real
+faith in thought and knowledge yet. Old necessity has driven men so hard
+that they still rush with a wild urgency--though she goads no more.
+Greed and haste, and if, indeed, we seem to have a moment's breathing
+space, then the Gawdsaker tramples us under."
+
+"My dear!" cried Marjorie, with a sharp note of amusement. "What _is_ a
+Gawdsaker?"
+
+"Oh," said Trafford, "haven't you heard that before? He's the person who
+gets excited by any deliberate discussion and gets up wringing his hands
+and screaming, 'For Gawd's sake, let's _do_ something _now!_' I think
+they used it first for Pethick Lawrence, that man who did so much to run
+the old militant suffragettes and burke the proper discussion of woman's
+future. You know. You used to have 'em in Chelsea--with their hats. Oh!
+'Gawdsaking' is the curse of all progress, the hectic consumption that
+kills a thousand good beginnings. You see it in small things and in
+great. You see it in my life; Gawdsaking turned my life-work to cash and
+promotions, Gawdsaking----Look at the way the aviators took to flying
+for prizes and gate-money, the way pure research is swamped by
+endowments for technical applications! Then that poor ghost-giant of an
+idea the socialists have;--it's been treated like one of those unborn
+lambs they kill for the fine skin of it, made into results before ever
+it was alive. Was there anything more pitiful? The first great dream and
+then the last phase! when your Aunt Plessington and the district
+visitors took and used it as a synonym for Payment in Kind.... It's
+natural, I suppose, for people to be eager for results, personal and
+immediate results--the last lesson of life is patience. Naturally they
+want reality, naturally! They want the individual life, something to
+handle and feel and use and live by, something of their very own before
+they die, and they want it now. But the thing that matters for the race,
+Marjorie, is a very different thing; it is to get the emerging thought
+process clear and to keep it clear--and to let those other hungers go.
+We've got to go back to England on the side of that delay, that arrest
+of interruption, that detached, observant, synthesizing process of the
+mind, that solvent of difficulties and obsolescent institutions, which
+is the reality of collective human life. We've got to go back on the
+side of pure science--literature untrammeled by the preconceptions of
+the social schemers--art free from the urgency of immediate utility--and
+a new, a regal, a god-like sincerity in philosophy. And, above all,
+we've got to stop this Jackdaw buying of yours, my dear, which is the
+essence of all that is wrong with the world, this snatching at
+everything, which loses everything worth having in life, this greedy
+confused realization of our accumulated resources! You're going to be a
+non-shopping woman now. You're to come out of Bond Street, you and your
+kind, like Israel leaving the Egyptian flesh-pots. You're going to be
+my wife and my mate.... Less of this service of things. Investments in
+comfort, in security, in experience, yes; but not just spending any
+more...."
+
+He broke off abruptly with: "I want to go back and begin."
+
+"Yes," said Marjorie, "we will go back," and saw minutely and distantly,
+and yet as clearly and brightly as if she looked into a concave mirror,
+that tall and dignified study, a very high room indeed, with a man
+writing before a fine, long-curtained window and a great lump of
+rich-glowing Labradorite upon his desk before him holding together an
+accumulation of written sheets....
+
+She knew exactly the shop in Oxford Street where the stuff for the
+curtains might be best obtained.
+
+
+§ 17
+
+One night Marjorie had been sitting musing before the stove for a long
+time, and suddenly she said: "I wonder if we shall fail. I wonder if we
+shall get into a mess again when we are back in London.... As big a mess
+and as utter a discontent as sent us here...."
+
+Trafford was scraping out his pipe, and did not answer for some moments.
+Then he remarked: "What nonsense!"
+
+"But we shall," she said. "Everybody fails. To some extent, we are bound
+to fail. Because indeed nothing is clear; nothing is a clear issue....
+You know--I'm just the old Marjorie really in spite of all these
+resolutions--the spendthrift, the restless, the eager. I'm a born
+snatcher and shopper. We're just the same people really."
+
+"No," he said, after thought. "You're all Labrador older."
+
+"I always _have_ failed," she considered, "when it came to any special
+temptations, Rag. I can't _stand_ not having a thing!"
+
+He made no answer.
+
+"And you're still the same old Rag, you know," she went on. "Who weakens
+into kindness if I cry. Who likes me well-dressed. Who couldn't endure
+to see me poor."
+
+"Not a bit of it. No! I'm a very different Rag with a very different
+Marjorie. Yes indeed! Things--are graver. Why!--I'm lame for life--and
+I've a scar. The very _look_ of things is changed...." He stared at her
+face and said: "You've hidden the looking-glass and you think I haven't
+noted it----"
+
+"It keeps on healing," she interrupted. "And if it comes to
+that--where's my complexion?" She laughed. "These are just the
+superficial aspects of the case."
+
+"Nothing ever heals completely," he said, answering her first sentence,
+"and nothing ever goes back to the exact place it held before. We _are_
+different, you sun-bitten, frost-bitten wife of mine."...
+
+"Character is character," said Marjorie, coming back to her point.
+"Don't exaggerate conversion, dear. It's not a bit of good pretending we
+shan't fall away, both of us. Each in our own manner. We shall. We
+shall, old man. London is still a tempting and confusing place, and you
+can't alter people fundamentally, not even by half-freezing and
+half-starving them. You only alter people fundamentally by killing them
+and replacing them. I shall be extravagant again and forget again, try
+as I may, and you will work again and fall away again and forgive me
+again. You know----It's just as though we were each of us not one
+person, but a lot of persons, who sometimes meet and shout all together,
+and then disperse and forget and plot against each other...."
+
+"Oh, things will happen again," said Trafford, in her pause. "But they
+will happen again with a difference--after this. With a difference.
+That's the good of it all.... We've found something here--that makes
+everything different.... We've found each other, too, dear wife."
+
+She thought intently.
+
+"I am afraid," she whispered.
+
+"But what is there to be afraid of?"
+
+"_Myself_."
+
+She spoke after a little pause that seemed to hesitate. "At times I
+wish--oh, passionately!--that I could pray."
+
+"Why don't you?"
+
+"I don't believe enough--in that. I wish I did."
+
+Trafford thought. "People are always so exacting about prayer," he said.
+
+"Exacting."
+
+"You want to pray--and you can't make terms for a thing you want. I used
+to think I could. I wanted God to come and demonstrate a bit.... It's no
+good, Madge.... If God chooses to be silent--you must pray to the
+silence. If he chooses to live in darkness, you must pray to the
+night...."
+
+"Yes," said Marjorie, "I suppose one must."
+
+She thought. "I suppose in the end one does," she said....
+
+
+§ 18
+
+Mixed up with this entirely characteristic theology of theirs and their
+elaborate planning-out of a new life in London were other strands of
+thought. Queer memories of London and old times together would flash
+with a peculiar brightness across their contemplation of the infinities
+and the needs of mankind. Out of nowhere, quite disconnectedly, would
+come the human, finite: "Do you remember----?"
+
+Two things particularly pressed into their minds. One was the thought of
+their children, and I do not care to tell how often in the day now they
+calculated the time in England, and tried to guess to a half mile or
+so where those young people might be and what they might be doing. "The
+shops are bright for Christmas now," said Marjorie. "This year Dick was
+to have had his first fireworks. I wonder if he did. I wonder if he
+burnt his dear little funny stumps of fingers. I hope not."
+
+"Oh, just a little," said Trafford. "I remember how a squib made my
+glove smoulder and singed me, and how my mother kissed me for taking it
+like a man. It was the best part of the adventure."
+
+"Dick shall burn his fingers when his mother's home to kiss him. But
+spare his fingers now, Dadda...."
+
+The other topic was food.
+
+It was only after they had been doing it for a week or so that they
+remarked how steadily they gravitated to reminiscences, suggestions,
+descriptions and long discussions of eatables--sound, solid eatables.
+They told over the particulars of dinners they had imagined altogether
+forgotten; neither hosts nor conversations seemed to matter now in the
+slightest degree, but every item in the menu had its place. They nearly
+quarrelled one day about _hors-d'oeuvre_. Trafford wanted to dwell on
+them when Marjorie was eager for the soup.
+
+"It's niggling with food," said Marjorie.
+
+"Oh, but there's no reason," said Trafford, "why you shouldn't take a
+lot of _hors-d'oeuvre_. Three or four sardines, and potato salad and
+a big piece of smoked salmon, and some of that Norwegian herring, and so
+on, and keep the olives by you to pick at. It's a beginning."
+
+"It's--it's immoral," said Marjorie, "that's what I feel. If one needs a
+whet to eat, one shouldn't eat. The proper beginning of a dinner is
+soup--good, hot, _rich_ soup. Thick soup--with things in it, vegetables
+and meat and things. Bits of oxtail."
+
+"Not peas."
+
+"No, not peas. Pea-soup is tiresome. I never knew anything one tired of
+so soon. I wish we hadn't relied on it so much."
+
+"Thick soup's all very well," said Trafford, "but how about that clear
+stuff they give you in the little pavement restaurants in Paris. You
+know--_Croűte-au-pot_, with lovely great crusts and big leeks and
+lettuce leaves and so on! Tremendous aroma of onions, and beautiful
+little beads of fat! And being a clear soup, you see what there is.
+That's--interesting. Twenty-five centimes, Marjorie. Lord! I'd give a
+guinea a plate for it. I'd give five pounds for one of those jolly
+white-metal tureens full--you know, _full_, with little drops all over
+the outside of it, and the ladle sticking out under the lid."
+
+"Have you ever tasted turtle soup?"
+
+"Rather. They give it you in the City. The fat's--ripping. But they're
+rather precious with it, you know. For my own part, I don't think soup
+should be _doled_ out. I always liked the soup we used to get at the
+Harts'; but then they never give you enough, you know--not nearly
+enough."
+
+"About a tablespoonful," said Marjorie. "It's mocking an appetite."
+
+"Still there's things to follow," said Trafford....
+
+They discussed the proper order of a dinner very carefully. They
+decided that sorbets and ices were not only unwholesome, but nasty. "In
+London," said Trafford, "one's taste gets--vitiated."...
+
+They weighed the merits of French cookery, modern international cookery,
+and produced alternatives. Trafford became very eloquent about old
+English food. "Dinners," said Trafford, "should be feasting, not the
+mere satisfaction of a necessity. There should be--_amplitude_. I
+remember a recipe for a pie; I think it was in one of those books that
+man Lucas used to compile. If I remember rightly, it began with: 'Take a
+swine and hew it into gobbets.' Gobbets! That's something like a
+beginning. It was a big pie with tiers and tiers of things, and it kept
+it up all the way in that key.... And then what could be better than
+prime British-fed roast beef, reddish, just a shade on the side of
+underdone, and not too finely cut. Mutton can't touch it."
+
+"Beef is the best," she said.
+
+"Then our English cold meat again. What can equal it? Such stuff as they
+give in a good country inn, a huge joint of beef--you cut from it
+yourself, you know as much as you like--with mustard, pickles, celery, a
+tankard of stout, let us say. Pressed beef, such as they'll give you at
+the Reform, too, that's good eating for a man. With chutney, and then
+old cheese to follow. And boiled beef, with little carrots and turnips
+and a dumpling or so. Eh?"
+
+"Of course," said Marjorie, "one must do justice to a well-chosen
+turkey, a _fat_ turkey."
+
+"Or a good goose, for the matter of that--with honest, well-thought-out
+stuffing. I like the little sausages round the dish of a turkey, too;
+like cherubs they are, round the feet of a Madonna.... There's much to
+be said for sausage, Marjorie. It concentrates."
+
+Sausage led to Germany. "I'm not one of those patriots," he was saying
+presently, "who run down other countries by way of glorifying their own.
+While I was in Germany I tasted many good things. There's their
+Leberwurst; it's never bad, and, at its best, it's splendid. It's only a
+fool would reproach Germany with sausage. Devonshire black-pudding, of
+course, is the master of any Blutwurst, but there's all those others on
+the German side, Frankfurter, big reddish sausage stuff again with great
+crystalline lumps of white fat. And how well they cook their rich
+hashes, and the thick gravies they make. Curious, how much better the
+cooking of Teutonic peoples is than the cooking of the South Europeans!
+It's as if one needed a colder climate to brace a cook to his business.
+The Frenchman and the Italian trifle and stimulate. It's as if they'd
+never met a hungry man. No German would have thought of _soufflé_. Ugh!
+it's vicious eating. There's much that's fine, though, in Austria and
+Hungary. I wish I had travelled in Hungary. Do you remember how once or
+twice we've lunched at that Viennese place in Regent Street, and how
+they've given us stuffed Paprika, eh?"
+
+"That was a good place. I remember there was stewed beef once with a lot
+of barley--such _good_ barley!"
+
+"Every country has its glories. One talks of the cookery of northern
+countries and then suddenly one thinks of curry, with lots of rice."
+
+"And lots of chicken!"
+
+"And lots of hot curry powder, _very_ hot. And look at America! Here's a
+people who haven't any of them been out of Europe for centuries, and yet
+they have as different a table as you could well imagine. There's a kind
+of fish, planked shad, that they cook on resinous wood--roast it, I
+suppose. It's substantial, like nothing else in the world. And how
+good, too, with turkey are sweet potatoes. Then they have such a
+multitude of cereal things; stuff like their buckwheat cakes, all
+swimming in golden syrup. And Indian corn, again!"
+
+"Of course, corn is being anglicized. I've often given you
+corn--latterly, before we came away."
+
+"That sort of separated grain--out of tins. Like chicken's food! It's
+not the real thing. You should eat corn on the cob--American fashion!
+It's fine. I had it when I was in the States. You know, you take it up
+in your hands by both ends--you've seen the cobs?--and gnaw."
+
+The craving air of Labrador at a temperature of -20° Fahrenheit, and
+methodically stinted rations, make great changes in the outward
+qualities of the mind. "_I'd_ like to do that," said Marjorie.
+
+Her face flushed a little at a guilty thought, her eyes sparkled. She
+leant forward and spoke in a confidential undertone.
+
+"_I'd--I'd like to eat a mutton chop like that_," said Marjorie.
+
+
+§ 20
+
+One morning Marjorie broached something she had had on her mind for
+several days.
+
+"Old man," she said, "I can't stand it any longer. I'm going to thaw my
+scissors and cut your hair.... And then you'll have to trim that beard
+of yours."
+
+"You'll have to dig out that looking-glass."
+
+"I know," said Marjorie. She looked at him. "You'll never be a pretty
+man again," she said. "But there's a sort of wild splendour.... And I
+love every inch and scrap of you...."
+
+Their eyes met. "We're a thousand deeps now below the look of things,"
+said Trafford. "We'd love each other minced."
+
+She broke into that smiling laugh of hers. "Oh! it won't come to
+_that_," she said. "Trust my housekeeping!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTH
+
+THE TRAIL TO THE SEA
+
+
+§ 1
+
+One astonishing afternoon in January a man came out of the wilderness to
+Lonely Hut. He was a French-Indian half-breed, a trapper up and down the
+Green River and across the Height of Land to Sea Lake. He arrived in a
+sort of shy silence, and squatted amiably on a log to thaw. "Much snow,"
+he said, "and little fur."
+
+After he had sat at their fire for an hour and eaten and drunk, his
+purpose in coming thawed out. He explained he had just come on to them
+to see how they were. He was, he said, a planter furring; he had a line
+of traps, about a hundred and twenty miles in length. The nearest trap
+in his path before he turned northward over the divide was a good forty
+miles down the river. He had come on from there. Just to have a look.
+His name, he said, was Louis Napoleon Partington. He had carried a big
+pack, a rifle and a dead marten,--they lay beside him--and out of his
+shapeless mass of caribou skins and woolen clothing and wrappings,
+peeped a genial, oily, brown face, very dirty, with a strand of
+blue-black hair across one eye, irregular teeth in its friendly smile,
+and little, squeezed-up eyes.
+
+Conversation developed. There had been doubts of his linguistic range at
+first, but he had an understanding expression, and his English seemed
+guttural rather than really bad.
+
+He was told the tremendous story of Trafford's leg; was shown it, and
+felt it; he interpolated thick and whistling noises to show how
+completely he followed their explanations, and then suddenly he began a
+speech that made all his earlier taciturnity seem but the dam of a great
+reservoir of mixed and partly incomprehensible English. He complimented
+Marjorie so effusively and relentlessly and shamelessly as to produce a
+pause when he had done. "Yes," he said, and nodded to button up the
+whole. He sucked his pipe, well satisfied with his eloquence. Trafford
+spoke in his silence. "We are coming down," he said.
+
+("I thought, perhaps----" whispered Louis Napoleon.)
+
+"Yes," said Trafford, "we are coming down with you. Why not? We can get
+a sledge over the snow now? It's hard? I mean a flat sledge--like
+_this_. See? Like this." He got up and dragged Marjorie's old
+arrangement into view. "We shall bring all the stuff we can down with
+us, grub, blankets--not the tent, it's too bulky; we'll leave a lot of
+the heavy gear."
+
+"You'd have to leave the tent," said Louis Napoleon.
+
+"I _said_ leave the tent."
+
+"And you'd have to leave ... some of those tins."
+
+"Nearly all of them."
+
+"And the ammunition, there;--except just a little."
+
+"Just enough for the journey down."
+
+"Perhaps a gun?"
+
+"No, not a gun. Though, after all,--well, we'd return one of the guns.
+Give it you to bring back here."
+
+"Bring back here?"
+
+"If you liked."
+
+For some moments Louis Napoleon was intently silent. When he spoke his
+voice was guttural with emotion. "After," he said thoughtfully and
+paused, and then resolved to have it over forthwith, "all you leave will
+be mine? Eh?"
+
+Trafford said that was the idea.
+
+Louis Napoleon's eye brightened, but his face preserved its Indian calm.
+
+"I will take you right to Hammond's," he said, "Where they have dogs.
+And then I can come back here...."
+
+
+§ 2
+
+They had talked out nearly every particular of their return before they
+slept that night; they yarned away three hours over the first generous
+meal that any one of them had eaten for many weeks. Louis Napoleon
+stayed in the hut as a matter of course, and reposed with snores and
+choking upon Marjorie's sledge and within a yard of her. It struck her
+as she lay awake and listened that the housemaids in Sussex Square would
+have thought things a little congested for a lady's bedroom, and then
+she reflected that after all it wasn't much worse than a crowded
+carriage in an all-night train from Switzerland. She tried to count how
+many people there had been in that compartment, and failed. How stuffy
+that had been--the smell of cheese and all! And with that, after a dream
+that she was whaling and had harpooned a particularly short-winded whale
+she fell very peacefully into oblivion.
+
+Next day was spent in the careful preparation of the two sledges. They
+intended to take a full provision for six weeks, although they reckoned
+that with good weather they ought to be down at Hammond's in four.
+
+The day after was Sunday, and Louis Napoleon would not look at the
+sledges or packing. Instead he held a kind of religious service which
+consisted partly in making Trafford read aloud out of a very oily old
+New Testament he produced, a selected passage from the book of
+Corinthians, and partly in moaning rather than singing several hymns. He
+was rather disappointed that they did not join in with him. In the
+afternoon he heated some water, went into the tent with it and it would
+appear partially washed his face. In the evening, after they had supped,
+he discussed religion, being curious by this time about their beliefs
+and procedure.
+
+He spread his mental and spiritual equipment before them very artlessly.
+Their isolation and their immense concentration on each other had made
+them sensitive to personal quality, and they listened to the broken
+English and the queer tangential starts into new topics of this dirty
+mongrel creature with the keenest appreciation of its quality. It was
+inconsistent, miscellaneous, simple, honest, and human. It was as
+touching as the medley in the pocket of a dead schoolboy. He was
+superstitious and sceptical and sensual and spiritual, and very, very
+earnest. The things he believed, even if they were just beliefs about
+the weather or drying venison or filling pipes, he believed with
+emotion. He flushed as he told them. For all his intellectual muddle
+they felt he knew how to live honestly and die if need be very finely.
+
+He was more than a little distressed at their apparent ignorance of the
+truths of revealed religion as it is taught in the Moravian schools upon
+the coast, and indeed it was manifest that he had had far more careful
+and infinitely more sincere religious teaching than either Trafford or
+Marjorie. For a time the missionary spirit inspired him, and then he
+quite forgot his solicitude for their conversion in a number of
+increasingly tall anecdotes about hunters and fishermen, illustrating at
+first the extreme dangers of any departure from a rigid Sabbatarianism,
+but presently becoming just stories illustrating the uncertainty of
+life. Thence he branched off to the general topic of life upon the coast
+and the relative advantages of "planter" and fisherman.
+
+And then with a kindling eye he spoke of women, and how that some day he
+would marry. His voice softened, and he addressed himself more
+particularly to Marjorie. He didn't so much introduce the topic of the
+lady as allow the destined young woman suddenly to pervade his
+discourse. She was, it seemed, a servant, an Esquimaux girl at the
+Moravian Mission station at Manivikovik. He had been plighted to her for
+nine years. He described a gramophone he had purchased down at Port
+Dupré and brought back to her three hundred miles up the coast--it
+seemed to Marjorie an odd gift for an Esquimaux maiden--and he gave his
+views upon its mechanism. He said God was with the man who invented the
+gramophone "truly." They would have found one a very great relief to the
+tediums of their sojourn at Lonely Hut. The gramophone he had given his
+betrothed possessed records of the Rev. Capel Gumm's preaching and of
+Madame Melba's singing, a revival hymn called "Sowing the Seed," and a
+comic song--they could not make out his pronunciation of the title--that
+made you die with laughter. "It goes gobble, gobble, gobble," he said,
+with a solemn appreciative reflection of those distant joys.
+
+"It's good to be jolly at times," he said with his bright eyes scanning
+Marjorie's face a little doubtfully, as if such ideas were better left
+for week-day expression.
+
+
+§ 3
+
+Their return was a very different journey from the toilsome ascent of
+the summer. An immense abundance of snow masked the world, snow that
+made them regret acutely they had not equipped themselves with ski. With
+ski and a good circulation, a man may go about Labrador in winter, six
+times more easily than by the canoes and slow trudging of summer travel.
+As it was they were glad of their Canadian snow shoes. One needs only
+shelters after the Alpine Club hut fashion, and all that vast solitary
+country would be open in the wintertime. Its shortest day is no shorter
+than the shortest day in Cumberland or Dublin.
+
+This is no place to tell of the beauty and wonder of snow and ice, the
+soft contours of gentle slopes, the rippling of fine snow under a steady
+wind, the long shadow ridges of shining powder on the lee of trees and
+stones and rocks, the delicate wind streaks over broad surfaces like the
+marks of a chisel in marble, the crests and cornices, the vivid
+brightness of edges in the sun, the glowing yellowish light on sunlit
+surfaces, the long blue shadows, the flush of sunset and sunrise and the
+pallid unearthly desolation of snow beneath the moon. Nor need the
+broken snow in woods and amidst tumbled stony slopes be described, nor
+the vast soft overhanging crests on every outstanding rock beside the
+icebound river, nor the huge stalactites and stalagmites of green-blue
+ice below the cliffs, nor trees burdened and broken by frost and snow,
+nor snow upon ice, nor the blue pools at mid-day upon the surface of the
+ice-stream. Across the smooth wind-swept ice of the open tarns they
+would find a growth of ice flowers, six-rayed and complicated, more
+abundant and more beautiful than the Alpine summer flowers.
+
+But the wind was very bitter, and the sun had scarcely passed its zenith
+before the thought of fuel and shelter came back into their minds.
+
+As they approached Partington's tilt, at the point where his trapping
+ground turned out of the Green River gorge, he became greatly obsessed
+by the thought of his traps. He began to talk of all that he might find
+in them, all he hoped to find, and the "dallars" that might ensue. They
+slept the third night, Marjorie within and the two men under the lee of
+the little cabin, and Partington was up and away before dawn to a trap
+towards the ridge. He had infected Marjorie and Trafford with a
+sympathetic keenness, but when they saw his killing of a marten that was
+still alive in its trap, they suddenly conceived a distaste for
+trapping.
+
+They insisted they must witness no more. They would wait while he went
+to a trap....
+
+"Think what he's doing!" said Trafford, as they sat together under the
+lee of a rock waiting for him. "We imagined this was a free,
+simple-souled man leading an unsophisticated life on the very edge of
+humanity, and really he is as much a dependant of your woman's world,
+Marjorie, as any sweated seamstress in a Marylebone slum. Lord! how far
+those pretty wasteful hands of women reach! All these poor broken and
+starving beasts he finds and slaughters are, from the point of view of
+our world, just furs. Furs! Poor little snarling unfortunates! Their
+pelts will be dressed and prepared because women who have never dreamt
+of this bleak wilderness desire them. They will get at last into Regent
+Street shops, and Bond Street shops, and shops in Fifth Avenue and in
+Paris and Berlin, they will make delightful deep muffs, with scent and
+little bags and powder puffs and all sorts of things tucked away inside,
+and long wraps for tall women, and jolly little frames of soft fur for
+pretty faces, and dainty coats and rugs for expensive little babies in
+Kensington Gardens."...
+
+"I wonder," reflected Marjorie, "if I could buy one perhaps. As a
+memento."
+
+He looked at her with eyes of quiet amusement.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, "I didn't mean to! The old Eve!"
+
+"The old Adam is with her," said Trafford. "He's wanting to give it
+her.... We don't cease to be human, Madge, you know, because we've got
+an idea now of just where we are. I wonder, which would you like? I dare
+say we could arrange it."
+
+"No," said Marjorie, and thought. "It would be jolly," she said. "All
+the same, you know--and just to show you--I'm not going to let you buy
+me that fur."
+
+"I'd like to," said Trafford.
+
+"No," said Marjorie, with a decision that was almost fierce. "I mean it.
+I've got more to do than you in the way of reforming. It's just because
+always I've let my life be made up of such little things that I mustn't.
+Indeed I mustn't. Don't make things hard for me."
+
+He looked at her for a moment. "Very well," he said. "But I'd have liked
+to."...
+
+"You're right," he added, five seconds later.
+
+"Oh! I'm right."
+
+
+§ 4
+
+One day Louis Napoleon sent them on along the trail while he went up the
+mountain to a trap among the trees. He rejoined them--not as his custom
+was, shouting inaudible conversation for the last hundred yards or so,
+but in silence. They wondered at that, and at the one clumsy gesture
+that flourished something darkly grey at them. What had happened
+to the man? Whatever he had caught he was hugging it as one
+hugs a cat, and stroking it. "Ugh!" he said deeply, drawing near. "Oh!"
+A solemn joy irradiated his face, and almost religious ecstasy found
+expression.
+
+He had got a silver fox, a beautifully marked silver fox, the best luck
+of Labrador! One goes for years without one, in hope, and when it comes,
+it pays the trapper's debts, it clears his life--for years!
+
+They tried poor inadequate congratulation....
+
+As they sat about the fire that night a silence came upon Louis
+Napoleon. It was manifest that his mind was preoccupied. He got up,
+walked about, inspected the miracle of fur that had happened to him,
+returned, regarded them. "'M'm," he said, and stroked his chin with his
+forefinger. A certain diffidence and yet a certain dignity of assurance
+mingled in his manner. It wasn't so much a doubt of his own correctness
+as of some possible ignorance of the finer shades on their part that
+might embarrass him. He coughed a curt preface, and intimated he had a
+request to make. Behind the Indian calm of his face glowed tremendous
+feeling, like the light of a foundry furnace shining through chinks in
+the door. He spoke in a small flat voice, exercising great self-control.
+His wish, he said, in view of all that had happened, was a little
+thing.... This was nearly a perfect day for him, and one thing only
+remained.... "Well," he said, and hung. "Well," said Trafford. He
+plunged. Just simply this. Would they give him the brandy bottle and let
+him get drunk? Mr. Grenfell was a good man, a very good man, but he had
+made brandy dear--dear beyond the reach of common men altogether--along
+the coast....
+
+He explained, dear bundle of clothes and dirt! that he was always
+perfectly respectable when he was drunk.
+
+
+§ 5
+
+It seemed strange to Trafford that now that Marjorie was going home, a
+wild impatience to see her children should possess her. So long as it
+had been probable that they would stay out their year in Labrador, that
+separation had seemed mainly a sentimental trouble; now at times it was
+like an animal craving. She would talk of them for hours at a stretch,
+and when she was not talking he could see her eyes fixed ahead, and knew
+that she was anticipating a meeting. And for the first time it seemed
+the idea of possible misadventure troubled her....
+
+They reached Hammond's in one and twenty days from Lonely Hut, three
+days they had been forced to camp because of a blizzard, and three
+because Louis Napoleon was rigidly Sabbatarian. They parted from him
+reluctantly, and the next day Hammond's produced its dogs, twelve stout
+but extremely hungry dogs, and sent the Traffords on to the Green River
+pulp-mills, where there were good beds and a copious supply of hot
+water. Thence they went to Manivikovik, and thence the new Marconi
+station sent their inquiries home, inquiries that were answered next day
+with matter-of-fact brevity: "Everyone well, love from all."
+
+When the operator hurried with that to Marjorie she received it
+off-handedly, glanced at it carelessly, asked him to smoke, remarked
+that wireless telegraphy was a wonderful thing, and then, in the midst
+of some unfinished commonplace about the temperature, broke down and
+wept wildly and uncontrollably....
+
+
+§ 6
+
+Then came the long, wonderful ride southward day after day along the
+coast to Port Dupré, a ride from headland to headland across the frozen
+bays behind long teams of straining, furry dogs, that leapt and yelped
+as they ran. Sometimes over the land the brutes shirked and loitered and
+called for the whip; they were a quarrelsome crew to keep waiting; but
+across the sea-ice they went like the wind, and downhill the komatic
+chased their waving tails. The sledges swayed and leapt depressions, and
+shot athwart icy stretches. The Traffords, spectacled and wrapped to
+their noses, had all the sensations then of hunting an unknown quarry
+behind a pack of wolves. The snow blazed under the sun, out to sea
+beyond the ice the water glittered, and it wasn't so much air they
+breathed as a sort of joyous hunger.
+
+One day their teams insisted upon racing.
+
+Marjorie's team was the heavier, her driver more skillful, and her
+sledge the lighter, and she led in that wild chase from start to finish,
+but ever and again Trafford made wild spurts that brought him almost
+level. Once, as he came alongside, she heard him laughing joyously.
+
+"Marjorie," he shouted, "d'you remember? Old donkey cart?"
+
+Her team yawed away, and as he swept near again, behind his pack of
+whimpering, straining, furious dogs, she heard him shouting, "You know,
+that old cart! Under the overhanging trees! So thick and green they met
+overhead! You know! When you and I had our first talk together! In the
+lane. It wasn't so fast as this, eh?"...
+
+
+§ 7
+
+At Port Dupré they stayed ten days--days that Marjorie could only make
+tolerable by knitting absurd garments for the children (her knitting was
+atrocious), and then one afternoon they heard the gun of the _Grenfell_,
+the new winter steamer from St. John's, signalling as it came in through
+the fog, very slowly, from that great wasteful world of men and women
+beyond the seaward grey.
+
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation and hyphenation inconsistencies have been silently
+repaired. Words with variable spelling have been retained. The following
+spelling and typographical emendations have been made:
+
+  p. 22: broken text "were they living and moving realities" was
+  completed to "were they living and moving realities when those others
+  were at home again?"
+  p. 34: protruberant replaced with protuberant ("large protuberant")
+  p. 38: pay replaced with play ("what the play was")
+  p. 40: Majorie replaced with Marjorie ("Marjorie loved singing")
+  p. 40: feut replaced with felt ("that he felt")
+  p. 60: téte-ŕ-tęte replaced with tęte-ŕ-tęte ("silent tęte-ŕ-tęte")
+  p. 70: foundamental replaced with fundamental ("three fundamental
+  things")
+  p. 76: fina replaced with final ("working for her final")
+  p. 88: challenege replaced with challenge ("challenge inattentive
+  auditors")
+  p. 92: presumbly replaced with presumably ("presumably Billy's")
+  p. 115: ino replaced with into ("into the air")
+  p. 141: himse_f replaced with himself ("ask himself")
+  p. 147: contradication replaced with contradiction ("any sort of
+  contradiction")
+  p. 167: calcalculated replaced with calculated ("indeed calculated")
+  p. 223: hestitated replaced with hesitated ("She hesitated")
+  p. 230: intriques replaced with intrigues ("culminations and intrigues")
+  p. 242: America replaced with American ("American minor poet")
+  p. 265: acquiscent replaced with acquiescent ("by no means acquiescent")
+  p. 313: It's replaced with Its ("Its end was the Agenda Club")
+  p. 316: regime replaced with régime ("the new régime")
+  p. 341: number of section 15 replaced with 16
+  p. 342: gestulated replaced with gesticulated ("Solomonson
+  gesticulated")
+  p. 342: The paragraphs starting with: "It was all" and "You said
+  good-bye" were merged
+  p. 346: The paragraphs starting with: "They aren't arranged" and "They'd
+  get everything" were merged
+  p. 349: devine replaced with divine ("by right divine of genius")
+  p. 368: presumptious replaced with presumptuous ("extremely
+  presumptuous")
+  p. 376: mispelling replaced with misspelling ("as much misspelling as")
+  p. 376: The replaced with They ("They gave dinners")
+  p. 378: The replaced with They ("They could play")
+  p. 395: Docter replaced with Doctor ("Doctor Codger")
+  p. 396: authoritive replaced with authoritative ("authoritative
+  imagine")
+  p. 399: shuldered replaced with shouldered ("As he shouldered")
+  p. 403: wet replaced with went ("Trafford's eyes went from")
+  p. 405: subthe replaced with subtle ("skilful, subtle appreciation")
+  p. 426: fine replaced with find ("find God")
+  p. 427: chidren replaced with children ("of having children at all")
+  p. 441: serere replaced with serene ("brightly serene")
+  p. 442: tundura replaced with tundra ("wide stretches of tundra")
+  p. 457: rucksac replaced with rucksack ("chunks of dry paper,
+  the rucksack")
+  p. 481: realties replaced with realities ("expression of the realities")
+  p. 485: the duplicate phrase "He stared at her" was removed
+  p. 493: think replaced with thing ("salvation is a collective thing")
+  p. 504: realty replaced with reality ("of sense and reality")
+  p. 509: greal replaced with great ("a great lump")
+  p. 512: caluclated replaced with calculated ("now they calculated")
+  p. 515: travellel replaced with travelled ("I had travelled")
+  p. 518: gutteral replaced with guttural ("seemed guttural")
+  p. 520: gutteral replaced with guttural ("his voice was guttural")
+  p. 524: slaughers replaced with slaughters ("he finds and slaughters")
+
+
+
+
+
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+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Marriage, by H. G. Wells.
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage, by H. G. Wells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
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+Title: Marriage
+
+Author: H. G. Wells
+
+Release Date: February 20, 2011 [EBook #35338]
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIAGE ***
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+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="centerbox bbox">
+<p><big>MR. WELLS HAS ALSO WRITTEN</big></p>
+<p class="hang">The following Novels:<br />
+TONO BUNGAY<br />
+LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM<br />
+KIPPS&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;ANN VERONICA<br />
+THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY<br />
+and THE NEW MACHIAVELLI</p>
+<p class="hang">Numerous short stories now published
+in a single volume under the title.<br />
+THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND</p>
+<p class="hang">The following fantastic Romances:<br />
+THE TIME MACHINE<br />
+THE WONDERFUL VISIT<br />
+THE INVISIBLE MAN<br />
+THE WAR OF THE WORLDS<br />
+THE SEA LADY<br />
+IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET<br />
+THE SLEEPER AWAKES<br />
+THE FOOD OF THE GODS<br />
+THE WAR IN THE AIR<br />
+THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON<br />
+and THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU</p>
+<p class="hang">And a series of books upon social and political
+questions of which<br />
+A MODERN UTOPIA<br />
+FIRST AND LAST THINGS (RELIGION)<br />
+NEW WORLDS FOR OLD<br />
+THE FUTURE IN AMERICA<br />
+and ANTICIPATIONS<br />
+are the chief.</p></div>
+
+<h1>MARRIAGE<br />
+
+<small>BY</small></h1>
+
+<h2>H. G. WELLS</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><br />"And the Poor Dears haven't the shadow of a doubt they will live<br />
+happily ever afterwards."&mdash;<i>From a Private Letter</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 120px;">
+<img src="images/illustrationfirstpage.png" width="120" height="170" alt="" title="front_page" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center"><br /><b>NEW YORK</b><br />
+<b>DUFFIELD &amp; COMPANY</b><br />
+<b>1912</b></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center"><br />
+<span class="smcap">COPYRIGHT, 1912</span><br />
+<big>DUFFIELD &amp; COMPANY</big></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center"><i>FRATERNALLY<br />
+TO<br />
+<big>ARNOLD BENNETT</big></i></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center"><br />
+<span class="smcap">BOOK THE FIRST</span><br />
+<br />
+<big>MARJORIE MARRIES</big></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h1>MARRIAGE</h1>
+
+<h2>CHAPTER THE FIRST</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">A Day with the Popes</span></h3>
+
+<p class="title">§ 1</p>
+
+<p>An extremely pretty girl occupied a second-class
+compartment in one of those trains which percolate
+through the rural tranquillities of middle England
+from Ganford in Oxfordshire to Rumbold Junction
+in Kent. She was going to join her family at Buryhamstreet
+after a visit to some Gloucestershire
+friends. Her father, Mr. Pope, once a leader in the
+coach-building world and now by retirement a gentleman,
+had taken the Buryhamstreet vicarage furnished
+for two months (beginning on the fifteenth of July)
+at his maximum summer rental of seven guineas a
+week. His daughter was on her way to this retreat.</p>
+
+<p>At first she had been an animated traveller, erect
+and keenly regardful of every detail upon the platforms
+of the stations at which her conveyance lingered,
+but the tedium of the journey and the warmth of
+the sunny afternoon had relaxed her pose by imperceptible
+degrees, and she sat now comfortably in the
+corner, with her neat toes upon the seat before her,
+ready to drop them primly at the first sign of a
+fellow-traveller. Her expression lapsed more and
+more towards an almost somnolent reverie. She
+wished she had not taken a second-class ticket, because
+then she might have afforded a cup of tea at Reading,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">-4-</a></span>
+and so fortified herself against this insinuating
+indolence.</p>
+
+<p>She was travelling second class, instead of third as
+she ought to have done, through one of those lapses
+so inevitable to young people in her position. The
+two Carmel boys and a cousin, two greyhounds and a
+chow had come to see her off; they had made a brilliant
+and prosperous group on the platform and
+extorted the manifest admiration of two youthful
+porters, and it had been altogether too much for
+Marjorie Pope to admit it was the family custom&mdash;except
+when her father's nerves had to be considered&mdash;to
+go third class. So she had made a hasty calculation&mdash;she
+knew her balance to a penny because of
+the recent tipping&mdash;and found it would just run to
+it. Fourpence remained,&mdash;and there would be a porter
+at Buryhamstreet!</p>
+
+<p>Her mother had said: "You will have Ample."
+Well, opinions of amplitude vary. With numerous
+details fresh in her mind, Marjorie decided it would
+be wiser to avoid financial discussion during her first
+few days at Buryhamstreet.</p>
+
+<p>There was much in Marjorie's equipment in the
+key of travelling second class at the sacrifice of afternoon
+tea. There was, for example, a certain quiet
+goodness of style about her clothes, though the skirt
+betrayed age, and an entire absence of style about
+her luggage, which was all in the compartment with
+her, and which consisted of a distended hold-all, a
+very good tennis racquet in a stretcher, a portmanteau
+of cheap white basketwork held together by
+straps, and a very new, expensive-looking and meretricious
+dressing-bag of imitation morocco, which had
+been one of her chief financial errors at Oxbridge.
+The collection was eloquent indeed of incompatible
+standards....</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie had a chin that was small in size if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">-5-</a></span>
+resolute in form, and a mouth that was not noticeably
+soft and weak because it was conspicuously soft and
+pretty. Her nose was delicately aquiline and very
+subtly and finely modelled, and she looked out upon
+the world with steady, grey-blue eyes beneath broad,
+level brows that contradicted in a large measure the
+hint of weakness below. She had an abundance of
+copper-red hair, which flowed back very prettily from
+her broad, low forehead and over her delicate ears,
+and she had that warm-tinted clear skin that goes
+so well with reddish hair. She had a very dainty neck,
+and the long slender lines of her body were full of
+the promise of a riper beauty. She had the good
+open shoulders of a tennis-player and a swimmer.
+Some day she was to be a tall, ruddy, beautiful
+woman. She wore simple clothes of silvery grey and
+soft green, and about her waist was a belt of grey
+leather in which there now wilted two creamy-petalled
+roses.</p>
+
+<p>That was the visible Marjorie. Somewhere out of
+time and space was an invisible Marjorie who looked
+out on the world with those steady eyes, and smiled
+or drooped with the soft red lips, and dreamt, and
+wondered, and desired.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 2</p>
+
+<p>What a queer thing the invisible human being
+would appear if, by some discovery as yet inconceivable,
+some spiritual X-ray photography, we could
+flash it into sight! Long ago I read a book called
+"Soul Shapes" that was full of ingenious ideas, but I
+doubt very much if the thing so revealed would have
+any shape, any abiding solid outline at all. It is
+something more fluctuating and discursive than that&mdash;at
+any rate, for every one young enough not to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">-6-</a></span>
+have set and hardened.
+Things come into it and become it, things drift out of it
+and cease to be it, things turn upside down in it
+and change and colour and dissolve, and grow and eddy about and blend
+into each other. One might figure it, I suppose, as a
+preposterous jumble animated by a will; a floundering
+disconnectedness through which an old hump of
+impulse rises and thrusts unaccountably; a river
+beast of purpose wallowing in a back eddy of mud
+and weeds and floating objects and creatures drowned.
+Now the sunshine of gladness makes it all vivid,
+now it is sombre and grimly insistent under the sky
+of some darkling mood, now an emotional gale sweeps
+across it and it is one confused agitation....</p>
+
+<p>And surely these invisible selves of men were never
+so jumbled, so crowded, complicated, and stirred
+about as they are at the present time. Once I am
+told they had a sort of order, were sphered in religious
+beliefs, crystal clear, were arranged in a cosmogony
+that fitted them as hand fits glove, were
+separated by definite standards of right and wrong
+which presented life as planned in all its essential
+aspects from the cradle to the grave. Things are so
+no longer. That sphere is broken for most of us;
+even if it is tied about and mended again, it is burst
+like a seed case; things have fallen out and things
+have fallen in....</p>
+
+<p>Can I convey in any measure how it was with
+Marjorie?</p>
+
+<p>What was her religion?</p>
+
+<p>In college forms and returns, and suchlike documents,
+she would describe herself as "Church of
+England." She had been baptized according to the
+usages of that body, but she had hitherto evaded
+confirmation into it, and although it is a large,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">-7-</a></span>
+wealthy, and powerful organization with many minds
+to serve it, it had never succeeded in getting into her
+quick and apprehensive intelligence any lucid and
+persuasive conception of what it considered God and
+the universe were up to with her. It had failed to
+catch her attention and state itself to her. A number
+of humorous and other writers and the general
+trend of talk around her, and perhaps her own shrewd
+little observation of superficial things, had, on the
+other hand, created a fairly definite belief in her that
+it wasn't as a matter of fact up to very much at all,
+that what it said wasn't said with that absolute
+honesty which is a logical necessity in every religious
+authority, and that its hierarchy had all sorts of
+political and social considerations confusing its treatment
+of her immortal soul....</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie followed her father in abstaining from
+church. He too professed himself "Church of England,"
+but he was, if we are to set aside merely superficial
+classifications, an irascible atheist with a respect
+for usage and Good Taste, and an abject fear of the
+disapproval of other gentlemen of his class. For
+the rest he secretly disliked clergymen on account of
+the peculiarity of their collars, and a certain
+influence they had with women. When Marjorie at the
+age of fourteen had displayed a hankering after ecclesiastical
+ceremony and emotional religion, he had
+declared: "We don't want any of <i>that</i> nonsense,"
+and sent her into the country to a farm where there
+were young calves and a bottle-fed lamb and kittens.
+At times her mother went to church and displayed
+considerable orthodoxy and punctilio, at times the
+good lady didn't, and at times she thought in a broad-minded
+way that there was a Lot in Christian Science,
+and subjected herself to the ministrations of an
+American named Silas Root. But his ministrations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">-8-</a></span>
+were too expensive for continuous use, and so the old
+faith did not lose its hold upon the family altogether.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%" />
+
+<p>At school Marjorie had been taught what I may
+best describe as Muffled Christianity&mdash;a temperate
+and discreet system designed primarily not to irritate
+parents, in which the painful symbol of the crucifixion
+and the riddle of what Salvation was to save
+her from, and, indeed, the coarser aspects of religion
+generally, were entirely subordinate to images of
+amiable perambulations, and a rich mist of finer feelings.
+She had been shielded, not only from arguments
+against her religion, but from arguments for
+it&mdash;the two things go together&mdash;and I do not think
+it was particularly her fault if she was now growing
+up like the great majority of respectable English
+people, with her religious faculty as it were, artificially
+faded, and an acquired disposition to regard
+any speculation of why she was, and whence and
+whither, as rather foolish, not very important, and
+in the very worst possible taste.</p>
+
+<p>And so, the crystal globe being broken which once
+held souls together, you may expect to find her a little
+dispersed and inconsistent in her motives, and with
+none of that assurance a simpler age possessed of the
+exact specification of goodness or badness, the exact
+delimitation of right and wrong. Indeed, she did not
+live in a world of right and wrong, or anything so
+stern; "horrid" and "jolly" had replaced these
+archaic orientations. In a world where a mercantile
+gentility has conquered passion and God is neither
+blasphemed nor adored, there necessarily arises this
+generation of young people, a little perplexed, indeed,
+and with a sense of something missing, but feeling
+their way inevitably at last to the great releasing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">-9-</a></span>
+question, "Then why shouldn't we have a good
+time?"</p>
+
+<p>Yet there was something in Marjorie, as in most
+human beings, that demanded some general idea, some
+aim, to hold her life together. A girl upon the borders
+of her set at college was fond of the phrase "living
+for the moment," and Marjorie associated with it the
+speaker's lax mouth, sloe-like eyes, soft, quick-flushing,
+boneless face, and a habit of squawking and
+bouncing in a forced and graceless manner. Marjorie's
+natural disposition was to deal with life in a
+steadier spirit than that. Yet all sorts of powers
+and forces were at work in her, some exalted, some
+elvish, some vulgar, some subtle. She felt keenly and
+desired strongly, and in effect she came perhaps
+nearer the realization of that offending phrase than
+its original exponent. She had a clean intensity of
+feeling that made her delight in a thousand various
+things, in sunlight and textures, and the vividly
+quick acts of animals, in landscape, and the
+beauty of other girls, in wit, and people's voices, and
+good strong reasoning, and the desire and skill of art.
+She had a clear, rapid memory that made her excel
+perhaps a little too easily at school and college, an
+eagerness of sympathetic interest that won people
+very quickly and led to disappointments, and a very
+strong sense of the primary importance of Miss
+Marjorie Pope in the world. And when any very
+definite dream of what she would like to be and what
+she would like to do, such as being the principal of a
+ladies' college, or the first woman member of Parliament,
+or the wife of a barbaric chief in Borneo, or a
+great explorer, or the wife of a millionaire and a
+great social leader, or George Sand, or Saint Teresa,
+had had possession of her imagination for a few
+weeks, an entirely contrasted and equally attractive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">-10-</a></span>
+dream would presently arise beside it and compete
+with it and replace it. It wasn't so much that she
+turned against the old one as that she was attracted
+by the new, and she forgot the old dream rather than
+abandoned it, simply because she was only one person,
+and hadn't therefore the possibility of realizing both.</p>
+
+<p>In certain types Marjorie's impressionability
+aroused a passion of proselytism. People of the most
+diverse kinds sought to influence her, and they invariably
+did so. Quite a number of people, including
+her mother and the principal of her college, believed
+themselves to be the leading influence in her life. And
+this was particularly the case with her aunt Plessington.
+Her aunt Plessington was devoted to social and
+political work of an austere and aggressive sort (in
+which Mr. Plessington participated); she was childless,
+and had a Movement of her own, the Good
+Habits Movement, a progressive movement of the
+utmost scope and benevolence which aimed at extensive
+interferences with the food and domestic intimacies
+of the more defenceless lower classes by means
+ultimately of legislation, and she had Marjorie up
+to see her, took her for long walks while she influenced
+with earnestness and vigour, and at times had an air
+of bequeathing her mantle, movement and everything,
+quite definitely to her "little Madge." She spoke of
+training her niece to succeed her, and bought all the
+novels of Mrs. Humphry Ward for her as they
+appeared, in the hope of quickening in her that
+flame of politico-social ambition, that insatiable
+craving for dinner-parties with important guests,
+which is so distinctive of the more influential variety
+of English womanhood. It was due rather to her
+own habit of monologue than to any reserve on the
+part of Marjorie that she entertained the belief that
+her niece was entirely acquiescent in these projects.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">-11-</a></span>
+They went into Marjorie's mind and passed. For
+nearly a week, it is true, she had dramatized herself
+as the angel and inspiration of some great modern
+statesman, but this had been ousted by a far more
+insistent dream, begotten by a picture she had seen
+in some exhibition, of a life of careless savagery,
+whose central and constantly recurrent incident was
+the riding of barebacked horses out of deep-shadowed
+forest into a foamy sunlit sea&mdash;in a costume that
+would certainly have struck Aunt Plessington as a
+mistake.</p>
+
+<p>If you could have seen Marjorie in her railway
+compartment, with the sunshine, sunshine mottled by
+the dirty window, tangled in her hair and creeping to
+and fro over her face as the train followed the curves
+of the line, you would certainly have agreed with me
+that she was pretty, and you might even have thought
+her beautiful. But it was necessary to fall in love
+with Marjorie before you could find her absolutely
+beautiful. You might have speculated just what
+business was going on behind those drowsily thoughtful
+eyes. If you are&mdash;as people say&mdash;"Victorian,"
+you might even have whispered "Day Dreams," at
+the sight of her....</p>
+
+<p>She <i>was</i> dreaming, and in a sense she was thinking
+of beautiful things. But only mediately. She was
+thinking how very much she would enjoy spending
+freely and vigorously, quite a considerable amount
+of money,&mdash;heaps of money.</p>
+
+<p>You see, the Carmels, with whom she had just
+been staying, were shockingly well off. They had two
+motor cars with them in the country, and the boys
+had the use of the second one as though it was just
+an old bicycle. Marjorie had had a cheap white
+dinner-dress, made the year before by a Chelsea
+French girl, a happy find of her mother's, and it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">-12-</a></span>
+shapely and simple and not at all bad, and she had
+worn her green beads and her Egyptian necklace of
+jade; but Kitty Carmel and her sister had had a new
+costume nearly every night, and pretty bracelets,
+and rubies, big pearls, and woven gold, and half a
+score of delightful and precious things for neck and
+hair. Everything in the place was bright and good
+and abundant, the servants were easy and well-mannered,
+without a trace of hurry or resentment, and
+one didn't have to be sharp about the eggs and things
+at breakfast in the morning, or go without. All
+through the day, and even when they had gone to
+bathe from the smart little white and green shed on
+the upper lake, Marjorie had been made to feel the
+insufficiency of her equipment. Kitty Carmel, being
+twenty-one, possessed her own cheque-book and had
+accounts running at half a dozen West-end shops;
+and both sisters had furnished their own rooms according
+to their taste, with a sense of obvious effect
+that had set Marjorie speculating just how a room
+might be done by a girl with a real eye for colour
+and a real brain behind it....</p>
+
+<p>The train slowed down for the seventeenth time.
+Marjorie looked up and read "Buryhamstreet."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 3</p>
+
+<p>Her reverie vanished, and by a complex but almost
+instantaneous movement she had her basket off
+the rack and the carriage door open. She became
+teeming anticipations. There, advancing in a string,
+were Daffy, her elder sister, Theodore, her younger
+brother, and the dog Toupee. Sydney and Rom
+hadn't come. Daffy was not copper red like her sister,
+but really quite coarsely red-haired; she was
+bigger than Marjorie, and with irregular teeth instead
+of Marjorie's neat row;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">-13-</a></span> she confessed them in
+a broad simple smile of welcome. Theodore was
+hatless, rustily fuzzy-headed, and now a wealth of
+quasi-humorous gesture. The dog Toupee was
+straining at a leash, and doing its best in a yapping,
+confused manner, to welcome the wrong people by
+getting its lead round their legs.</p>
+
+<p>"Toupee!" cried Marjorie, waving the basket.
+"Toupee!"</p>
+
+<p>They all called it Toupee because it was like one,
+but the name was forbidden in her father's hearing.
+Her father had decided that the proper name for a
+family dog in England is Towser, and did his utmost
+to suppress a sobriquet that was at once unprecedented
+and not in the best possible taste. Which was
+why the whole family, with the exception of Mrs.
+Pope, of course, stuck to Toupee....</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie flashed a second's contrast with the
+Carmel splendours.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, old Daffy. What's it like?" she asked,
+handing out the basket as her sister came up.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a lark," said Daffy. "Where's the dressing-bag?"</p>
+
+<p>"Thoddy," said Marjorie, following up the
+dressing-bag with the hold-all. "Lend a hand."</p>
+
+<p>"Stow it, Toupee," said Theodore, and caught
+the hold-all in time.</p>
+
+<p>In another moment Marjorie was out of the
+train, had done the swift kissing proper to the occasion,
+and rolled a hand over Toupee's head&mdash;Toupee,
+who, after a passionate lunge at a particularly
+savoury drover from the next compartment, was now
+frantically trying to indicate that Marjorie was the
+one human being he had ever cared for. Brother and sister
+were both sketching out the state of affairs
+at Buryhamstreet Vicarage in rapid competitive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">-14-</a></span>
+jerks, each eager to tell things first&mdash;and the whole
+party moved confusedly towards the station exit.
+Things pelted into Marjorie's mind.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got an old donkey-cart. I thought we
+shouldn't get here&mdash;ever.... Madge, we can go
+up the church tower whenever we like, only old Daffy
+won't let me shin up the flagstaff. It's <i>perfectly</i>
+safe&mdash;you couldn't fall off if you tried.... Had
+positively to get out at the level crossing and <i>pull</i>
+him over.... There's a sort of moat in the garden....
+You never saw such furniture, Madge!
+And the study! It's hung with texts, and stuffed
+with books about the Scarlet Woman.... Piano's
+rather good, it's a Broadwood.... The Dad's
+got a war on about the tennis net. Oh, frightful!
+You'll see. It won't keep up. He's had a letter
+kept waiting by the <i>Times</i> for a fortnight, and it's a
+terror at breakfast. Says the motor people have
+used influence to silence him. Says that's a game two
+can play at.... Old Sid got herself upset stuffing
+windfalls. Rather a sell for old Sid, considering
+how refined she's getting...."</p>
+
+<p>There was a brief lull as the party got into the
+waiting governess cart. Toupee, after a preliminary
+refusal to enter, made a determined attempt on the
+best seat, from which he would be able to bark in a
+persistent, official manner at anything that passed.
+That suppressed, and Theodore's proposal to drive
+refused, they were able to start, and attention was
+concentrated upon Daffy's negotiation of the station
+approach. Marjorie turned on her brother with a
+smile of warm affection.</p>
+
+<p>"How are you, old Theodore?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm all right, old Madge."</p>
+
+<p>"Mummy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Every one's all right," said Theodore; "if it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">-15-</a></span>
+wasn't for that damned infernal net&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ssssh!" cried both sisters together.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>He</i> says it," said Theodore.</p>
+
+<p>Both sisters conveyed a grave and relentless disapproval.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty bit of road," said Marjorie. "I like
+that little house at the corner."</p>
+
+<p>A pause and the eyes of the sisters met.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>He's</i> here," said Daffy.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie affected ignorance.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's here?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Il vostro senior Miraculoso</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"Just as though a fellow couldn't understand
+your kiddy little Italian," said Theodore, pulling
+Toupee's ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well, I thought he might be," said Marjorie,
+regardless of her brother.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Daffy. "I didn't know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Both sisters looked at each other, and then both
+glanced at Theodore. He met Marjorie's eyes with
+a grimace of profound solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>"Little brothers," he said, "shouldn't know.
+Just as though they didn't! Rot! But let's change
+the subject, my dears, all the same. Lemme see.
+There are a new sort of flea on Toupee, Madge, that
+he gets from the hens."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Is</i> a new sort," corrected Daffy. "He's horrider
+than ever, Madge. He leaves his soap in soak
+now to make us think he has used it. This is the
+village High Street. Isn't it jolly?"</p>
+
+<p>"Corners don't <i>bite</i> people," said Theodore, with
+a critical eye to the driving.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie surveyed the High Street, while Daffy
+devoted a few moments to Theodore.</p>
+
+<p>The particular success of the village was its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">-16-</a></span>
+brace of chestnut trees which, with that noble disregard
+of triteness which is one of the charms of villages
+the whole world over, shadowed the village
+smithy. On either side of the roadway between it
+and the paths was a careless width of vivid grass
+protected by white posts, which gave way to admit a
+generous access on either hand to a jolly public
+house, leering over red blinds, and swinging a painted
+sign against its competitor. Several of the cottages
+had real thatch and most had porches; they had
+creepers nailed to their faces, and their gardens,
+crowded now with flowers, marigolds, begonias, snapdragon,
+delphiniums, white foxgloves, and monkshood,
+seemed almost too good to be true. The
+doctor's house was pleasantly Georgian, and the
+village shop, which was also a post and telegraph
+office, lay back with a slight air of repletion, keeping
+its bulging double shop-windows wide open in a manifest
+attempt not to fall asleep. Two score of shock-headed
+boys and pinafored girls were drilling upon a
+bald space of ground before the village school, and
+near by, the national emotion at the ever-memorable
+Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria had evoked an
+artistic drinking-fountain of grey stone. Beyond
+the subsequent green&mdash;there were the correctest geese
+thereon&mdash;the village narrowed almost to a normal
+road again, and then, recalling itself with a start,
+lifted a little to the churchyard wall about the grey
+and ample church. "It's just like all the villages
+that ever were," said Marjorie, and gave a cry of
+delight when Daffy, pointing to the white gate between
+two elm trees that led to the vicarage, remarked:
+"That's us."</p>
+
+<p>In confirmation of which statement, Sydney and
+Rom, the two sisters next in succession to Marjorie,
+and with a strong tendency to be twins in spite of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">-17-</a></span>
+year between them, appeared in a state of vociferous
+incivility opening the way for the donkey-carriage.
+Sydney was Sydney, and Rom was just short for
+Romola&mdash;one of her mother's favourite heroines in
+fiction.</p>
+
+<p>"Old Madge," they said; and then throwing
+respect to the winds, "Old Gargoo!" which was Marjorie's
+forbidden nickname, and short for gargoyle
+(though surely only Victorian Gothic, ever produced
+a gargoyle that had the remotest right to be associated
+with the neat brightness of Marjorie's face).</p>
+
+<p>She overlooked the offence, and the pseudo-twins
+boarded the cart from behind, whereupon the already
+overburthened donkey, being old and in a manner
+wise, quickened his pace for the house to get the
+whole thing over.</p>
+
+<p>"It's really an avenue," said Daffy; but Marjorie,
+with her mind strung up to the Carmel standards,
+couldn't agree. It was like calling a row of
+boy-scouts Potsdam grenadiers. The trees were at
+irregular distances, of various ages, and mostly on
+one side. Still it was a shady, pleasant approach.</p>
+
+<p>And the vicarage was truly very interesting and
+amusing. To these Londoners accustomed to live in
+a state of compression, elbows practically touching,
+in a tall, narrow fore-and-aft stucco house, all window
+and staircase, in a despondent Brompton square,
+there was an effect of maundering freedom about the
+place, of enlargement almost to the pitch of adventure
+and sunlight to the pitch of intoxication. The
+house itself was long and low, as if a London house
+holidaying in the country had flung itself asprawl; it
+had two disconnected and roomy staircases, and when
+it had exhausted itself completely as a house, it
+turned to the right and began again as rambling,
+empty stables, coach house, cart sheds, men's bedrooms
+up ladders, and outhouses of the most various
+kinds.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">-18-</a></span>
+On one hand was a neglected orchard, in the
+front of the house was a bald, worried-looking lawn
+area capable of simultaneous tennis and croquet, and
+at the other side a copious and confused vegetable
+and flower garden full of roses, honesty, hollyhocks,
+and suchlike herbaceous biennials and perennials,
+lapsed at last into shrubbery, where a sickle-shaped,
+weedy lagoon of uncertain aims, which had evidently,
+as a rustic bridge and a weeping willow confessed,
+aspired to be an "ornamental water," declined at
+last to ducks. And there was access to the church,
+and the key of the church tower, and one went across
+the corner of the lawn, and by a little iron gate into
+the churchyard to decipher inscriptions, as if the
+tombs of all Buryhamstreet were no more than a part
+of the accommodation relinquished by the vicar's
+household.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie was hurried over the chief points of all
+this at a breakneck pace by Sydney and Rom, and
+when Sydney was called away to the horrors of practice&mdash;for
+Sydney in spite of considerable reluctance
+was destined by her father to be "the musical one"&mdash;Rom
+developed a copious affection, due apparently
+to some occult ćsthetic influence in Marjorie's silvery-grey
+and green, and led her into the unlocked
+vestry, and there prayed in a whisper that she might
+be given "one good hug, just <i>one</i>"&mdash;and so they
+came out with their arms about each other very
+affectionately to visit the lagoon again. And then
+Rom remembered that Marjorie hadn't seen either
+the walnut-tree in the orchard, or the hen with nine
+chicks....</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere among all these interests came tea and
+Mrs. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope kissed her daughter with an air of
+having really wanted to kiss her half an hour ago,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">-19-</a></span>
+but of having been distracted since. She was a fine-featured,
+anxious-looking little woman, with a close
+resemblance to all her children, in spite of the fact
+that they were markedly dissimilar one to the other,
+except only that they took their ruddy colourings
+from their father. She was dressed in a neat blue
+dress that had perhaps been hurriedly chosen, and
+her method of doing her hair was a manifest compromise
+between duty and pleasure. She embarked
+at once upon an exposition of the bedroom arrangements,
+which evidently involved difficult issues. Marjorie
+was to share a room with Daffy&mdash;that was the
+gist of it&mdash;as the only other available apartment,
+originally promised to Marjorie, had been secured
+by Mr. Pope for what he called his "matutinal ablutions,
+<i>videlicet</i> tub."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, when your Aunt Plessington comes, you
+won't have to move," said Mrs. Pope with an air of
+a special concession. "Your father's looking forward
+to seeing you, but he mustn't be disturbed just
+yet. He's in the vicar's study. He's had his tea
+in there. He's writing a letter to the <i>Times</i> answering
+something they said in a leader, and also a
+private note calling attention to their delay in printing
+his previous communication, and he wants to be
+delicately ironical without being in any way offensive.
+He wants to hint without actually threatening
+that very probably he will go over to the <i>Spectator</i>
+altogether if they do not become more attentive.
+The <i>Times</i> used to print his letters punctually, but
+latterly these automobile people seem to have got
+hold of it.... He has the window on the lawn
+open, so that I think, perhaps, we'd better not stay
+out here&mdash;for fear our voices might disturb him."</p>
+
+<p>"Better get right round the other side of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">-20-</a></span>
+church," said Daffy.</p>
+
+<p>"He'd hear far less of us if we went indoors,"
+said Mrs. Pope.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 4</p>
+
+<p>The vicarage seemed tight packed with human
+interest for Marjorie and her mother and sisters.
+Going over houses is one of the amusements proper to
+her sex, and she and all three sisters and her mother,
+as soon as they had finished an inaudible tea, went to
+see the bedroom she was to share with Daffy, and then
+examined, carefully and in order, the furniture and
+decoration of the other bedrooms, went through the
+rooms downstairs, always excepting and avoiding
+very carefully and closing as many doors as possible
+on, and hushing their voices whenever they approached
+the study in which her father was being delicately
+ironical without being offensive to the <i>Times</i>. None
+of them had seen any of the vicarage people at all&mdash;Mr.
+Pope had come on a bicycle and managed all the
+negotiations&mdash;and it was curious to speculate about
+the individuals whose personalities pervaded the
+worn and faded furnishings of the place.</p>
+
+<p>The Popes' keen-eyed inspection came at times, I
+think, dangerously near prying. The ideals of decoration
+and interests of the vanished family were so
+absolutely dissimilar to the London standards as to
+arouse a sort of astonished wonder in their minds.
+Some of the things they decided were perfectly hideous,
+some quaint, some were simply and weakly silly.
+Everything was different from Hartstone Square.
+Daffy was perhaps more inclined to contempt, and
+Mrs. Pope to refined amusement and witty appreciation
+than Marjorie. Marjorie felt there was something
+in these people that she didn't begin to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">-21-</a></span>
+understand, she needed some missing clue that would
+unlock the secret of their confused peculiarity. She
+was one of those people who have an almost instinctive
+turn for decoration in costume and furniture;
+she had already had a taste of how to do things in
+arranging her rooms at Bennett College, Oxbridge,
+where also she was in great demand among the richer
+girls as an adviser. She knew what it was to try
+and fail as well as to try and succeed, and these
+people, she felt, hadn't tried for anything she comprehended.
+She couldn't quite see why it was that
+there was at the same time an attempt at ornament
+and a disregard of beauty, she couldn't quite do as
+her mother did and dismiss it as an absurdity and
+have done with it. She couldn't understand, too,
+why everything should be as if it were faded and
+weakened from something originally bright and clear.</p>
+
+<p>All the rooms were thick with queer little objects
+that indicated a quite beaver-like industry in the production
+of "work." There were embroidered covers
+for nearly every article on the wash-hand-stand, and
+mats of wool and crochet wherever anything stood on
+anything; there were "tidies" everywhere, and odd
+little brackets covered with gilded and varnished fir
+cones and bearing framed photographs and little jars
+and all sorts of colourless, dusty little objects, and
+everywhere on the walls tacks sustained crossed fans
+with badly painted flowers or transfer pictures.
+There was a jar on the bedroom mantel covered with
+varnished postage stamps and containing grey-haired
+dried grasses. There seemed to be a moral element
+in all this, for in the room Sydney shared with
+Rom there was a decorative piece of lettering which
+declared that&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Something attempted, something done,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Has earned a night's repose."<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">-22-</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>There were a great number of texts that set Marjorie's
+mind stirring dimly with intimations of a
+missed significance. Over her own bed, within the
+lattice of an Oxford frame, was the photograph of a
+picture of an extremely composed young woman in a
+trailing robe, clinging to the Rock of Ages in the
+midst of histrionically aggressive waves, and she had
+a feeling, rather than a thought, that perhaps for
+all the oddity of the presentation it did convey something
+acutely desirable, that she herself had had
+moods when she would have found something very
+comforting in just such an impassioned grip. And
+on a framed, floriferous card, these incomprehensible
+words:</p>
+
+<div class="centerbox bbox">
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Thy Grace is Sufficient for Me.</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>seemed to be saying something to her tantalizingly
+just outside her range of apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>Did all these things light up somehow to those
+dispossessed people&mdash;from some angle she didn't
+attain? Were they living and moving realities when
+those others were at home again?</p>
+
+<p>The drawing-room had no texts; it was altogether
+more pretentious and less haunted by the faint and
+faded flavour of religion that pervaded the bedrooms.
+It had, however, evidences of travel in Switzerland
+and the Mediterranean. There was a piano in black
+and gold, a little out of tune, and surmounted by a
+Benares brass jar, enveloping a scarlet geranium in
+a pot. There was a Japanese screen of gold wrought
+upon black, that screened nothing. There was a
+framed chromo-lithograph of Jerusalem hot in the
+sunset, and another of Jerusalem cold under a sub-tropical<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">-23-</a></span>
+moon, and there were gourds, roses of Jericho,
+sandalwood rosaries and kindred trash from
+the Holy Land in no little profusion upon a what-not.
+Such books as the room had contained had been arranged
+as symmetrically as possible about a large,
+pink-shaded lamp upon the claret-coloured cloth of
+a round table, and were to be replaced, Mrs. Pope
+said, at their departure. At present they were piled
+on a side-table. The girls had been through them
+all, and were ready with the choicer morsels for Marjorie's
+amusement. There was "Black Beauty," the
+sympathetic story of a soundly Anglican horse, and
+a large Bible extra-illustrated with photographs of
+every well-known scriptural picture from Michael
+Angelo to Doré, and a book of injunctions to young
+ladies upon their behaviour and deportment that
+Rom and Sydney found particularly entertaining.
+Marjorie discovered that Sydney had picked up a
+new favourite phrase. "I'm afraid we're all dreadfully
+cynical," said Sydney, several times.</p>
+
+<p>A more advanced note was struck by a copy of
+"Aurora Leigh," richly underlined in pencil, but
+with exclamation marks at some of the bolder passages....</p>
+
+<p>And presently, still avoiding the open study window
+very elaborately, this little group of twentieth
+century people went again into the church&mdash;the
+church whose foundations were laid in <span class="smcap">A.D.</span> 912&mdash;foundations
+of rubble and cement that included flat
+Roman bricks from a still remoter basilica. Their
+voices dropped instinctively, as they came into its
+shaded quiet from the exterior sunshine. Marjorie
+went a little apart and sat in a pew that gave her a
+glimpse of the one good stained-glass window. Rom
+followed her, and perceiving her mood to be restful,
+sat a yard away. Syd began a whispered dispute<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">-24-</a></span>
+with her mother whether it wasn't possible to try
+the organ, and whether Theodore might not be bribed
+to blow. Daffy discovered relics of a lepers' squint
+and a holy-water stoup, and then went to scrutinize
+the lettering of the ten commandments of the Mosaic
+law that shone black and red on gold on either side
+of the I.H.S. monogram behind the white-clothed
+communion table that had once been the altar. Upon
+a notice board hung about the waist of the portly
+pulpit were the numbers of hymns that had been
+sung three days ago. The sound Protestantism of
+the vicar had banished superfluous crosses from the
+building; the Bible reposed upon the wings of a great
+brass eagle; shining blue and crimson in the window,
+Saint Christopher carried his Lord. What a harmonized
+synthesis of conflicts a country church presents!
+What invisible mysteries of filiation spread
+between these ancient ornaments and symbols and
+the new young minds from the whirlpool of the town
+that looked upon them now with such bright, keen
+eyes, wondering a little, feeling a little, missing so
+much?</p>
+
+<p>It was all so very cool and quiet now&mdash;with something
+of the immobile serenity of death.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 5</p>
+
+<p>When Mr. Pope had finished his letter to the
+<i>Times</i>, he got out of the window of the study, treading
+on a flower-bed as he did so&mdash;he was the sort of
+man who treads on flower-beds&mdash;partly with the purpose
+of reading his composition aloud to as many
+members of his family as he could assemble for the
+purpose, and so giving them a chance of appreciating
+the nuances of his irony more fully than if they
+saw it just in cold print without the advantage of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">-25-</a></span>
+intonation, and partly with the belated idea of welcoming
+Marjorie. The law presented a rather discouraging
+desolation. Then he became aware that
+the church tower frothed with his daughters. In
+view of his need of an audience, he decided after a
+brief doubt that their presence there was unobjectionable,
+and waved his MS. amiably. Marjorie
+flapped a handkerchief in reply....</p>
+
+<p>The subsequent hour was just the sort of hour
+that gave Mr. Pope an almost meteorological importance
+to his family. He began with an amiability
+that had no fault, except, perhaps, that it was a
+little forced after the epistolary strain in the study,
+and his welcome to Marjorie was more than cordial.
+"Well, little Madge-cat!" he said, giving her an
+affectionate but sound and heavy thump on the left
+shoulder-blade, "got a kiss for the old daddy?"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie submitted a cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," said Mr. Pope; "and now I just
+want you all to advise me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He led the way to a group of wicker garden
+chairs. "You're coming, mummy?" he said, and
+seated himself comfortably and drew out a spectacle
+case, while his family grouped itself dutifully. It
+made a charming little picture of a Man and his
+Womankind. "I don't often flatter myself," he said,
+"but this time I think I've been neat&mdash;neat's the
+word for it."</p>
+
+<p>He cleared his throat, put on his spectacles, and
+emitted a long, flat preliminary note, rather like the
+sound of a child's trumpet. "Er&mdash;'Dear Sir!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Rom," said Mrs. Pope, "don't creak your
+chair."</p>
+
+<p>"It's Daffy, mother," said Rom.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>Rom!</i>" said Daffy.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope paused, and looked with a warning eye<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">-26-</a></span>
+over his left spectacle-glass at Rom.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't creak your chair, Rom," he said, "when
+your mother tells you."</p>
+
+<p>"I was <i>not</i> creaking my chair," said Rom.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard it," said Mr. Pope, suavely.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Daffy."</p>
+
+<p>"Your mother does not think so," said Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, all right! I'll sit on the ground," said Rom,
+crimson to the roots of her hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Me too," said Daffy. "I'd rather."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope watched the transfer gravely. Then he
+readjusted his glasses, cleared his throat again,
+trumpeted, and began. "Er&mdash;'Dear Sir,'"</p>
+
+<p>"Oughtn't it to be simply 'Sir,' father, for an
+editor?" said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I didn't explain, Marjorie," said her
+father, with the calm of great self-restraint, and
+dabbing his left hand on the manuscript in his right,
+"that this is a <i>private</i> letter&mdash;a private letter."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't understand," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been evident as I went on," said
+Mr. Pope, and prepared to read again.</p>
+
+<p>This time he was allowed to proceed, but the interruptions
+had ruffled him, and the gentle stresses that
+should have lifted the subtleties of his irony into prominence
+missed the words, and he had to go back and
+do his sentences again. Then Rom suddenly, horribly,
+uncontrollably, was seized with hiccups. At the
+second hiccup Mr. Pope paused, and looked very
+hard at his daughter with magnified eyes; as he was
+about to resume, the third burst its way through the
+unhappy child's utmost effort.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope rose with an awful resignation. "That's
+enough," he said. He regarded the pseudo-twin vindictively.
+"You haven't the self-control of a child<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">-27-</a></span>
+of six," he said. Then very touchingly to Mrs.
+Pope: "Mummy, shall we try a game of tennis with
+the New Generation?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you read it after supper?" asked Mrs.
+Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"It must go by the eight o'clock post," said Mr.
+Pope, putting the masterpiece into his breast pocket,
+the little masterpiece that would now perhaps never
+be read aloud to any human being. "Daffy, dear, do
+you mind going in for the racquets and balls?"</p>
+
+<p>The social atmosphere was now sultry, and overcast,
+and Mr. Pope's decision to spend the interval
+before Daffy returned in seeing whether he couldn't
+do something to the net, which was certainly very unsatisfactory,
+did not improve matters. Then, unhappily,
+Marjorie, who had got rather keen upon
+tennis at the Carmels', claimed her father's first two
+services as faults, contrary to the etiquette of the
+family. It happened that Mr. Pope had a really
+very good, hard, difficult, smart-looking serve, whose
+only defect was that it always went either too far
+or else into the net, and so a feeling had been fostered
+and established by his wife that, on the whole, it was
+advisable to regard the former variety as a legitimate
+extension of a father's authority. Naturally,
+therefore, Mr. Pope was nettled at Marjorie's ruling,
+and his irritation increased when his next two services
+to Daffy perished in the net. ("Damn that net!
+Puts one's eye out.") Then Marjorie gave him an
+unexpected soft return which he somehow muffed,
+and then Daffy just dropped a return over the top
+of the net. (Love-game.) It was then Marjorie's
+turn to serve, which she did with a new twist acquired
+from the eldest Carmel boy that struck Mr. Pope as
+un-English. "Go on," he said concisely. "Fifteen
+love."</p>
+
+<p>She was gentle with her mother and they got their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">-28-</a></span>
+first rally, and when it was over Mr. Pope had to
+explain to Marjorie that if she returned right up into
+his corner of the court he would have to run backwards
+very fast and might fall over down the silly
+slope at that end. She would have to consider him
+and the court. One didn't get everything out of a
+game by playing merely to win. She said "All right,
+Daddy," rather off-handedly, and immediately served
+to him again, and he, taken a little unawares, hit the
+ball with the edge of his racquet and sent it out, and
+then he changed racquets with Daffy&mdash;it seemed he
+had known all along she had taken his, but he had
+preferred to say nothing&mdash;uttered a word of advice
+to his wife just on her stroke, and she, failing to
+grasp his intention as quickly as she ought to have
+done, left the score forty-fifteen. He felt better
+when he returned Marjorie's serve, and then before
+she could control herself she repeated her new unpleasant
+trick of playing into the corner again,
+whereupon, leaping back with an agility that would
+have shamed many a younger man, Mr. Pope came
+upon disaster. He went spinning down the treacherous
+slope behind, twisted his ankle painfully and collapsed
+against the iron railings of the shrubbery. It
+was too much, and he lost control of himself. His
+daughters had one instant's glimpse of the linguistic
+possibilities of a strong man's agony. "I told her,"
+he went on as if he had said nothing. "<i>Tennis!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>For a second perhaps he seemed to hesitate upon
+a course of action. Then as if by a great effort he
+took his coat from the net post and addressed himself
+houseward, incarnate Grand Dudgeon&mdash;limping.</p>
+
+<p>"Had enough of it, Mummy," he said, and added
+some happily inaudible comment on Marjorie's new
+style of play.</p>
+
+<p>The evening's exercise was at an end.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">-29-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The three ladies regarded one another in silence
+for some moments.</p>
+
+<p>"I will take in the racquets, dear," said Mrs.
+Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"I think the other ball is at your end," said
+Daffy....</p>
+
+<p>The apparatus put away, Marjorie and her sister
+strolled thoughtfully away from the house.</p>
+
+<p>"There's croquet here too," said Daffy. "We've
+not had the things out yet!"....</p>
+
+<p>"He'll play, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"He wants to play."...</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Marjorie after a long pause,
+"there's no <i>reasoning</i> with Dad!"</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 6</p>
+
+<p>Character is one of England's noblest and most
+deliberate products, but some Englishmen have it to
+excess. Mr. Pope had.</p>
+
+<p>He was one of that large and representative class
+which imparts a dignity to national commerce by
+inheriting big businesses from its ancestors. He
+was a coach-builder by birth, and a gentleman by
+education and training. He had been to City Merchant's
+and Cambridge.</p>
+
+<p>Throughout the earlier half of the nineteenth
+century the Popes had been the princes of the coach-building
+world. Mr. Pope's great-grandfather had
+been a North London wheelwright of conspicuous
+dexterity and integrity, who had founded the family
+business; his son, Mr. Pope's grandfather, had made
+that business the occupation of his life and brought
+it to the pinnacle of pre-eminence; his son, who was
+Marjorie's grandfather, had displayed a lesser enthusiasm,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">-30-</a></span>
+left the house at the works for a home ten
+miles away and sent a second son into the Church.
+It was in the days of the third Pope that the business
+ceased to expand, and began to suffer severely from
+the competition of an enterprising person who had
+originally supplied the firm with varnish, gradually
+picked up the trade in most other materials and
+accessories needed in coach-building, and passed on
+by almost imperceptible stages to delivering the article
+complete&mdash;dispensing at last altogether with
+the intervention of Pope and Son&mdash;to the customer.
+Marjorie's father had succeeded in the fulness of
+time to the inheritance this insurgent had damaged.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope was a man of firm and resentful temper,
+with an admiration for Cato, Brutus, Cincinnatus,
+Cromwell, Washington, and the sterner heroes generally,
+and by nature a little ill-used and offended at
+things. He suffered from indigestion and extreme
+irritability. He found himself in control of a business
+where more flexible virtues were needed. The
+Popes based their fame on a heavy, proud type of
+vehicle, which the increasing luxury and triviality of
+the age tended to replace by lighter forms of carriage,
+carriages with diminutive and apologetic
+names. As these lighter forms were not only lighter
+but less expensive, Mr. Pope with a pathetic confidence
+in the loyalty of the better class of West End
+customer, determined to "make a stand" against
+them. He was the sort of man to whom making a
+stand is in itself a sombre joy. If he had had to
+choose his pose for a portrait, he would certainly have
+decided to have one foot advanced, the other planted
+like a British oak behind, the arms folded and the
+brows corrugated,&mdash;making a stand.</p>
+
+<p>Unhappily the stars in their courses and the general
+improvement of roads throughout the country<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">-31-</a></span>
+fought against him. The lighter carriages, and especially
+the lighter carriages of that varnish-selling
+firm, which was now absorbing businesses right and
+left, prevailed over Mr. Pope's resistance. For
+crossing a mountain pass or fording a river, for
+driving over the scene of a recent earthquake or following
+a retreating army, for being run away with
+by frantic horses or crushing a personal enemy,
+there can be no doubt the Pope carriages remained
+to the very last the best possible ones and fully worth
+the inflexible price demanded. Unhappily all carriages
+in a civilization essentially decadent are not
+subjected to these tests, and the manufactures of his
+rivals were not only much cheaper, but had a sort of
+meretricious smartness, a disingenuous elasticity,
+above all a levity, hateful indeed to the spirit of Mr.
+Pope yet attractive to the wanton customer. Business
+dwindled. Nevertheless the habitual element in
+the good class customer did keep things going, albeit
+on a shrinking scale, until Mr. Pope came to the unfortunate
+decision that he would make a stand against
+automobiles. He regarded them as an intrusive
+nuisance which had to be seen only to be disowned by
+the landed gentry of England. Rather than build a
+car he said he would go out of business. He went out
+of business. Within five years of this determination
+he sold out the name, good will, and other vestiges of
+his concern to a mysterious buyer who turned out to
+be no more than an agent for these persistently expanding
+varnish makers, and he retired with a genuine
+grievance upon the family accumulations&mdash;chiefly
+in Consols and Home Railways.</p>
+
+<p>He refused however to regard his defeat as final,
+put great faith in the approaching exhaustion of the
+petrol supply, and talked in a manner that should
+have made the Automobile Association uneasy, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">-32-</a></span>
+devoting the rest of his days to the purification of
+England from these aggressive mechanisms. "It
+was a mistake," he said, "to let them in." He became
+more frequent at his excellent West End club, and
+directed a certain portion of his capital to largely
+indecisive but on the whole unprofitable speculations
+in South African and South American enterprises.
+He mingled a little in affairs. He was a tough conventional
+speaker, rich in established phrases and
+never abashed by hearing himself say commonplace
+things, and in addition to his campaign against automobiles
+he found time to engage also in quasi-political
+activities, taking chairs, saying a few words and
+so on, cherishing a fluctuating hope that his eloquence
+might ultimately win him an invitation to contest a
+constituency in the interests of reaction and the
+sounder elements in the Liberal party.</p>
+
+<p>He had a public-spirited side, and he was particularly
+attracted by that mass of modern legislative
+proposals which aims at a more systematic control of
+the lives of lower class persons for their own good by
+their betters. Indeed, in the first enthusiasm of his
+proprietorship of the Pope works at East Purblow,
+he had organized one of those benevolent industrial
+experiments that are now so common. He felt
+strongly against the drink evil, that is to say, the
+unrestricted liberty of common people to drink what
+they prefer, and he was acutely impressed by the
+fact that working-class families do not spend their
+money in the way that seems most desirable to upper
+middle-class critics. Accordingly he did his best to
+replace the dangerous freedoms of money by that
+ideal of the social reformer, Payment in Kind. To
+use his invariable phrase, the East Purblow experiment
+did "no mean service" to the cause of social
+reform. Unhappily it came to an end through a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">-33-</a></span>
+prosecution under the Truck Act, that blot upon the
+Statute Book, designed, it would appear, even deliberately
+to vitiate man's benevolent control of his
+fellow man. The lessons to be drawn from that
+experience, however, grew if anything with the years.
+He rarely spoke without an allusion to it, and it was
+quite remarkable how readily it could be adapted to
+illuminate a hundred different issues in the hospitable
+columns of the <i>Spectator</i>....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 7</p>
+
+<p>At seven o'clock Marjorie found herself upstairs
+changing into her apple-green frock. She had had a
+good refreshing wash in cold soft water, and it was
+pleasant to change into thinner silk stockings and
+dainty satin slippers and let down and at last brush
+her hair and dress loiteringly after the fatigues of her
+journey and the activities of her arrival. She
+looked out on the big church and the big trees behind
+it against the golden quiet of a summer evening with
+extreme approval.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose those birds are rooks," she said.</p>
+
+<p>But Daffy had gone to see that the pseudo-twins
+had done themselves justice in their muslin frocks and
+pink sashes; they were apt to be a little sketchy with
+their less accessible buttons.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie became aware of two gentlemen with
+her mother on the lawn below.</p>
+
+<p>One was her almost affianced lover, Will Magnet,
+the humorous writer. She had been doing her best
+not to think about him all day, but now he became an
+unavoidable central fact. She regarded him with an
+almost perplexed scrutiny, and wondered vividly why
+she had been so excited and pleased by his attentions
+during the previous summer.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Magnet was one of those quiet, deliberately<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">-34-</a></span>
+unassuming people who do not even attempt to be
+beautiful. Not for him was it to pretend, but to
+prick the bladder of pretence. He was a fairish man
+of forty, pale, with a large protuberant, observant
+grey eye&mdash;I speak particularly of the left&mdash;and a
+face of quiet animation warily alert for the wit's opportunity.
+His nose and chin were pointed, and his
+lips thin and quaintly pressed together. He was
+dressed in grey, with a low-collared silken shirt showing
+a thin neck, and a flowing black tie, and he carried
+a grey felt hat in his joined hands behind his
+back. She could hear the insinuating cadences of his
+voice as he talked in her mother's ear. The other
+gentleman, silent on her mother's right, must, she
+knew, be Mr. Wintersloan, whom Mr. Magnet had
+proposed to bring over. His dress betrayed that
+modest gaiety of disposition becoming in an artist,
+and indeed he was one of Mr. Magnet's favourite
+illustrators. He was in a dark bluish-grey suit; a
+black tie that was quite unusually broad went twice
+around his neck before succumbing to the bow, and
+his waistcoat appeared to be of some gaily-patterned
+orange silk. Marjorie's eyes returned to Mr. Magnet.
+Hitherto she had never had an opportunity of
+remarking that his hair was more than a little attenuated
+towards the crown. It was funny how his tie
+came out under his chin to the right.</p>
+
+<p>What an odd thing men's dress had become, she
+thought. Why did they wear those ridiculous collars
+and ties? Why didn't they always dress in flannels
+and look as fine and slender and active as the elder
+Carmel boy for example? Mr. Magnet couldn't be
+such an ill-shaped man. Why didn't every one dress
+to be just as beautiful and splendid as possible?&mdash;instead
+of wearing queer things!</p>
+
+<p>"Coming down?" said Daffy, a vision of sulphur-yellow,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">-35-</a></span>
+appearing in the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"Let <i>them</i> go first," said Marjorie, with a finer
+sense of effect. "And Theodore. We don't want to
+make part of a comic entry with Theodore, Daffy."</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, the two sisters watched discreetly&mdash;they
+had to be wary on account of Mr. Magnet's
+increasingly frequent glances at the windows&mdash;and
+when at last all the rest of the family had appeared
+below, they decided their cue had come. Mr. Pope
+strolled into the group, with no trace of his recent
+debacle except a slight limp. He was wearing a
+jacket of damson-coloured velvet, which he affected
+in the country, and all traces of his Grand Dudgeon
+were gone. But then he rarely had Grand Dudgeon
+except in the sanctities of family life, and hardly ever
+when any other man was about.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," his daughters heard him say, with a
+witty allusiveness that was difficult to follow, "so
+the Magnet has come to the Mountain again&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come on, Madge," said Daffy, and the two sisters
+emerged harmoniously together from the house.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been manifest to a meaner capacity
+than any present that evening that Mr. Magnet regarded
+Marjorie with a distinguished significance.
+He had two eyes, but he had that mysterious quality
+so frequently associated with a bluish-grey iris which
+gives the effect of looking hard with one large orb, a
+sort of grey searchlight effect, and he used this eye
+ray now to convey a respectful but firm admiration
+in the most unequivocal manner. He saluted Daffy
+courteously, and then allowed himself to retain Marjorie's
+hand for just a second longer than was necessary
+as he said&mdash;very simply&mdash;"I am very pleased
+indeed to meet you again&mdash;very."</p>
+
+<p>A slight embarrassment fell between them.</p>
+
+<p>"You are staying near here, Mr. Magnet?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">-36-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"At the inn," said Mr. Magnet, and then, "I
+chose it because it would be near you."</p>
+
+<p>His eye pressed upon her again for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it comfortable?" said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"So charmingly simple," said Mr. Magnet. "I
+love it."</p>
+
+<p>A tinkling bell announced the preparedness of
+supper, and roused the others to the consciousness
+that they were silently watching Mr. Magnet and
+Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"It's quite a simple farmhouse supper," said
+Mrs. Pope.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 8</p>
+
+<p>There were ducks, green peas, and adolescent new
+potatoes for supper, and afterwards stewed fruit
+and cream and junket and cheese, bottled beer, Gilbey's
+Burgundy, and home-made lemonade. Mrs.
+Pope carved, because Mr. Pope splashed too much,
+and bones upset him and made him want to show up
+chicken in the <i>Times</i>. So he sat at the other end
+and rallied his guests while Mrs. Pope distributed the
+viands. He showed not a trace of his recent umbrage.
+Theodore sat between Daffy and his mother
+because of his table manners, and Marjorie was on
+her father's right hand and next to Mr. Wintersloan,
+while Mr. Magnet was in the middle of the table on
+the opposite side in a position convenient for looking
+at her. Both maids waited.</p>
+
+<p>The presence of Magnet invariably stirred the
+latent humorist in Mr. Pope. He felt that he who
+talks to humorists should himself be humorous, and it
+was his private persuasion that with more attention
+he might have been, to use a favourite form of expression,
+"no mean jester." Quite a lot of little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">-37-</a></span>
+things of his were cherished as "Good" both by
+himself and, with occasional inaccuracies, by Mrs.
+Pope. He opened out now in a strain of rich allusiveness.</p>
+
+<p>"What will you drink, Mr. Wintersloan?" he
+said. "Wine of the country, yclept beer, red wine
+from France, or my wife's potent brew from the golden
+lemon?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wintersloan thought he would take Burgundy.
+Mr. Magnet preferred beer.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I've heard there's iron in the Beer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I believe it,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>misquoted Mr. Pope, and nodded as it were to the
+marker to score. "Daffy and Marjorie are still in
+the lemonade stage. Will you take a little Burgundy
+to-night, Mummy?"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope decided she would, and was inspired to
+ask Mr. Wintersloan if he had been in that part of
+the country before. Topography ensued. Mr. Wintersloan
+had a style of his own, and spoke of the
+Buryhamstreet district as a "pooty little country&mdash;pooty
+little hills, with a swirl in them."</p>
+
+<p>This pleased Daffy and Marjorie, and their eyes
+met for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Magnet, with a ray full on Marjorie,
+said he had always been fond of Surrey. "I think
+if ever I made a home in the country I should like it
+to be here."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wintersloan said Surrey would tire him, it
+was too bossy and curly, too flocculent; he would
+prefer to look on broader, simpler lines, with just a
+sudden catch in the breath in them&mdash;if you understand
+me?</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie did, and said so.</p>
+
+<p>"A sob&mdash;such as you get at the break of a pinewood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">-38-</a></span>
+on a hill."</p>
+
+<p>This baffled Mr. Pope, but Marjorie took it. "Or
+the short dry cough of a cliff," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," said Mr. Wintersloan, and having
+turned a little deliberate close-lipped smile on her for
+a moment, resumed his wing.</p>
+
+<p>"So long as a landscape doesn't <i>sneeze</i>" said
+Mr. Magnet, in that irresistible dry way of his, and
+Rom and Sydney, at any rate, choked.</p>
+
+<p>"Now is the hour when Landscapes yawn,"
+mused Mr. Pope, coming in all right at the end.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mrs. Pope asked Mr. Wintersloan, about
+his route to Buryhamstreet, and then Mr. Pope asked
+Mr. Magnet whether he was playing at a new work
+or working at a new play.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Magnet said he was dreaming over a play.
+He wanted to bring out the more serious side of his
+humour, go a little deeper into things than he had
+hitherto done.</p>
+
+<p>"Mingling smiles and tears," said Mr. Pope approvingly.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Magnet said very quietly that all true humour
+did that.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mrs. Pope asked what the play was to be
+about, and Mr. Magnet, who seemed disinclined to
+give an answer, turned the subject by saying he had
+to prepare an address on humour for the next dinner
+of the <i>Literati</i>. "It's to be a humourist's dinner,
+and they've made me the guest of the evening&mdash;by
+way of a joke to begin with," he said with that dry
+smile again.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope said he shouldn't say things like that.
+She then said "Syd!" quietly but sharply to Sydney,
+who was making a disdainful, squinting face at Theodore,
+and told the parlourmaid to clear the plates<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">-39-</a></span>
+for sweets. Mr. Magnet professed great horror of
+public speaking. He said that whenever he rose to
+make an after-dinner speech all the ices he had ever
+eaten seemed to come out of the past, and sit on his
+backbone.</p>
+
+<p>The talk centered for awhile on Mr. Magnet's
+address, and apropos of Tests of Humour Mr. Pope,
+who in his way was "no mean raconteur," related the
+story of the man who took the salad dressing with
+his hand, and when his host asked why he did that,
+replied: "Oh! I thought it was spinach!"</p>
+
+<p>"Many people," added Mr. Pope, "wouldn't see
+the point of that. And if they don't see the point
+they can't&mdash;and the more they try the less they do."</p>
+
+<p>All four girls hoped secretly and not too confidently
+that their laughter had not sounded hollow.</p>
+
+<p>And then for a time the men told stories as they
+came into their heads in an easy, irresponsible way.
+Mr. Magnet spoke of the humour of the omnibus-driver
+who always dangled and twiddled his badge
+"by way of a joke" when he passed the conductor
+whose father had been hanged, and Mr. Pope, perhaps,
+a little irrelevantly, told the story of the little
+boy who was asked his father's last words, and said
+"mother was with him to the end," which particularly
+amused Mrs. Pope. Mr. Wintersloan gave the story
+of the woman who was taking her son to the hospital
+with his head jammed into a saucepan, and explained
+to the other people in the omnibus: "You see,
+what makes it so annoying, it's me only saucepan!"
+Then they came back to the Sense of Humour with
+the dentist who shouted with laughter, and when asked
+the reason by his patient, choked out: "Wrong
+tooth!" and then Mr. Pope reminded them of the
+heartless husband who, suddenly informed that his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">-40-</a></span>
+mother-in-law was dead, exclaimed "Oh, don't make
+me laugh, please, I've got a split lip...."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 9</p>
+
+<p>The conversation assumed a less anecdotal quality
+with the removal to the drawing-room. On Mr.
+Magnet's initiative the gentlemen followed the ladies
+almost immediately, and it was Mr. Magnet who
+remembered that Marjorie could sing.</p>
+
+<p>Both the elder sisters indeed had sweet clear
+voices, and they had learnt a number of those jolly
+songs the English made before the dull Hanoverians
+came. Syd accompanied, and Rom sat back in the
+low chair in the corner and fell deeply in love with
+Mr. Wintersloan. The three musicians in their green
+and sulphur-yellow and white made a pretty group
+in the light of the shaded lamp against the black and
+gold Broadwood, the tawdry screen, its pattern thin
+glittering upon darkness, and the deep shadows behind.
+Marjorie loved singing, and forgot herself as
+she sang.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"I love, and he loves me again,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Yet dare I not tell who;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For if the nymphs should know my swain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I fear they'd love him too,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>she sang, and Mr. Magnet could not conceal the
+intensity of his admiration.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope had fallen into a pleasant musing;
+several other ripe old yarns, dear delicious old things,
+had come into his mind that he felt he might presently
+recall when this unavoidable display of accomplishments
+was overpast, and it was with one of them
+almost on his lips that he glanced across at his guest.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">-41-</a></span>
+He was surprised to see Mr. Magnet's face transfigured.
+He was sitting forward, looking up at Marjorie,
+and he had caught something of the expression
+of those blessed boys who froth at the feet of an
+Assumption. For an instant Mr. Pope did not
+understand.</p>
+
+<p>Then he understood. It was Marjorie! He had
+a twinge of surprise, and glanced at his own daughter
+as though he had never seen her before. He perceived
+in a flash for the first time that this troublesome,
+clever, disrespectful child was tall and shapely
+and sweet, and indeed quite a beautiful young
+woman. He forgot his anecdotes. His being was
+suffused with pride and responsibility and the sense
+of virtue rewarded. He did not reflect for a moment
+that Marjorie embodied in almost equal proportions
+the very best points in his mother and his mother-in-law,
+and avoided his own more salient characteristics
+with so neat a dexterity that from top to toe, except
+for the one matter of colour, not only did she not
+resemble him but she scarcely even alluded to him.
+He thought simply that she was his daughter, that
+she derived from him, that her beauty was his. She
+was the outcome of his meritorious preparations. He
+recalled all the moments when he had been kind and
+indulgent to her, all the bills he had paid for her; all
+the stresses and trials of the coach-building collapse,
+all the fluctuations of his speculative adventures,
+became things he had faced patiently and valiantly
+for her sake. He forgot the endless times when he
+had been viciously cross with her, all the times when
+he had pished and tushed and sworn in her hearing.
+He had on provocation and in spite of her mother's
+protests slapped her pretty vigorously, but such
+things are better forgotten; nor did he recall how
+bitterly he had opposed the college education which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">-42-</a></span>
+had made her now so clear in eye and thought, nor
+the frightful shindy, only three months since, about
+that identical green dress in which she now stood
+delightful. He forgot these petty details, as an
+idealist should. There she was, his daughter. An
+immense benevolence irradiated his soul&mdash;for Marjorie&mdash;for
+Magnet. His eyes were suffused with a
+not ignoble tenderness. The man, he knew, was
+worth at least thirty-five thousand pounds, a discussion
+of investments had made that clear, and he must
+be making at least five thousand a year! A beautiful
+girl, a worthy man! A good fellow, a sound good
+fellow, a careful fellow too&mdash;as these fellows went!</p>
+
+<p>Old Daddy would lose his treasure of course.</p>
+
+<p>Well, a father must learn resignation, and he for
+one would not stand in the way of his girl's happiness.
+A day would come when, very beautifully and
+tenderly, he would hand her over to Magnet, his
+favourite daughter to his trusted friend. "Well,
+my boy, there's no one in all the world&mdash;&mdash;" he
+would begin.</p>
+
+<p>It would be a touching parting. "Don't forget
+your old father, Maggots," he would say. At such a
+moment that quaint nickname would surely not be
+resented....</p>
+
+<p>He reflected how much he had always preferred
+Marjorie to Daffy. She was brighter&mdash;more like
+him. Daffy was unresponsive, with a touch of bitterness
+under her tongue....</p>
+
+<p>He was already dreaming he was a widower,
+rather infirm, the object of Magnet's and Marjorie's
+devoted care, when the song ceased, and the wife he
+had for the purpose of reveries just consigned so
+carelessly to the cemetery proposed that they should
+have a little game that every one could play at. A
+number of pencils and slips of paper appeared in her hands.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">-43-</a></span>
+She did not want the girls to exhaust their
+repertory on this first occasion&mdash;and besides, Mr.
+Pope liked games in which one did things with pencils
+and strips of paper. Mr. Magnet wished the
+singing to go on, he said, but he was overruled.</p>
+
+<p>So for a time every one played a little game in
+which Mr. Pope was particularly proficient. Indeed,
+it was rare that any one won but Mr. Pope. It was
+called "The Great Departed," and it had such considerable
+educational value that all the children had
+to play at it whenever he wished.</p>
+
+<p>It was played in this manner; one of the pseudo
+twins opened a book and dabbed a finger on the page,
+and read out the letter immediately at the tip of her
+finger, then all of them began to write as hard as they
+could, writing down the names of every great person
+they could think of, whose name began with that
+letter. At the end of five minutes Mr. Pope said
+Stop! and then began to read his list out, beginning
+with the first name. Everybody who had that name
+crossed it out and scored one, and after his list was
+exhausted all the surviving names on the next list were
+read over in the same way, and so on. The names
+had to be the names of dead celebrated people, only
+one monarch of the same name of the same dynasty
+was allowed, and Mr. Pope adjudicated on all doubtful
+cases. It was great fun.</p>
+
+<p>The first two games were won as usual by Mr.
+Pope, and then Mr. Wintersloan, who had been a
+little distraught in his manner, brightened up and
+scribbled furiously.</p>
+
+<p>The letter was <i>D</i>, and after Mr. Pope had rehearsed
+a tale of nine and twenty names, Mr. Wintersloan
+read out his list in that curious voice of his
+which suggested nothing so much as some mobile
+drink glucking out of the neck of a bottle held upside
+down.</p>
+
+<p>"Dahl," he began.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">-44-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who was Dahl?" asked Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"'Vented dahlias," said Mr. Wintersloan, with a
+sigh. "Danton."</p>
+
+<p>"Forgot him," said Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Davis."</p>
+
+<p>"Davis?"</p>
+
+<p>"Davis Straits. Doe."</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"John Doe, Richard Roe."</p>
+
+<p>"Legal fiction, I'm afraid," said Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Dam," said Mr. Wintersloan, and added after
+a slight pause: "Anthony van."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope made an interrogative noise.</p>
+
+<p>"Painter&mdash;eighteenth century&mdash;Dutch. Dam, Jan
+van, his son. Dam, Frederich van. Dam, Wilhelm
+van. Dam, Diedrich van. Dam, Wilhelmina, wood
+engraver, gifted woman. Diehl."</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"Painter&mdash;dead&mdash;famous. See Düsseldorf. It's
+all painters now&mdash;all guaranteed dead, all good men.
+Deeds of Norfolk, the aquarellist, Denton, Dibbs."</p>
+
+<p>"Er?" said Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"The Warwick Claude, <i>you</i> know. Died 1823."</p>
+
+<p>"Dickson, Dunting, John Dickery. Peter Dickery,
+William Dock&mdash;I beg your pardon?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope was making a protesting gesture, but
+Mr. Wintersloan's bearing was invincible, and he
+proceeded.</p>
+
+<p>In the end he emerged triumphant with forty-nine
+names, mostly painters for whose fame he
+answered, but whose reputations were certainly new
+to every one else present. "I can go on like that,"
+said Mr. Wintersloan, "with any letter," and turned
+that hard little smile full on Marjorie. "I didn't
+see how to do it at first. I just cast about.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">-45-</a></span>
+But I know a frightful lot of painters. No end. Shall we
+try again?"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie glanced at her father. Mr. Wintersloan's
+methods were all too evident to her. A
+curious feeling pervaded the room that Mr. Pope
+didn't think Mr. Wintersloan's conduct honourable,
+and that he might even go some way towards saying
+so.</p>
+
+<p>So Mrs. Pope became very brisk and stirring, and
+said she thought that now perhaps a charade would
+be more amusing. It didn't do to keep on at a game
+too long. She asked Rom and Daphne and Theodore
+and Mr. Wintersloan to go out, and they all agreed
+readily, particularly Rom. "Come on!" said Rom
+to Mr. Wintersloan. Everybody else shifted into an
+audience-like group between the piano and the what-not.
+Mr. Magnet sat at Marjorie's feet, while Syd
+played a kind of voluntary, and Mr. Pope leant back
+in his chair, with his brows knit and lips moving,
+trying to remember something.</p>
+
+<p>The charade <i>was</i> very amusing. The word was
+Catarrh, and Mr. Wintersloan, as the patient in the
+last act being given gruel, surpassed even the children's
+very high expectations. Rom, as his nurse,
+couldn't keep her hands off him. Then the younger
+people kissed round and were packed off to bed, and
+the rest of the party went to the door upon the lawn
+and admired the night. It was a glorious summer
+night, deep blue, and rimmed warmly by the afterglow,
+moonless, and with a few big lamp-like stars
+above the black still shapes of trees.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope said they would all accompany their
+guests to the gate at the end of the avenue&mdash;in spite
+of the cockchafers.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope's ankle, however, excused him; the cordiality
+of his parting from Mr. Wintersloan seemed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">-46-</a></span>
+a trifle forced, and he limped thoughtfully and a
+little sombrely towards the study to see if he could
+find an Encyclopćdia or some such book of reference
+that would give the names of the lesser lights of
+Dutch, Italian, and English painting during the last
+two centuries.</p>
+
+<p>He felt that Mr. Wintersloan had established an
+extraordinarily bad precedent.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 10</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie discovered that she and Mr. Magnet had
+fallen a little behind the others. She would have
+quickened her pace, but Mr. Magnet stopped short
+and said: "Marjorie!"</p>
+
+<p>"When I saw you standing there and singing,"
+said Mr. Magnet, and was short of breath for a
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie's natural gift for interruption failed
+her altogether.</p>
+
+<p>"I felt I would rather be able to call you mine&mdash;than
+win an empire."</p>
+
+<p>The pause seemed to lengthen, between them, and
+Marjorie's remark when she made it at last struck her
+even as she made it as being but poorly conceived.
+She had some weak idea of being self-depreciatory.</p>
+
+<p>"I think you had better win an empire, Mr.
+Magnet," she said meekly.</p>
+
+<p>Then, before anything more was possible, they
+had come up to Daffy and Mr. Wintersloan and her
+mother at the gate....</p>
+
+<p>As they returned Mrs. Pope was loud in the
+praises of Will Magnet. She had a little clear-cut
+voice, very carefully and very skilfully controlled,
+and she dilated on his modesty, his quiet helpfulness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">-47-</a></span>
+at table, his ready presence of mind. She pointed
+out instances of those admirable traits, incidents
+small in themselves but charming in their implications.
+When somebody wanted junket, he had made
+no fuss, he had just helped them to junket. "So
+modest and unassuming," sang Mrs. Pope. "You'd
+never dream he was quite rich and famous. Yet
+every book he writes is translated into Russian and
+German and all sorts of languages. I suppose he's
+almost the greatest humorist we have. That play of
+his; what is it called?&mdash;<i>Our Owd Woman</i>&mdash;has been
+performed nearly twelve hundred times! I think that
+is the most wonderful of gifts. Think of the people
+it has made happy."</p>
+
+<p>The conversation was mainly monologue. Both
+Marjorie and Daffy were unusually thoughtful.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 11</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie ended the long day in a worldly mood.</p>
+
+<p>"Penny for your thoughts," said Daffy abruptly,
+brushing the long firelit rapids of her hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Not for sale," said Marjorie, and roused herself.
+"I've had a long day."</p>
+
+<p>"It's always just the time I particularly wish I
+was a man," she remarked after a brief return to
+meditation. "Fancy, no hair-pins, no brushing, no
+tie-up to get lost about, no strings. I suppose they
+haven't strings?"</p>
+
+<p>"They haven't," said Daffy with conviction.</p>
+
+<p>She met Marjorie's interrogative eye. "Father
+would swear at them," she explained. "He'd naturally
+tie himself up&mdash;and we should hear of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't think of that," said Marjorie, and stuck
+out her chin upon her fists. "Sound induction."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">-48-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She forgot this transitory curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose one had a maid, Daffy&mdash;a real maid
+... a maid who mended your things ... did
+your hair while you read...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! here goes," and she stood up and grappled
+with the task of undressing.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER THE SECOND</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Two Proposals of Mr. Magnet</span></h3>
+
+<p class="title">§ 1</p>
+
+<p>It was presently quite evident to Marjorie that Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">-49-</a></span>
+Magnet intended to propose marriage to her, and
+she did not even know whether she wanted him to do
+so.</p>
+
+<p>She had met him first the previous summer while
+she had been staying with the Petley-Cresthams at
+High Windower, and it had been evident that he found
+her extremely attractive. She had never had a real
+grown man at her feet before, and she had found it
+amazingly entertaining. She had gone for a walk
+with him the morning before she came away&mdash;a frank
+and ingenuous proceeding that made Mrs. Petley-Crestham
+say the girl knew what she was about, and
+she had certainly coquetted with him in an extraordinary
+manner at golf-croquet. After that Oxbridge
+had swallowed her up, and though he had called once
+on her mother while Marjorie was in London during
+the Christmas vacation, he hadn't seen her again. He
+had written&mdash;which was exciting&mdash;a long friendly
+humorous letter about nothing in particular, with an
+air of its being quite the correct thing for him to do,
+and she had answered, and there had been other exchanges.
+But all sorts of things had happened in
+the interval, and Marjorie had let him get into quite
+a back place in her thoughts&mdash;the fact that he was
+a member of her father's club had seemed somehow
+to remove him from a great range of possibilities&mdash;until
+a drift in her mother's talk towards him and a
+letter from him with an indefinable change in tone
+towards intimacy, had restored him to importance.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">-50-</a></span>
+Now here he was in the foreground of her world again,
+evidently more ardent than ever, and with a portentous
+air of being about to do something decisive at
+the very first opportunity. What was he going to
+do? What had her mother been hinting at? And
+what, in fact, did the whole thing amount to?</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie was beginning to realize that this was
+going to be a very serious affair indeed for her&mdash;and
+that she was totally unprepared to meet it.</p>
+
+<p>It had been very amusing, very amusing indeed, at
+the Petley-Cresthams', but there were moments now
+when she felt towards Mr. Magnet exactly as she
+would have felt if he had been one of the Oxbridge
+tradesmen hovering about her with a "little account,"
+full of apparently exaggerated items....</p>
+
+<p>Her thoughts and feelings were all in confusion
+about this business. Her mind was full of scraps,
+every sort of idea, every sort of attitude contributed
+something to that Twentieth Century jumble. For
+example, and so far as its value went among motives,
+it was by no means a trivial consideration; she wanted
+a proposal for its own sake. Daffy had had a proposal
+last year, and although it wasn't any sort of
+eligible proposal, still there it was, and she had given
+herself tremendous airs. But Marjorie would certainly
+have preferred some lighter kind of proposal
+than that which now threatened her. She felt that
+behind Mr. Magnet were sanctions; that she wasn't
+free to deal with this proposal as she liked. He was
+at Buryhamstreet almost with the air of being her
+parents' guest.</p>
+
+<p>Less clear and more instinctive than her desire for
+a proposal was her inclination to see just all that Mr.
+Magnet was disposed to do, and hear all that he was
+disposed to say. She was curious. He didn't behave
+in the least as she had expected a lover to behave.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">-51-</a></span>
+But then none of the boys, the "others" with whom
+she had at times stretched a hand towards the hem of
+emotion, had ever done that. She had an obscure
+feeling that perhaps presently Mr. Magnet must light
+up, be stirred and stirring. Even now his voice
+changed very interestingly when he was alone with
+her. His breath seemed to go&mdash;as though something
+had pricked his lung. If it hadn't been for that new,
+disconcerting realization of an official pressure behind
+him, I think she would have been quite ready to experiment
+extensively with his emotions....</p>
+
+<p>But she perceived as she lay awake next morning
+that she wasn't free for experiments any longer.
+What she might say or do now would be taken up very
+conclusively. And she had no idea what she wanted
+to say or do.</p>
+
+<p>Marriage regarded in the abstract&mdash;that is to
+say, with Mr. Magnet out of focus&mdash;was by no means
+an unattractive proposal to her. It was very much
+at the back of Marjorie's mind that after Oxbridge,
+unless she was prepared to face a very serious row
+indeed and go to teach in a school&mdash;and she didn't
+feel any call whatever to teach in a school&mdash;she would
+probably have to return to Hartstone Square and
+share Daffy's room again, and assist in the old collective,
+wearisome task of propitiating her father.
+The freedoms of Oxbridge had enlarged her imagination
+until that seemed an almost unendurably irksome
+prospect. She had tasted life as it could be in
+her father's absence, and she was beginning to realize
+just what an impossible person he was. Marriage
+was escape from all that; it meant not only respectful
+parents but a house of her very own, furniture of
+her choice, great freedom of movement, an authority,
+an importance. She had seen what it meant to be a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">-52-</a></span>
+prosperously married young woman in the person of
+one or two resplendent old girls revisiting Bennett
+College, scattering invitations, offering protections
+and opportunities....</p>
+
+<p>Of course there is love.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie told herself, as she had been trained to
+tell herself, to be sensible, but something within her
+repeated: <i>there is love</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Of course she liked Mr. Magnet. She really did
+like Mr. Magnet very much. She had had her girlish
+dreams, had fallen in love with pictures of men and
+actors and a music master and a man who used to
+ride by as she went to school; but wasn't this desolating
+desire for self-abandonment rather silly?&mdash;something
+that one left behind with much else when
+it came to putting up one's hair and sensible living,
+something to blush secretly about and hide from every
+eye?</p>
+
+<p>Among other discrepant views that lived together
+in her mind as cats and rats and parrots and squirrels
+and so forth used to live together in those Happy
+Family cages unseemly men in less well-regulated days
+were wont to steer about our streets, was one instilled
+by quite a large proportion of the novels she had read,
+that a girl was a sort of self-giving prize for high
+moral worth. Mr. Magnet she knew was good, was
+kind, was brave with that truer courage, moral courage,
+which goes with his type of physique; he was
+modest, unassuming, well off and famous, and very
+much in love with her. His True Self, as Mrs. Pope
+had pointed out several times, must be really very
+beautiful, and in some odd way a line of Shakespeare
+had washed up in her consciousness as being somehow
+effectual on his behalf:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Love looks not with the eye but with the mind."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She felt she ought to look with the mind. Nice<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">-53-</a></span>
+people surely never looked in any other way. It
+seemed from this angle almost her duty to love
+him....</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps she did love him, and mistook the symptoms.
+She did her best to mistake the symptoms.
+But if she did truly love him, would it seem so queer
+and important and antagonistic as it did that his
+hair was rather thin upon the crown of his head?</p>
+
+<p>She wished she hadn't looked down on him....</p>
+
+<p>Poor Marjorie! She was doing her best to be
+sensible, and she felt herself adrift above a clamorous
+abyss of feared and forbidden thoughts. Down there
+she knew well enough it wasn't thus that love must
+come. Deep in her soul, the richest thing in her life
+indeed and the best thing she had to give humanity,
+was a craving for beauty that at times became almost
+intolerable, a craving for something other than beauty
+and yet inseparably allied with it, a craving for deep
+excitement, for a sort of glory in adventure, for passion&mdash;for
+things akin to great music and heroic poems
+and bannered traditions of romance. She had hidden
+away in her an immense tumultuous appetite for life,
+an immense tumultuous capacity for living. To be
+loved beautifully was surely the crown and climax of
+her being.</p>
+
+<p>She did not dare to listen to these deeps, yet these
+insurgent voices filled her. Even while she drove her
+little crocodile of primly sensible thoughts to their
+sane appointed conclusion, her blood and nerves and
+all her being were protesting that Mr. Magnet would
+not do, that whatever other worthiness was in him,
+regarded as a lover he was preposterous and flat and
+foolish and middle-aged, and that it were better never
+to have lived than to put the treasure of her life to
+his meagre lips and into his hungry, unattractive<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">-54-</a></span>
+arms. "The ugliness of it! The spiritless horror of
+it!" so dumbly and formlessly the rebel voices urged.</p>
+
+<p>"One has to be sensible," said Marjorie to herself,
+suddenly putting down Shaw's book on Municipal
+Trading, which she imagined she had been reading....</p>
+
+<p>(Perhaps all marriage was horrid, and one had to
+get over it.)</p>
+
+<p>That was rather what her mother had conveyed
+to her.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 2</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Magnet made his first proposal in form three
+days later, after coming twice to tea and staying on
+to supper. He had played croquet with Mr. Pope,
+he had been beaten twelve times in spite of twinges in
+the sprained ankle&mdash;heroically borne&mdash;had had three
+victories lucidly explained away, and heard all the
+particulars of the East Purblow experiment three
+times over, first in relation to the new Labour Exchanges,
+then regarded at rather a different angle in
+relation to female betting, tally-men, and the sanctities
+of the home generally, and finally in a more
+exhaustive style, to show its full importance from
+every side and more particularly as demonstrating the
+gross injustice done to Mr. Pope by the neglect of its
+lessons, a neglect too systematic to be accidental, in
+the social reform literature of the time. Moreover,
+Mr. Magnet had been made to understand thoroughly
+how several later quasi-charitable attempts of a similar
+character had already become, or must inevitably
+become, unsatisfactory through their failure to follow
+exactly in the lines laid down by Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope was really very anxious to be pleasant
+and agreeable to Mr. Magnet, and he could think of
+no surer way of doing so than by giving him an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">-55-</a></span>
+unrestrained intimacy of conversation that prevented
+anything more than momentary intercourse between
+his daughter and her admirer. And not only did Mr.
+Magnet find it difficult to get away from Mr. Pope
+without offence, but whenever by any chance Mr.
+Pope was detached for a moment Mr. Magnet discovered
+that Marjorie either wasn't to be seen, or if she
+was she wasn't to be isolated by any device he could
+contrive, before the unappeasable return of Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Magnet did not get his chance therefore until
+Lady Petchworth's little gathering at Summerhay
+Park.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Petchworth was Mrs. Pope's oldest friend,
+and one of those brighter influences which save our
+English country-side from lassitude. She had been
+more fortunate than Mrs. Pope, for while Mr. Pope
+with that aptitude for disadvantage natural to his
+temperament had, he said, been tied to a business that
+never gave him a chance, Lady Petchworth's husband
+had been a reckless investor of exceptional good-luck.
+In particular, led by a dream, he had put most of his
+money into a series of nitrate deposits in caves in
+Saghalien haunted by benevolent penguins, and had
+been rewarded beyond the dreams of avarice. His
+foresight had received the fitting reward of a knighthood,
+and Sir Thomas, after restoring the Parish
+Church at Summerhay in a costly and destructive
+manner, spent his declining years in an enviable contentment
+with Lady Petchworth and the world at
+large, and died long before infirmity made him really
+troublesome.</p>
+
+<p>Good fortune had brought out Lady Petchworth's
+social aptitudes. Summerhay Park was everything
+that a clever woman, inspired by that gardening
+literature which has been so abundant in the opening
+years of the twentieth century, could make it. It had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">-56-</a></span>
+rosaries and rock gardens, sundials and yew hedges,
+pools and ponds, lead figures and stone urns, box
+borderings and wilderness corners and hundreds and
+hundreds of feet of prematurely-aged red-brick wall
+with broad herbaceous borders; the walks had primroses,
+primulas and cowslips in a quite disingenuous
+abundance, and in spring the whole extent of the park
+was gay, here with thousands of this sort of daffodil
+just bursting out and here with thousands of that sort
+of narcissus just past its prime, and every patch
+ready to pass itself off in its naturalized way as the
+accidental native flower of the field, if only it hadn't
+been for all the other different varieties coming on or
+wilting-off in adjacent patches....</p>
+
+<p>Her garden was only the beginning of Lady
+Petchworth's activities. She had a model dairy, and
+all her poultry was white, and so far as she was able
+to manage it she made Summerhay a model village.
+She overflowed with activities, it was astonishing in
+one so plump and blonde, and meeting followed meeting
+in the artistic little red-brick and green-stained
+timber village hall she had erected. Now it was the
+National Theatre and now it was the National
+Mourning; now it was the Break Up of the Poor
+Law, and now the Majority Report, now the Mothers'
+Union, and now Socialism, and now Individualism,
+but always something progressive and beneficial.
+She did her best to revive the old village life, and
+brought her very considerable powers of compulsion
+to make the men dance in simple old Morris dances,
+dressed up in costumes they secretly abominated,
+and to induce the mothers to dress their children in
+art-coloured smocks instead of the prints and blue
+serge frocks they preferred. She did not despair,
+she said, of creating a spontaneous peasant art
+movement in the district, springing from the people<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">-57-</a></span>
+and expressing the people, but so far it had been
+necessary to import not only instructors and material,
+but workers to keep the thing going, so sluggish
+had the spontaneity of our English countryside
+become.</p>
+
+<p>Her little gatherings were quite distinctive of her.
+They were a sort of garden party extending from
+mid-day to six or seven; there would be a nucleus of
+house guests, and the highways and byeways on
+every hand would be raided to supply persons and
+interests. She had told her friend to "bring the
+girls over for the day," and flung an invitation to
+Mr. Pope, who had at once excused himself on the
+score of his ankle. Mr. Pope was one of those men
+who shun social gatherings&mdash;ostensibly because of a
+sterling simplicity of taste, but really because his
+intolerable egotism made him feel slighted and neglected
+on these occasions. He told his wife he
+would be far happier with a book at home, exhorted
+her not to be late, and was seen composing himself
+to read the "Vicar of Wakefield"&mdash;whenever they
+published a new book Mr. Pope pretended to read
+an old one&mdash;as the hired waggonette took the rest of
+his family&mdash;Theodore very unhappy in buff silk and
+a wide Stuart collar&mdash;down the avenue.</p>
+
+<p>They found a long lunch table laid on the lawn
+beneath the chestnuts, and in full view of the poppies
+and forget-me-nots around the stone obelisk, a
+butler and three men servants with brass buttons and
+red and white striped waistcoats gave dignity to the
+scene, and beyond, on the terrace amidst abundance
+of deckchairs, cane chairs, rugs, and cushions, a
+miscellaneous and increasing company seethed under
+Lady Petchworth's plump but entertaining hand.
+There were, of course, Mr. Magnet, and his friend
+Mr. Wintersloan&mdash;Lady Petchworth had been given<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">-58-</a></span>
+to understand how the land lay; and there was Mr.
+Bunford Paradise the musician, who was doing his
+best to teach a sullen holiday class in the village
+schoolroom to sing the artless old folk songs of Surrey
+again, in spite of the invincible persuasion of
+everybody in the class that the songs were rather
+indelicate and extremely silly; there were the Rev.
+Jopling Baynes, and two Cambridge undergraduates
+in flannels, and a Doctor something or other from
+London. There was also the Hon. Charles Muskett,
+Lord Pottinger's cousin and estate agent, in tweeds
+and very helpful. The ladies included Mrs. Raff,
+the well-known fashion writer, in a wonderful costume,
+the anonymous doctor's wife, three or four
+neighbouring mothers with an undistinguished
+daughter or so, and two quiet-mannered middle-aged
+ladies, whose names Marjorie could not catch, and
+whom Lady Petchworth, in that well-controlled
+voice of hers, addressed as Kate and Julia, and seemed
+on the whole disposed to treat as humorous.
+There was also Fraulein Schmidt in charge of Lady
+Petchworth's three tall and already abundant children,
+Prunella, Prudence, and Mary, and a young,
+newly-married couple of cousins, who addressed each
+other in soft undertones and sat apart. These were
+the chief items that became distinctive in Marjorie's
+survey; but there were a number of other people who
+seemed to come and go, split up, fuse, change their
+appearance slightly, and behave in the way inadequately
+apprehended people do behave on these
+occasions.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie very speedily found her disposition to
+take a detached and amused view of the entertainment
+in conflict with more urgent demands. From
+the outset Mr. Magnet loomed upon her&mdash;he loomed
+nearer and nearer. He turned his eye upon her as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">-59-</a></span>
+she came up to the wealthy expanse of Lady Petchworth's
+presence, like some sort of obsolescent iron-clad
+turning a dull-grey, respectful, loving searchlight
+upon a fugitive torpedo boat, and thereafter
+he seemed to her to be looking at her without intermission,
+relentlessly, and urging himself towards
+her. She wished he wouldn't. She hadn't at all
+thought he would on this occasion.</p>
+
+<p>At first she relied upon her natural powers of
+evasion, and the presence of a large company. Then
+gradually it became apparent that Lady Petchworth
+and her mother, yes&mdash;and the party generally, and
+the gardens and the weather and the stars in their
+courses were of a mind to co-operate in giving opportunity
+for Mr. Magnet's unmistakable intentions.</p>
+
+<p>And Marjorie with that instability of her sex
+which has been a theme for masculine humour in all
+ages, suddenly and with an extraordinary violence
+didn't want to make up her mind about Mr. Magnet.
+She didn't want to accept him; and as distinctly she
+didn't want to refuse him. She didn't even want to
+be thought about as making up her mind about him&mdash;which
+was, so to speak, an enlargement of her
+previous indisposition. She didn't even want to seem
+to avoid him, or to be thinking about him, or aware
+of his existence.</p>
+
+<p>After the greeting of Lady Petchworth she had
+succeeded very clumsily in not seeing Mr. Magnet,
+and had addressed herself to Mr. Wintersloan, who
+was standing a little apart, looking under his hand,
+with one eye shut, at the view between the tree stems
+towards Buryhamstreet. He told her that he
+thought he had found something "pooty" that
+hadn't been done, and she did her best to share his
+artistic interests with a vivid sense of Mr. Magnet's
+tentative incessant approach behind her.</p>
+
+<p>He joined them, and she made a desperate attempt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">-60-</a></span>
+to entangle Mr. Wintersloan in a three-cornered
+talk in vain. He turned away at the first
+possible opportunity, and left her to an embarrassed
+and eloquently silent <i>tęte-ŕ-tęte</i>. Mr. Magnet's
+professional wit had deserted him. "It's nice to see
+you again," he said after an immense interval.
+"Shall we go and look at the aviary?"</p>
+
+<p>"I hate to see birds in cages," said Marjorie,
+"and it's frightfully jolly just here. Do you think
+Mr. Wintersloan will paint this? He does paint,
+doesn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know him best in black and white," said Mr.
+Magnet.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie embarked on entirely insincere praises
+of Mr. Wintersloan's manner and personal effect;
+Magnet replied tepidly, with an air of reserving
+himself to grapple with the first conversational opportunity.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a splendid day for tennis," said Marjorie.
+"I think I shall play tennis all the afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't play well enough for this publicity."</p>
+
+<p>"It's glorious exercise," said Marjorie. "Almost
+as good as dancing," and she decided to stick to that
+resolution. "I never lose a chance of tennis if I can
+help it."</p>
+
+<p>She glanced round and detected a widening space
+between themselves and the next adjacent group.</p>
+
+<p>"They're looking at the goldfish," she said. "Let
+us join them."</p>
+
+<p>Everyone moved away as they came up to the
+little round pond, but then Marjorie had luck, and
+captured Prunella, and got her to hold hands and
+talk, until Fraulein Schmidt called the child away.
+And then Marjorie forced Mr. Magnet to introduce
+her to Mr. Bunford Paradise. She had a bright idea<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">-61-</a></span>
+of sitting between Prunella and Mary at the lunch
+table, but a higher providence had assigned her to
+a seat at the end between Julia&mdash;or was it Kate?&mdash;and
+Mr. Magnet. However, one of the undergraduates
+was opposite, and she saved herself from
+undertones by talking across to him boldly about
+Newnham, though she hadn't an idea of his name or
+college. From that she came to tennis. To her
+inflamed imagination he behaved as if she was under
+a Taboo, but she was desperate, and had pledged
+him and his friend to a foursome before the meal was
+over.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't <i>you</i> play?" said the undergraduate to
+Mr. Magnet.</p>
+
+<p>"Very little," said Mr. Magnet. "Very little&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>At the end of an hour she was conspicuously and
+publicly shepherded from the tennis court by Mrs.
+Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Other people want to play," said her mother in
+a clear little undertone.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Magnet fielded her neatly as she came off the
+court.</p>
+
+<p>"You play tennis like&mdash;a wild bird," he said,
+taking possession of her.</p>
+
+<p>Only Marjorie's entire freedom from Irish blood
+saved him from a vindictive repartee.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 3</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we go and look at the aviary?" said Mr.
+Magnet, reverting to a favourite idea of his, and
+then remembered she did not like to see caged birds.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps we might see the Water Garden?" he
+said. "The Water Garden is really very delightful
+indeed&mdash;anyhow. You ought to see that."</p>
+
+<p>On the spur of the moment, Marjorie could think
+of no objection to the Water Garden, and he led
+her off.</p>
+
+<p>"I often think of that jolly walk we had last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">-62-</a></span>
+summer," said Mr. Magnet, "and how you talked
+about your work at Oxbridge."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie fell into a sudden rapture of admiration
+for a butterfly.</p>
+
+<p>Twice more was Mr. Magnet baffled, and then
+they came to the little pool of water lilies with its
+miniature cascade of escape at the head and source of
+the Water Garden. "One of Lady Petchworth's
+great successes," said Mr. Magnet.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose the lotus is like the water-lily," said
+Marjorie, with no hope of staving off the inevitable&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She stood very still by the little pool, and in
+spite of her pensive regard of the floating blossoms,
+stiffly and intensely aware of his relentless regard.</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie," came his voice at last, strangely
+softened. "There is something I want to say to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>She made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Ever since we met last summer&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A clear cold little resolution not to stand this,
+had established itself in Marjorie's mind. If she
+must decide, she <i>would</i> decide. He had brought it
+upon himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie," said Mr. Magnet, "I love you."</p>
+
+<p>She lifted a clear unhesitating eye to his face.
+"I'm sorry, Mr. Magnet," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted to ask you to marry me," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry, Mr. Magnet," she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>They looked at one another. She felt a sort of
+scared exultation at having done it; her mother
+might say what she liked.</p>
+
+<p>"I love you very much," he said, at a loss.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," she repeated obstinately.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you cared for me a little."</p>
+
+<p>She left that unanswered. She had a curious<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">-63-</a></span>
+feeling that there was no getting away from this
+splashing, babbling pool, that she was fixed there
+until Mr. Magnet chose to release her, and that he
+didn't mean to release her yet. In which case she
+would go on refusing.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm disappointed," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie could only think that she was sorry
+again, but as she had already said that three times,
+she remained awkwardly silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it because&mdash;&mdash;" he began and stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't because of anything. Please let's go
+back to the others, Mr. Magnet. I'm sorry if I'm
+disappointing."</p>
+
+<p>And by a great effort she turned about.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Magnet remained regarding her&mdash;I can only
+compare it to the searching preliminary gaze of an
+artistic photographer. For a crucial minute in his
+life Marjorie hated him. "I don't understand," he
+said at last.</p>
+
+<p>Then with a sort of naturalness that ought to
+have touched her he said: "Is it possible, Marjorie&mdash;that
+I might hope?&mdash;that I have been inopportune?"</p>
+
+<p>She answered at once with absolute conviction.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think so, Mr. Magnet."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry," he said, "to have bothered you."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I'm</i> sorry," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>A long silence followed.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry too," he said.</p>
+
+<p>They said no more, but began to retrace their
+steps. It was over. Abruptly, Mr. Magnet's bearing
+had become despondent&mdash;conspicuously despondent.
+"I had hoped," he said, and sighed.</p>
+
+<p>With a thrill of horror Marjorie perceived he
+meant to <i>look</i> rejected, let every one see he had been
+rejected&mdash;after encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>What would they think? How would they look?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">-64-</a></span>
+What conceivably might they not say? Something
+of the importance of the thing she had done, became
+manifest to her. She felt first intimations of regret.
+They would all be watching, Mother, Daffy, Lady
+Petchworth. She would reappear with this victim
+visibly suffering beside her. What could she say to
+straighten his back and lift his chin? She could
+think of nothing. Ahead at the end of the shaded
+path she could see the copious white form, the agitated
+fair wig and red sunshade of Lady Petchworth&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 4</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope's eye was relentless; nothing seemed
+hidden from it; nothing indeed was hidden from it;
+Mr. Magnet's back was diagrammatic. Marjorie
+was a little flushed and bright-eyed, and professed
+herself eager, with an unnatural enthusiasm, to play
+golf-croquet. It was eloquently significant that Mr.
+Magnet did not share her eagerness, declined to play,
+and yet when she had started with the Rev. Jopling
+Baynes as partner, stood regarding the game with a
+sort of tender melancholy from the shade of the big
+chestnut-tree.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope joined him unobtrusively.</p>
+
+<p>"You're not playing, Mr. Magnet," she remarked.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm a looker-on, this time," he said with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie's winning, I think," said Mrs. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>He made no answer for some seconds.</p>
+
+<p>"She looks so charming in that blue dress," he
+remarked at last, and sighed from the lowest deeps.</p>
+
+<p>"That bird's-egg blue suits her," said Mrs. Pope,
+ignoring the sigh. "She's clever in her girlish way,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">-65-</a></span>
+she chooses all her own dresses,&mdash;colours, material,
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>(And also, though Mrs. Pope had not remarked
+it, she concealed her bills.)</p>
+
+<p>There came a still longer interval, which Mrs.
+Pope ended with the slightest of shivers. She perceived
+Mr. Magnet was heavy for sympathy and
+ripe to confide. "I think," she said, "it's a little
+cool here. Shall we walk to the Water Garden, and
+see if there are any white lilies?"</p>
+
+<p>"There are," said Mr. Magnet sorrowfully,
+"and they are very beautiful&mdash;<i>quite</i> beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>He turned to the path along which he had so
+recently led Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced back as they went along between
+Lady Petchworth's herbaceous border and the poppy
+beds. "She's so full of life," he said, with a sigh
+in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope knew she must keep silent.</p>
+
+<p>"I asked her to marry me this afternoon," Mr.
+Magnet blurted out. "I couldn't help it."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope made her silence very impressive.</p>
+
+<p>"I know I ought not to have done so without
+consulting you"&mdash;he went on lamely; "I'm very
+much in love with her. It's&mdash;&mdash;It's done no harm."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope's voice was soft and low. "I had no
+idea, Mr. Magnet.... You know she is very
+young. Twenty. A mother&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know," said Magnet. "I can quite understand.
+But I've done no harm. She refused me. I
+shall go away to-morrow. Go right away for ever....
+I'm sorry."</p>
+
+<p>Another long silence.</p>
+
+<p>"To me, of course, she's just a child," Mrs. Pope
+said at last. "She <i>is</i> only a child, Mr. Magnet. She<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">-66-</a></span>
+could have had no idea that anything of the sort was
+in your mind&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her words floated away into the stillness.</p>
+
+<p>For a time they said no more. The lilies came
+into sight, dreaming under a rich green shade on a
+limpid pool of brown water, water that slept and
+brimmed over as it were, unconsciously into a cool
+splash and ripple of escape. "How beautiful!"
+cried Mrs. Pope, for a moment genuine.</p>
+
+<p>"I spoke to her here," said Mr. Magnet.</p>
+
+<p>The fountains of his confidence were unloosed.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I've spoken to you about it, Mrs. Pope,"
+he said, "I can tell you just how I&mdash;oh, it's the only
+word&mdash;adore her. She seems so sweet and easy&mdash;so
+graceful&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope turned on him abruptly, and grasped
+his hands; she was deeply moved. "I can't tell
+you," she said, "what it means to a mother to hear
+such things&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Words failed her, and for some moments they
+engaged in a mutual pressure.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Mr. Magnet, and had a queer wish
+it was the mother he had to deal with.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure, Mr. Magnet," Mrs. Pope went
+on as their emotions subsided, "that she really meant
+what she said? Girls are very strange creatures&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She seems so clear and positive."</p>
+
+<p>"Her manner is always clear and positive."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I know."</p>
+
+<p>"I know she <i>has</i> cared for you."</p>
+
+<p>"No!"</p>
+
+<p>"A mother sees. When your name used to be
+mentioned&mdash;&mdash;. But these are not things to talk
+about. There is something&mdash;something sacred&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said. "Yes. Only&mdash;&mdash;Of course,
+one thing&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope seemed lost in the contemplation of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">-67-</a></span>
+water-lilies.</p>
+
+<p>"I wondered," said Mr. Magnet, and paused
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Then, almost breathlessly, "I wondered if there
+should be perhaps&mdash;some one else?"</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head slowly. "I should know," she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know I should know."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps recently?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure I should know. A mother's intuition&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Memories possessed her for awhile. "A girl of
+twenty is a mass of contradictions. I can remember
+myself as if it was yesterday. Often one says no, or
+yes&mdash;out of sheer nervousness.... I am sure
+there is no other attachment&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>It occurred to her that she had said enough.
+"What a dignity that old gold-fish has!" she remarked.
+"He waves his tail&mdash;as if he were a beadle
+waving little boys out of church."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 5</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope astonished Marjorie by saying nothing
+about the all too obvious event of the day for some
+time, but her manner to her second daughter on their
+way home was strangely gentle. It was as if she had
+realized for the first time that regret and unhappiness
+might come into that young life. After supper,
+however, she spoke. They had all gone out just
+before the children went to bed to look for the new
+moon; Daffy was showing the pseudo-twins the old
+moon in the new moon's arms, and Marjorie found
+herself standing by her mother's side. "I hope<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">-68-</a></span>
+dear," said Mrs. Pope, "that it's all for the best&mdash;and
+that you've done wisely, dear."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie was astonished and moved by her
+mother's tone.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so difficult to know what <i>is</i> for the best,"
+Mrs. Pope went on.</p>
+
+<p>"I had to do&mdash;as I did," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"I only hope you may never find you have made
+a Great Mistake, dear. He cares for you very, very
+much."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! we see it now!" cried Rom, "we see it now!
+Mummy, have you seen it? Like a little old round
+ghost being nursed!"</p>
+
+<p>When Marjorie said "Good-night," Mrs. Pope
+kissed her with an unaccustomed effusion.</p>
+
+<p>It occurred to Marjorie that after all her mother
+had no selfish end to serve in this affair.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 6</p>
+
+<p>The idea that perhaps after all she had made a
+Great Mistake, the Mistake of her Life it might be,
+was quite firmly established in its place among all the
+other ideas in Marjorie's mind by the time she had
+dressed next morning. Subsequent events greatly
+intensified this persuasion. A pair of new stockings
+she had trusted sprang a bad hole as she put them
+on. She found two unmistakable bills from Oxbridge
+beside her plate, and her father was "horrid"
+at breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>Her father, it appeared, had bought the ordinary
+shares of a Cuban railway very extensively, on the
+distinct understanding that they would improve. In
+a decent universe, with a proper respect for meritorious
+gentlemen, these shares would have improved
+accordingly, but the weather had seen fit to shatter
+the wisdom of Mr. Pope altogether. The sugar crop
+had collapsed, the bears were at work, and every<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">-69-</a></span>
+morning now saw his nominal capital diminished by
+a dozen pounds or so. I do not know what Mr. Pope
+would have done if he had not had his family to help
+him bear his trouble. As it was he relieved his tension
+by sending Theodore from the table for dropping
+a knife, telling Rom when she turned the plate
+round to pick the largest banana that she hadn't
+the self-respect of a child of five, and remarking
+sharply from behind the <i>Times</i> when Daffy asked
+Marjorie if she was going to sketch: "Oh, for God's
+sake don't <i>whisper!</i>" Then when Mrs. Pope came
+round the table and tried to take his coffee cup softly
+to refill it without troubling him, he snatched at it,
+wrenched it roughly out of her hand, and said with
+his mouth full, and strangely in the manner of a
+snarling beast: "No' ready yet. Half foo'."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie wanted to know why every one didn't
+get up and leave the room. She glanced at her
+mother and came near to speaking.</p>
+
+<p>And very soon she would have to come home and
+live in the midst of this again&mdash;indefinitely!</p>
+
+<p>After breakfast she went to the tumbledown summer-house
+by the duckpond, and contemplated the bills
+she had not dared to open at table. One was boots,
+nearly three pounds, the other books, over seven. "I
+<i>know</i> that's wrong," said Marjorie, and rested her
+chin on her hand, knitted her brows and tried to
+remember the details of orders and deliveries....</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie had fallen into the net prepared for
+our sons and daughters by the delicate modesty of
+the Oxbridge authorities in money matters, and she
+was, for her circumstances, rather heavily in debt.
+But I must admit that in Marjorie's nature the Oxbridge
+conditions had found an eager and adventurous
+streak that rendered her particularly apt to
+these temptations.</p>
+
+<p>I doubt if reticence is really a virtue in a teacher.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">-70-</a></span>
+But this is a fearful world, and the majority of those
+who instruct our youth have the painful sensitiveness
+of the cloistered soul to this spirit of terror in things.
+The young need particularly to be told truthfully
+and fully all we know of three fundamental things:
+the first of which is God, the next their duty towards
+their neighbours in the matter of work and money,
+and the third Sex. These things, and the adequate
+why of them, and some sort of adequate how, make
+all that matters in education. But all three are obscure
+and deeply moving topics, topics for which the
+donnish mind has a kind of special ineptitude, and
+which it evades with the utmost skill and delicacy.
+The middle part of this evaded triad was now being
+taken up in Marjorie's case by the Oxbridge tradespeople.</p>
+
+<p>The Oxbridge shopkeeper is peculiar among shopkeepers
+in the fact that he has to do very largely
+with shy and immature customers with an extreme
+and distinctive ignorance of most commercial things.
+They are for the most part short of cash, but with
+vague and often large probabilities of credit behind
+them, for most people, even quite straitened people,
+will pull their sons and daughters out of altogether
+unreasonable debts at the end of their university
+career; and so the Oxbridge shopkeeper becomes a
+sort of propagandist of the charms and advantages
+of insolvency. Alone among retailers he dislikes the
+sight of cash, declines it, affects to regard it as a
+coarse ignorant truncation of a budding relationship,
+begs to be permitted to wait. So the youngster
+just up from home discovers that money may stay
+in the pocket, be used for cab and train fares and
+light refreshments; all the rest may be had for the
+asking. Marjorie, with her innate hunger for good<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">-71-</a></span>
+fine things, with her quite insufficient pocket-money,
+and the irregular habits of expenditure a spasmodically
+financed, hard-up home is apt to engender, fell
+very readily into this new, delightful custom of having
+it put down (whatever it happened to be). She
+had all sorts of things put down. She and the elder
+Carmel girl used to go shopping together, having
+things put down. She brightened her rooms with
+colour-prints and engravings, got herself pretty and
+becoming clothes, acquired a fitted dressing-bag
+already noted in this story, and one or two other
+trifles of the sort, revised her foot-wear, created a
+very nice little bookshelf, and although at times she
+felt a little astonished and scared at herself, resolutely
+refused to estimate the total of accumulated
+debt she had attained. Indeed until the bills came in
+it was impossible to do that, because, following the
+splendid example of the Carmel girl, she hadn't even
+inquired the price of quite a number of things....</p>
+
+<p>She didn't dare think now of the total. She lied
+even to herself about that. She had fixed on fifty
+pounds as the unendurable maximum. "It is less
+than fifty pounds," she said, and added: "<i>must</i> be."
+But something in her below the threshold of consciousness
+knew that it was more.</p>
+
+<p>And now she was in her third year, and the Oxbridge
+tradesman, generally satisfied with the
+dimensions of her account, and no longer anxious to
+see it grow, was displaying the less obsequious side of
+his character. He wrote remarks at the bottom of
+his account, remarks about settlement, about having
+a bill to meet, about having something to go on with.
+He asked her to give the matter her "early attention."
+She had a disagreeable persuasion that if she
+wanted many more things anywhere she would have
+to pay ready money for them. She was particularly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">-72-</a></span>
+short of stockings. She had overlooked stockings
+recently.</p>
+
+<p>Daffy, unfortunately, was also short of stockings.</p>
+
+<p>And now, back with her family again, everything
+conspired to remind Marjorie of the old stringent
+habits from which she had had so delightful an
+interlude. She saw Daffy eye her possessions, reflect.
+This morning something of the awfulness of her
+position came to her....</p>
+
+<p>At Oxbridge she had made rather a joke of her
+debts.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd <i>swear</i> I haven't had three pairs of house
+shoes," said Marjorie. "But what can one do?"</p>
+
+<p>And about the whole position the question was,
+"what can one do?"</p>
+
+<p>She proceeded with tense nervous movements to
+tear these two distasteful demands into very minute
+pieces. Then she collected them all together in the
+hollow of her hand, and buried them in the loose
+mould in a corner of the summer-house.</p>
+
+<p>"Madge," said Theodore, appearing in the sunshine
+of the doorway. "Aunt Plessington's coming!
+She's sent a wire. Someone's got to meet her by
+the twelve-forty train."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 7</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Plessington's descent was due to her sudden
+discovery that Buryhamstreet was in close proximity
+to Summerhay Park, indeed only three miles away.
+She had promised a lecture on her movement for Lady
+Petchworth's village room in Summerhay, and she
+found that with a slight readjustment of dates she
+could combine this engagement with her promised
+visit to her husband's sister, and an evening or so of
+influence for her little Madge. So she had sent Hubert
+to telegraph at once, and "here," she said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">-73-</a></span>
+triumphantly on the platform, after a hard kiss at
+Marjorie's cheek, "we are again."</p>
+
+<p>There, at any rate, she was, and Uncle Hubert
+was up the platform seeing after the luggage, in his
+small anxious way.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Plessington was a tall lean woman, with firm
+features, a high colour and a bright eye, who wore
+hats to show she despised them, and carefully dishevelled
+hair. Her dress was always good, but extremely
+old and grubby, and she commanded respect
+chiefly by her voice. Her voice was the true governing-class
+voice, a strangulated contralto, abundant
+and authoritative; it made everything she said clear
+and important, so that if she said it was a fine morning
+it was like leaded print in the <i>Times</i>, and she had
+over her large front teeth lips that closed quietly
+and with a slight effort after her speeches, as if the
+words she spoke tasted well and left a peaceful,
+secure sensation in the mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Hubert was a less distinguished figure, and
+just a little reminiscent of the small attached husbands
+one finds among the lower crustacea: he was
+much shorter and rounder than his wife, and if he
+had been left to himself, he would probably have been
+comfortably fat in his quiet little way. But Aunt
+Plessington had made him a Haigite, which is one of
+the fiercer kinds of hygienist, just in the nick of time.
+He had round shoulders, a large nose, and glasses
+that made him look astonished&mdash;and she said he had
+a great gift for practical things, and made him see
+after everything in that line while she did the lecturing.
+His directions to the porter finished, he came
+up to his niece. "Hello, Marjorie!" he said, in a
+peculiar voice that sounded as though his mouth was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">-74-</a></span>
+full (though of course, poor dear, it wasn't),
+"how's the First Class?"</p>
+
+<p>"A second's good enough for me, Uncle Hubert,"
+said Marjorie, and asked if they would rather walk
+or go in the donkey cart, which was waiting outside
+with Daffy. Aunt Plessington, with an air of great
+<i>bonhomie</i> said she'd ride in the donkey cart, and they
+did. But no pseudo-twins or Theodore came to meet
+this arrival, as both uncle and aunt had a way of
+asking how the lessons were getting on that they
+found extremely disagreeable. Also, their aunt measured
+them, and incited them with loud encouraging
+noises to grow one against the other in an urgent,
+disturbing fashion.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Plessington's being was consumed by
+thoughts of getting on. She was like Bernard Shaw's
+life force, and she really did not seem to think there
+was anything in existence but shoving. She had no
+idea what a lark life can be, and occasionally how
+beautiful it can be when you do not shove, if only,
+which becomes increasingly hard each year, you can
+get away from the shovers. She was one of an energetic
+family of eight sisters who had maintained
+themselves against a mutual pressure by the use of
+their elbows from the cradle. They had all married
+against each other, all sorts of people; two had driven
+their husbands into bishoprics and made quite
+typical bishop's wives, one got a leading barrister, one
+a high war-office official, and one a rich Jew, and
+Aunt Plessington, after spending some years in just
+missing a rich and only slightly demented baronet,
+had pounced&mdash;it's the only word for it&mdash;on Uncle
+Hubert. "A woman is nothing without a husband,"
+she said, and took him. He was a fairly comfortable
+Oxford don in his furtive way, and bringing him out
+and using him as a basis, she specialized in intellectual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">-75-</a></span>
+philanthropy and evolved her Movement. It
+was quite remarkable how rapidly she overhauled
+her sisters again.</p>
+
+<p>What the Movement was, varied considerably
+from time to time, but it was always aggressively
+beneficial towards the lower strata of the community.
+Among its central ideas was her belief that
+these lower strata can no more be trusted to eat than
+they can to drink, and that the licensing monopoly
+which has made the poor man's beer thick, lukewarm
+and discreditable, and so greatly minimized its
+consumption, should be extended to the solid side of
+his dietary. She wanted to place considerable restrictions
+upon the sale of all sorts of meat, upon
+groceries and the less hygienic and more palatable
+forms of bread (which do not sufficiently stimulate
+the coatings of the stomach), to increase the present
+difficulties in the way of tobacco purchasers, and to
+put an end to that wanton and deleterious consumption
+of sweets which has so bad an effect upon
+the enamel of the teeth of the younger generation.
+Closely interwoven with these proposals was an adoption
+of the principle of the East Purblow Experiment,
+the principle of Payment in Kind. She was
+quite in agreement with Mr. Pope that poor people,
+when they had money, frittered it away, and so she
+proposed very extensive changes in the Truck Act,
+which could enable employers, under suitable safeguards,
+and with the advice of a small body of
+spinster inspectors, to supply hygienic housing,
+approved clothing of moral and wholesome sort,
+various forms of insurance, edifying rations, cuisine,
+medical aid and educational facilities as circumstances
+seemed to justify, in lieu of the wages the
+employees handled so ill....</p>
+
+<p>As no people in England will ever admit they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">-76-</a></span>
+belong to the lower strata of society, Aunt Plessington's
+Movement attracted adherents from every
+class in the community.</p>
+
+<p>She now, as they drove slowly to the vicarage,
+recounted to Marjorie&mdash;she had the utmost contempt
+for Daffy because of her irregular teeth and
+a general lack of progressive activity&mdash;the steady
+growth of the Movement, and the increasing respect
+shown for her and Hubert in the world of politico-social
+reform. Some of the meetings she had addressed
+had been quite full, various people had made
+various remarks about her, hostile for the most part
+and yet insidiously flattering, and everybody seemed
+quite glad to come to the little dinners she gave in
+order, she said, to gather social support for her reforms.
+She had been staying with the Mastersteins,
+who were keenly interested, and after she had polished
+off Lady Petchworth she was to visit Lady
+Rosenbaum. It was all going on swimmingly, these
+newer English gentry were eager to learn all she had
+to teach in the art of breaking in the Anglo-Saxon
+villagers, and now, how was Marjorie going on, and
+what was <i>she</i> going to do in the world?</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie said she was working for her final.</p>
+
+<p>"And what then?" asked Aunt Plessington.</p>
+
+<p>"Not very clear, Aunt, yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Looking around for something to take up?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Aunt."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you've time yet. And it's just as well to
+see how the land lies before you begin. It saves going
+back. You'll have to come up to London with
+me for a little while, and see things, and be seen a
+little."</p>
+
+<p>"I should love to."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll give you a good time," said Aunt Plessington,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">-77-</a></span>
+nodding promisingly. "Theodore getting on
+in school?"</p>
+
+<p>"He's had his remove."</p>
+
+<p>"And how's Sydney getting on with the music?"</p>
+
+<p>"Excellently."</p>
+
+<p>"And Rom. Rom getting on?"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie indicated a more restrained success.</p>
+
+<p>"And what's Daffy doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! <i>get</i> on!" said Daffy and suddenly whacked
+the donkey rather hard. "I beg your pardon, Aunt?"</p>
+
+<p>"I asked what <i>you</i> were up to, Daffy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dusting, Aunt&mdash;and the virtues," said Daffy.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to find something better than that."</p>
+
+<p>"Father tells me a lot about the East Purblow
+Experiment," said Daffy after a perceptible interval.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" cried Aunt Plessington with a loud encouraging
+note, but evidently making the best of it,
+"<i>that's</i> better. Sociological observation."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Aunt," said Daffy, and negotiated a corner
+with exceptional care.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 8</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope, who had an instinctive disposition to
+pad when Aunt Plessington was about, had secured
+the presence at lunch of Mr. Magnet (who was after
+all staying on in Buryhamstreet) and the Rev. Jopling
+Baynes. Aunt Plessington liked to meet the
+clergy, and would always if she could win them over
+to an interest in the Movement. She opened the
+meal with a brisk attack upon him. "Come, Mr.
+Baynes," she said, "what do your people eat here?
+Hubert and I are making a study of the gluttonous
+side of village life, and we find that no one knows so
+much of that as the vicar&mdash;not even the doctor."</p>
+
+<p>The Reverend Jopling Baynes was a clergyman<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">-78-</a></span>
+of the evasive type with a quite distinguished voice.
+He pursed his lips and made his eyes round. "Well,
+Mrs. Plessington," he said and fingered his glass,
+"it's the usual dietary. The usual dietary."</p>
+
+<p>"Too much and too rich, badly cooked and
+eaten too fast," said Aunt Plessington. "And what
+do you think is the remedy?"</p>
+
+<p>"We make an Effort," said the Rev. Jopling
+Baynes, "we make an Effort. A Hint here, a Word
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing organized?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes, and shook
+his head with a kind of resignation.</p>
+
+<p>"We are going to alter all that," said Aunt Plessington
+briskly, and went on to expound the Movement
+and the diverse way in which it might be possible
+to control and improve the domestic expenditure
+of the working classes.</p>
+
+<p>The Rev. Jopling Baynes listened sympathetically
+across the table and tried to satisfy a healthy
+appetite with as abstemious an air as possible while
+he did so. Aunt Plessington passed rapidly from
+general principles, to a sketch of the success of the
+movement, and Hubert, who had hitherto been busy
+with his lunch, became audible from behind the exceptionally
+large floral trophy that concealed him
+from his wife, bubbling confirmatory details. She
+was very bright and convincing as she told of this
+prominent man met and subdued, that leading antagonist
+confuted, and how the Bishops were coming
+in. She made it clear in her swift way that an
+intelligent cleric resolved to get on in this world <i>en
+route</i> for a better one hereafter, might do worse than
+take up her Movement. And this touched in, she
+turned her mind to Mr. Magnet.</p>
+
+<p>(That floral trophy, I should explain, by the by,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">-79-</a></span>
+was exceptionally large because of Mrs. Pope's firm
+conviction that Aunt Plessington starved her husband.
+Accordingly, she masked him, and so was able
+to heap second and third helpings upon his plate
+without Aunt Plessington discovering his lapse. The
+avidity with which Hubert ate confirmed her worst
+suspicions and evinced, so far as anything ever did
+evince, his gratitude.)</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mr. Magnet," she said, "I wish I had
+your sense of humour."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you had," said Mr. Magnet.</p>
+
+<p>"I should write tracts," said Aunt Plessington.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it was good for something," said Mr.
+Magnet, and Daffy laughed in a tentative way.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean it," said Aunt Plessington brightly.
+"Think if we had a Dickens&mdash;and you are the nearest
+man alive to Dickens&mdash;on the side of social
+reform to-day!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Magnet's light manner deserted him. "We
+do what we can, Mrs. Plessington," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"How much more might be done," said Aunt
+Plessington, "if humour could be organized."</p>
+
+<p>"Hear, hear!" said Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"If all the humorists of England could be induced
+to laugh at something together."</p>
+
+<p>"They do&mdash;at times," said Mr. Magnet, but the
+atmosphere was too serious for his light touch.</p>
+
+<p>"They could laugh it out of existence," said
+Aunt Plessington.</p>
+
+<p>It was evident Mr. Magnet was struck by the idea.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," he said, "in <i>Punch</i>, to which I
+happen to be an obscure occasional contributor&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope was understood to protest that he
+should not say such things.</p>
+
+<p>"We <i>do</i> remember just what we can do either in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">-80-</a></span>
+the way of advertising or injury. I don't think
+you'll find us up against any really <i>solid</i> institutions."</p>
+
+<p>"But do you think, Mr. Magnet, you are sufficiently
+kind to the New?" Aunt Plessington persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"I think we are all grateful to <i>Punch</i>," said the
+Rev. Jopling Baynes suddenly and sonorously, "for
+its steady determination to direct our mirth into the
+proper channels. I do not think that any one can
+accuse its editor of being unmindful of his great
+responsibilities&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie found it a very interesting conversation.</p>
+
+<p>She always met her aunt again with a renewal of
+a kind of admiration. That loud authoritative rudeness,
+that bold thrusting forward of the Movement
+until it became the sole criterion of worth or success,
+this annihilation by disregard of all that Aunt Plessington
+wasn't and didn't and couldn't, always in the
+intervals seemed too good to be true. Of course this
+really was the way people got on and made a mark,
+but she felt it must be almost as trying to the nerves
+as aeronautics. Suppose, somewhere up there your
+engine stopped! How Aunt Plessington dominated
+the table! Marjorie tried not to catch Daffy's eye.
+Daffy was unostentatiously keeping things going,
+watching the mustard, rescuing the butter, restraining
+Theodore, and I am afraid not listening very
+carefully to Aunt Plessington. The children were
+marvellously silent and jumpily well-behaved, and
+Mr. Pope, in a very unusual state of subdued amiability,
+sat at the end of the table with the East Purblow
+experiment on the tip of his tongue. He liked
+Aunt Plessington, and she was good for him. They
+had the same inherent distrust of the intelligence
+and good intentions of their fellow creatures, and she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">-81-</a></span>
+had the knack of making him feel that he too was
+getting on, that she was saying things on his behalf
+in influential quarters, and in spite of the almost
+universal conspiracy (based on jealousy) to ignore
+his stern old-world virtues, he might still be able to
+battle his way to the floor of the House of Commons
+and there deliver himself before he died of a few sorely
+needed home-truths about motor cars, decadence
+and frivolity generally....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 9</p>
+
+<p>After lunch Aunt Plessington took her little
+Madge for an energetic walk, and showed herself far
+more observant than the egotism of her conversation
+at that meal might have led one to suppose. Or
+perhaps she was only better informed. Aunt Plessington
+loved a good hard walk in the afternoon;
+and if she could get any one else to accompany her,
+then Hubert stayed at home, and curled up into a
+ball on a sofa somewhere, and took a little siesta that
+made him all the brighter for the intellectual activities
+of the evening. The thought of a young life,
+new, untarnished, just at the outset, just addressing
+itself to the task of getting on, always stimulated her
+mind extremely, and she talked to Marjorie with a
+very real and effectual desire to help her to the
+utmost of her ability.</p>
+
+<p>She talked of a start in life, and the sort of start
+she had had. She showed how many people who
+began with great advantages did not shove sufficiently,
+and so dropped out of things and weren't seen and
+mentioned. She defended herself for marrying Hubert,
+and showed what a clever shoving thing it had
+been to do. It startled people a little, and made them
+realize that here was a woman who wanted something
+more in a man than a handsome organ-grinder. She<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">-82-</a></span>
+made it clear that she thought a clever marriage, if
+not a startlingly brilliant one, the first duty of a
+girl. It was a girl's normal gambit. She branched
+off to the things single women might do, in order to
+justify this view. She did not think single women
+could do very much. They might perhaps shove as
+suffragettes, but even there a husband helped tremendously&mdash;if
+only by refusing to bail you out.
+She ran over the cases of a number of prominent
+single women.</p>
+
+<p>"And what," said Aunt Plessington, "do they
+all amount to? A girl is so hampered and an old
+maid is so neglected," said Aunt Plessington.</p>
+
+<p>She paused.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you up and marry Mr. Magnet,
+Marjorie?" she said, with her most brilliant flash.</p>
+
+<p>"It takes two to make a marriage, aunt," said
+Marjorie after a slight hesitation.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear child! he worships the ground you
+tread on!" said Aunt Plessington.</p>
+
+<p>"He's rather&mdash;grown up," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit of it. He's not forty. He's just the
+age."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid it's a little impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible?"</p>
+
+<p>"You see I've refused him, aunt."</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally&mdash;the first time! But I wouldn't send
+him packing the second."</p>
+
+<p>There was an interval.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie decided on a blunt question. "Do you
+really think, aunt, I should do well to marry Mr.
+Magnet?"</p>
+
+<p>"He'd give you everything a clever woman
+needs," said Aunt Plessington. "Everything."</p>
+
+<p>With swift capable touches she indicated the sort
+of life the future Mrs. Magnet might enjoy. "He's<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">-83-</a></span>
+evidently a man who wants helping to a position,"
+she said. "Of course his farces and things, I'm told,
+make no end of money, but he's just a crude gift by
+himself. Money like that is nothing. With a clever
+wife he might be all sorts of things. Without one
+he'll just subside&mdash;you know the sort of thing this
+sort of man does. A rather eccentric humorous
+house in the country, golf, croquet, horse-riding,
+rose-growing, queer hats."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't that rather what he would like to do,
+aunt?" said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"That's not <i>our</i> business, Madge," said Aunt
+Plessington with humorous emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>She began to sketch out a different and altogether
+smarter future for the fortunate humorist. There
+would be a house in a good central position in London
+where Marjorie would have bright successful
+lunches and dinners, very unpretending and very
+good, and tempt the clever smart with the lure of the
+interestingly clever; there would be a bright little
+country cottage in some pretty accessible place to
+which Aunt and Uncle Plessington and able and influential
+people generally could be invited for gaily
+recreative and yet extremely talkative and helpful
+week-ends. Both places could be made centres of
+intrigue; conspiracies for getting on and helping and
+exchanging help could be organized, people could be
+warned against people whose getting-on was undesirable.
+In the midst of it all, dressed with all the
+natural wit she had and an enlarging experience,
+would be Marjorie, shining like a rising planet. It
+wouldn't be long, if she did things well, before she
+had permanent officials and young cabinet ministers
+mingling with her salad of writers and humorists and
+the Plessington connexion.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Aunt Plessington with a joyous
+lift in her voice, "you'll begin to <i>weed</i> a little."</p>
+
+<p>For a time the girl's mind resisted her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">-84-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But Marjorie was of the impressionable sex at an
+impressionable age, and there was something overwhelming
+in the undeviating conviction of her aunt,
+in the clear assurance of her voice, that this life which
+interested her was the real life, the only possible
+successful life. The world reformed itself in Marjorie's
+fluent mind, until it was all a scheme of
+influence and effort and ambition and triumphs. Dinner-parties
+and receptions, men wearing orders,
+cabinet ministers more than a little in love asking her
+advice, beautiful robes, a great blaze of lights; why!
+she might be, said Aunt Plessington rising to enthusiasm,
+"another Marcella." The life was not
+without its adventurous side; it wasn't in any way
+dull. Aunt Plessington to illustrate that point told
+amusing anecdotes of how two almost impudent invitations
+on her part had succeeded, and how she
+had once scored off her elder sister by getting a
+coveted celebrity through their close family resemblance.
+"After accepting he couldn't very well
+refuse because I wasn't somebody else," she ended
+gleefully. "So he came&mdash;and stayed as long as
+anybody."</p>
+
+<p>What else was there for Marjorie to contemplate?
+If she didn't take this by no means unattractive
+line, what was the alternative? Some sort
+of employment after a battle with her father, a parsimonious
+life, and even then the Oxbridge tradesmen
+and their immortal bills....</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Plessington was so intent upon her theme
+that she heeded nothing of the delightful little flowers
+she trampled under foot across the down, nor the
+jolly squirrel with an artistic temperament who saw
+fit to give an uninvited opinion upon her personal
+appearance from the security of a beech-tree in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">-85-</a></span>
+wood. But Marjorie, noting quite a number of such
+things with the corner of her mind, and being now
+well under the Plessington sway, wished she had more
+concentration....</p>
+
+<p>In the evening after supper the customary games
+were suspended, and Mr. and Mrs. Plessington talked
+about getting on, and work and efficiency generally,
+and explained how so-and-so had spoilt his chances
+in life, and why so-and-so was sure to achieve nothing,
+and how this man ate too much and that man drank
+too much, and on the contrary what promising and
+capable people the latest adherents of and subscribers
+to the Movement were, until two glasses of hot
+water came&mdash;Aunt Plessington had been told it was
+good for her digestion and she thought it just as well
+that Hubert should have some too&mdash;and it was time
+for every one to go to bed.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 10</p>
+
+<p>Next morning an atmosphere of getting on and
+strenuosity generally prevailed throughout the vicarage.
+The Plessingtons were preparing a memorandum
+on their movement for the "Reformer's Year
+Book," every word was of importance and might win
+or lose adherents and subscribers, and they secured
+the undisturbed possession of the drawing-room,
+from which the higher notes of Aunt Plessington's
+voice explaining the whole thing to Hubert, who had
+to write it out, reached, a spur to effort, into every
+part of the house.</p>
+
+<p>Their influence touched every one.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie, struck by the idea that she was not
+perhaps getting on at Oxbridge so fast as she ought
+to do, went into the summer-house with Marshall's
+"Principles of Economics," read for two hours, and
+did not think about her bills for more than a quarter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">-86-</a></span>
+of the time. Rom, who had already got up early and
+read through about a third of "Aurora Leigh," now
+set herself with dogged determination to finish that
+great poem. Syd practised an extra ten minutes&mdash;for
+Aunt Plessington didn't mind practice so long as
+there wasn't a tune. Mrs. Pope went into the kitchen
+and made a long-needed fuss about the waste of rice.
+Mr. Pope began the pamphlet he had had in contemplation
+for some time upon the advantages to public
+order of Payment in Kind. Theodore, who had
+washed behind his ears and laced his boots in all the
+holes, went into the yard before breakfast and hit a
+tennis ball against the wall and back, five hundred
+and twenty-two times&mdash;a record. He would have
+resumed this after breakfast, but his father came
+round the corner of the house with a pen in his mouth,
+and asked him indistinctly, but fiercely, what the
+<i>devil</i> he was doing. So he went away, and after a
+fretful interval set himself to revise his Latin irregular
+verbs. By twelve he had done wonders.</p>
+
+<p>Later in the day the widening circle of aggressive
+urgency reached the kitchen, and at two the cook
+gave notice in order, she said, to better herself.</p>
+
+<p>Lunch, unconscious of this impending shadow,
+was characterized by a virtuous cheerfulness, and
+Aunt Plessington told in detail how her seven and
+twenty nephews and nieces, the children of her various
+sisters, were all getting on. On the whole, they
+were not getting on so brilliantly as they might have
+done (which indeed is apt to be the case with the
+children of people who have loved not well but too
+wisely), and it was borne in upon the mind of the
+respectfully listening Marjorie that, to borrow an
+easy colloquialism of her aunt's, she might "take
+the shine out of the lot of them" with a very little
+zeal and effort&mdash;and of course Mr. Magnet.</p>
+
+<p>The lecture in the evening at Summerhay was a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">-87-</a></span>
+great success.</p>
+
+<p>The chair was taken by the Rev. Jopling Baynes,
+Lady Petchworth was enthroned behind the table,
+Hubert was in charge of his wife's notes&mdash;if notes
+should be needed&mdash;and Mr. Pope, expectant of an invitation
+at the end to say a few words about the East
+Purblow experiment, also occupied a chair on the
+platform. Lady Petchworth, with her abundant soft
+blond hair, brightly blond still in spite of her fifty-five
+years, her delicate features, her plump hands, her
+numerous chins and her entirely inaudible voice, made
+a pleasing contrast with Aunt Plessington's resolute
+personality. She had perhaps an even greater assurance
+of authority, but it was a quiet assurance;
+you felt that she knew that if she spoke in her sleep
+she would be obeyed, that it was quite unnecessary to
+make herself heard. The two women, indeed, the one
+so assertive, the other so established, were at the
+opposite poles of authoritative British womanhood,
+and harmonized charmingly. The little room struck
+the note of a well-regulated brightness at every point,
+it had been decorated in a Keltic but entirely respectful
+style by one of Lady Petchworth's artistic discoveries,
+it was lit by paraffin lamps that smelt
+hardly at all, and it was gay with colour prints illustrating
+the growth of the British Empire from the
+battle of Ethandune to the surrender of Cronje. The
+hall was fairly full. Few could afford to absent
+themselves from these brightening occasions, but
+there was a tendency on the part of the younger and
+the less thoughtful section of the village manhood to
+accumulate at the extreme back and rumble in what
+appeared to be a slightly ironical spirit, so far as it
+had any spirit, with its feet.</p>
+
+<p>The Rev. Jopling Baynes opened proceedings<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">-88-</a></span>
+with a few well-chosen remarks, in which he complimented
+every one present either singly or collectively
+according to their rank and importance, and then
+Aunt Plessington came forward to the centre of the
+platform amidst a hectic flush of applause, and said
+"Haw!" in a loud clear ringing tone.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke without resorting to the notes in Hubert's
+little fist, very freely and easily. Her strangulated
+contralto went into every corner of the room
+and positively seemed to look for and challenge
+inattentive auditors. She had come over, she said,
+and she had been very glad to come over and talk to
+them that night, because it meant not only seeing them
+but meeting her very dear delightful friend Lady
+Petchworth (loud applause) and staying for a day
+or so with her brother-in-law Mr. Pope (unsupported
+outburst of applause from Mr. Magnet), to whom
+she and social reform generally owed so much. She
+had come to talk to them that night about the National
+Good Habits Movement, which was attracting so much
+attention and which bore so closely on our
+National Life and Character; she happened to be&mdash;here
+Aunt Plessington smiled as she spoke&mdash;a humble
+person connected with that movement, just a
+mere woman connected with it; she was going to
+explain to them as well as she could in her womanly
+way and in the time at her disposal just what it was
+and just what it was for, and just what means it
+adopted and just what ends it had in view. Well,
+they all knew what Habits were, and that there were
+Good Habits and Bad Habits, and she supposed that
+the difference between a good man and a bad man
+was just that the good man had good habits and the
+bad one had bad habits. Everybody she supposed
+wanted to get on. If a man had good habits he got<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">-89-</a></span>
+on, and if he had bad habits he didn't get on, and she
+supposed it was the same with a country, if its people
+had good habits they got on, and if its people had
+bad habits they didn't get on. For her own part she
+and her husband (Hubert gave a little self-conscious
+jump) had always cultivated good habits, and she
+had to thank him with all her heart for his help in
+doing so. (Applause from the front seats.) Now,
+the whole idea of her movement was to ask, how can
+we raise the standard of the national habits? how can
+we get rid of bad habits and cultivate good ones?...
+(Here there was a slight interruption due to
+some one being suddenly pushed off the end of a
+form at the back, and coming to the floor with audible
+violence, after which a choked and obstructed
+tittering continued intermittently for some time.)</p>
+
+<p>Some of her audience, she remarked, had not yet
+acquired the habit of sitting still.</p>
+
+<p>(Laughter, and a coarse vulgar voice: "Good old
+Billy Punt!")</p>
+
+<p>Well, to resume, she and her husband had made a
+special and careful study of habits; they had consulted
+all sorts of people and collected all sorts of
+statistics, in fact they had devoted themselves to this
+question, and the conclusion to which they came was
+this, that Good Habits were acquired by Training
+and Bad Habits came from neglect and carelessness
+and leaving people, who weren't fit for such freedom,
+to run about and do just whatever they liked. And
+so, she went on with a note of complete demonstration,
+the problem resolved itself into the question of
+how far they could get more Training into the national
+life, and how they could check extravagant and
+unruly and wasteful and unwise ways of living.
+(Hear, hear! from Mr. Pope.) And this was the
+problem she and her husband had set themselves to
+solve.</p>
+
+<p>(Scuffle, and a boy's voice at the back, saying:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">-90-</a></span>
+"Oh, <i>shut</i> it, Nuts! <span class="smcap">Shut</span> it!")</p>
+
+<p>Well, she and her husband had worked the thing
+out, and they had come to the conclusion that what
+was the matter with the great mass of English people
+was first that they had rather too much loose money,
+and secondly that they had rather too much loose
+time. (A voice: "What O!" and the Rev. Jopling
+Baynes suddenly extended his neck, knitted his brows,
+and became observant of the interrupter.) She did
+not say they had too much money (a second voice:
+"Not Arf!"), but too much <i>loose</i> money. She did
+not say they had too much time but too much loose
+time, that is to say, they had money and time they
+did not know how to spend properly. And so they
+got into mischief. A great number of people in this
+country, she maintained, and this was especially true
+of the lower classes, did not know how to spend either
+money or time; they bought themselves wasteful
+things and injurious things, and they frittered away
+their hours in all sorts of foolish, unprofitable ways.
+And, after the most careful and scientific study of
+this problem, she and her husband had come to the
+conclusion that two main principles must underlie
+any remedial measures that were attempted, the first
+of which was the Principle of Payment in Kind, which
+had already had so interesting a trial at the great
+carriage works of East Purblow, and the second, the
+Principle of Continuous Occupation, which had been
+recognized long ago in popular wisdom by that
+admirable proverb&mdash;or rather quotation&mdash;she believed
+it was a quotation, though she gave, she feared,
+very little time to poetry ("Better employed," from
+Mr. Pope)&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Satan finds some mischief still<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For idle hands to do."<br /></span>
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">-91-</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>(Irrepressible outbreak of wild and sustained applause
+from the back seats, and in a sudden lull a
+female voice asking in a flattened, thwarted tone:
+"Ain't there to be no lantern then?")</p>
+
+<p>The lecturer went on to explain what was meant
+by either member of what perhaps they would permit
+her to call this double-barrelled social remedy.</p>
+
+<p>It was an admirable piece of lucid exposition.
+Slowly the picture of a better, happier, more disciplined
+England grew upon the minds of the meeting.
+First she showed the new sort of employer her
+movement would evoke, an employer paternal, philanthropic,
+vaguely responsible for the social order
+of all his dependants. (Lady Petchworth was seen
+to nod her head slowly at this.) Only in the last
+resort, and when he was satisfied that his worker
+and his worker's family were properly housed, hygienically
+clothed and fed, attending suitable courses
+of instruction and free from any vicious inclinations,
+would he pay wages in cash. In the discharge of the
+duties of payment he would have the assistance of
+expert advice, and the stimulus of voluntary inspectors
+of his own class. He would be the natural clan-master,
+the captain and leader, adviser and caretaker
+of his banded employees. Responsibility
+would stimulate him, and if responsibility did not
+stimulate him, inspectors (both men and women
+inspectors) would. The worker, on the other hand,
+would be enormously more healthy and efficient under
+the new régime. His home, designed by qualified and
+officially recognized architects, would be prettier as
+well as more convenient and elevating to his taste,
+his children admirably trained and dressed in the new
+and more beautiful clothing with which Lady Petchworth
+(applause) had done so much to make them
+familiar, his vital statistics compared with current<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">-92-</a></span>
+results would be astonishingly good, his mind free
+from any anxiety but the proper anxiety of a man
+in his position, to get his work done properly and
+earn recognition from those competent and duly authorized
+to judge it. Of all this she spoke with the
+inspiring note of absolute conviction. All this would
+follow Payment in Kind and Continuous Occupation
+as days follow sunrise. And there would always,&mdash;and
+here Aunt Plessington's voice seemed to brighten&mdash;be
+something for the worker to get on with, something
+for him to do; lectures, classes, reading-rooms,
+improving entertainments. His time would be filled.
+The proper authorities would see that it was filled&mdash;and
+filled in the right way. Never for a moment
+need he be bored. He would never have an excuse
+for being bored. That was the second great idea, the
+complementary idea to the first. "And here it is,"
+she said, turning a large encouraging smile on Lady
+Petchworth, "that the work of a National Theatre,
+instructive, stimulating, well regulated, and morally
+sustaining, would come in." He wouldn't, of course,
+be <i>compelled</i> to go, but there would be his seat, part
+of his payment in kind, and the public-house would
+be shut, most other temptations would be removed....</p>
+
+<p>The lecture reached its end at last with only one
+other interruption. Some would-be humorist suddenly
+inquired, <i>ŕ propos</i> of nothing: "What's the
+fare to America, Billy?" and a voice, presumably
+Billy's, answered him: "Mor'n <i>you'll</i> ev 'av in <i>you'</i>
+pocket."</p>
+
+<p>The Rev. Jopling Baynes, before he called upon
+Mr. Pope for his promised utterance about East
+Purblow, could not refrain from pointing out how
+silly "in every sense of the word" these wanton
+interruptions were. What, he asked, had English
+social reform to do with the fare to America?&mdash;and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">-93-</a></span>
+having roused the meeting to an alert silence by the
+length of his pause, answered in a voice of ringing
+contempt: "Nothing&mdash;<i>whatsoever</i>." Then Mr. Pope
+made his few remarks about East Purblow with the
+ease and finish that comes from long practice; much,
+he said, had to be omitted "in view of" the restricted
+time at his disposal, but he did not grudge that, the
+time had been better filled. ("No, no," from Aunt
+Plessington.) Yes, yes,&mdash;by the lucid and delightful
+lecture they had all enjoyed, and he not least among
+them. (Applause.)...</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 11</p>
+
+<p>They came out into a luminous blue night, with a
+crescent young moon high overhead. It was so fine
+that the Popes and the Plessingtons and Mr. Magnet
+declined Lady Petchworth's proffered car, and walked
+back to Buryhamstreet across the park through a
+sleeping pallid cornfield, and along by the edge of
+the pine woods. Mr. Pope would have liked to walk
+with Mr. Magnet and explain all that the pressure on
+his time had caused him to omit from his speech, and
+why it was he had seen fit to omit this part and
+include that. Some occult power, however, baffled
+this intention, and he found himself going home in the
+company of his brother-in-law and Daffy, with Aunt
+Plessington and his wife like a barrier between him
+and his desire. Marjorie, on the other hand, found
+Mr. Magnet's proximity inevitable. They fell a little
+behind and were together again for the first time
+since her refusal.</p>
+
+<p>He behaved, she thought, with very great restraint,
+and indeed he left her a little doubtful on
+that occasion whether he had not decided to take<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">-94-</a></span>
+her decision as final. He talked chiefly about
+the lecture, which had impressed him very deeply.
+Mrs. Plessington, he said, was so splendid&mdash;made
+him feel trivial. He felt stirred up by her,
+wanted to help in this social work, this picking
+up of helpless people from the muddle in which they
+wallowed.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed not only extraordinarily modest but
+extraordinarily gentle that night, and the warm
+moonshine gave his face a shadowed earnestness it
+lacked in more emphatic lights. She felt the profound
+change in her feelings towards him that had
+followed her rejection of him. It had cleared away
+his effect of oppression upon her. She had no longer
+any sense of entanglement and pursuit, and all the
+virtues his courtship had obscured shone clear again.
+He was kindly, he was patient&mdash;and she felt something
+about him a woman is said always to respect, he
+gave her an impression of ability. After all, he could
+banish the trouble that crushed and overwhelmed her
+with a movement of his little finger. Of all her load
+of debt he could earn the payment in a day.</p>
+
+<p>"Your aunt goes to-morrow?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie admitted it.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I could talk to her more. She's so inspiring."</p>
+
+<p>"You know of our little excursion for Friday?"
+he asked after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>She had not heard. Friday was Theodore's
+birthday; she knew it only too well because she had
+had to part with her stamp collection&mdash;which very
+luckily had chanced to get packed and come to Buryhamstreet&mdash;to
+meet its demand. Mr. Magnet explained
+he had thought it might be fun to give a
+picnic in honour of the anniversary.</p>
+
+<p>"How jolly of you!" said Marjorie.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">-95-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There's a pretty bit of river between Wamping
+and Friston Hanger&mdash;I've wanted you to see it
+for a long time, and Friston Hanger church has
+the prettiest view. The tower gets the bend of the
+river."</p>
+
+<p>He told her all he meant to do as if he submitted
+his plans for her approval. They would drive to
+Wamping and get a very comfortable little steam
+launch one could hire there. Wintersloan was coming
+down again; an idle day of this kind just suited
+his temperament. Theodore would like it, wouldn't
+he?</p>
+
+<p>"Theodore will think he is King of Surrey!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have a rod and line if he wants to fish. I
+don't want to forget anything. I want it to be <i>his</i>
+day really and truly."</p>
+
+<p>The slightest touch upon the pathetic note? She
+could not tell.</p>
+
+<p>But that evening brought Marjorie nearer to
+loving Magnet than she had ever been. Before she
+went to sleep that night she had decided he was quite
+a tolerable person again; she had been too nervous
+and unjust with him. After all, his urgency and
+awkwardness had been just a part of his sincerity.
+Perhaps the faint doubt whether he would make his
+request again gave the zest of uncertainty to his
+devotion. Of course, she told herself, he would ask
+again. And then the blissful air of limitless means
+she might breathe. The blessed release....</p>
+
+<p>She was suddenly fast asleep.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 12</p>
+
+<p>Friday was after all not so much Theodore's day
+as Mr. Magnet's.</p>
+
+<p>Until she found herself committed there was no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">-96-</a></span>
+shadow of doubt in Marjorie's mind of what she
+meant to do. "Before I see you again," said Aunt
+Plessington at the parting kiss, "I hope you'll have
+something to tell me." She might have been Hymen
+thinly disguised as an aunt, waving from the departing
+train. She continued by vigorous gestures and
+unstinted display of teeth and a fluttering handkerchief
+to encourage Marjorie to marry Mr. Magnet,
+until the curve of the cutting hid her from
+view....</p>
+
+<p>Fortune favoured Mr. Magnet with a beautiful
+day, and the excursion was bright and successful
+from the outset. It was done well, and what perhaps
+was more calculated to impress Marjorie, it was done
+with lavish generosity. From the outset she turned a
+smiling countenance upon her host. She did her
+utmost to suppress a reviving irrational qualm in
+her being, to maintain clearly and simply her overnight
+decision, that he should propose again and that
+she should accept him.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the festival was just a little dreamlike in its
+quality to her perceptions. She found she could
+not focus clearly on its details.</p>
+
+<p>Two waggonettes came from Wamping; there
+was room for everybody and to spare, and Wamping
+revealed itself a pleasant small country town with
+stocks under the market hall, and just that tint of
+green paint and that loafing touch the presence of
+a boating river gives.</p>
+
+<p>The launch was brilliantly smart with abundant
+crimson cushions and a tasselled awning, and away
+to the left was a fine old bridge that dated in its
+essentials from Plantagenet times.</p>
+
+<p>They started with much whistling and circling,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">-97-</a></span>
+and went away up river under overhanging trees that
+sometimes swished the funnel, splashing the meadow
+path and making the reeds and bulrushes dance with
+their wash. They went through a reluctant lock,
+steamed up a long reach, they passed the queerly
+painted Potwell Inn with its picturesque group of
+poplars and its absurd new notice-board of "Omlets." ...
+Theodore was five stone of active
+happiness; he and the pseudo-twins, strictly under
+his orders as the universal etiquette of birthdays
+prescribes, clambered round and round the boat,
+clutching the awning rail and hanging over the water
+in an entirely secure and perilous looking manner.
+No one, unless his father happened to be upset by
+something, would check him, he knew, on this auspicious
+day. Mr. Magnet sat with the grey eye on
+Marjorie and listened a little abstractedly to Mr.
+Pope, who was telling very fully what he would say
+if the Liberal party were to ask his advice at the
+present juncture. Mrs. Pope attended discreetly,
+and Daffy and Marjorie with a less restrained interest,
+to Mr. Wintersloan, who showed them how to
+make faces out of a fist tied up in a pocket-handkerchief,
+how to ventriloquize, how to conjure with
+halfpence&mdash;which he did very amusingly&mdash;and what
+the buttons on a man's sleeve were for; Theodore
+clambering at his back discovered what he was at,
+and by right of birthday made him do all the faces
+and tricks over again. Then Mr. Wintersloan told
+stories of all the rivers along which, he said, he had
+travelled in steamboats; the Rhine, the Danube, the
+Hoogly and the Fall River, and particularly how he
+had been bitten by a very young crocodile. "It's
+the smell of the oil brings it all back to me," he said.
+"And the kind of sway it gives you."</p>
+
+<p>He made sinuous movements of his hand, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">-98-</a></span>
+looked at Marjorie with that wooden yet expressive
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>Friston Hanger proved to be even better than
+Wamping. It had a character of its own because it
+was built very largely of a warm buff coloured local
+rock instead of the usual brick, and the outhouses at
+least of the little inn at which they landed were
+thatched. Most of the cottages had casement windows
+with diamond panes, and the streets were cobbled
+and very up-and-down hill. The place ran to
+high walls richly suggestive of hidden gardens, overhung
+by big trees and pierced by secretive important
+looking doors. And over it all rose an unusually big
+church, with a tall buttressed tower surmounted by a
+lantern of pierced stone.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll go through the town and look at the ruins
+of the old castle beyond the church," said Mr. Magnet
+to Marjorie, "and then I want you to see the
+view from the church tower."</p>
+
+<p>And as they went through the street, he called
+her attention again to the church tower in a voice
+that seemed to her to be inexplicably charged with
+significance. "I want you to go up there," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"How about something to eat, Mr. Magnet?"
+remarked Theodore suddenly, and everybody felt a
+little surprised when Mr. Magnet answered: "Who
+wants things to eat on your birthday, Theodore?"</p>
+
+<p>But they saw the joke of that when they reached
+the castle ruins and found in the old tilting yard,
+with its ivy-covered arch framing a view of the town
+and stream, a table spread with a white cloth that
+shone in the sunshine, glittering with glass and silver
+and gay with a bowl of salad and flowers and cold
+pies and a jug of claret-cup and an ice pail&mdash;a silver
+pail! containing two promising looking bottles, in the
+charge of two real live waiters, in evening dress as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">-99-</a></span>
+waiters should be, but with straw hats to protect
+them from the sun and weather. "Oh!" cried Mrs.
+Pope, "what a <i>splendid</i> idea, Mr. Magnet," when
+the destination of the feast was perfectly clear, and
+even Theodore seemed a little overawed&mdash;almost as
+if he felt his birthday was being carried too far and
+might provoke a judgment later. Manifestly Mr.
+Magnet must have ordered this in London, and have
+had it sent down, waiters and all! Theodore knew
+he was a very wonderful little boy in spite of the
+acute criticism of four devoted sisters, and Mr.
+Magnet had noticed him before at times, but this
+was, well, rather immense! "Look at the pie-crusts,
+old man!" And on the pie-crusts, and on the icing
+of the cake, their munificent host had caused to be
+done in little raised letters of dough and chocolate
+the word "Theodore."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>Mr.</i> Magnet!" said Marjorie&mdash;his eye so
+obviously invited her to say something. Mr. Pope
+tried a nebulous joke about "groaning boards of
+Frisky Hanger," and only Mr. Wintersloan restrained
+his astonishment and admiration. "You could
+have got those chaps in livery," he said&mdash;unheeded.
+The lunch was as a matter of fact his idea; he had
+refused to come unless it was provided, and he had
+somehow counted on blue coats, brass buttons, and
+yellow waistcoats&mdash;but everybody else of course
+ascribed the whole invention to Mr. Magnet.</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said Mr. Pope with a fine air of epigram,
+"the only thing I can say is&mdash;to eat it," and prepared
+to sit down.</p>
+
+<p>"Melon," cried Mr. Magnet to the waiters, "we'll
+begin with the melon. Have you ever tried melon
+with pepper and salt, Mrs. Pope?"</p>
+
+<p>"You put salt in everything," admired Mr. Pope.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">-100-</a></span>
+"Salt from those attics of yours&mdash;Attic salt."</p>
+
+<p>"Or there's ginger!" said Mr. Magnet, after a
+whisper from the waiter.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope said something classical about "ginger
+hot in the mouth."</p>
+
+<p>"Some of these days," said Mr. Wintersloan,
+"when I have exhausted all other sensations, I mean
+to try melon and mustard."</p>
+
+<p>Rom made a wonderful face at him.</p>
+
+<p>"I can think of worse things than that," said Mr.
+Wintersloan with a hard brightness.</p>
+
+<p>"Not till after lunch, Mr. Wintersloan!" said
+Rom heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"The claret cup's all right for Theodore, Mrs.
+Pope," said Magnet. "It's a special twelve year old
+brand." (He thought of everything!)</p>
+
+<p>"Mummy," said Mr. Pope. "You'd better
+carve this pie, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"I want very much," said Mr. Magnet in Marjorie's
+ear and very confidentially, "to show you the
+view from the church tower. I think&mdash;it will appeal
+to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Rom!" said Theodore, uncontrollably, in a
+tremendous stage whisper. "There's peaches!...
+<i>There!</i> on the hamper!"</p>
+
+<p>"Champagne, m'am?" said the waiter suddenly
+in Mrs. Pope's ear, wiping ice-water from the bottle.</p>
+
+<p>(But what could it have cost him?)</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 13</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie would have preferred that Mr. Magnet
+should not have decided with such relentless determination
+to make his second proposal on the church
+tower. His purpose was luminously clear to her from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">-101-</a></span>
+the beginning of lunch onward, and she could feel
+her nerves going under the strain of that long expectation.
+She tried to pull herself together, tried not
+to think about it, tried to be amused by the high
+spirits and nonsense of Mr. Wintersloan and Syd
+and Rom and Theodore; but Mr. Magnet was very
+pervasive, and her mother didn't ever look at her,
+looked past her and away from her and all round her,
+in a profoundly observant manner. Marjorie felt
+chiefly anxious to get to the top of that predestinate
+tower and have the whole thing over, and it was with
+a start that she was just able to prevent one of the
+assiduous waiters filling her glass with champagne
+for the third time.</p>
+
+<p>There was a little awkwardness in dispersing after
+lunch. Mr. Pope, his heart warmed by the champagne
+and mellowed by a subsequent excellent cigar,
+wanted very much to crack what he called a "postprandial
+jest" or so with the great humorist, while
+Theodore also, deeply impressed with the discovery
+that there was more in Mr. Magnet than he had
+supposed, displayed a strong disposition to attach
+himself more closely than he had hitherto done to
+this remarkable person, and study his quiet but
+enormous possibilities with greater attention. Mrs.
+Pope with a still alertness did her best to get people
+adjusted, but Syd and Rom had conceived a base
+and unnatural desire to subjugate the affections of
+the youngest waiter, and wouldn't listen to her proposal
+that they should take Theodore away into the
+town; Mr. Wintersloan displayed extraordinary
+cunning and resource in evading a <i>tęte-ŕ-tęte</i> with
+Mr. Pope that would have released Mr. Magnet.
+Now Mrs. Pope came to think of it, Mr. Wintersloan
+never had had the delights of a good talk with Mr.
+Pope, he knew practically nothing about the East<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">-102-</a></span>
+Purblow experiment except for what Mr. Magnet
+might have retailed to him, and she was very greatly
+puzzled to account for his almost manifest reluctance
+to go into things thoroughly. Daffy remained on
+hand, available but useless, and Mrs. Pope, smiling
+at the landscape and a prey to Management within,
+was suddenly inspired to take her eldest daughter
+into her confidence. "Daffy," she said, with a guileful
+finger extended and pointing to the lower sky
+as though she was pointing out the less obvious and
+more atmospheric beauties of Surrey, "get Theodore
+away from Mr. Magnet if you can. He wants
+to talk to Marjorie."</p>
+
+<p>Daffy looked round. "Shall I call him?" she
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Mrs. Pope, "do it&mdash;just&mdash;quietly."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll try," said Daffy and stared at her task, and
+Mrs. Pope, feeling that this might or might not succeed
+but that anyhow she had done what she could,
+strolled across to her husband and laid a connubial
+touch upon his shoulder. "All the young people,"
+she said, "are burning to climb the church tower. I
+never <i>can</i> understand this activity after lunch."</p>
+
+<p>"Not me," said Mr. Pope. "Eh, Magnet?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I'm</i> game," said Theodore. "Come along, Mr.
+Magnet."</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said Mr. Magnet looking at Marjorie,
+"I shall go up. I want to show Marjorie the view."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll stay here, Mummy, eh?" said Mr. Pope,
+with a quite unusual geniality, and suddenly put his
+arm round Mrs. Pope's waist. Her motherly eye
+sought Daffy's, and indicated her mission. "I'll
+come with you, Theodore," said Daffy. "There isn't
+room for everyone at once up that tower."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll go with Mr. Magnet," said Theodore, relying
+firmly on the privileges of the day....</p>
+
+<p>For a time they played for position, with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">-103-</a></span>
+intentions of Mr. Magnet showing more and more
+starkly through the moves of the game. At last
+Theodore was lured down a side street by the sight of
+a huge dummy fish dangling outside a tackle and bait
+shop, and Mr. Magnet and Marjorie, already with a
+dreadful feeling of complicity, made a movement so
+rapid it seemed to her almost a bolt for the church
+tower. Whatever Mr. Magnet desired to say, and
+whatever elasticity his mind had once possessed with
+regard to it, there can be no doubt that it had now
+become so rigid as to be sayable only in that one
+precise position, and in the exact order he had determined
+upon. But when at last they got to that high
+serenity, Mr. Magnet was far too hot and far too
+much out of breath to say anything at all for a time
+except an almost explosive gust or so of approbation
+of the scenery. "Shor' breath!" he said, "win'ey
+stairs always&mdash;that 'fect on me&mdash;buful sceny&mdash;Suwy&mdash;like
+it always."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie found herself violently disposed to
+laugh; indeed she had never before been so near the
+verge of hysterics.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a perfectly lovely view," she said. "No
+wonder you wanted me to see it."</p>
+
+<p>"Naturally," said Mr. Magnet, "wanted you to
+see it."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie, with a skill her mother might have
+envied, wriggled into a half-sitting position in an
+embrasure and concentrated herself upon the broad
+wooded undulations that went about the horizon, and
+Mr. Magnet mopped his face with surreptitious gestures,
+and took deep restoring breaths.</p>
+
+<p>"I've always wanted to bring you here," he said,
+"ever since I found it in the spring."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">-104-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It was very kind of you, Mr. Magnet," said
+Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he explained, "whenever I see anything
+fine or rich or splendid or beautiful now, I seem
+to want it for you." His voice quickened as though
+he were repeating something that had been long in
+his mind. "I wish I could give you all this country.
+I wish I could put all that is beautiful in the world at
+your feet."</p>
+
+<p>He watched the effect of this upon her for a
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie," he said, "did you really mean what
+you told me the other day, that there was indeed no
+hope for me? I have a sort of feeling I bothered you
+that day, that perhaps you didn't mean all&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stopped short.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think I knew what I meant," said Marjorie,
+and Magnet gave a queer sound of relief at
+her words. "I don't think I know what I mean now.
+I don't think I can say I love you, Mr. Magnet. I
+would if I could. I like you very much indeed, I
+think you are awfully kind, you're more kind and
+generous than anyone I have ever known...."</p>
+
+<p>Saying he was kind and generous made her
+through some obscure association of ideas feel that
+he must have understanding. She had an impulse to
+put her whole case before him frankly. "I wonder,"
+she said, "if you can understand what it is to be a
+girl."</p>
+
+<p>Then she saw the absurdity of her idea, of any
+such miracle of sympathy. He was entirely concentrated
+upon the appeal he had come prepared to
+make.</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie," he said, "I don't ask you to love me
+yet. All I ask is that you shouldn't decide <i>not</i> to
+love me."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie became aware of Theodore, hotly followed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">-105-</a></span>
+by Daffy, in the churchyard below. "I <i>know</i>
+he's up there," Theodore was manifestly saying.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie faced her lover gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Magnet," she said, "I will certainly
+promise you that."</p>
+
+<p>"I would rather be your servant, rather live for
+your happiness, than do anything else in all the
+world," said Mr. Magnet. "If you would trust your
+life to me, if you would deign&mdash;." He paused to
+recover his thread. "If you would deign to let me
+make life what it should be for you, take every care
+from your shoulders, face every responsibility&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie felt she had to hurry. She could almost
+feel the feet of Theodore coming up that tower.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Magnet," she said, "you don't understand.
+You don't realize what I am. You don't know how
+unworthy I am&mdash;what a mere ignorant child&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Let me be judge of that!" cried Mr. Magnet.</p>
+
+<p>They paused almost like two actors who listen
+for the prompter. It was only too obvious that
+both were aware of a little medley of imperfectly subdued
+noises below. Theodore had got to the ladder
+that made the last part of the ascent, and there Daffy
+had collared him. "<i>My</i> birthday," said Theodore.
+"Come down! You <i>shan't</i> go up there!" said Daffy.
+"You <i>mustn't</i>, Theodore!" "Why not?" There
+was something like a scuffle, and whispers. Then it
+would seem Theodore went&mdash;reluctantly and with
+protests. But the conflict receded.</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie!" said Mr. Magnet, as though there
+had been no pause, "if you would consent only to
+make an experiment, if you would try to love me.
+Suppose you <i>tried</i> an engagement. I do not care
+how long I waited...."</p>
+
+<p>He paused. "Will you try?" he urged upon her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">-106-</a></span>
+distressed silence.</p>
+
+<p>She felt as though she forced the word. "<i>Yes!</i>"
+she said in a very low voice.</p>
+
+<p>Then it seemed to her that Mr. Magnet leapt upon
+her. She felt herself pulled almost roughly from
+the embrasure, and he had kissed her. She struggled
+in his embrace. "Mr. Magnet!" she said. He
+lifted her face and kissed her lips. "Marjorie!" he
+said, and she had partly released herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh <i>don't</i> kiss me," she cried, "don't kiss me
+yet!"</p>
+
+<p>"But a kiss!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like it."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon!" he said. "I forgot&mdash;&mdash;. But
+you.... You.... I couldn't help it."</p>
+
+<p>She was suddenly wildly sorry for what she had
+done. She felt she was going to cry, to behave absurdly.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to go down," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie, you have made me the happiest of
+men! All my life, all my strength I will spend in
+showing you that you have made no mistake in trusting
+me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said, "yes," and wondered what she
+could say or do. It seemed to him that her shrinking
+pose was the most tenderly modest thing he had ever
+seen.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh my dear!" he said, and restrained himself
+and took her passive hand and kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to go down to them!" she insisted.</p>
+
+<p>He paused on the topmost rungs of the ladder,
+looking unspeakable things at her. Then he turned
+to go down, and for the second time in her life she
+saw that incipient thinness....</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure you will never be sorry," he said....</p>
+
+<p>They found Mr. and Mrs. Pope in the churchyard.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">-107-</a></span>
+Mr. Pope was reading with amusement for
+the third time an epitaph that had caught his
+fancy&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Lands ever bright, days ever fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet we weep that <i>he</i> is there."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>he read. "You know that's really Good. That ought
+to be printed somewhere."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope glanced sharply at her daughter's
+white face, and found an enigma. Then she looked at
+Mr. Magnet.</p>
+
+<p>There was no mistake about Mr. Magnet. Marjorie
+had accepted him, whatever else she had felt or
+done.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 14</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie's feelings for the rest of the day are
+only to be accounted for on the supposition that she
+was overwrought. She had a preposterous reaction.
+She had done this thing with her eyes open after days
+of deliberation, and now she felt as though she was
+caught in a trap. The clearest thing in her mind
+was that Mr. Magnet had taken hold of her and
+kissed her, kissed her on the lips, and that presently
+he would do it again. And also she was asking herself
+with futile reiteration why she had got into debt
+at Oxbridge? Why she had got into debt? For such
+silly little things too!</p>
+
+<p>Nothing definite was said in her hearing about
+the engagement, but everybody seemed to understand.
+Mr. Pope was the most demonstrative, he took occasion
+to rap her hard upon the back, his face
+crinkled with a resolute kindliness. "Ah!" he said,
+"Sly Maggots!"</p>
+
+<p>He also administered several resounding blows<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">-108-</a></span>
+to Magnet's shoulder blades, and irradiated the party
+with a glow of benevolent waggery. Marjorie submitted
+without an answer to these paternal intimations.
+Mrs. Pope did no more than watch her
+daughter. Invisible but overwhelming forces were
+busy in bringing Marjorie and her glowing lover
+alone together again. It happened at last, as he was
+departing; she was almost to her inflamed imagination
+thrust out upon him, had to take him to the
+gate; and there in the shadows of the trees he kissed
+her "good night" with passionate effusion.</p>
+
+<p>"Madge," he said, "Madge!"</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer. She submitted passively to
+his embrace, and then suddenly and dexterously
+disengaged herself from him, ran in, and without
+saying good-night to anyone went to her room to
+bed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope was greatly amused by this departure
+from the customary routine of life, and noted it
+archly.</p>
+
+<p>When Daffy came up Marjorie was ostentatiously
+going to sleep....</p>
+
+<p>As she herself was dropping off Daffy became
+aware of an odd sound, somehow familiar, and yet
+surprising and disconcerting.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly wide awake again, she started up. Yes
+there was no mistake about it! And yet it was very
+odd.</p>
+
+<p>"Madge, what's up?"</p>
+
+<p>No answer.</p>
+
+<p>"I say! you aren't crying, Madge, are you?"</p>
+
+<p>Then after a long interval: "<i>Madge!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>An answer came in a muffled voice, almost as if
+Marjorie had something in her mouth. "Oh shut
+it, old Daffy."</p>
+
+<p>"But Madge?" said Daffy after reflection.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">-109-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Shut it. <i>Do</i> shut it! Leave me alone, I say!
+Can't you leave me alone? Oh!"&mdash;and for a moment
+she let her sobs have way with her&mdash;"Daffy, don't
+worry me. Old Daffy! <i>Please!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Daffy sat up for a long time in the stifled silence
+that ensued, and then like a sensible sister gave it up,
+and composed herself again to slumber....</p>
+
+<p>Outside watching the window in a state of nebulous
+ecstasy, was Mr. Magnet, moonlit and dewy. It
+was a high serene night with a growing moon and a
+scattered company of major stars, and if no choir
+of nightingales sang there was at least a very active
+nightjar. "More than I hoped," whispered Mr.
+Magnet, "more than I dared to hope." He was very
+sleepy, but it seemed to him improper to go to bed
+on such a night&mdash;on such an occasion.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER THE THIRD</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Man Who Fell Out of the Sky</span></h3>
+
+<p class="title">§ 1</p>
+
+<p>For the next week Marjorie became more nearly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">-110-</a></span>
+introspective than she had ever been in her life before.
+She began to doubt her hitherto unshaken conviction
+that she was a single, consistent human being.
+She found such discords and discrepancies between
+mood and mood, between the conviction of this hour
+and the feeling of that, that it seemed to her she was
+rather a collection of samples of emotion and attitude
+than anything so simple as an individual.</p>
+
+<p>For example, there can be no denying there was
+one Marjorie in the bundle who was immensely set
+up by the fact that she was engaged, and going to be
+at no very remote date mistress of a London house.
+She was profoundly Plessingtonian, and quite the
+vulgarest of the lot. The new status she had attained
+and the possibly beautiful house and the probably
+successful dinner-parties and the arrangements and
+the importance of such a life was the substance of
+this creature's thought. She designed some queenly
+dresses. This was the Marjorie most in evidence when
+it came to talking with her mother and Daphne. I
+am afraid she patronized Daphne, and ignored the
+fact that Daphne, who had begun with a resolute
+magnanimity, was becoming annoyed and resentful.</p>
+
+<p>And she thought of things she might buy, and the
+jolly feeling of putting them about and making fine
+effects with them. One thing she told Daphne, she
+had clearly resolved upon; the house should be always
+full and brimming over with beautiful flowers. "I've
+always wished mother would have more flowers&mdash;and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">-111-</a></span>
+not keep them so long when she has them...."</p>
+
+<p>Another Marjorie in the confusion of her mind
+was doing her sincerest, narrow best to appreciate
+and feel grateful for and return the devotion of Mr.
+Magnet. This Marjorie accepted and even elaborated
+his views, laid stress on his voluntary subjection,
+harped upon his goodness, brought her to kiss him.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't deserve all this love," this side of Marjorie
+told Magnet. "But I mean to learn to love
+you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear one!" cried Magnet, and pressed her
+hand....</p>
+
+<p>A third Marjorie among the many was an altogether
+acuter and less agreeable person. She was a
+sprite of pure criticism, and in spite of the utmost
+efforts to suppress her, she declared night and day in
+the inner confidences of Marjorie's soul that she did
+not believe in Mr. Magnet's old devotion at all. She
+was anti-Magnet, a persistent insurgent. She was
+dreadfully unsettling. It was surely this Marjorie
+that wouldn't let the fact of his baldness alone, and
+who discovered and insisted upon a curious unbeautiful
+flatness in his voice whenever he was doing his
+best to speak from the heart. And as for this devotion,
+what did it amount to? A persistent unimaginative
+besetting of Marjorie, a growing air of
+ownership, an expansive, indulgent, smiling disposition
+to thwart and control. And he was always
+touching her! Whenever he came near her she would
+wince at the freedoms a large, kind hand might take
+with her elbow or wrist, at a possible sudden, clumsy
+pat at some erring strand of hair.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was an appraising satisfaction in his
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>On the third day of their engagement he began,
+quite abruptly, to call her "Magsy." "We'll end<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">-112-</a></span>
+this scandal of a Girl Pope," he said. "Magsy
+Magnet, you'll be&mdash;M.M. No women M.P.'s for <i>us</i>,
+Magsy...."</p>
+
+<p>She became acutely critical of his intellectual
+quality. She listened with a new alertness to the
+conversations at the dinner-table, the bouts of wit
+with her father. She carried off utterances and
+witticism for maturer reflection. She was amazed to
+find how little they could withstand the tests and
+acids of her mind. So many things, such wide and
+interesting fields, he did not so much think about as
+cover with a large enveloping shallowness....</p>
+
+<p>He came strolling around the vicarage into the
+garden one morning about eleven, though she had not
+expected him until lunch-time; and she was sitting
+with her feet tucked up on the aged but still practicable
+garden-seat reading Shaw's "Common Sense of
+Municipal Trading." He came and leant over the
+back of the seat, and she looked up, said "Good
+morning. Isn't it perfectly lovely?" and indicated
+by a book still open that her interest in it remained
+alive.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the book, Magsy?" he asked, took it
+out of her slightly resisting hand, closed it and read
+the title. "Um," he said; "Isn't this a bit stiff for
+little women's brains?"</p>
+
+<p>All the rebel Marjories were up in arms at that.</p>
+
+<p>"Dreadful word, 'Municipal.' I <i>don't</i> like it."
+He shook his head with a grimace of humorous distaste.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose women have as good brains as men,"
+said Marjorie, "if it comes to that."</p>
+
+<p>"Better," said Magnet. "That's why they
+shouldn't trouble about horrid things like Municipal
+and Trading.... On a day like this!"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you think this sort of thing is interesting?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">-113-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" he said, and flourished the book. "Come!
+And besides&mdash;<i>Shaw!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"He makes a very good case."</p>
+
+<p>"But he's such a&mdash;mountebank."</p>
+
+<p>"Does that matter? He isn't a mountebank
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"He's not sincere. I doubt if you had a serious
+book on Municipal Trading, Magsy, whether you'd
+make head or tail of it. It's a stiff subject. Shaw
+just gets his chance for a smart thing or so....
+I'd rather you read a good novel."</p>
+
+<p>He really had the air of taking her reading in
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"You think I ought not to read an intelligent
+book."</p>
+
+<p>"I think we ought to leave those things to the
+people who understand."</p>
+
+<p>"But we ought to understand."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled wisely. "There's a lot of things <i>you</i>
+have to understand," he said, "nearer home than
+this."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie was ablaze now. "What a silly thing to
+say!" she cried, with an undergraduate's freedom.
+"Really, you are talking nonsense! I read that book
+because it interests me. If I didn't, I should read
+something else. Do you mean to suggest that I'm
+reading like a child, who holds a book upside down?"</p>
+
+<p>She was so plainly angry that he was taken aback.
+"I don't mean to suggest&mdash;" he began, and turned
+to greet the welcome presence, the interrogative eye
+of Mrs. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Here we are!" he said, "having a quarrel!"</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie!" said Mrs. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's serious!" said Mr. Magnet, and added<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">-114-</a></span>
+with a gleam: "It's about Municipal Trading!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope knew the wicked little flicker in Marjorie's
+eye better than Mr. Magnet. She had known
+it from the nursery, and yet she had never quite mastered
+its meaning. She had never yet realized it was
+Marjorie, she had always regarded it as something
+Marjorie, some other Marjorie, ought to keep under
+control. So now she adopted a pacificatory tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! lovers' quarrels," she said, floating over the
+occasion. "Lovers' quarrels. You mustn't ask <i>me</i>
+to interfere!"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie, already a little ashamed of her heat,
+thought for an instant she ought to stand that, and
+then decided abruptly with a return to choler that she
+would not do so. She stood up, and held out her hand
+for her book.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Magnet," she said to her mother with remarkable
+force and freedom as she took it, "has been
+talking unutterable nonsense. I don't call that a
+lovers' quarrel&mdash;anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>Then, confronted with a double astonishment, and
+having no more to say, she picked up her skirt quite
+unnecessarily, and walked with a heavenward chin
+indoors.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid," explained Mr. Magnet, "I was a
+little too free with one of Magsy's favourite authors."</p>
+
+<p>"Which is the favourite author now?" asked Mrs.
+Pope, after a reflective pause, with a mother's indulgent
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"Shaw." He raised amused eyebrows. "It's
+just the age, I suppose."</p>
+
+<p>"She's frightfully loyal while it lasts," said Mrs.
+Pope. "No one dare say a word against them."</p>
+
+<p>"I think it's adorable of her," said Mr. Magnet&mdash;with
+an answering loyalty and gusto.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 2<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">-115-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The aviation accident occurred while Mrs. Pope,
+her two eldest daughters, and Mr. Magnet were playing
+golf-croquet upon the vicarage lawn. It was a
+serene, hot afternoon, a little too hot to take a game
+seriously, and the four little figures moved slowly
+over the green and grouped and dispersed as the game
+required. Mr. Magnet was very fond of golf-croquet,
+he displayed a whimsical humour and much invention
+at this game, it was not too exacting physically; and
+he could make his ball jump into the air in the absurdest
+manner. Occasionally he won a laugh from Marjorie
+or Daffy. No one else was in sight; the pseudo-twins
+and Theodore and Toupee were in the barn, and
+Mr. Pope was six miles away at Wamping, lying
+prone, nibbling grass blades and watching a county
+cricket match, as every good Englishman, who knows
+what is expected of him, loves to do.... Click
+went ball and mallet, and then after a long interval,
+click. It seemed incredible that anything could possibly
+happen before tea.</p>
+
+<p>But this is no longer the world it was. Suddenly
+this tranquil scene was slashed and rent by the sound
+and vision of a monoplane tearing across the heavens.</p>
+
+<p>A purring and popping arrested Mr. Magnet in
+mid jest, and the monster came sliding up the sky
+over the trees beside the church to the east, already
+near enough to look big, a great stiff shape, big buff
+sails stayed with glittering wire, and with two odd
+little wheels beneath its body. It drove up the sky,
+rising with a sort of upward heaving, until the croquet
+players could see the driver and a passenger
+perched behind him quite clearly. It passed a little
+to the right of the church tower and only a few yards
+above the level of the flagstaff, there wasn't fifty feet
+of clearance altogether, and as it did so Marjorie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">-116-</a></span>
+could see both driver and passenger making hasty
+movements. It became immense and over-shadowing,
+and every one stood rigid as it swept across the sun
+above the vicarage chimneys. Then it seemed to drop
+twenty feet or so abruptly, and then both the men
+cried out as it drove straight for the line of poplars
+between the shrubbery and the meadow. "Oh, oh,
+OH!" cried Mrs. Pope and Daffy. Evidently the
+aviator was trying to turn sharply; the huge thing
+banked, but not enough, and came about and slipped
+away until its wing was slashing into the tree tops
+with a thrilling swish of leaves and the snapping of
+branches and stays.</p>
+
+<p>"Run!" cried Magnet, and danced about the lawn,
+and the three ladies rushed sideways as the whole
+affair slouched down on them. It came on its edge,
+hesitated whether to turn over as a whole, then crumpled,
+and amidst a volley of smashing and snapping
+came to rest amidst ploughed-up turf, a clamorous
+stench of petrol, and a cloud of dust and blue smoke
+within twenty yards of them. The two men had
+jumped to clear the engine, had fallen headlong, and
+were now both covered by the fabric of the shattered
+wing.</p>
+
+<p>It was all too spectacular for word or speech until
+the thing lay still. Even then the croquet players
+stood passive for awhile waiting for something to
+happen. It took some seconds to reconcile their minds
+to this sudden loss of initiative in a monster that had
+been so recently and threateningly full of go. It
+seemed quite a long time before it came into Marjorie's
+head that she ought perhaps to act in some
+way. She saw a tall young man wriggling on all
+fours from underneath the wreckage of fabric. He
+stared at her rather blankly. She went forward
+with a vague idea of helping him. He stood up,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">-117-</a></span>
+swayed doubtfully on his legs, turned, and became
+energetic, struggling mysteriously with the edge of
+the left wing. He gasped and turned fierce blue eyes
+over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Help me to hold the confounded thing up!" he
+cried, with a touch of irritation in his voice at her
+attitude.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie at once seized the edge of the plane and
+pushed. The second man, in a peculiar button-shaped
+head-dress, was lying crumpled up underneath,
+his ear and cheek were bright with blood, and
+there was a streak of blood on the ground near his
+head.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right. Can you hold it if I use only one
+hand?"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie gasped "Yes," with a terrific weight as
+it seemed suddenly on her wrists.</p>
+
+<p>"Right O," and the tall young man had thrust
+himself backwards under the plane until it rested on
+his back, and collared the prostrate man. "Keep it
+up!" he said fiercely when Marjorie threatened to
+give way. He seemed to assume that she was there
+to obey orders, and with much grunting and effort
+he had dragged his companion clear of the wreckage.</p>
+
+<p>The man's face was a mass of blood, and he was
+sickeningly inert to his companion's lugging.</p>
+
+<p>"Let it go," said the tall young man, and Marjorie
+thanked heaven as the broken wing flapped
+down again.</p>
+
+<p>She came helpfully to his side, and became aware
+of Daffy and her mother a few paces off. Magnet&mdash;it
+astonished her&mdash;was retreating hastily. But he
+had to go away because the sight of blood upset him&mdash;so
+much that it was always wiser for him to go
+away.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he hurt?" cried Mrs. Pope.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">-118-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"We both are," said the tall young man, and
+then as though these other people didn't matter and
+he and Marjorie were old friends, he said: "Can we
+turn him over?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so." Marjorie grasped the damaged
+man's shoulder and got him over skilfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you get some water?" said the tall young
+man to Daffy and Mrs. Pope, in a way that sent
+Daffy off at once for a pail.</p>
+
+<p>"He wants water," she said to the parlourmaid
+who was hurrying out of the house.</p>
+
+<p>The tall young man had gone down on his knees
+by his companion, releasing his neck, and making a
+hasty first examination of his condition. "The pneumatic
+cap must have saved his head," he said, throwing
+the thing aside. "Lucky he had it. He can't be
+badly hurt. Just rubbed his face along the ground.
+Silly thing to have come as we did."</p>
+
+<p>He felt the heart, and tried the flexibility of an
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>That's</i> all right," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He became judicial and absorbed over the problems
+of his friend's side. "Um," he remarked. He
+knelt back and regarded Marjorie for the first time.
+"Thundering smash," he said. His face relaxed into
+an agreeable smile. "He only bought it last week."</p>
+
+<p>"Is he hurt?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rib, I think&mdash;or two ribs perhaps. Stunned
+rather. All <i>this</i>&mdash;just his nose."</p>
+
+<p>He regarded Marjorie and Marjorie him for a
+brief space. He became aware of Mrs. Pope on his
+right hand. Then at a clank behind, he turned round
+to see Daphne advancing with a pail of water. The
+two servants were now on the spot, and the odd-job
+man, and the old lady who did out the church, and
+Magnet hovered doubtfully in the distance. Suddenly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">-119-</a></span>
+with shouts and barks of sympathetic glee the
+pseudo-twins, Theodore and Toupee shot out of the
+house. New thoughts were stirring in the young
+aviator. He rose, wincing a little as he did so. "I'm
+afraid I'm a little rude," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I do hope your friend isn't hurt," said Mrs.
+Pope, feeling the duty of a hostess.</p>
+
+<p>"He's not hurt <i>much</i>&mdash;so far as I can see.
+Haven't we made rather a mess of your lawn?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, not at all!" said Mrs. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"We have. If that is your gardener over there,
+it would be nice if he kept back the people who seem
+to be hesitating beyond those trees. There will be
+more presently. I'm afraid I must throw myself on
+your hands." He broke into a chuckle for a moment.
+"I have, you know. Is it possible to get a doctor?
+My friend's not hurt so very much, but still he wants
+expert handling. He's Sir Rupert Solomonson,
+from"&mdash;he jerked his head back&mdash;"over beyond
+Tunbridge Wells. My name's Trafford."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm Mrs. Pope and these are my daughters."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford bowed. "We just took the thing out
+for a lark," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie had been regarding the prostrate man.
+His mouth was a little open, and he showed beautiful
+teeth. Apart from the dry blood upon him he was
+not an ill-looking man. He was manifestly a Jew, a
+square-rigged Jew (you have remarked of course that
+there are square-rigged Jews, whose noses are within
+bounds, and fore-and-aft Jews, whose noses aren't),
+with not so much a bullet-head as a round-shot,
+cropped like the head of a Capuchin monkey. Suddenly
+she was down and had his head on her knee,
+with a quick movement that caught Trafford's eye.
+"He's better," she said. "His eyelids flickered.
+Daffy, bring the water."</p>
+
+<p>She had felt a queer little repugnance at first with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">-120-</a></span>
+this helpless man, but now that professional nurse
+who lurks in the composition of so many women, was
+uppermost. "Give me your handkerchief," she said
+to Trafford, and with Daffy kneeling beside her and
+also interested, and Mrs. Pope a belated but more
+experienced and authoritative third, Sir Rupert was
+soon getting the best of attention.</p>
+
+<p>"Wathall..." said Sir Rupert suddenly,
+and tried again: "Wathall." A third effort gave
+"Wathall about, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"If we could get him into the shade," said
+Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Woosh," cried Sir Rupert. "Weeeooo!"</p>
+
+<p>"That's all right," said Trafford. "It's only a
+rib or two."</p>
+
+<p>"Eeeeeyoooo!" said Sir Rupert.</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. We're going to carry you out of the
+glare."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't touch me," said Sir Rupert. "Gooo."</p>
+
+<p>It took some little persuasion before Sir Rupert
+would consent to be moved, and even then he was for
+a time&mdash;oh! crusty. But presently Trafford and the
+two girls had got him into the shade of a large bush
+close to where in a circle of rugs and cushions the tea
+things lay prepared. There they camped. The helpful
+odd-job man was ordered to stave off intruders
+from the village; water, towels, pillows were forthcoming.
+Mr. Magnet reappeared as tentative assistance,
+and Solomonson became articulate and brave
+and said he'd nothing but a stitch in his side. In his
+present position he wasn't at all uncomfortable. Only
+he didn't want any one near him. He enforced that
+by an appealing smile. The twins, invited to fetch
+the doctor, declined, proffering Theodore. They
+had conceived juvenile passions for the tall young
+man, and did not want to leave him. He certainly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">-121-</a></span>
+had a very nice face. So Theodore after walking
+twice round the wreckage, tore himself away and
+departed on Rom's bicycle. Enquiry centred on
+Solomonson for a time. His face, hair and neck
+were wet but no longer bloody, and he professed
+perfect comfort so long as he wasn't moved, and no
+one came too near him. He was very clear about
+that though perfectly polite, and scrutinized their
+faces to see if they were equally clear. Satisfied upon
+this point he closed his eyes and spoke no more. He
+looked then like a Capuchin monkey lost in pride.
+There came a pause. Every one was conscious of
+having risen to an emergency and behaved well under
+unusual circumstances. The young man's eye rested
+on the adjacent tea-things, lacking nothing but the
+coronation of the teapot.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not," he remarked, "have tea?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you think your friend&mdash;&mdash;" began Mrs.
+Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! <i>he's</i> all right. Aren't you, Solomonson?
+There's nothing more now until the doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"Only want to be left alone," said Solomonson,
+and closed his heavy eyelids again.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope told the maids, with an air of dismissal,
+to get tea.</p>
+
+<p>"We can keep an eye on him," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie surveyed her first patient with a pretty
+unconscious mixture of maternal gravity and girlish
+interest, and the twins to avoid too openly gloating
+upon the good looks of Trafford, chose places and
+secured cushions round the tea-things, calculating
+to the best of their ability how they might secure
+the closest proximity to him. Mr. Magnet and
+Toupee had gone to stare at the monoplane; they
+were presently joined by the odd-job man in an
+interrogative mood. "Pretty complete smash, sir!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">-122-</a></span>
+said the odd-job man, and then perceiving heads over
+the hedge by the churchyard, turned back to his duty
+of sentinel. Daffy thought of the need of more cups
+and plates and went in to get them, and Mrs. Pope
+remarked that she did hope Sir Rupert was not badly
+hurt....</p>
+
+<p>"Extraordinary all this is," remarked Mr. Trafford.
+"Now, here we were after lunch, twenty miles
+away&mdash;smoking cigars and with no more idea of having
+tea with you than&mdash;I was going to say&mdash;flying.
+But that's out of date now. Then we just thought
+we'd try the thing.... Like a dream."</p>
+
+<p>He addressed himself to Marjorie: "I never feel
+that life is quite real until about three days after
+things have happened. Never. Two hours ago I had
+not the slightest intention of ever flying again."</p>
+
+<p>"But haven't you flown before?" asked Mrs.
+Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Not much. I did a little at Sheppey, but it's so
+hard for a poor man to get his hands on a machine.
+And here was Solomonson, with this thing in his
+hangar, eating its head off. Let's take it out," I
+said, "and go once round the park. And here we
+are.... I thought it wasn't wise for him to
+come...."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert, without opening his eyes, was understood
+to assent.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know," said Trafford, "The sight of
+your tea makes me feel frightfully hungry."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think the engine's damaged?" he said
+cheerfully, "do you?" as Magnet joined them. "The
+ailerons are in splinters, and the left wing's not much
+better. But that's about all except the wheels. One
+falls so much lighter than you might suppose&mdash;from
+the smash.... Lucky it didn't turn over. Then,
+you know, the engine comes on the top of you, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">-123-</a></span>
+you're done."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 3</p>
+
+<p>The doctor arrived after tea, with a bag and a
+stethoscope in a small coffin-like box, and the Popes
+and Mr. Magnet withdrew while Sir Rupert was
+carefully sounded, tested, scrutinized, questioned,
+watched and examined in every way known to medical
+science. The outcome of the conference was presently
+communicated to the Popes by Mr. Trafford
+and the doctor. Sir Rupert was not very seriously
+injured, but he was suffering from concussion and
+shock, two of his ribs were broken and his wrist
+sprained, unless perhaps one of the small bones was
+displaced. He ought to be bandaged up and put to
+bed....</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't we&mdash;" said Mrs. Pope, but the doctor
+assured her his own house was quite the best place.
+There Sir Rupert could stay for some days. At
+present the cross-country journey over the Downs
+or by the South Eastern Railway would be needlessly
+trying and painful. He would with the Popes'
+permission lie quietly where he was for an hour or so,
+and then the doctor would come with a couple of men
+and a carrying bed he had, and take him off to his
+own house. There he would be, as Mr. Trafford said,
+"as right as ninepence," and Mr. Trafford could put
+up either at the Red Lion with Mr. Magnet or in the
+little cottage next door to the doctor. (Mr. Trafford
+elected for the latter as closer to his friend.)
+As for the smashed aeroplane, telegrams would be
+sent at once to Sir Rupert's engineers at Chesilbury,
+and they would have all that cleared away by mid-day
+to-morrow....</p>
+
+<p>The doctor departed; Sir Rupert, after stimulants,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">-124-</a></span>
+closed his eyes, and Mr. Trafford seated himself
+at the tea-things for some more cake, as though
+introduction by aeroplane was the most regular thing
+in the world.</p>
+
+<p>He had very pleasant and easy manners, an entire
+absence of self-consciousness, and a quick talkative
+disposition that made him very rapidly at home with
+everybody. He described all the sensations of flight,
+his early lessons and experiments, and in the utmost
+detail the events of the afternoon that had led to this
+disastrous adventure. He made his suggestion of
+"trying the thing" seem the most natural impulse
+in the world. The bulk of the conversation fell on
+him; Mr. Magnet, save for the intervention of one
+or two jests, was quietly observant; the rest were well
+disposed to listen. And as Mr. Trafford talked his
+eye rested ever and again on Marjorie with the
+faintest touch of scrutiny and perplexity, and she,
+too, found a curious little persuasion growing up in
+her mind that somewhere, somehow, she and he had
+met and had talked rather earnestly. But how and
+where eluded her altogether....</p>
+
+<p>They had sat for an hour&mdash;the men from the
+doctor's seemed never coming&mdash;when Mr. Pope returned
+unexpectedly from his cricket match, which
+had ended a little prematurely in a rot on an over-dry
+wicket. He was full of particulars of the day's
+play, and how Wiper had got a most amazing catch
+and held it, though he fell; how Jenks had deliberately
+bowled at a man's head, he believed, and little
+Gibbs thrown a man out from slip. He was burning
+to tell all this in the utmost detail to Magnet and his
+family, so that they might at least share the retrospect
+of his pleasure. He had thought out rather a
+good pun on Wiper, and he was naturally a little
+thwarted to find all this good, rich talk crowded out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">-125-</a></span>
+by a more engrossing topic.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of a stranger grouped in a popular
+manner beside the tea-things, he displayed a slight
+acerbity, which was if anything increased by the discovery
+of a prostrate person with large brown eyes
+and an expression of Oriental patience and disdain,
+in the shade of a bush near by. At first he seemed
+scarcely to grasp Mrs. Pope's explanations, and regarded
+Sir Rupert with an expression that bordered
+on malevolence. Then, when his attention was directed
+to the smashed machine upon the lawn, he broke
+out into a loud indignant: "Good God! What next?"</p>
+
+<p>He walked towards the wreckage, disregarding
+Mr. Trafford beside him. "A man can't go away
+from his house for an hour!" he complained.</p>
+
+<p>"I can assure you we did all we could to prevent
+it," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"Ought never to have had it to prevent," said
+Mr. Pope. "Is your friend hurt?"</p>
+
+<p>"A rib&mdash;and shock," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;he deserves it," said Mr. Pope. "Rather
+than launch myself into the air in one of those infernal
+things, I'd be stood against a wall and shot."</p>
+
+<p>"Tastes differ, of course," said Trafford, with
+unruffled urbanity.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have all this cleared away," said Mr.
+Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Mechanics&mdash;oh! a complete break-down party&mdash;are
+speeding to us in fast motors," said Trafford.
+"Thanks to the kindness of your domestic in taking
+a telegram for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Hope they won't kill any one," said Mr. Pope,
+and just for a moment the conversation hung fire.
+"And your friend?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He goes in the next ten minutes&mdash;well, whenever<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">-126-</a></span>
+the litter comes from the doctor's. Poor old Solomonson!"</p>
+
+<p>"Solomonson?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir Rupert."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Mr. Pope. "Is that the Pigmentation
+Solomonson?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe he does do some beastly company of
+that sort," said Trafford. "Isn't it amazing we
+didn't smash our engine?"</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert Solomonson was indeed a familiar
+name to Mr. Pope. He had organized the exploitation
+of a number of pigment and bye-product patents,
+and the ordinary and deferred shares of his syndicate
+has risen to so high a price as to fill Mr. Pope
+with the utmost confidence in their future; indeed he
+had bought considerably, withdrawing capital to do
+so from an Argentine railway whose stock had awakened
+his distaste and a sort of moral aversion by
+slumping heavily after a bad wheat and linseed harvest.
+This discovery did much to mitigate his first
+asperity, his next remark to Trafford was almost
+neutral, and he was even asking Sir Rupert whether
+he could do anything to make him comfortable, when
+the doctor returned with a litter, borne by four hastily
+compiled bearers.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 4</p>
+
+<p>Some brightness seemed to vanish when the buoyant
+Mr. Trafford, still undauntedly cheerful, limped
+off after his more injured friend, and disappeared
+through the gate. Marjorie found herself in a world
+whose remaining manhood declined to see anything
+but extreme annoyance in this gay, exciting rupture
+of the afternoon. "Good God!" said Mr. Pope.
+"What next? What next?"</p>
+
+<p>"Registration, I hope," said Mr. Magnet,&mdash;"and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">-127-</a></span>
+relegation to the desert of Sahara."</p>
+
+<p>"One good thing about it," said Mr. Pope&mdash;"it
+all wastes petrol. And when the petrol supply gives
+out&mdash;they're done."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly we might all have been killed!" said
+Mrs. Pope, feeling she had to bear her witness against
+their visitors, and added: "If we hadn't moved out
+of the way, that is."</p>
+
+<p>There was a simultaneous movement towards the
+shattered apparatus, about which a small contingent
+of villagers, who had availed themselves of the withdrawal
+of the sentinel, had now assembled.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at it!" said Mr. Pope, with bitter hostility.
+"Look at it!"</p>
+
+<p>Everyone had anticipated his command.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll never come to anything," said Mr.
+Pope, after a pause of silent hatred.</p>
+
+<p>"But they <i>have</i> to come to something," said
+Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"They've come to smash!" said Mr. Magnet,
+with the true humorist's air.</p>
+
+<p>"But consider the impudence of this invasion, the
+wild&mdash;objectionableness of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"They're nasty things," said Mr. Magnet.
+"Nasty things!"</p>
+
+<p>A curious spirit of opposition stirred in Marjorie.
+It seemed to her that men who play golf-croquet
+and watch cricket matches have no business to
+contemn men who risk their lives in the air. She
+sought for some controversial opening.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't the engine rather wonderful?" she remarked.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Magnet regarded the engine with his head a
+little on one side. "It's the usual sort," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"There weren't engines like that twenty years
+ago."</p>
+
+<p>"There weren't people like <i>you</i> twenty years<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">-128-</a></span>
+ago," said Mr. Magnet, smiling wisely and kindly,
+and turned his back on the thing.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope followed suit. He was filled with the
+bitter thought that he would never now be able to tell
+the history of the remarkable match he had witnessed.
+It was all spoilt for him&mdash;spoilt for ever. Everything
+was disturbed and put out.</p>
+
+<p>"They've left us our tennis lawn," he said, with
+a not unnatural resentment passing to invitation.
+"What do you say, Magnet? Now you've begun
+the game you must keep it up?"</p>
+
+<p>"If Marjorie, or Mrs. Pope, or Daffy...?"
+said Magnet.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope declared the house required her. And
+so with the gravest apprehensions, and an insincere
+compliment to their father's energy, Daffy and Marjorie
+made up a foursome for that healthy and invigorating
+game. But that evening Mr. Pope got
+his serve well into the bay of the sagging net almost
+at once, and with Marjorie in the background taking
+anything he left her, he won quite easily, and everything
+became pleasant again. Magnet gloated upon
+Marjorie and served her like a missionary giving
+Bibles to heathen children, he seemed always looking
+at her instead of the ball, and except for a slight
+disposition on the part of Daffy to slash, nothing
+could have been more delightful. And at supper Mr.
+Pope, rather crushing his wife's attempt to recapitulate
+the more characteristic sayings and doings of
+Sir Rupert and his friend, did after all succeed in
+giving every one a very good idea indeed of the more
+remarkable incidents of the cricket match at Wamping,
+and made the pun he had been accustomed to
+use upon the name of Wiper in a new and improved
+form. A general talk about cricket and the Immense
+Good of cricket followed. Mr. Pope said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">-129-</a></span>
+he would make cricket-playing compulsory for every
+English boy.</p>
+
+<p>Everyone it seemed to Marjorie was forgetting
+that dark shape athwart the lawn, and all the immense
+implication of its presence, with a deliberate
+and irrational skill, and she noted that the usual
+move towards the garden at the end of the evening
+was not made.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 5</p>
+
+<p>In the night time Marjorie had a dream that she
+was flying about in the world on a monoplane with
+Mr. Trafford as a passenger.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Trafford disappeared, and she was flying
+about alone with a curious uneasy feeling that in
+a minute or so she would be unable any longer to
+manage the machine.</p>
+
+<p>Then her father and Mr. Magnet appeared very
+far below, walking about and disapproving of her.
+Mr. Magnet was shaking his head very, very sagely,
+and saying: "Rather a stiff job for little Marjorie,"
+and her father was saying she would be steadier when
+she married. And then, she wasn't clear how, the
+engine refused to work until her bills were paid, and
+she began to fall, and fall, and fall towards Mr.
+Magnet. She tried frantically to pay her bills. She
+was falling down the fronts of skyscrapers and precipices&mdash;and
+Mr. Magnet was waiting for her below
+with a quiet kindly smile that grew wider and wider
+and wider....</p>
+
+<p>She woke up palpitating.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 6</p>
+
+<p>Next morning a curious restlessness came upon
+Marjorie. Conceivably it was due to the absence of
+Magnet, who had gone to London to deliver his long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">-130-</a></span>
+promised address on The Characteristics of English
+Humour to the <i>Literati</i> Club. Conceivably she missed
+his attentions. But it crystallized out in the early
+afternoon into the oddest form, a powerful craving
+to go to the little town of Pensting, five miles off, on
+the other side of Buryhamstreet, to buy silk shoelaces.</p>
+
+<p>She decided to go in the donkey cart. She communicated
+her intention to her mother, but she did
+not communicate an equally definite intention to be
+reminded suddenly of Sir Rupert Solomonson as she
+was passing the surgery, and make an inquiry on the
+spur of the moment&mdash;it wouldn't surely be anything
+but a kindly and justifiable impulse to do that. She
+might see Mr. Trafford perhaps, but there was no
+particular harm in that.</p>
+
+<p>It is also to be remarked that finding Theodore a
+little disposed to encumber her vehicle with his presence
+she expressed her delight at being released from
+the need of going, and abandoned the whole expedition
+to him&mdash;knowing as she did perfectly well that if
+Theodore hated anything more than navigating the
+donkey cart alone, it was going unprotected into a
+shop to buy articles of feminine apparel&mdash;until he
+chucked the whole project and went fishing&mdash;if one
+can call it fishing when there are no fish and the
+fisherman knows it&mdash;in the decadent ornamental
+water.</p>
+
+<p>And it is also to be remarked that as Marjorie
+approached the surgery she was seized with an absurd
+and powerful shyness, so that not only did she
+not call at the surgery, she did not even look at the
+surgery, she gazed almost rigidly straight ahead,
+telling herself, however, that she merely deferred that
+kindly impulse until she had bought her laces. And
+so it happened that about half a mile beyond the end
+of Buryhamstreet she came round a corner upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">-131-</a></span>
+Trafford, and by a singular fatality he also was
+driving a donkey, or, rather, was tracing a fan-like
+pattern on the road with a donkey's hoofs. It was a
+very similar donkey to Marjorie's, but the vehicle
+was a governess cart, and much smarter than Marjorie's
+turn-out. His ingenuous face displayed great
+animation at the sight of her, and as she drew alongside
+he hailed her with an almost unnatural ease of
+manner.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo!" he cried. "I'm taking the air. You
+seem to be able to drive donkeys forward. How do
+you do it? I can't. Never done anything so dangerous
+in my life before. I've just been missed by two
+motor cars, and hung for a terrible minute with my
+left wheel on the very verge of an unfathomable
+ditch. I could hear the little ducklings far, far below,
+and bits of mould dropping. I tried to count before
+the splash. Aren't you&mdash;<i>white?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"But why are you doing it?"</p>
+
+<p>"One must do something. I'm bandaged up and
+can't walk. It hurt my leg more than I knew&mdash;your
+doctor says. Solomonson won't talk of anything but
+how he feels, and <i>I</i> don't care a rap how he feels. So
+I got this thing and came out with it."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie made her inquiries. There came a little
+pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Some day no one will believe that men were ever
+so foolish as to trust themselves to draught animals,"
+he remarked. "Hullo! Look out! The horror of
+it!"</p>
+
+<p>A large oil van&mdash;a huge drum on wheels&mdash;motor-driven,
+had come round the corner, and after a preliminary
+and quite insufficient hoot, bore down upon
+them, and missing Trafford as it seemed by a miracle,
+swept past. Both drivers did wonderful things with
+whips and reins, and found themselves alone in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">-132-</a></span>
+road again, with their wheels locked and an indefinite
+future.</p>
+
+<p>"I leave the situation to you," said Trafford.
+"Or shall we just sit and talk until the next motor
+car kills us?"</p>
+
+<p>"We ought to make an effort," said Marjorie,
+cheerfully, and descended to lead the two beasts.</p>
+
+<p>Assisted by an elderly hedger, who had been taking
+a disregarded interest in them for some time, she
+separated the wheels and got the two donkeys abreast.
+The old hedger's opinion of their safety on the king's
+highway was expressed by his action rather than his
+words; he directed the beasts towards a shady lane
+that opened at right angles to the road. He stood by
+their bridles while Marjorie resumed her seat.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me clearly a case for compromise,"
+said Trafford. "You want to go that way, I want
+to go that way. Let us both go <i>this</i> way. It is by
+such arrangements that civilization becomes possible."</p>
+
+<p>He dismissed the hedger generously and resumed
+his reins.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall we race?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"With your leg?" she inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"No; with the donkeys. I say, this <i>is</i> rather a
+lark. At first I thought it was both dangerous and
+dull. But things have changed. I am in beastly high
+spirits. I feel there will be a cry before night; but
+still, I am&mdash;&mdash;I wanted the companionship of an
+unbroken person. It's so jolly to meet you again."</p>
+
+<p>"Again?"</p>
+
+<p>"After the year before last."</p>
+
+<p>"After the year before last?"</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't know," said Trafford, "I had met
+you before? How aggressive I must have seemed!
+Well, <i>I</i> wasn't quite clear. I spent the greater part
+of last night&mdash;my ankle being foolish in the small<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">-133-</a></span>
+hours&mdash;in trying to remember how and where."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't remember," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"I remembered you very distinctly, and some
+things I thought about you, but not where it had
+happened. Then in the night I got it. It <i>is</i> a puzzle,
+isn't it? You see, I was wearing a black gown,
+and I had been out of the sunlight for some months&mdash;and
+my eye, I remember it acutely, was bandaged.
+I'm usually bandaged somewhere.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I was a King in Babylon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And you were a Christian slave'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;I mean a candidate."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie remembered suddenly. "You're Professor
+Trafford."</p>
+
+<p>"Not in this atmosphere. But I am at the Romeike
+College. And as soon as I recalled examining
+you I remembered it&mdash;minutely. You were intelligent,
+though unsound&mdash;about cryo-hydrates it was.
+Ah, you remember me now. As most young women
+are correct by rote and unintelligent in such questions,
+and as it doesn't matter a rap about anything
+of that sort, whether you are correct or not, as long
+as the mental gesture is right&mdash;&mdash;" He paused for a
+moment, as though tired of his sentence. "I remembered
+you."</p>
+
+<p>He proceeded in his easy and detached manner,
+that seemed to make every topic possible, to tell her
+his first impressions of her, and show how very distinctly
+indeed he remembered her.</p>
+
+<p>"You set me philosophizing. I'd never examined
+a girls' school before, and I was suddenly struck by
+the spectacle of the fifty of you. What's going to
+become of them all?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought," he went on, "how bright you were,
+and how keen and eager you were&mdash;<i>you</i>, I mean, in
+particular&mdash;and just how certain it was your brightness<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">-134-</a></span>
+and eagerness would be swallowed up by some
+silly ordinariness or other&mdash;stuffy marriage or stuffy
+domestic duties. The old, old story&mdash;done over again
+with a sort of threadbare badness. (Nothing to say
+against it if it's done well.) I got quite sentimental
+and pathetic about life's breach of faith with women.
+Odd, isn't it, how one's mind runs on. But that's
+what I thought. It's all come back to me."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie's bright, clear eye came round to him.
+"I don't see very much wrong with the lot of women,"
+she reflected. "Things are different nowadays.
+Anyhow&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She paused.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't want to be a man?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>No!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>She was emphatic.</p>
+
+<p>"Some of us cut more sharply at life than you
+think," he said, plumbing her unspoken sense.</p>
+
+<p>She had never met a man before who understood
+just how a girl can feel the slow obtuseness of his sex.
+It was almost as if he had found her out at something.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she said, "perhaps you do," and looked
+at him with an increased interest.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm half-feminine, I believe," he said. "For
+instance, I've got just a woman's joy in textures and
+little significant shapes. I know how you feel about
+that. I can spend hours, even now, in crystal gazing&mdash;I
+don't mean to see some silly revelation of some
+silly person's proceedings somewhere, but just for the
+things themselves. I wonder if you have ever been in
+the Natural History Museum at South Kensington,
+and looked at Ruskin's crystal collection? I saw it
+when I was a boy, and it became&mdash;I can't help the
+word&mdash;an obsession. The inclusions like moss and
+like trees, and all sorts of fantastic things, and the
+cleavages and enclosures with little bubbles, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">-135-</a></span>
+lights and shimmer&mdash;What were we talking about?
+Oh, about the keen way your feminine perceptions
+cut into things. And yet somehow I was throwing
+contempt on the feminine intelligence. I don't do
+justice to the order of my thoughts. Never mind.
+We've lost the thread. But I wish you knew my
+mother."</p>
+
+<p>He went on while Marjorie was still considering
+the proper response to this.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, I'm her only son and she brought me
+up, and we know each other&mdash;oh! very well. She
+helps with my work. She understands nearly all of it.
+She makes suggestions. And to this day I don't
+know if she's the most original or the most parasitic
+of creatures. And that's the way with all women and
+girls, it seems to me. You're as critical as light, and
+as undiscriminating.... I say, do I strike you as
+talking nonsense?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit," said Marjorie. "But you do go
+rather fast."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," he admitted. "But somehow you
+excite me. I've been with Solomonson a week, and
+he's dull at all times. It was that made me take out
+that monoplane of his. But it did him no good."</p>
+
+<p>He paused.</p>
+
+<p>"They told me after the exam.," said Marjorie,
+"you knew more about crystallography&mdash;than anyone."</p>
+
+<p>"Does that strike you as a dull subject?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Marjorie, in a tone that invited justifications.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't. I think&mdash;naturally, that the world one
+goes into when one studies molecular physics is quite
+the most beautiful of Wonderlands.... I can
+assure you I work sometimes like a man who is exploring
+a magic palace.... Do you know anything<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">-136-</a></span>
+of molecular physics?"</p>
+
+<p>"You examined me," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"The sense one has of exquisite and wonderful
+rhythms&mdash;just beyond sound and sight! And there's
+a taunting suggestion of its being all there, displayed
+and confessed, if only one were quick enough to see
+it. Why, for instance, when you change the composition
+of a felspar almost imperceptibly, do the
+angles change? What's the correspondence between
+the altered angle and the substituted atom? Why
+does this bit of clear stuff swing the ray of light so
+much out of its path, and that swing it more? Then
+what happens when crystals gutter down, and go
+into solution. The endless launching of innumerable
+little craft. Think what a clear solution must be if
+only one had ultra-microscopic eyes and could see
+into it, see the extraordinary patternings, the swimming
+circling constellations. And then the path of
+a ray of polarized light beating through it! It takes
+me like music. Do you know anything of the effects
+of polarized light, the sight of a slice of olivine-gabbro
+for instance between crossed Nicols?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've seen some rock sections," said Marjorie.
+"I forget the names of the rocks."</p>
+
+<p>"The colours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, the colours."</p>
+
+<p>"Is there anything else so rich and beautiful in
+all the world? And every different mineral and every
+variety of that mineral has a different palette of
+colours, a different scheme of harmonies&mdash;and is
+telling you something."</p>
+
+<p>"If only you understood."</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly. All the ordinary stuff of life&mdash;you
+know&mdash;the carts and motor cars and dusty roads and&mdash;cinder
+sifting, seems so blank to me&mdash;with that
+persuasion of swing and subtlety beneath it all. As<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">-137-</a></span>
+if the whole world was fire and crystal and aquiver&mdash;with
+some sort of cotton wrappers thrown over
+it...."</p>
+
+<p>"Dust sheets," said Marjorie. "I know."</p>
+
+<p>"Or like a diamond painted over!"</p>
+
+<p>"With that sort of grey paint, very full of body&mdash;that
+lasts."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes." He smiled at her. "I can't help apologetics.
+Most people think a professor of science is
+just&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"A professor of science."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Something all pedantries and phrases. I
+want to clear my character. As though it is foolish
+to follow a vortex ring into a vacuum, and wise to
+whack at a dirty golf ball on a suburban railway
+bank. Oh, their golf! Under high heaven!...
+You don't play golf, do you, by any chance?"</p>
+
+<p>"Only the woman's part," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"And they despise us," he said. "Solomonson
+can hardly hide how he despises us. Nothing is more
+wonderful than the way these people go on despising
+us who do research, who have this fever of curiosity,
+who won't be content with&mdash;what did you call those
+wrappers?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dust sheets."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dust sheets. What a life! Swaddling
+bands, dust sheets and a shroud! You know, research
+and discovery aren't nearly so difficult as
+people think&mdash;if only you have the courage to say
+a thing or try a thing now and then that it isn't
+usual to say or try. And after all&mdash;&mdash;" he went off
+at a tangent, "these confounded ordinary people
+aren't justified in their contempt. We keep on
+throwing them things over our shoulders, electric
+bells, telephones, Marconigrams. Look at the beautiful
+electric trains that come towering down the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">-138-</a></span>
+London streets at nightfall, ships of light in full
+sail! Twenty years ago they were as impossible as
+immortality. We conquer the seas for these&mdash;golfers,
+puts arms in their hands that will certainly
+blow them all to bits if ever the idiots go to war
+with them, come sailing out of the air on them&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He caught Marjorie's eye and stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Falling</i> out of the air on them," corrected Marjorie
+very softly.</p>
+
+<p>"That was only an accident," said Mr. Trafford....</p>
+
+<p>So they began a conversation in the lane where
+the trees met overhead that went on and went on like
+a devious path in a shady wood, and touched upon
+all manner of things....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 7</p>
+
+<p>In the end quite a number of people were aggrieved
+by this dialogue, in the lane that led nowhither....</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert Solomonson was the first to complain.
+Trafford had been away "three mortal hours." No
+one had come near him, not a soul, and there hadn't
+been even a passing car to cheer his ear.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert admitted he had to be quiet. "But
+not so <i>damned</i> quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd have been glad," said Sir Rupert, "if a hen
+had laid an egg and clucked a bit. You might have
+thought there had been a Resurrection or somethin',
+and cleared off everybody. Lord! it was deadly. I'd
+have sung out myself if it hadn't been for these infernal
+ribs...."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope came upon the affair quite by accident.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Marjorie," she said as she poured tea for
+the family, "did you get your laces?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never got there, Mummy," said Marjorie, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">-139-</a></span>
+paused fatally.</p>
+
+<p>"Didn't get there!" said Mrs. Pope. "That's
+worse than Theodore! Wouldn't the donkey go,
+poor dear?"</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing to colour about, and yet Marjorie
+felt the warm flow in neck and cheek and brow.
+She threw extraordinary quantities of candour into
+her manner. "I had a romantic adventure," she
+said rather quietly. "I was going to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>(Sensation.)</p>
+
+<p>"You see it was like this," said Marjorie. "I
+ran against Mr. Trafford...."</p>
+
+<p>She drank tea, and pulled herself together for a
+lively description of the wheel-locking and the subsequent
+conversation, a bright ridiculous account
+which made the affair happen by implication on the
+high road and not in a byeway, and was adorned
+with every facetious ornament that seemed likely to
+get a laugh from the children. But she talked rather
+fast, and she felt she forced the fun a little. However,
+it amused the children all right, and Theodore
+created a diversion by choking with his tea. From
+first to last Marjorie was extremely careful to avoid
+the affectionate scrutiny of her mother's eye. And
+had this lasted the <i>whole</i> afternoon? asked Mrs.
+Pope. "Oh, they'd talked for half-an-hour," said
+Marjorie, or more, and had driven back very slowly
+together. "He did all the talking. You saw what
+he was yesterday. And the donkeys seemed too
+happy together to tear them away."</p>
+
+<p>"But what was it all about?" asked Daffy
+curious.</p>
+
+<p>"He asked after you, Daffy, most affectionately,"
+said Marjorie, and added, "several times." (Though
+Trafford had as a matter of fact displayed a quite
+remarkable disregard of all her family.)</p>
+
+<p>"And," she went on, getting a plausible idea at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">-140-</a></span>
+last, "he explained all about aeroplanes. And all
+that sort of thing. Has Daddy gone to Wamping
+for some more cricket?..."</p>
+
+<p>(But none of this was lost on Mrs. Pope.)</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 8</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Magnet's return next day was heralded by
+nearly two-thirds of a column in the <i>Times</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The Lecture on the Characteristics of Humour
+had evidently been quite a serious affair, and a very
+imposing list of humorists and of prominent people
+associated with their industry had accepted the hospitality
+of the <i>Literati</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie ran her eyes over the Chairman's flattering
+introduction, then with a queer faint flavour
+of hostility she reached her destined husband's utterance.
+She seemed to hear the flat full tones of his
+voice as she read, and automatically the desiccated
+sentences of the reporter filled out again into those
+rich quietly deliberate unfoldings of sound that were
+already too familiar to her ear.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Magnet had begun with modest disavowals.
+"There was a story, he said,"&mdash;so the report began&mdash;"whose
+hallowed antiquity ought to protect it
+from further exploitation, but he was tempted to
+repeat it because it offered certain analogies to the
+present situation. There were three characters in
+the story, a bluebottle and two Scotsmen. (Laughter.)
+The bluebottle buzzed on the pane, otherwise a
+profound silence reigned. This was broken by one
+of the Scotsmen trying to locate the bluebottle with
+zoölogical exactitude. Said this Scotsman: 'Sandy,
+I am thinking if yon fly is a birdie or a beastie.' The
+other replied: 'Man, don't spoil good whiskey with
+religious conversation.' (Laughter.) He was
+tempted, Mr. Magnet resumed, to ask himself and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">-141-</a></span>
+them why it was that they should spoil the aftereffects
+of a most excellent and admirably served dinner
+by an academic discussion on British humour.
+At first he was pained by the thought that they
+proposed to temper their hospitality with a demand
+for a speech. A closer inspection showed that he
+was to introduce a debate and that others were to
+speak, and that was a new element in their hospitality.
+Further, he was permitted to choose the subject
+so that he could bring their speeches within the
+range of his comprehension. (Laughter.) His was
+an easy task. He could make it easier; the best
+thing to do would be to say nothing at all. (Laughter.)"</p>
+
+<p>For a space the reporter seemed to have omitted
+largely&mdash;perhaps he was changing places with his
+relief&mdash;and the next sentence showed Mr. Magnet
+engaged as it were in revising a <i>hortus siccus</i> of
+jokes. "There was the humour of facts and situations,"
+he was saying, "or that humour of expression
+for which there was no human responsibility,
+as in the case of Irish humour; he spoke of the humour
+of the soil which found its noblest utterance in
+the bull. Humour depended largely on contrast.
+There was a humour of form and expression which
+had many local varieties. American humour had
+been characterized by exaggeration, the suppression
+of some link in the chain of argument or narrative,
+and a wealth of simile and metaphor which had been
+justly defined as the poetry of a pioneer race."...</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie's attention slipped its anchor, and
+caught lower down upon: "In England there was a
+near kinship between laughter and tears; their mental
+relations were as close as their physical. Abroad
+this did not appear to be the case. It was different
+in France. But perhaps on the whole it would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">-142-</a></span>
+better to leave the humour of France and what some
+people still unhappily chose to regard as matters
+open to controversy&mdash;he referred to choice of subject&mdash;out
+of their discussion altogether. ('Hear,
+hear,' and cheers.)"...</p>
+
+<p>Attention wandered again. Then she remarked:&mdash;it
+reminded her in some mysterious way of a dropped
+hairpin&mdash;"It was noticeable that the pun to a
+great extent had become démodé...."</p>
+
+<p>At this point the flight of Marjorie's eyes down
+the column was arrested by her father's hand gently
+but firmly taking possession of the <i>Times</i>. She yielded
+it without reluctance, turned to the breakfast
+table, and never resumed her study of the social
+relaxations of humorists....</p>
+
+<p>Indeed she forgot it. Her mind was in a state of
+extreme perplexity. She didn't know what to make
+of herself or anything or anybody. Her mind was
+full of Trafford and all that he had said and done
+and all that he might have said and done, and it was
+entirely characteristic that she could not think of
+Magnet in any way at all except as a bar-like shadow
+that lay across all her memories and all the bright
+possibilities of this engaging person.</p>
+
+<p>She thought particularly of the mobile animation
+of his face, the keen flash of enthusiasm in his
+thoughts and expressions....</p>
+
+<p>It was perhaps more characteristic of her time
+than of her that she did not think she was dealing
+so much with a moral problem as an embarrassment,
+and that she hadn't as yet felt the first stirrings of
+self-reproach for the series of disingenuous proceedings
+that had rendered the yesterday's encounter
+possible. But she was restless, wildly restless as a
+bird whose nest is taken. She could abide nowhere.
+She fretted through the morning, avoided Daffy in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">-143-</a></span>
+marked manner, and inflicted a stinging and only
+partially merited rebuke upon Theodore for slouching,
+humping and&mdash;of all trite grievances!&mdash;not
+washing behind his ears. As if any chap washed
+behind his ears! She thought tennis with the pseudo-twins
+might assuage her, but she broke off after losing
+two sets; and then she went into the garden to
+get fresh flowers, and picked a large bunch and left
+them on the piano until her mother reminded her of
+them. She tried a little Shaw. She struggled with
+an insane wish to walk through the wood behind the
+village and have an accidental meeting with someone
+who couldn't possibly appear but whom it would
+be quite adorable to meet. Anyhow she conquered
+that.</p>
+
+<p>She had a curious and rather morbid indisposition
+to go after lunch to the station and meet Mr.
+Magnet as her mother wished her to do, in order to
+bring him straight to the vicarage to early tea, but
+here again reason prevailed and she went.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Magnet arrived by the 2.27, and to Marjorie's
+eye his alighting presence had an effect of
+being not so much covered with laurels as distended
+by them. His face seemed whiter and larger than
+ever. He waved a great handful of newspapers.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, Magsy!" he said. "They've given me a
+thumping Press. I'm nearer swelled head than I've
+ever been, so mind how you touch me!"</p>
+
+<p>"We'll take it down at croquet," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"They've cleared that thing away?"</p>
+
+<p>"And made up the lawn like a billiard table,"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>"That makes for skill," he said waggishly. "I
+shall save my head after all."</p>
+
+<p>For a moment he seemed to loom towards kissing
+her, but she averted this danger by a business-like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">-144-</a></span>
+concern for his bag. He entrusted this to a porter,
+and reverted to the triumph of overnight so soon as
+they were clear of the station. He was overflowing
+with kindliness towards his fellow humorists, who had
+appeared in force and very generously at the banquet,
+and had said the most charming things&mdash;some
+of which were in one report and some in another, and
+some the reporters had missed altogether&mdash;some of
+the kindliest.</p>
+
+<p>"It's a pleasant feeling to think that a lot of
+good fellows think you are a good fellow," said Mr.
+Magnet.</p>
+
+<p>He became solicitous for her. How had she got
+on while he was away? She asked him how one was
+likely to get on at Buryhamstreet; monoplanes didn't
+fall every day, and as she said that it occurred to her
+she was behaving meanly. But he was going on to his
+next topic before she could qualify.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got something in my pocket," he remarked,
+and playfully: "Guess."</p>
+
+<p>She did, but she wouldn't. She had a curious
+sinking of the heart.</p>
+
+<p>"I want you to see it before anyone else," he
+said. "Then if you don't like it, it can go back. It's
+a sapphire."</p>
+
+<p>He was feeling nervously in his pockets and then
+the little box was in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated to open it. It made everything so
+dreadfully concrete. And this time the sense of
+meanness was altogether acuter. He'd bought this in
+London; he'd brought it down, hoping for her approval.
+Yes, it was&mdash;horrid. But what was she
+to do?</p>
+
+<p>"It's&mdash;awfully pretty," she said with the glittering
+symbol in her hand, and indeed he had gone to
+one of those artistic women who are reviving and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">-145-</a></span>
+improving upon the rich old Roman designs. "It's
+so beautifully made."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so glad you like it. You really <i>do</i> like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't deserve it."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! But you <i>do</i> like it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Enormously."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I spent an hour in choosing it."</p>
+
+<p>She could see him. She felt as though she had
+picked his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>"Only I don't deserve it, Mr. Magnet. Indeed
+I don't. I feel I am taking it on false pretences."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense, Magsy. Nonsense! Slip it on your
+finger, girl."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't," she insisted.</p>
+
+<p>He took the box from her, pocketed it and seized
+her hand. She drew it away from him.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" she said. "I feel like a cheat. You know,
+I don't&mdash;I'm sure I don't love&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll love enough for two," he said, and got her
+hand again. "No!" he said at her gesture, "you'll
+wear it. Why shouldn't you?"</p>
+
+<p>And so Marjorie came back along the vicarage
+avenue with his ring upon her hand. And Mr. Pope
+was evidently very glad to see him....</p>
+
+<p>The family was still seated at tea upon rugs
+and wraps, and still discussing humorists at play,
+when Professor Trafford appeared, leaning on a
+large stick and limping, but resolute, by the church
+gate. "Pish!" said Mr. Pope. Marjorie tried not
+to reveal a certain dismay, there was dumb, rich approval
+in Daphne's eyes, and the pleasure of Theodore
+and the pseudo-twins was only too scandalously
+evident. "Hoo-Ray!" said Theodore, with ill-concealed
+relief.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope was the incarnate invocation of tact<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">-146-</a></span>
+as Trafford drew near.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope," he said, with obvious insincerity, "I
+don't invade you. But Solomonson is frightfully
+concerned and anxious about your lawn, and whether
+his men cleared it up properly and put things right."
+His eye went about the party and rested on Marjorie.
+"How are you?" he said, in a friendly voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we seem to have got our croquet lawn
+back," said Mr. Pope. "And our nerves are recovering.
+How is Sir Rupert?"</p>
+
+<p>"A little fractious," said Trafford, with the
+ghost of a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll take some tea?" said Mrs. Pope in the
+pause that followed.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you," said Trafford and sat down instantly.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw your jolly address in the <i>Standard</i>," he
+said to Magnet. "I haven't read anything so amusing
+for some time."</p>
+
+<p>"Rom dear," said Mrs. Pope, "will you take the
+pot in and get some fresh tea?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trafford addressed himself to the flattery of
+Magnet with considerable skill. He had detected a
+lurking hostility in the eyes of the two gentlemen
+that counselled him to propitiate them if he meant
+to maintain his footing in the vicarage, and now he
+talked to them almost exclusively and ignored the
+ladies modestly but politely in the way that seems
+natural and proper in a British middle-class house
+of the better sort. But as he talked chiefly of the
+improvement of motor machinery that had recently
+been shown at the Engineering Exhibition, he did
+not make that headway with Marjorie's father that
+he had perhaps anticipated. Mr. Pope fumed quietly
+for a time, and then suddenly spoke out.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm no lover of machines," he said abruptly,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">-147-</a></span>
+slashing across Mr. Trafford's description. "All
+our troubles began with villainous saltpetre. I'm
+an old-fashioned man with a nose&mdash;and a neck, and
+I don't want the one offended or the other broken.
+No, don't ask me to be interested in your valves and
+cylinders. What do you say, Magnet? It starts
+machinery in my head to hear about them...."</p>
+
+<p>On such occasions as this when Mr. Pope spoke
+out, his horror of an anti-climax or any sort of contradiction
+was apt to bring the utterance to a culmination
+not always to be distinguished from a
+flight. And now he rose to his feet as he delivered
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Who's for a game of tennis?" he said, "in
+this last uncontaminated patch of air? I and Marjorie
+will give you a match, Daffy&mdash;if Magnet isn't
+too tired to join you."</p>
+
+<p>Daffy looked at Marjorie for an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll want you, Theodore, to look after the
+balls in the potatoes," said Mr. Pope lest that ingenuous
+mind should be corrupted behind his back....</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope found herself left to entertain a
+slightly disgruntled Trafford. Rom and Syd hovered
+on the off chance of notice, at the corner of the
+croquet lawn nearest the tea things. Mrs. Pope had
+already determined to make certain little matters
+clearer than they appeared to be to this agreeable
+but superfluous person, and she was greatly assisted
+by his opening upon the subject of her daughters.
+"Jolly tennis looks," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't they?" said Mrs. Pope. "I think it is
+such a graceful game for a girl."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trafford glanced at Mrs. Pope's face, but
+her expression was impenetrable.</p>
+
+<p>"They both like it and play it so well," she
+said. "Their father is so skillful and interested in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">-148-</a></span>
+games. Marjorie tells me you were her examiner
+a year or so ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. She struck my memory&mdash;her work stood
+out."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she is clever," said Mrs. Pope. "Or
+we shouldn't have sent her to Oxbridge. There she's
+doing quite well&mdash;quite well. Everyone says so. I
+don't know, of course, if Mr. Magnet will let her
+finish there."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Magnet?"</p>
+
+<p>"She's just engaged to him. Of course she's
+frightfully excited about it, and naturally he wants
+her to come away and marry. There's very little
+excuse for a long engagement. No."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice died in a musical little note, and she
+seemed to be scrutinizing the tennis with an absorbed
+interest. "They've got new balls," she said, as if to
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>Trafford had rolled over, and she fancied she
+detected a change in his voice when it came. "Isn't
+it rather a waste not to finish a university career?"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it wouldn't be wasted. Of course a girl
+like that will be hand and glove with her husband.
+She'll be able to help him with the scientific side of
+his jokes and all that. I sometimes wish it had been
+Daffy who had gone to college though. I sometimes
+think we've sacrificed Daffy a little. She's not the
+bright quickness of Marjorie, but there's something
+quietly solid about her mind&mdash;something <i>stable</i>. Perhaps
+I didn't want her to go away from me....
+Mr. Magnet is doing wonders at the net. He's just
+begun to play&mdash;to please Marjorie. Don't you
+think he's a dreadfully amusing man, Mr. Trafford?
+He says such <i>quiet</i> things."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 9</p>
+
+<p>The effect of this <i>éclaircissement</i> upon Mr. Trafford<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">-149-</a></span>
+was not what it should have been. Properly he
+ought to have realized at once that Marjorie was
+for ever beyond his aspirations, and if he found it
+too difficult to regard her with equanimity, then he
+ought to have shunned her presence. But instead,
+after his first shock of incredulous astonishment, his
+spirit rose in a rebellion against arranged facts
+that was as un-English as it was ungentlemanly. He
+went back to Solomonson with a mood of thoughtful
+depression giving place to a growing passion of
+indignation. He presented it to himself in a generalized
+and altruistic form. "What the deuce is the
+good of all this talk of Eugenics," he asked himself
+aloud, "if they are going to hand over that shining
+girl to that beastly little area sneak?"</p>
+
+<p>He called Mr. Magnet a "beastly little area
+sneak!"</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could show more clearly just how much
+he had contrived to fall in love with Marjorie during
+his brief sojourn in Buryhamstreet and the acuteness
+of his disappointment, and nothing could be
+more eloquent of his forcible and undisciplined temperament.
+And out of ten thousand possible abusive
+epithets with which his mind was no doubt stored,
+this one, I think, had come into his head because of
+the alert watchfulness with which Mr. Magnet followed
+a conversation, as he waited his chance for
+some neat but brilliant flash of comment....</p>
+
+<p>Trafford, like Marjorie, was another of those undisciplined
+young people our age has produced in
+such significant quantity. He was just six-and-twenty,
+but the facts that he was big of build, had
+as an only child associated much with grown-up people,
+and was already a conspicuous success in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">-150-</a></span>
+world of micro-chemical research, had given him the
+self-reliance and assurance of a much older man. He
+had still to come his croppers and learn most of the
+important lessons in life, and, so far, he wasn't
+aware of it. He was naturally clean-minded, very
+busy and interested in his work, and on remarkably
+friendly and confidential terms with his mother who
+kept house for him, and though he had had several
+small love disturbances, this was the first occasion
+that anything of the kind had ploughed deep into
+his feelings and desires.</p>
+
+<p>Trafford's father had died early in life. He had
+been a brilliant pathologist, one of that splendid
+group of scientific investigators in the middle Victorian
+period which shines ever more brightly as our
+criticism dims their associated splendours, and he
+had died before he was thirty through a momentary
+slip of the scalpel. His wife&mdash;she had been his wife
+for five years&mdash;found his child and his memory and
+the quality of the life he had made about her too
+satisfying for the risks of a second marriage, and she
+had brought up her son with a passionate belief in
+the high mission of research and the supreme duty
+of seeking out and expressing truth finely. And
+here he was, calling Mr. Magnet a "beastly little
+area sneak."</p>
+
+<p>The situation perplexed him. Marjorie perplexed
+him. It was, had he known it, the beginning for
+him of a lifetime of problems and perplexities. He
+was absolutely certain she didn't love Magnet. Why,
+then, had she agreed to marry him? Such pressures
+and temptations as he could see about her seemed
+light to him in comparison with such an undertaking.</p>
+
+<p>Were they greater than he supposed?</p>
+
+<p>His method of coming to the issue of that problem<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">-151-</a></span>
+was entirely original. He presented himself
+next afternoon with the air of an invited guest,
+drove Mr. Pope who was suffering from liver, to expostulatory
+sulking in the study, and expressed a
+passionate craving for golf-croquet, in spite of Mrs.
+Pope's extreme solicitude for his still bandaged
+ankle. He was partnered with Daffy, and for a
+long time he sought speech with Marjorie in vain.
+At last he was isolated in a corner of the lawn, and
+with the thinnest pretence of inadvertence, in spite
+of Daffy's despairing cry of "She plays next!" he
+laid up within two yards of her. He walked across
+to her as she addressed herself to her ball, and
+speaking in an incredulous tone and with the air of
+a comment on the game, he said: "I say, are you
+engaged to that chap Magnet?"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie was amazed, but remarkably not offended.
+Something in his tone set her trembling.
+She forgot to play, and stood with her mallet hanging
+in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Punish him!" came the voice of Magnet from
+afar.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said faintly.</p>
+
+<p>His remark came low and clear. It had a note of
+angry protest. "<i>Why?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie, by the way of answer, hit her ball so
+that it jumped and missed his, ricochetted across the
+lawn and out of the ground on the further side.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry if I've annoyed you," said Trafford,
+as Marjorie went after her ball, and Daffy thanked
+heaven aloud for the respite.</p>
+
+<p>They came together no more for a time, and
+Trafford, observant with every sense, found no clue
+to the riddle of her grave, intent bearing. She played
+very badly, and with unusual care and deliberation.
+He felt he had made a mess of things altogether,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">-152-</a></span>
+and suddenly found his leg was too painful
+to go on. "Partner," he asked, "will you play out
+my ball for me? I can't go on. I shall have to go."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie surveyed him, while Daffy and Magnet
+expressed solicitude. He turned to go, mallet in hand,
+and found Marjorie following him.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that the heavier mallet?" she asked, and stood
+before him looking into his eyes and weighing a mallet
+in either hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Trafford, you're one of the worst examiners
+I've ever met," she said.</p>
+
+<p>He looked puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know <i>why</i>," said Marjorie, "I wonder
+as much as you. But I am"; and seeing the light
+dawning in his eyes, she turned about, and went
+back to the debacle of her game.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 10</p>
+
+<p>After that Mr. Trafford had one clear desire in
+his being which ruled all his other desires. He wanted
+a long, frank, unembarrassed and uninterrupted conversation
+with Marjorie. He had a very strong impression
+that Marjorie wanted exactly the same
+thing. For a week he besieged the situation in vain.
+After the fourth day Solomonson was only kept in
+Buryhamstreet by sheer will-power, exerted with a
+brutality that threatened to end that friendship
+abruptly. He went home on the sixth day in his
+largest car, but Trafford stayed on beyond the limits
+of decency to perform some incomprehensible service
+that he spoke of as "clearing up."</p>
+
+<p>"I want," he said, "to clear up."</p>
+
+<p>"But what <i>is</i> there to clear up, my dear boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Solomonson, you're a pampered plutocrat,"
+said Trafford, as though everything was explained.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see any sense in it at all," said Solomonson,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">-153-</a></span>
+and regarded his friend aslant with thick, black
+eyebrows raised.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to stay," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>And Solomonson said one of those unhappy and
+entirely disregarded things that ought never to be
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"There's some girl in this," said Solomonson.</p>
+
+<p>"Your bedroom's always waiting for you at Riplings,"
+he said, when at last he was going off....</p>
+
+<p>Trafford's conviction that Marjorie also wanted,
+with an almost equal eagerness, the same opportunity
+for speech and explanations that he desired, sustained
+him in a series of unjustifiable intrusions upon
+the seclusion of the Popes. But although the manner
+of Mr. and Mrs. Pope did change considerably for
+the better after his next visit, it was extraordinary
+how impossible it seemed for him and Marjorie to
+achieve their common end of an encounter.</p>
+
+<p>Always something intervened.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, Mrs. Pope's disposition to optimism
+had got the better of her earlier discretions,
+and a casual glance at Daphne's face when their
+visitor reappeared started quite a new thread of
+interpretations in her mind. She had taken the
+opportunity of hinting at this when Mr. Pope asked
+over his shirt-stud that night, "What the devil that&mdash;that
+chauffeur chap meant by always calling in
+the afternoon."</p>
+
+<p>"Now that Will Magnet monopolizes Marjorie,"
+she said, after a little pause and a rustle or so, "I
+don't see why Daffy shouldn't have a little company
+of her own age."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope turned round and stared at her. "I
+didn't think of that," he said. "But, anyhow, I
+don't like the fellow."</p>
+
+<p>"He seems to be rather clever," said Mrs. Pope,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">-154-</a></span>
+"though he certainly talks too much. And after all
+it was Sir Rupert's aeroplane. <i>He</i> was only driving
+it to oblige."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll think twice before he drives another," said
+Mr. Pope, wrenching off his collar....</p>
+
+<p>Once Mrs. Pope had turned her imagination in
+this more and more agreeable direction, she was
+rather disposed, I am afraid, to let it bolt with her.
+And it was a deflection that certainly fell in very
+harmoniously with certain secret speculations of
+Daphne's. Trafford, too, being quite unused to any
+sort of social furtiveness, did perhaps, in order to
+divert attention from his preoccupation with Marjorie,
+attend more markedly to Daphne than he
+would otherwise have done. And so presently he
+found Daphne almost continuously on his hands. So
+far as she was concerned, he might have told her the
+entire history of his life, and every secret he had in
+the world, without let or hindrance. Mrs. Pope, too,
+showed a growing appreciation of his company, became
+sympathetic and confidential in a way that
+invited confidence, and threw a lot of light on her
+family history and Daffy's character. She had found
+Daffy a wonderful study, she said. Mr. Pope, too,
+seemed partly reconciled to him. The idea that,
+after all, both motor cars and monoplane were Sir
+Rupert's, and not Trafford's, had produced a reaction
+in the latter gentleman's favour. Moreover, it
+had occurred to him that Trafford's accident had
+perhaps disposed him towards a more thoughtful
+view of mechanical traction, and that this tendency
+would be greatly helped by a little genial chaff. So
+that he ceased to go indoors when Trafford was
+there, and hung about, meditating and delivering sly
+digs at this new victim of his ripe, old-fashioned
+humour.</p>
+
+<p>Nor did it help Trafford in his quest for Marjorie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">-155-</a></span>
+and a free, outspoken delivery that the pseudo-twins
+considered him a person of very considerable
+charm, and that Theodore, though indisposed to
+"suck up" to him publicly&mdash;I write here in Theodorese&mdash;did
+so desire intimate and solitary communion
+with him, more particularly in view of the chances
+of an adventitious aeroplane ride that seemed to
+hang about him&mdash;as to stalk him persistently&mdash;hovering
+on the verge of groups, playing a waiting game
+with a tennis ball and an old racquet, strolling artlessly
+towards the gate of the avenue when the time
+seemed ripening for his appearance or departure.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, Marjorie was greatly entangled
+by Magnet.</p>
+
+<p>Magnet was naturally an attentive lover; he was
+full of small encumbering services, and it made him
+none the less assiduous to perceive that Marjorie
+seemed to find no sort of pleasure in all the little
+things he did. He seemed to think that if picking
+the very best rose he could find for her did not cause
+a very perceptible brightening in her, then it was
+all the more necessary quietly to force her racquet
+from her hand and carry it for her, or help her
+ineffectually to cross a foot-wide ditch, or offer to
+read her in a rich, abundant, well modulated voice,
+some choice passage from "The Forest Lovers" of
+Mr. Maurice Hewlett. And behind these devotions
+there was a streak of jealousy. He knew as if by
+instinct that it was not wise to leave these two handsome
+young people together; he had a queer little
+disagreeable sensation whenever they spoke to one
+another or looked at one another. Whenever Trafford
+and Marjorie found themselves in a group,
+there was Magnet in the midst of them. He knew
+the value of his Marjorie, and did not mean to lose<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">-156-</a></span>
+her....</p>
+
+<p>Being jointly baffled in this way was oddly stimulating
+to Marjorie's and Trafford's mutual predisposition.
+If you really want to throw people
+together, the thing to do&mdash;thank God for Ireland!&mdash;is
+to keep them apart. By the fourth day of this
+emotional incubation, Marjorie was thinking of
+Trafford to the exclusion of all her reading; and
+Trafford was lying awake at nights&mdash;oh, for half an
+hour and more&mdash;thinking of bold, decisive ways of
+getting at Marjorie, and bold, decisive things to say
+to her when he did.</p>
+
+<p>(But why she should be engaged to Magnet continued,
+nevertheless, to puzzle him extremely. It was
+a puzzle to which no complete solution was ever to
+be forthcoming....)</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 11</p>
+
+<p>At last that opportunity came. Marjorie had
+come with her mother into the village, and while Mrs.
+Pope made some purchases at the general shop she
+walked on to speak to Mrs. Blythe the washerwoman.
+Trafford suddenly emerged from the Red Lion with
+a soda syphon under each arm. She came forward
+smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," he said forthwith, "I want to talk with
+you&mdash;badly."</p>
+
+<p>"And I," she said unhesitatingly, "with you."</p>
+
+<p>"How can we?"</p>
+
+<p>"There's always people about. It's absurd."</p>
+
+<p>"We'll have to meet."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I have to go away to-morrow. I ought to have
+gone two days ago. Where <i>can</i> we meet?"</p>
+
+<p>She had it all prepared.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">-157-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Listen," she said. "There is a path runs from
+our shrubbery through a little wood to a stile on
+the main road." He nodded. "Either I will be there
+at three or about half-past five or&mdash;there's one more
+chance. While father and Mr. Magnet are smoking
+at nine.... I might get away."</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't I write?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Impossible."</p>
+
+<p>"I've no end of things to say...."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope appeared outside her shop, and Trafford
+gesticulated a greeting with the syphons. "All
+right," he said to Marjorie. "I'm shopping," he
+cried as Mrs. Pope approached.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 12</p>
+
+<p>All through the day Marjorie desired to go to
+Trafford and could not do so. It was some minutes
+past nine when at last with a swift rustle of skirts
+that sounded louder than all the world to her, she
+crossed the dimly lit hall between dining-room and
+drawing-room and came into the dreamland of moonlight
+upon the lawn. She had told her mother she
+was going upstairs; at any moment she might be
+missed, but she would have fled now to Trafford if
+an army pursued her. Her heart seemed beating in
+her throat, and every fibre of her being was aquiver.
+She flitted past the dining-room window like a ghost,
+she did not dare to glance aside at the smokers within,
+and round the lawn to the shrubbery, and so under a
+blackness of trees to the gate where he stood waiting.
+And there he was, dim and mysterious and wonderful,
+holding the gate open for her, and she was breathless,
+and speechless, and near sobbing. She stood
+before him for a moment, her face moonlit and laced
+with the shadows of little twigs, and then his arms<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">-158-</a></span>
+came out to her.</p>
+
+<p>"My darling," he said, "Oh, my darling!"</p>
+
+<p>They had no doubt of one another or of anything
+in the world. They clung together; their lips came
+together fresh and untainted as those first lovers' in
+the garden.</p>
+
+<p>"I will die for you," he said, "I will give all the
+world for you...."</p>
+
+<p>They had thought all through the day of a hundred
+statements and explanations they would make
+when this moment came, and never a word of it all
+was uttered. All their anticipations of a highly
+strung eventful conversation vanished, phrases of the
+most striking sort went like phantom leaves before a
+gale. He held her and she clung to him between
+laughing and sobbing, and both were swiftly and
+conclusively assured their lives must never separate
+again.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 13</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie never knew whether it was a moment or
+an age before her father came upon them. He had
+decided to take a turn in the garden when Magnet
+could no longer restrain himself from joining the
+ladies, and he chanced to be stick in hand because
+that was his habit after twilight. So it was he found
+them. She heard his voice falling through love and
+moonlight like something that comes out of an immense
+distance.</p>
+
+<p>"Good God!" he cried, "what next!"</p>
+
+<p>But he still hadn't realized the worst.</p>
+
+<p>"Daffy," he said, "what in the name of goodness&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie put her hands before her face too late.</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord!" he cried with a rising inflection,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">-159-</a></span>
+"it's Madge!"</p>
+
+<p>Trafford found the situation difficult. "I should
+explain&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Pope was giving himself up to a towering
+rage. "You damned scoundrel!" he said. "What
+the devil are you doing?" He seized Marjorie by
+the arm and drew her towards him. "My poor misguided
+girl!" he said, and suddenly she was tensely
+alive, a little cry of horror in her throat, for her
+father, at a loss for words and full of heroic rage,
+had suddenly swung his stick with passionate force,
+and struck at Trafford's face. She heard the thud,
+saw Trafford wince and stiffen. For a perfectly
+horrible moment it seemed to her these men, their
+faces queerly distorted by the shadows of the branches
+in the slanting moonlight, might fight. Then she
+heard Trafford's voice, sounding cool and hard, and
+she knew that he would do nothing of the kind. In
+that instant if there had remained anything to win
+in Marjorie it was altogether won. "I asked your
+daughter to meet me here," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Be off with you, sir!" cried Mr. Pope. "Don't
+tempt me further, sir," and swung his stick again.
+But now the force had gone out of him. Trafford
+stood with a hand out ready for him, and watched his
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"I asked your daughter to meet me here, and she
+came. I am prepared to give you any explanation&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"If you come near this place again&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>For some moments Marjorie's heart had been held
+still, now it was beating violently. She felt this scene
+must end. "Mr. Trafford," she said, "will you go.
+Go now. Nothing shall keep us apart!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope turned on her. "Silence, girl!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall come to you to-morrow," said Trafford.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">-160-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Marjorie, "to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie!" said Mr. Pope, "<i>will</i> you go indoors."</p>
+
+<p>"I have done nothing&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Be off, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"I have done nothing&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Will you be off, sir? And you, Marjorie&mdash;will
+you go indoors?"</p>
+
+<p>He came round upon her, and after one still
+moment of regard for Trafford&mdash;and she looked very
+beautiful in the moonlight with her hair a little disordered
+and her face alight&mdash;she turned to precede
+her father through the shrubbery.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope hesitated whether he should remain
+with Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>A perfectly motionless man is very disconcerting.</p>
+
+<p>"Be off, sir," he said over his shoulder, lowered
+through a threatening second, and followed her.</p>
+
+<p>But Trafford remained stiffly with a tingling temple
+down which a little thread of blood was running,
+until their retreating footsteps had died down into
+that confused stirring of little sounds which makes
+the stillness of an English wood at night.</p>
+
+<p>Then he roused himself with a profound sigh, and
+put a hand to his cut and bruised cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Well!</i>" he said.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER THE FOURTH</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Crisis</span></h3>
+
+<p class="title">§ 1</p>
+
+<p>Crisis prevailed in Buryhamstreet that night. On<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">-161-</a></span>
+half a dozen sleepless pillows souls communed with
+the darkness, and two at least of those pillows were
+wet with tears.</p>
+
+<p>Not one of those wakeful heads was perfectly
+clear about the origins and bearings of the trouble;
+not even Mr. Pope felt absolutely sure of himself.
+It had come as things come to people nowadays, because
+they will not think things out, much less talk
+things out, and are therefore in a hopeless tangle of
+values that tightens sooner or later to a knot....</p>
+
+<p>What an uncharted perplexity, for example,
+was the mind of that excellent woman Mrs. Pope!</p>
+
+<p>Poor lady! she hadn't a stable thing in her head.
+It is remarkable that some queer streak in her composition
+sympathized with Marjorie's passion for
+Trafford. But she thought it such a pity! She
+fought that sympathy down as if it were a wicked
+thing. And she fought too against other ideas that
+rose out of the deeps and did not so much come into
+her mind as cluster at the threshold, the idea that
+Marjorie was in effect grown up, a dozen queer
+criticisms of Magnet, and a dozen subtle doubts
+whether after all Marjorie was going to be happy
+with him as she assured herself the girl would be.
+(So far as any one knew Trafford might be an excellent
+match!) And behind these would-be invaders
+of her guarded mind prowled even worse ones, doubts,
+horrible disloyal doubts, about the wisdom and
+kindness of Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>Quite early in life Mrs. Pope had realized that it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">-162-</a></span>
+is necessary to be very careful with one's thoughts.
+They lead to trouble. She had clipped the wings of
+her own mind therefore so successfully that all her
+conclusions had become evasions, all her decisions
+compromises. Her profoundest working conviction
+was a belief that nothing in the world was of value
+but "tact," and that the art of living was to "tide
+things over." But here it seemed almost beyond
+her strength to achieve any sort of tiding over....</p>
+
+<p>(Why <i>couldn't</i> Mr. Pope lie quiet?)</p>
+
+<p>Whatever she said or did had to be fitted to the
+exigencies of Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>Availing himself of the privileges of matrimony,
+her husband so soon as Mr. Magnet had gone and
+they were upstairs together, had explained the situation
+with vivid simplicity, and had gone on at considerable
+length and with great vivacity to enlarge
+upon his daughter's behaviour. He ascribed this
+moral disaster,&mdash;he presented it as a moral disaster
+of absolutely calamitous dimensions&mdash;entirely to
+Mrs. Pope's faults and negligences. Warming with
+his theme he had employed a number of homely expressions
+rarely heard by decent women except in
+these sacred intimacies, to express the deep indignation
+of a strong man moved to unbridled speech by
+the wickedness of those near and dear to him. Still
+warming, he raised his voice and at last shouted out
+his more forcible meanings, until she feared the servants
+and children might hear, waved a clenched fist
+at imaginary Traffords and scoundrels generally,
+and giving way completely to his outraged virtue,
+smote and kicked blameless articles of furniture in
+a manner deeply impressive to the feminine intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>Finally he sat down in the little arm-chair between<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">-163-</a></span>
+her and the cupboard where she was accustomed
+to hang up her clothes, stuck out his legs very
+stiffly across the room, and despaired of his family
+in an obtrusive and impregnable silence for an
+enormous time.</p>
+
+<p>All of which awakened a deep sense of guilt and
+unworthiness in Mrs. Pope's mind, and prevented her
+going to bed, but did not help her in the slightest
+degree to grasp the difficulties of the situation....</p>
+
+<p>She would have lain awake anyhow, but she was
+greatly helped in this by Mr. Pope's restlessness. He
+was now turning over from left to right or from right
+to left at intervals of from four to seven minutes,
+and such remarks as "Damned scoundrel! Get out
+of this!" or "<i>My</i> daughter and degrade yourself in
+this way!" or "Never let me see your face again!"
+"Plight your troth to one man, and fling yourself
+shamelessly&mdash;I repeat it, Marjorie, shamelessly&mdash;into
+the arms of another!" kept Mrs. Pope closely
+in touch with the general trend of his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>She tried to get together her plans and perceptions
+rather as though she swept up dead leaves on a
+gusty day. She knew that the management of the
+whole situation rested finally on her, and that whatever
+she did or did not do, or whatever arose to
+thwart her arrangements, its entire tale of responsibility
+would ultimately fall upon her shoulders. She
+wondered what was to be done with Marjorie, with
+Mr. Magnet? Need he know? Could that situation
+be saved? Everything at present was raw in her mind.
+Except for her husband's informal communications
+she did not even know what had appeared, what
+Daffy had seen, what Magnet thought of Marjorie's
+failure to bid him good-night. For example, had
+Mr. Magnet noticed Mr. Pope's profound disturbance?
+She had to be ready to put a face on things<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">-164-</a></span>
+before morning, and it seemed impossible she could
+do so. In times of crisis, as every woman knows, it
+is always necessary to misrepresent everything to
+everybody, but how she was to dovetail her misrepresentations,
+get the best effect from them, extract
+a working system of rights and wrongs from them,
+she could not imagine....</p>
+
+<p>(Oh! she did so wish Mr. Pope would lie quiet.)</p>
+
+<p>But he had no doubts of what became <i>him</i>. He
+had to maintain a splendid and irrational rage&mdash;at
+any cost&mdash;to anybody.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 2</p>
+
+<p>A few yards away, a wakeful Marjorie confronted
+a joyless universe. She had a baffling realization
+that her life was in a hopeless mess, that she
+really had behaved disgracefully, and that she
+couldn't for a moment understand how it had happened.
+She had intended to make quite sure of
+Trafford&mdash;and then put things straight.</p>
+
+<p>Only her father had spoilt everything.</p>
+
+<p>She regarded her father that night with a want
+of natural affection terrible to record. Why had he
+come just when he had, just as he had? Why had
+he been so violent, so impossible?</p>
+
+<p>Of course, she had no business to be there....</p>
+
+<p>She examined her character with a new unprecedented
+detachment. Wasn't she, after all, rather
+a mean human being? It had never occurred to her
+before to ask such a question. Now she asked it with
+only too clear a sense of the answer. She tried to
+trace how these multiplying threads of meanness had
+first come into the fabric of a life she had supposed
+herself to be weaving in extremely bright, honourable,
+and adventurous colours. She ought, of course,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">-165-</a></span>
+never to have accepted Magnet....</p>
+
+<p>She faced the disagreeable word; was she a liar?</p>
+
+<p>At any rate, she told lies.</p>
+
+<p>And she'd behaved with extraordinary meanness
+to Daphne. She realized that now. She had known,
+as precisely as if she had been told, how Daphne
+felt about Trafford, and she'd never given her an
+inkling of her own relations. She hadn't for a moment
+thought of Daphne. No wonder Daffy was
+sombre and bitter. Whatever she knew, she knew
+enough. She had heard Trafford's name in urgent
+whispers on the landing. "I suppose you couldn't
+leave him alone," Daffy had said, after a long hostile
+silence. That was all. Just a sentence without prelude
+or answer flung across the bedroom, revealing
+a perfect understanding&mdash;deeps of angry disillusionment.
+Marjorie had stared and gasped, and
+made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>Would she ever see him again? After this horror
+of rowdy intervention? She didn't deserve to; she
+didn't deserve anything.... Oh, the tangle of it
+all! The tangle of it all! And those bills at Oxbridge!
+She was just dragging Trafford down into
+her own miserable morass of a life.</p>
+
+<p>Her thoughts would take a new turn. "I love
+him," she whispered soundlessly. "I would die for
+him. I would like to lie under his feet&mdash;and him not
+know it."</p>
+
+<p>Her mind hung on that for a long time. "Not
+know it until afterwards," she corrected.</p>
+
+<p>She liked to be exact, even in despair....</p>
+
+<p>And then in her memory he was struck again, and
+stood stiff and still. She wanted to kneel to him,
+imagined herself kneeling....</p>
+
+<p>And so on, quite inconclusively, round and round
+through the interminable night hours.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 3</p>
+
+<p>The young man in the village was, if possible,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">-166-</a></span>
+more perplexed, round-eyed and generally inconclusive
+than anyone else in this series of nocturnal
+disturbances. He spent long intervals sitting on his
+window-sill regarding a world that was scented
+with nightstock, and seemed to be woven of moonshine
+and gossamer. Being an inexpert and infrequent
+soliloquist, his only audible comment on his
+difficulties was the repetition in varying intonations
+of his fervent, unalterable conviction that he was
+damned. But behind this simple verbal mask was
+a great fury of mental activity.</p>
+
+<p>He had something of Marjorie's amazement at
+the position of affairs.</p>
+
+<p>He had never properly realized that it was
+possible for any one to regard Marjorie as a
+daughter, to order her about and resent the research
+for her society as criminal. It was a new light in his
+world. Some day he was to learn the meaning of
+fatherhood, but in these night watches he regarded
+it as a hideous survival of medićval darknesses.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," he said, entirely ignoring the actual
+quality of their conversation, "she had to explain
+about the Magnet affair. Can't one&mdash;converse?"</p>
+
+<p>He reflected through great intervals.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>will</i> see her! Why on earth shouldn't I see
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose they can't lock her up!"</p>
+
+<p>For a time he contemplated a writ of Habeas
+Corpus. He saw reason to regret the gaps in his
+legal knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>"Can any one get a writ of Habeas Corpus for
+any one&mdash;it doesn't matter whom"&mdash;more especially
+if you are a young man of six-and-twenty, anxious
+to exchange a few richly charged words with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">-167-</a></span>
+a girl of twenty who is engaged to someone else?</p>
+
+<p>The night had no answer.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly dawn when he came to the entirely
+inadvisable conclusion&mdash;I use his own word's&mdash;to go
+and have it out with the old ruffian. He would sit
+down and ask him what he meant by it all&mdash;and
+reason with him. If he started flourishing that stick
+again, it would have to be taken away.</p>
+
+<p>And having composed a peroration upon the
+institution of the family of a character which he
+fondly supposed to be extraordinarily tolerant,
+reasonable and convincing, but which was indeed calculated
+to madden Mr. Pope to frenzy, Mr. Trafford
+went very peacefully to sleep.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 4</p>
+
+<p>Came dawn, with a noise of birds and afterwards
+a little sleep, and then day, and heavy eyes
+opened again, and the sound of frying and the smell
+of coffee recalled our actors to the stage. Mrs.
+Pope was past her worst despair; always the morning
+brings courage and a clearer grasp of things,
+and she could face the world with plans shaped subconsciously
+during those last healing moments of
+slumber.</p>
+
+<p>Breakfast was difficult, but not impossible. Mr.
+Pope loomed like a thundercloud, but Marjorie
+pleaded a headache very wisely, and was taken a
+sympathetic cup of tea. The pseudo-twins scented
+trouble, but Theodore was heedless and over-full of
+an entertaining noise made by a moorhen as it dived
+in the ornamental water that morning. You could
+make it practically <i>sotto voce</i>, and it amused Syd.
+He seemed to think the <i>Times</i> opaque to such small
+sounds, and learnt better only to be dismissed underfed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">-168-</a></span>
+and ignominiously from the table to meditate
+upon the imperfections of his soul in the schoolroom.
+There for a time he was silent, and then presently
+became audible again, playing with a ball and, presumably,
+Marjorie's tennis racquet.</p>
+
+<p>Directly she could disentangle herself from breakfast
+Mrs. Pope, with all her plans acute, went up to
+the girls' room. She found her daughter dressing in
+a leisurely and meditative manner. She shut the door
+almost confidentially. "Marjorie," she said, "I
+want you to tell me all about this."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought I heard father telling you," said
+Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"He was too indignant," said Mrs. Pope, "to
+explain clearly. You see, Marjorie"&mdash;she paused
+before her effort&mdash;"he knows things&mdash;about this Professor
+Trafford."</p>
+
+<p>"What things?" asked Marjorie, turning sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, my dear&mdash;and I can't imagine."</p>
+
+<p>She looked out of the window, aware of Marjorie's
+entirely distrustful scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't believe what, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever he says."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish I didn't," said Mrs. Pope, and turned.
+"Oh, Madge," she cried, "you cannot imagine how
+all this distresses me! I cannot&mdash;I cannot conceive
+how you came to be in such a position! Surely honour&mdash;&mdash;!
+Think of Mr. Magnet, how good and
+patient he has been! You don't know that man.
+You don't know all he is, and all that it means to a
+girl. He is good and honourable and&mdash;pure. He is
+kindness itself. It seemed to me that you were to be
+so happy&mdash;rich, honoured."</p>
+
+<p>She was overcome by a rush of emotion; she turned<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">-169-</a></span>
+to the bed and sat down.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>There!</i>" she said desolately. "It's all ruined,
+shattered, gone."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie tried not to feel that her mother was
+right.</p>
+
+<p>"If father hadn't interfered," she said weakly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't, my dear, speak so coldly of your
+father! You don't know what he has to put up with.
+You don't know his troubles and anxieties&mdash;all this
+wretched business." She paused, and her face became
+portentous. "Marjorie, do you know if these railways
+go on as they are going he may have to <i>eat into
+his capital</i> this year. Just think of that, and the
+worry he has! And this last shame and anxiety!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice broke again. Marjorie listened with
+an expression that was almost sullen.</p>
+
+<p>"But what is it," she asked, "that father knows
+about Mr. Trafford?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, dear. I don't know. But it's
+something that matters&mdash;that makes it all different."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, may I speak to Mr. Trafford before he
+leaves Buryhamstreet?"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear! Never see him, dear&mdash;never think of
+him again! Your father would not dream&mdash;&mdash;Some
+day, Marjorie, you will rejoice&mdash;you will want to
+thank your father on your bended knees that he
+saved you from the clutches of this man...."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't believe anything about Mr. Trafford,"
+she said slowly, "until I know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She left the sentence incomplete.</p>
+
+<p>She made her declaration abruptly. "I love Mr.
+Trafford," she said, with a catch in her voice, "and I
+don't love Mr. Magnet."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope received this like one who is suddenly
+stabbed. She sat still as if overwhelmed, one hand
+pressed to her side and her eyes closed. Then she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">-170-</a></span>
+said, as if she gasped involuntarily&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It's too dreadful! Marjorie," she said, "I want
+to ask you to do something. After all, a mother has
+<i>some</i> claim. Will you wait just a little. Will you
+promise me to do nothing&mdash;nothing, I mean, to commit
+you&mdash;until your father has been able to make
+inquiries. Don't <i>see</i> him for a little while. Very soon
+you'll be one-and-twenty, and then perhaps things
+may be different. If he cares for you, and you for
+him, a little separation won't matter.... Until
+your father has inquired...."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother," said Marjorie, "I can't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope drew in the air sharply between her
+teeth, as if in agony.</p>
+
+<p>"But, mother&mdash;&mdash;Mother, I <i>must</i> let Mr. Trafford
+know that I'm not to see him. I <i>can't</i> suddenly
+cease.... If I could see him once&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't!" said Mrs. Pope, in a hollow voice.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie began weeping. "He'd not understand,"
+she said. "If I might just speak to him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not alone, Marjorie."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie stood still. "Well&mdash;before you."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope conceded the point. "And then, Marjorie&mdash;&mdash;"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd keep my word, mother," said Marjorie, and
+began to sob in a manner she felt to be absurdly
+childish&mdash;"until&mdash;until I am one-and-twenty. I'd
+promise that."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope did a brief calculation. "Marjorie,"
+she said, "it's only your happiness I think of."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," said Marjorie, and added in a low
+voice, "and father."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, you don't understand your father....
+I believe&mdash;I do firmly believe&mdash;if anything happened
+to any of you girls&mdash;anything bad&mdash;he would kill
+himself.... And I know he means that you aren't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">-171-</a></span>
+to go about so much as you used to do, unless we have
+the most definite promises. Of course, your father's
+ideas aren't always my ideas, Marjorie; but it's your
+duty&mdash;You know how hasty he is and&mdash;quick.
+Just as you know how good and generous and kind
+he is"&mdash;she caught Marjorie's eye, and added a little
+lamely&mdash;"at bottom." ... She thought. "I
+think I could get him to let you say just one word
+with Mr. Trafford. It would be very difficult,
+but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She paused for a few seconds, and seemed to be
+thinking deeply.</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie," she said, "Mr. Magnet must never
+know anything of this."</p>
+
+<p>"But, mother&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't go on with my engagement!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope shook her head inscrutably.</p>
+
+<p>"But how <i>can</i> I, mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"You need not tell him <i>why</i>, Marjorie."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Just think how it would humiliate and distress
+him! You <i>can't</i>, Marjorie. You must find some
+excuse&mdash;oh, any excuse! But not the truth&mdash;not the
+truth, Marjorie. It would be too dreadful."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie thought. "Look here, mother, I <i>may</i>
+see Mr. Trafford again? I <i>may</i> really speak to him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Haven't I promised?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then, I'll do as you say," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 5</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope found her husband seated at the desk
+in the ultra-Protestant study, meditating gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been talking to her," she said, "She's in
+a state of terrible distress."</p>
+
+<p>"She ought to be," said Mr. Pope.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">-172-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Philip, you don't understand Marjorie."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't."</p>
+
+<p>"You think she was kissing that man."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she was."</p>
+
+<p>"You can think <i>that</i> of her!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope turned his chair to her. "But I <i>saw!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope shook her head. "She wasn't; she
+was struggling to get away from him. She told me
+so herself. I've been into it with her. You don't
+understand, Philip. A man like that has a sort of
+fascination for a girl. He dazzles her. It's the way
+with girls. But you're quite mistaken.... Quite.
+It's a sort of hypnotism. She'll grow out of it. Of
+course, she <i>loves</i> Mr. Magnet. She does indeed. I've
+not a doubt of it. But&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You're <i>sure</i> she wasn't kissing him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Positive."</p>
+
+<p>"Then why didn't you say so?"</p>
+
+<p>"A girl's so complex. You didn't give her a
+chance. She's fearfully ashamed of herself&mdash;fearfully!
+but it's just because she <i>is</i> ashamed that she
+won't admit it."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make her admit it."</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to have had all boys," said Mrs.
+Pope. "Oh! she'll admit it some day&mdash;readily
+enough. But I believe a girl of her spirit would
+rather <i>die</i> than begin explaining. You can't expect
+it of her. Really you can't."</p>
+
+<p>He grunted and shook his head slowly from side
+to side.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down in the arm-chair beside the desk.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to know just exactly what we are to do
+about the girl, Philip. I can't bear to think of her&mdash;up
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"How?" he asked. "Up there?"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">-173-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she answered with that skilful inconsecutiveness
+of hers, and let a brief silence touch his
+imagination. "Do you think that man means to
+come here again?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Chuck him out if he does," said Mr. Pope,
+grimly.</p>
+
+<p>She pressed her lips together firmly. She seemed
+to be weighing things painfully. "I wouldn't," she
+said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not want you to make an open quarrel
+with Mr. Trafford."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Not</i> quarrel!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not an open one," said Mrs. Pope. "Of course
+I know how nice it would be if you <i>could</i> use a horsewhip,
+dear. There's such a lot of things&mdash;if we
+only just slash. But&mdash;it won't help. Get him to go
+away. She's consented never to see him again&mdash;practically.
+She's ready to tell him so herself. Part
+them against their will&mdash;oh! and the thing may go on
+for no end of time. But treat it as it ought to be
+treated&mdash;She'll be very tragic for a week or so,
+and then she'll forget him like a dream. He <i>is</i> a
+dream&mdash;a girl's dream.... If only we leave it
+alone, she'll leave it alone."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 6</p>
+
+<p>Things were getting straight, Mrs. Pope felt. She
+had now merely to add a few touches to the tranquillization
+of Daphne, and the misdirection of the twin's
+curiosity. These touches accomplished, it seemed that
+everything was done. After a brief reflection, she
+dismissed the idea of putting things to Theodore.
+She ran over the possibilities of the servants eavesdropping,
+and found them negligible. Yes, everything<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">-174-</a></span>
+was done&mdash;everything. And yet....</p>
+
+<p>The queer string in her nature between religiosity
+and superstition began to vibrate. She hesitated.
+Then she slipped upstairs, fastened the door, fell on
+her knees beside the bed and put the whole thing as
+acceptably as possible to Heaven in a silent, simple,
+but lucidly explanatory prayer....</p>
+
+<p>She came out of her chamber brighter and braver
+than she had been for eighteen long hours. She could
+now, she felt, await the developments that threatened
+with the serenity of one who is prepared at every
+point. She went almost happily to the kitchen, only
+about forty-five minutes behind her usual time, to
+order the day's meals and see with her own eyes that
+economies prevailed. And it seemed to her, on the
+whole, consoling, and at any rate a distraction, when
+the cook informed her that after all she <i>had</i> meant to
+give notice on the day of aunt Plessington's visit.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 7</p>
+
+<p>The unsuspecting Magnet, fatigued but happy&mdash;for
+three hours of solid humorous writing (omitting
+every unpleasant suggestion and mingling in the most
+acceptable and saleable proportions smiles and tears)
+had added its quota to the intellectual heritage of
+England, made a simple light lunch cooked in homely
+village-inn fashion, lit a well merited cigar, and turned
+his steps towards the vicarage. He was preceded
+at some distance along the avenuesque drive by the
+back of Mr. Trafford, which he made no attempt to
+overtake.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trafford was admitted and disappeared, and
+a minute afterwards Magnet reached the door.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope appeared radiant&mdash;about the weather.
+A rather tiresome man had just called upon Mr.
+Pope about business matters, she said, and he might<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">-175-</a></span>
+be detained five or ten minutes. Marjorie and Daffy
+were upstairs&mdash;resting. They had been disturbed
+by bats in the night.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it charmingly rural?" said Mrs. Pope.
+"<i>Bats!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>She talked about bats and the fear she had of
+their getting in her hair, and as she talked she led
+the way brightly but firmly as far as possible out of
+earshot of the windows of the ultra Protestant study
+in which Mr. Pope was now (she did so hope temperately)
+interviewing Mr. Trafford.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 8</p>
+
+<p>Directly Mr. Trafford had reached the front door
+it had opened for him, and closed behind him at once.
+He had found himself with Mrs. Pope. "You wish
+to see my husband?" she had said, and had led him
+to the study forthwith. She had returned at once to
+intercept Mr. Magnet....</p>
+
+<p>Trafford found Mr. Pope seated sternly at the
+centre of the writing desk, regarding him with a
+threatening brow.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir," said Mr. Pope breaking the silence,
+"you have come to offer some explanation&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>While awaiting this encounter Mr. Pope had not
+been insensitive to the tactical and scenic possibilities
+of the occasion. In fact, he had spent the latter half
+of the morning in intermittent preparations, arranging
+desks, books, hassocks in advantageous positions,
+and not even neglecting such small details as the
+stamp tray, the articles of interest from Jerusalem,
+and the rock-crystal cenotaph, which he had exhibited
+in such a manner as was most calculated to damp,
+chill and subjugate an antagonist in the exposed area<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">-176-</a></span>
+towards the window. He had also arranged the chairs
+in a highly favourable pattern.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trafford was greatly taken aback by Mr.
+Pope's juridical manner and by this form of address,
+and he was further put out by Mr. Pope saying with
+a regal gesture to the best illuminated and most isolated
+chair: "Be seated, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trafford's exordium vanished from his mind,
+he was at a loss for words until spurred to speech by
+Mr. Pope's almost truculent: "Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am in love sir, with your daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"I am not aware of it," said Mr. Pope, and lifted
+and dropped the paper-weight. "My daughter, sir,
+is engaged to marry Mr. Magnet. If you had approached
+me in a proper fashion before presuming
+to attempt&mdash;to attempt&mdash;&mdash;" His voice thickened
+with indignation,&mdash;"Liberties with her, you would
+have been duly informed of her position&mdash;and everyone
+would have been saved"&mdash;he lifted the paper-weight.
+"Everything that has happened." (Bump.)</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trafford had to adjust himself to the unexpected
+elements in this encounter. "Oh!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Mr. Pope, and there was a distinct
+interval.</p>
+
+<p>"Is your daughter in love with Mr. Magnet?"
+asked Mr. Trafford in an almost colloquial tone.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope smiled gravely. "I presume so, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"She never gave me that impression, anyhow,"
+said the young man.</p>
+
+<p>"It was neither her duty to give nor yours to
+receive that impression," said Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>Again Mr. Trafford was at a loss.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you come here, sir, merely to bandy
+words?" asked Mr. Pope, drumming with ten fingers
+on the table.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trafford thrust his hands into his pockets<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">-177-</a></span>
+and assumed a fictitious pose of ease. He had never
+found any one in his life before quite so provocative
+of colloquialism as Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, sir, this is all very well," he began,
+"but why can't I fall in love with your daughter?
+I'm a Doctor of Science and all that sort of thing.
+I've a perfectly decent outlook. My father was rather
+a swell in his science. I'm an entirely decent and
+respectable person."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg to differ," said Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am."</p>
+
+<p>"Again," said Mr. Pope, with great patience, and
+a slight forward bowing of the head, "I beg to differ."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;differ. But all the same&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He paused and began again, and for a time they
+argued to no purpose. They generalized about the
+position of an engaged girl and the rights and privileges
+of a father. Then Mr. Pope, "to cut all this
+short," told him frankly he wasn't wanted, his daughter
+did not want him, nobody wanted him; he was an
+invader, he had to be got rid of&mdash;"if possible by
+peaceful means." Trafford disputed these propositions,
+and asked to see Marjorie. Mr. Pope had been
+leading up to this, and at once closed with that
+request.</p>
+
+<p>"She is as anxious as any one to end this intolerable
+siege," he said. He went to the door and
+called for Marjorie, who appeared with conspicuous
+promptitude. She was in a dress of green linen that
+made her seem very cool as well as very dignified to
+Trafford; she was tense with restrained excitement,
+and either&mdash;for these things shade into each other&mdash;entirely
+without a disposition to act her part or
+acting with consummate ability. Trafford rose at
+the sight of her, and remained standing. Mr. Pope
+closed the door and walked back to the desk. "Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">-178-</a></span>
+Trafford has to be told," he said, "that you don't
+want him in Buryhamstreet." He arrested Marjorie's
+forward movement towards Trafford by a
+gesture of the hand, seated himself, and resumed his
+drumming on the table. "Well?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you ought to stay in Buryhamstreet,
+Mr. Trafford," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't want me to?"</p>
+
+<p>"It will only cause trouble&mdash;and scenes."</p>
+
+<p>"You want me to go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Away from here."</p>
+
+<p>"You really mean that?"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie did not answer for a little time; she
+seemed to be weighing the exact force of all she was
+going to say.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Trafford," she answered, "everything I've
+ever said to you&mdash;everything&mdash;I've <i>meant</i>, more than
+I've ever meant anything. Everything!"</p>
+
+<p>A little flush of colour came into Trafford's
+cheeks. He regarded Marjorie with a brightening
+eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well," he said, "I don't understand. But
+I'm entirely in your hands, of course."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie's pose and expression altered. For an
+instant she was a miracle of instinctive expression,
+she shone at him, she conveyed herself to him, she
+assured him. Her eyes met his, she stood warmly
+flushed and quite unconquered&mdash;visibly, magnificently
+<i>his</i>. She poured into him just that riotous pride and
+admiration that gives a man altogether to a woman....
+Then it seemed as if a light passed, and she
+was just an everyday Marjorie standing there.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll do anything you want me to," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I want you to go."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Trafford, with his eyes on her self-possession.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">-179-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I've promised not to write or send to you, or&mdash;think
+more than I can help of you, until I'm twenty-one&mdash;nearly
+two months from now."</p>
+
+<p>"And then?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. How can I?"</p>
+
+<p>"You hear, sir?" from Mr. Pope, in the pause
+of mutual scrutiny that followed.</p>
+
+<p>"One question," said Mr. Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"You've surely asked enough, sir," said Mr.
+Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you still engaged to Magnet?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sir!"</p>
+
+<p>"Please, father;" said Marjorie, with unusual
+daring and in her mother's voice. "Mr. Trafford,
+after what I've told you&mdash;you must leave that to
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"She <i>is</i> engaged to Mr. Magnet," said Mr.
+Pope. "Tell him outright, Marjorie. Make it
+clear."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I understand," said Trafford, with his
+eyes on Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"I've not seen Mr. Magnet since last night," said
+Marjorie. "And so&mdash;naturally&mdash;I'm still engaged
+to him."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely!" said Mr. Pope, and turned with a
+face of harsh interrogation to his importunate caller.
+Mr. Trafford seemed disposed for further questions.
+"I don't think we need detain you, Madge," said
+Mr. Pope, over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>The two young people stood facing one another
+for a moment, and I am afraid that they were both
+extremely happy and satisfied with each other. It
+was all right, they were quite sure&mdash;all right. Their
+lips were almost smiling. Then Marjorie made an
+entirely dignified exit. She closed the door very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">-180-</a></span>
+softly, and Mr. Pope turned to his visitor again with
+a bleak politeness. "I hope that satisfies you," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing more to be said at present, I
+admit," said Mr. Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," said Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>Both gentlemen bowed. Mr. Pope rose ceremoniously,
+and Mr. Trafford walked doorward. He had
+a sense of latent absurdities in these tremendous
+attitudes. They passed through the hall&mdash;processionally.
+But just at the end some lower strain in
+Mr. Trafford's nature touched the fine dignity of the
+occasion with an inappropriate remark.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, sir," said Mr. Pope, holding the
+housedoor wide.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-bye, sir," said Mr. Trafford, and then
+added with a note of untimely intimacy in his voice,
+with an inexcusable levity upon his lips: "You know&mdash;there's
+nobody&mdash;no man in the world&mdash;I'd sooner
+have for a father-in-law than you."</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope, caught unprepared on the spur of the
+moment, bowed in a cold and distant manner, and
+then almost immediately closed the door to save himself
+from violence....</p>
+
+<p>From first to last neither gentleman had made
+the slightest allusion to a considerable bruise upon
+Mr. Trafford's left cheek, and a large abrasion above
+his ear.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 9</p>
+
+<p>That afternoon Marjorie began her difficult task
+of getting disengaged from Mr. Magnet. It was
+difficult because she was pledged not to tell him of
+the one thing that made this line of action not only
+explicable, but necessary. Magnet, perplexed, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">-181-</a></span>
+disconcerted, and secretly sustained by her mother's
+glancing sidelights on the feminine character and the
+instability of "girlish whims," remained at Buryhamstreet
+until the family returned to Hartstone Square.
+The engagement was ended&mdash;formally&mdash;but in such
+a manner that Magnet was left a rather pathetic
+and invincibly assiduous besieger. He lavished little
+presents upon both sisters, he devised little treats for
+the entire family, he enriched Theodore beyond the
+dreams of avarice, and he discussed his love and admiration
+for Marjorie, and the perplexities and
+delicacies of the situation not only with Mrs. Pope,
+but with Daphne. At first he had thought very little
+of Daphne, but now he was beginning to experience
+the subtle pleasures of a confidential friendship. She
+understood, he felt; it was quite wonderful how she
+understood. He found Daffy much richer in response
+than Marjorie, and far less disconcerting in
+reply....</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope, for all Marjorie's submission to his
+wishes, developed a Grand Dudgeon of exceptionally
+fine proportions when he heard of the breach of the
+engagement. He ceased to speak to his daughter or
+admit himself aware of her existence, and the Grand
+Dudgeon's blighting shadow threw a chill over the
+life of every one in the house. He made it clear that
+the Grand Dudgeon would only be lifted by Marjorie's
+re-engagement to Magnet, and that whatever
+blight or inconvenience fell on the others was due
+entirely to Marjorie's wicked obstinacy. Using Mrs.
+Pope as an intermediary, he also conveyed to Marjorie
+his decision to be no longer burthened with the
+charges of her education at Oxbridge, and he made it
+seem extremely doubtful whether he should remember
+her approaching twenty-first birthday.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie received the news of her severance from<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">-182-</a></span>
+Oxbridge, Mrs. Pope thought, with a certain hardness.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought he would do that," said Marjorie.
+"He's always wanted to do that," and said no more.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER THE FIFTH</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">A Telephone Call</span></h3>
+
+<p class="title">§ 1</p>
+
+<p>Trafford went back to Solomonson for a day or so,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">-183-</a></span>
+and then to London, to resume the experimental work
+of the research he had in hand. But he was so much
+in love with Marjorie that for some days it was a very
+dazed mind that fumbled with the apparatus&mdash;arranged
+it and rearranged it, and fell into daydreams
+that gave the utmost concern to Durgan the
+bottle-washer.</p>
+
+<p>"He's not going straight at things," said Durgan
+the bottle-washer to his wife. "He usually goes so
+straight at things it's a pleasure to watch it. He
+told me he was going down into Kent to think everything
+out." Mr. Durgan paused impressively, and
+spoke with a sigh of perplexity. "He hasn't...."</p>
+
+<p>But later Durgan was able to report that Trafford
+had pulled himself together. The work was
+moving.</p>
+
+<p>"I was worried for a bit," said Mr. Durgan.
+"But I <i>think</i> it's all right again. I <i>believe</i> it's all
+right again."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 2</p>
+
+<p>Trafford was one of those rare scientific men who
+really ought to be engaged in scientific research.</p>
+
+<p>He could never leave an accepted formula alone.
+His mind was like some insatiable corrosive, that ate
+into all the hidden inequalities and plastered weaknesses
+of accepted theories, and bit its way through
+every plausibility of appearance. He was extraordinarily<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">-184-</a></span>
+fertile in exasperating alternative hypotheses.
+His invention of destructive test experiments was as
+happy as the respectful irony with which he brought
+them into contact with the generalizations they
+doomed. He was already, at six-and-twenty, hated,
+abused, obstructed, and respected. He was still outside
+the Royal Society, of course, and the editors of
+the scientific periodicals admired his papers greatly,
+and delayed publication; but it was fairly certain
+that that pressure of foreign criticism and competition
+which prevents English scientific men of good
+family and social position from maintaining any
+such national standards as we are able to do in art,
+literature, and politics, would finally carry him in.
+And since he had a small professorship worth three
+hundred a year, which gave him the command of a
+sufficient research laboratory and the services of Mr.
+Durgan, a private income of nearly three hundred
+more, a devoted mother to keep house for him, and
+an invincible faith in Truth, he had every prospect
+of winning in his particular struggle to inflict more
+Truth, new lucidities, and fresh powers upon this
+fractious and unreasonable universe.</p>
+
+<p>In the world of science now, even more than in the
+world of literature and political thought, the thing
+that is alive struggles, half-suffocated, amidst a
+copious production of things born dead. The endowment
+of research, the organization of scientific
+progress, the creation of salaried posts, and the
+assignment of honours, has attracted to this field
+just that type of man which is least gifted to penetrate
+and discover, and least able to admit its own
+defect or the quality of a superior. Such men are
+producing great, bulky masses of imitative research,
+futile inquiries, and monstrous entanglements of
+technicality about their subjects; and it is to their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">-185-</a></span>
+instinctive antagonism to the idea of a "gift" in
+such things that we owe the preposterous conception
+of a training for research, the manufacture of mental
+blinkers that is to say, to avoid what is the very soul
+of brilliant inquiry&mdash;applicable discursiveness. The
+trained investigator is quite the absurdest figure in
+the farce of contemporary intellectual life; he is like
+a bath-chair perpetually starting to cross the Himalayas
+by virtue of a licence to do so. For such enterprises
+one must have wings. Organization and
+genius are antipathetic. The vivid and creative
+mind, by virtue of its qualities, is a spasmodic and
+adventurous mind; it resents blinkers, and the mere
+implication that it can be driven in harness to the
+unexpected. It demands freedom. It resents regular
+attendance from ten to four and punctualities in
+general and all those paralyzing minor tests of conduct
+that are vitally important to the imagination
+of the authoritative dull. Consequently, it is being
+eliminated from its legitimate field, and it is only
+here and there among the younger men that such a
+figure as Trafford gives any promise of a renewal of
+that enthusiasm, that intellectual enterprise, which
+were distinctive of the great age of scientific advance.</p>
+
+<p>Trafford was the only son of his parents. His
+father had been a young surgeon, more attracted by
+knowledge than practice, who had been killed by a
+scratch of the scalpel in an investigation upon ulcerative
+processes, at the age of twenty-nine. Trafford
+at that time was three years old, so that he had not
+the least memory of his father; but his mother, by a
+thousand almost unpremeditated touches, had built
+up a figure for him and a tradition that was shaping
+his life. She had loved her husband passionately, and
+when he died her love burnt up like a flame released,
+and made a god of the good she had known with him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">-186-</a></span>
+She was then a very beautiful and active-minded
+woman of thirty, and she did her best to reconstruct
+her life; but she could find nothing so living in the
+world as the clear courage, the essential simplicity,
+and tender memories of the man she had lost. And
+she was the more devoted to him that he had had little
+weaknesses of temper and bearing, and that an outrageous
+campaign had been waged against him that
+did not cease with his death. He had, in some medical
+periodical, published drawings of a dead dog
+clamped to display a deformity, and these had been
+seized upon by a group of anti-vivisection fanatics
+as the representation of a vivisection. A libel action
+had been pending when he died; but there is no protection
+of the dead from libel. That monstrous lie
+met her on pamphlet cover, on hoardings, in sensational
+appeals; it seemed immortal, and she would
+have suffered the pains of a dozen suttees if she
+could have done so, to show the world how the power
+and tenderness of this alleged tormentor of helpless
+beasts had gripped one woman's heart. It counted
+enormously in her decision to remain a widow and
+concentrate her life upon her son.</p>
+
+<p>She watched his growth with a care and passionate
+subtlety that even at six-and-twenty he was still
+far from suspecting. She dreaded his becoming a
+mother's pet, she sent him away to school and fretted
+through long terms alone, that he might be made
+into a man. She interested herself in literary work
+and social affairs lest she should press upon him unduly.
+She listened for the crude expression of growing
+thought in him with an intensity that was almost
+anguish. She was too intelligent to dream of forming
+his mind, he browsed on every doctrine to find his
+own, but she did desire most passionately, she prayed,
+she prayed in the darkness of sleepless nights, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">-187-</a></span>
+the views, the breadths, the spacious emotions which
+had ennobled her husband in her eyes should rise
+again in him.</p>
+
+<p>There were years of doubt and waiting. He was
+a good boy and a bad boy, now brilliant, now touching,
+now disappointing, now gloriously reassuring,
+and now heart-rending as only the children of our
+blood can be. He had errors and bad moments,
+lapses into sheer naughtiness, phases of indolence,
+attacks of contagious vulgarity. But more and more
+surely she saw him for his father's son; she traced
+the same great curiosities, the same keen dauntless
+questioning; whatever incidents might disturb and
+perplex her, his intellectual growth went on strong
+and clear and increasing like some sacred flame that
+is carried in procession, halting perhaps and swaying
+a little but keeping on, over the heads of a
+tumultuous crowd.</p>
+
+<p>He went from his school to the Royal College of
+Science, thence to successes at Cambridge, and thence
+to Berlin. He travelled a little in Asia Minor and
+Persia, had a journey to America, and then came back
+to her and London, sunburnt, moustached, manly,
+and a little strange. When he had been a boy she
+had thought his very soul pellucid; it had clouded
+opaquely against her scrutiny as he passed into adolescence.
+Then through the period of visits and
+departures, travel together, separations, he grew into
+something detached and admirable, a man curiously
+reminiscent of his father, unexpectedly different. She
+ceased to feel what he was feeling in his mind, had
+to watch him, infer, guess, speculate about him. She
+desired for him and dreaded for him with an undying
+tenderness, but she no longer had any assurance that
+she could interfere to help him. He had his father's
+trick of falling into thought. Her brown eyes would<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">-188-</a></span>
+watch him across the flowers and delicate glass and
+silver of her dinner table when he dined at home
+with her. Sometimes he seemed to forget she existed,
+sometimes he delighted in her, talked to amuse her,
+petted her; sometimes, and then it was she was
+happiest, he talked of plays and books with her,
+discussed general questions, spoke even of that
+broadly conceived scheme of work which engaged so
+much of his imagination. She knew that it was distinguished
+and powerful work. Old friends of her
+husband spoke of it to her, praised its inspired directness,
+its beautiful simplicity. Since the days of Wollaston,
+they said, no one had been so witty an experimenter,
+no one had got more out of mere scraps of
+apparatus or contrived more ingenious simplifications.</p>
+
+<p>When he had accepted the minor Professorship
+which gave him a footing in the world of responsible
+scientific men, she had taken a house in a quiet street
+in Chelsea which necessitated a daily walk to his
+laboratory. It was a little old Georgian house with
+worn and graceful rooms, a dignified front door and
+a fine gateway of Sussex ironwork much painted and
+eaten away. She arranged it with great care; she
+had kept most of her furniture, and his study had his
+father's bureau, and the selfsame agate paper-weight
+that had pressed the unfinished paper he left when
+he died. She was a woman of persistent friendships,
+and there came to her, old connections of those early
+times trailing fresher and younger people in their
+wake, sons, daughters, nephews, disciples; her son
+brought home all sorts of interesting men, and it was
+remarkable to her that amidst the talk and discussion
+at her table, she discovered aspects of her son and
+often quite intimate aspects she would never have
+seen with him alone.</p>
+
+<p>She would not let herself believe that this Indian<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">-189-</a></span>
+summer of her life could last for ever. He was no
+passionless devotee of research, for all his silence and
+restraints. She had seen him kindle with anger at
+obstacles and absurdities, and quicken in the presence
+of beauty. She knew how readily and richly he
+responded to beauty. Things happened to have run
+smoothly with him so far, that was all. "Of course,"
+she said, "he must fall in love. It cannot be long
+before he falls in love."</p>
+
+<p>Once or twice that had seemed to happen, and
+then it had come to nothing....</p>
+
+<p>She knew that sooner or later this completion of
+his possibilities must come, that the present steadfastness
+of purpose was a phase in which forces gathered,
+that love must sweep into his life as a deep and passionate
+disturbance. She wondered where it would
+take him, whether it would leave him enriched or
+devastated. She saw at times how young he was; she
+had, as I suppose most older people have about their
+juniors, the profoundest doubt whether he was wise
+enough yet to be trusted with a thing so good as
+himself. He had flashes of high-spirited indiscretion,
+and at times a wildfire of humour flared in his talk.
+So far that had done no worse for him than make
+an enemy or so in scientific circles. But she had no
+idea of the limits of his excitability. She would
+watch him and fear for him&mdash;she knew the wreckage
+love can make&mdash;and also she desired that he should
+lose nothing that life and his nature could give him.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 3</p>
+
+<p>In the two months of separation that ensued
+before Marjorie was one-and-twenty, Trafford's mind
+went through some remarkable phases. At first the
+excitement of his passion for Marjorie obscured
+everything else, then with his return to London and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">-190-</a></span>
+his laboratory the immense inertia of habit and
+slowly developed purposes, the complex yet convergent
+system of ideas and problems to which so much
+of his life had been given, began to reassert itself.
+His love was vivid and intense, a light in his imagination,
+a fever in his blood; but it was a new thing;
+it had not crept into the flesh and bones of his being,
+it was away there in Surrey; the streets of London,
+his home, the white-walled chamber with its skylight
+and high windows and charts of constants, in which
+his apparatus was arranged, had no suggestion of
+her. She was outside&mdash;an adventure&mdash;a perplexing
+incommensurable with all these things.</p>
+
+<p>He had left Buryhamstreet with Marjorie riotously
+in possession of his mind. He could think of
+nothing but Marjorie in the train, and how she had
+shone at him in the study, and how her voice had
+sounded when she spoke, and how she stood and
+moved, and the shape and sensation of her hands, and
+how it had felt to hold her for those brief moments
+in the wood and press lips and body to his, and how
+her face had gleamed in the laced shadows of the
+moonlight, soft and wonderful.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, he thought of Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>He thought she was splendid, courageous, wise by
+instinct. He had no doubt of her or that she was to
+be his&mdash;when the weeks of waiting had passed by.
+She was his, and he was Marjorie's; that had been
+settled from the beginning of the world. It didn't
+occur to him that anything had happened to alter
+his life or any of his arrangements in any way, except
+that they were altogether altered&mdash;as the world is
+altered without displacement when the sun pours up
+in the east. He was glorified&mdash;and everything was
+glorified.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered how they would meet again, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">-191-</a></span>
+dreamt a thousand impossible and stirring dreams,
+but he dreamt them as dreams.</p>
+
+<p>At first, to Durgan's infinite distress, he thought
+of her all day, and then, as the old familiar interests
+grappled him again, he thought of her in the morning
+and the evening and as he walked between his
+home and the laboratory and at all sorts of incidental
+times&mdash;and even when the close-locked riddles of
+his research held the foreground and focus of his
+thoughts, he still seemed to be thinking of her as a
+radiant background to ions and molecules and atoms
+and interwoven systems of eddies and quivering oscillations
+deep down in the very heart of matter.</p>
+
+<p>And always he thought of her as something of
+the summer. The rich decays of autumn came, the
+Chelsea roads were littered with variegated leaves
+that were presently wet and dirty and slippery, the
+twilight crept down into the day towards five o'clock
+and four, but in his memory of her the leaves were
+green, the evenings were long, the warm quiet of
+rural Surrey in high August filled the air. So that
+it was with a kind of amazement he found her in
+London and in November close at hand. He was
+called to the college telephone one day from a conversation
+with a proposed research student. It was
+a middle-aged woman bachelor anxious for the D.Sc.,
+who wished to occupy the further bench in the laboratory;
+but she had no mental fire, and his mind
+was busy with excuses and discouragements.</p>
+
+<p>He had no thought of Marjorie when she answered,
+and for an instant he did not recognize her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I'm Mr. Trafford."...</p>
+
+<p>"Who is it?" he reiterated with a note of irascibility.
+"<i>Who?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>The little voice laughed. "Why! I'm Marjorie!"
+it said.</p>
+
+<p>Then she was back in his life like a lantern suddenly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">-192-</a></span>
+become visible in a wood at midnight.</p>
+
+<p>It was like meeting her as a china figure, neat
+and perfect and two inches high. It was her voice,
+very clear and very bright, and quite characteristic,
+as though he was hearing it through the wrong end
+of a telescope. It was her voice, clear as a bell; confident
+without a shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"It's <i>me!</i> Marjorie! I'm twenty-one to-day!"</p>
+
+<p>It was like a little arrow of exquisite light shot
+into the very heart of his life.</p>
+
+<p>He laughed back. "Are you for meeting me
+then, Marjorie?"</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 4</p>
+
+<p>They met in Kensington Gardens with an air of
+being clandestine and defiant. It was one of those
+days of amber sunlight, soft air, and tender beauty
+with which London relieves the tragic glooms of the
+year's decline. There were still a residue of warm-tinted
+leaves in puffs and clusters upon the tree
+branches, a boat or two ruffled the blue Serpentine,
+and the waterfowl gave colour and animation to the
+selvage of the water. The sedges were still a greenish
+yellow.</p>
+
+<p>The two met shyly. They were both a little unfamiliar
+to each other. Trafford was black-coated,
+silk-hatted, umbrella-d, a decorous young professor
+in the place of the cheerful aeronaut who had fallen
+so gaily out of the sky. Marjorie had a new tailor-made
+dress of russet-green, and a little cloth toque
+ruled and disciplined the hair he had known as a
+ruddy confusion.... They had dreamt, I think,
+of extended arms and a wild rush to embrace one
+another. Instead, they shook hands.</p>
+
+<p>"And so," said Trafford, "we meet again!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">-193-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why we shouldn't meet!" said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>There was a slight pause.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's have two of those jolly little green
+chairs," said Trafford....</p>
+
+<p>They walked across the grass towards the chairs
+he had indicated, and both were full of the momentous
+things they were finding it impossible to say.</p>
+
+<p>"There ought to be squirrels here, as there are
+in New York," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>They sat down. There was a moment's silence,
+and then Trafford's spirit rose in rebellion and he
+plunged at this&mdash;this stranger beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here," he said, "do you still love me,
+Marjorie?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked up into his face with eyes in which
+surprise and scrutiny passed into something altogether
+beautiful. "I love you&mdash;altogether," she
+said in a steady, low voice.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly she was no longer a stranger, but
+the girl who had flitted to his arms breathless, unhesitating,
+through the dusk. His blood quickened.
+He made an awkward gesture as though he arrested
+an impulse to touch her. "My sweetheart," he said.
+"My dear one!"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie's face flashed responses. "It's you,"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Me," she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"Everything!"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear!"</p>
+
+<p>"I want to tell you things," said Marjorie.
+"What are we to do?"....</p>
+
+<p>He tried afterwards to retrace that conversation.
+He was chiefly ashamed of his scientific preoccupations<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">-194-</a></span>
+during that London interval. He had thought
+of a thousand things; Marjorie had thought of nothing
+else but love and him. Her happy assurance, her
+absolute confidence that his desires would march with
+hers, reproached and confuted every adverse thought
+in him as though it was a treachery to love. He had
+that sense which I suppose comes at times to every
+man, of entire unworthiness for the straight, unhesitating
+decision, the clear simplicity of a woman's
+passion. He had dreamt vaguely, unsubstantially,
+the while he had arranged his pressures and temperatures
+and infinitesimal ingredients, and worked with
+goniometer and trial models and the new calculating
+machine he had contrived for his research. But she
+had thought clearly, definitely, fully&mdash;of nothing
+but coming to him. She had thought out everything
+that bore upon that; reasons for preciptance, reasons
+for delay, she had weighed the rewards of conformity
+against the glamour of romance. It became
+more and more clear to him as they talked, that she
+was determined to elope with him, to go to Italy, and
+there have an extraordinarily picturesque and beautiful
+time. Her definiteness shamed his poverty of
+anticipation. Her enthusiasm carried him with her.
+Of course it was so that things must be done....</p>
+
+<p>When at last they parted under the multiplying
+lamps of the November twilight, he turned his face
+eastward. He was afraid of his mother's eyes&mdash;he
+scarcely knew why. He walked along Kensington
+Gore, and the clustering confused lights of street and
+house, white and golden and orange and pale lilac,
+the moving lamps and shining glitter of the traffic,
+the luminous interiors of omnibuses, the reflection of
+carriage and hoarding, the fading daylight overhead,
+the phantom trees to the left, the deepening shadows
+and blacknesses among the houses on his right, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">-195-</a></span>
+bobbing heads of wayfarers, were just for him the
+stir and hue and texture of fairyland. All the world
+was fairyland. He went to his club and dined there,
+and divided the evening between geography, as it is
+condensed in Baedeker and Murray on North Italy,
+Italian Switzerland and the Italian Riviera, and a
+study of the marriage laws as they are expounded in
+"Whitaker's Almanac," the "Encyclopćdia Britannica,"
+and other convenient works of reference. He
+replaced the books as he used them, and went at last
+from the library into the smoking-room, but seeing a
+man who might talk to him there, he went out at once
+into the streets, and fetched a wide compass by Baker
+Street, Oxford Street, and Hyde Park, home.</p>
+
+<p>He was a little astonished at himself and everything.</p>
+
+<p>But it was going to be&mdash;splendid.</p>
+
+<p>(What poor things words can be!)</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 5</p>
+
+<p>He found his mother still up. She had been re-reading
+"The Old Wives' Tale," and she sat before
+a ruddy fire in the shadow beyond the lit circle of a
+green-shaded electric light thinking, with the book
+put aside. In the dimness above was his father's
+portrait. "Time you were in bed, mother," he said
+reprovingly, and kissed her eyebrow and stood above
+her. "What's the book?" he asked, and picked it up
+and put it down, forgotten. Their eyes met. She
+perceived he had something to say; she did not know
+what. "Where have you been?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He told her, and they lapsed into silence. She
+asked another question and he answered her, and the
+indifferent conversation ended again. The silence
+lengthened. Then he plunged: "I wonder, mother,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">-196-</a></span>
+if it would put you out very much if I brought home
+a wife to you?"</p>
+
+<p>So it had come to this&mdash;and she had not seen it
+coming. She looked into the glowing recesses of the
+fire before her and controlled her voice by an effort.
+"I'd be glad for you to do it, dear&mdash;if you loved
+her," she said very quietly. He stared down at her
+for a moment; then he knelt down beside her and
+took her hand and kissed it. "<i>My dear</i>," she whispered
+softly, stroking his head, and her tears came
+streaming. For a time they said no more.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he put coal on the fire, and then sitting
+on the hearthrug at her feet and looking away from
+her into the flames&mdash;in an attitude that took her back
+to his boyhood&mdash;he began to tell her brokenly and
+awkwardly of Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so hard, mother, to explain these things,"
+he began. "One doesn't half understand the things
+that are happening to one. I want to make you in
+love with her, dear, just as I am. And I don't see
+how I can."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps I shall understand, my dear. Perhaps
+I shall understand better than you think."</p>
+
+<p>"She's such a beautiful thing&mdash;with something
+about her&mdash;&mdash;. You know those steel blades you can
+bend back to the hilt&mdash;and they're steel! And she's
+tender. It's as if someone had taken tears, mother,
+and made a spirit out of them&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She caressed and stroked his hand. "My dear,"
+she said, "I know."</p>
+
+<p>"And a sort of dancing daring in her eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said. "But tell me where she comes
+from, and how you met her&mdash;and all the circumstantial
+things that a sensible old woman can understand."</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her hand and sat down beside her, with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">-197-</a></span>
+his shoulder against the arm of her chair, his fingers
+interlaced about his knee. She could not keep her
+touch from his hair, and she tried to force back the
+thought in her mind that all these talks must end,
+that very soon indeed they would end. And she was
+glad, full of pride and joy too that her son was a
+lover after her heart, a clean and simple lover as his
+father had been before him. He loved this unknown
+Marjorie, finely, sweetly, bravely, even as she herself
+could have desired to have been loved. She told herself
+she did not care very greatly even if this Marjorie
+should prove unworthy. So long as her son was
+not unworthy.</p>
+
+<p>He pieced his story together. He gave her a
+picture of the Popes, Marjorie in her family like a
+jewel in an ugly setting, so it seemed to him, and the
+queer dull rage of her father and all that they meant
+to do. She tried to grasp his perplexities and advise,
+but chiefly she was filled with the thought that he was
+in love. If he wanted a girl he should have her, and
+if he had to take her by force, well, wasn't it his
+right? She set small store upon the Popes that night&mdash;or
+any circumstances. And since she herself had
+married on the slightest of security, she was concerned
+very little that this great adventure was to be
+attempted on an income of a few hundreds a year.
+It was outside her philosophy that a wife should be
+anything but glad to tramp the roads if need be with
+the man who loved her. He sketched out valiant
+plans, was for taking Marjorie away in the teeth of
+all opposition and bringing her back to London. It
+would have to be done decently, of course, but it
+would have, he thought, to be done. Mrs. Trafford
+found the prospect perfect; never before had he
+sounded and looked so like that dim figure which hung
+still and sympathetic above them. Ever and again<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">-198-</a></span>
+she glanced up at her husband's quiet face....</p>
+
+<p>On one point she was very clear with him.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll live with us, mother?" he said abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not with you. As near as you like. But one
+house, one woman.... I'll have a little flat of my
+own&mdash;for you both to come to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nonsense, mother! You'll have to be with
+us. Living alone, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, I'd <i>prefer</i> a flat of my own. You
+don't understand&mdash;everything. It will be better for
+all of us like that."</p>
+
+<p>There came a little pause between them, and then
+her hand was on his head again. "Oh, my dear," she
+said, "I want you to be happy. And life can be difficult.
+I won't give a chance&mdash;for things to go wrong.
+You're hers, dear, and you've got to be hers&mdash;be each
+other's altogether. I've watched so many people.
+And that's the best, the very best you can have.
+There's just the lovers&mdash;the real enduring lovers; and
+the uncompleted people who've failed to find it."...</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 6</p>
+
+<p>Trafford's second meeting with Marjorie, which,
+by the by, happened on the afternoon of the following
+day, brought them near to conclusive decisions. The
+stiffness of their first encounter in London had altogether
+vanished. She was at her prettiest and in the
+highest spirits&mdash;and she didn't care for anything else
+in the world. A gauzy silk scarf which she had
+bought and not paid for that day floated atmospherically
+about her straight trim body; her hair had
+caught the infection of insurrection and was waving
+rebelliously about her ears. As he drew near her his
+grave discretion passed from him as clouds pass from
+a hillside. She smiled radiantly. He held out both<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">-199-</a></span>
+his hands for both of hers, and never did a maiden
+come so near and yet not get a public and shameless
+kissing.</p>
+
+<p>One could as soon describe music as tell their
+conversation. It was a matter of tones and feelings.
+But the idea of flight together, of the bright awakening
+in unfamiliar sunshine with none to come between
+them, had gripped them both. A certain sober gravity
+of discussion only masked that deeper inebriety.
+It would be easy for them to get away; he had no
+lectures until February; he could, he said, make arrangements,
+leave his research. She dreaded disputation.
+She was for a simple disappearance, notes
+on pincushions and defiantly apologetic letters from
+Boulogne, but his mother's atmosphere had been a
+gentler one than her home's, with a more powerful
+disposition to dignity. He still couldn't understand
+that the cantankerous egotism of Pope was indeed the
+essential man; it seemed to him a crust of bad manners
+that reason ought to pierce.</p>
+
+<p>The difference in their atmospheres came out in
+their talk&mdash;in his desire for a handsome and dignified
+wedding&mdash;though the very heavens protested&mdash;and
+her resolve to cut clear of every one, to achieve a sort
+of gaol delivery of her life, make a new beginning
+altogether, with the minimum of friction and the
+maximum of surprise. Unused to fighting, he was
+magnificently prepared to fight; she, with her intimate
+knowledge of chronic domestic conflict, was for
+the evasion of all the bickerings, scoldings, and misrepresentations
+his challenge would occasion. He
+thought in his innocence a case could be stated and
+discussed; but no family discussion she had ever
+heard had even touched the realities of the issue that
+occasioned it.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't like this underhand preparation," he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">-200-</a></span>
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I," she echoed. "But what can one do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, oughtn't I to go to your father and give
+him a chance? Why shouldn't I? It's&mdash;the dignified
+way."</p>
+
+<p>"It won't be dignified for father," said Marjorie,
+"anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"But what right has he to object?"</p>
+
+<p>"He isn't going to discuss his rights with you.
+He <i>will</i> object."</p>
+
+<p>"But <i>why?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! because he's started that way. He hit you.
+I haven't forgotten it. Well, if he goes back on that
+now&mdash;&mdash;He'd rather die than go back on it. You
+see, he's ashamed in his heart. It would be like confessing
+himself wrong not to keep it up that you're
+the sort of man one hits. He just hates you because
+he hit you. I haven't been his daughter for twenty-one
+years for nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm thinking of us," said Trafford. "I don't
+see we oughtn't to go to him just because he's likely
+to be&mdash;unreasonable."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, do as you please. He'll forbid and
+shout, and hit tables until things break. Suppose he
+locks me up!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Habeas Corpus, and my strong right arm!
+He's much more likely to turn you out-of-doors."</p>
+
+<p>"Not if he thinks the other will annoy you more.
+I'll have to bear a storm."</p>
+
+<p>"Not for long."</p>
+
+<p>"He'll bully mother till she cries over me. But
+do as you please. She'll come and she'll beg me&mdash;&mdash;Do
+as you please. Perhaps I'm a coward. I'd far
+rather I could slip away."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford thought for a moment. "I'd far rather
+you could," he answered, in a voice that spoke of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">-201-</a></span>
+inflexible determinations.</p>
+
+<p>They turned to the things they meant to do.
+"<i>Italy!</i>" she whispered, "<i>Italy!</i>" Her face was
+alight with her burning expectation of beauty, of
+love, of the new heaven and the new earth that lay
+before them. The intensity of that desire blazing
+through her seemed to shame his dull discretions. He
+had to cling to his resolution, lest it should vanish in
+that contagious intoxication.</p>
+
+<p>"You understand I shall come to your father,"
+he said, as they drew near the gate where it seemed
+discreet for them to part.</p>
+
+<p>"It will make it harder to get away," she said,
+with no apparent despondency. "It won't stop us.
+Oh! do as you please."</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to dismiss the question, and stood
+hand-in-hand with him in a state of glowing gravity.
+She wouldn't see him again for four-and-twenty hours.
+Then a thought came into her head&mdash;a point of
+great practical moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she said, "of course, you won't tell
+father you've seen me."</p>
+
+<p>She met his eye. "Really you mustn't," she said.
+"You see&mdash;he'll make a row with mother for not
+having watched me better. I don't know what he
+isn't likely to do. It isn't myself&mdash;&mdash;This is a confidential
+communication&mdash;all this. No one in this
+world knows I am meeting you. If you <i>must</i> go to
+him, go to him."</p>
+
+<p>"For myself?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded, with her open eyes on his&mdash;eyes that
+looked now very blue and very grave, and her lips a
+little apart.</p>
+
+<p>She surprised him a little, but even this sudden
+weakness seemed adorable.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">-202-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"You don't think that I'm shirking&mdash;&mdash;?" she
+asked, a little too eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"You know your father best," he answered.
+"I'll tell you all he says and all the terror of him here
+to-morrow afternoon."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 7</p>
+
+<p>In the stillness of the night Trafford found himself
+thinking over Marjorie; it was a new form of
+mental exercise, which was destined to play a large
+part in his existence for many subsequent years.
+There had come a shadow on his confidence in her.
+She was a glorious person; she had a kind of fire
+behind her and in her&mdash;shining through her, like
+the lights in a fire-opal, but&mdash;&mdash;He wished she had
+not made him promise to conceal their meeting and
+their close co-operation from her father. Why did
+she do that? It would spoil his case with her father,
+and it could forward things for them in no conceivable
+way. And from that, in some manner too subtle
+to trace, he found his mind wandering to another
+problem, which was destined to reappear with a
+slowly dwindling importance very often in this procedure
+of thinking over Marjorie in the small hours.
+It was the riddle&mdash;it never came to him in the daytime,
+but only in those intercalary and detachedly
+critical periods of thought&mdash;why exactly had she
+engaged herself to Magnet? Why had she? He
+couldn't imagine himself, in Marjorie's position,
+doing anything of the sort. Marjorie had ways of
+her own; she was different.... Well, anyhow,
+she was splendid and loving and full of courage....
+He had got no further than this when at last
+he fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 8</p>
+
+<p>Trafford's little attempt to regularise his position<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">-203-</a></span>
+was as creditable to him as it was inevitably futile.
+He sought out 29, Hartstone Square in the morning
+on his way to his laboratory, and he found it one of
+a great row of stucco houses each with a portico and
+a dining-room window on the ground floor, and each
+with a railed area from which troglodytic servants
+peeped. Collectively the terrace might claim a certain
+ugly dignity of restraint, there was none of your
+Queen Anne nonsense of art or beauty about it, and
+the narrow height, the subterranean kitchens of each
+constituent house, told of a steep relentless staircase
+and the days before the pampering of the lower classes
+began. The houses formed a square, as if the
+British square so famous at Waterloo for its dogged
+resistance to all the forces of the universe had immortalized
+itself in buildings, and they stared upon a
+severely railed garden of hardy shrubs and gravel to
+which the tenants had the inestimable privilege of
+access. They did not use it much, that was their
+affair, but at any rate they had keys and a nice
+sense of rights assured, and at least it kept other
+people out.</p>
+
+<p>Trafford turned out of a busy high road full of
+the mixed exhilarating traffic of our time, and came
+along a quiet street into this place, and it seemed to
+him he had come into a corner of defence and retreat,
+into an atmosphere of obstinate and unteachable
+resistances. But this illusion of conservativism in its
+last ditch was dispelled altogether in Mr. Pope's portico.
+Youth flashed out of these solemnities like a
+dart shot from a cave. Trafford was raising his
+hand to the solid brass knocker when abruptly it was
+snatched from his fingers, the door was flung open
+and a small boy with a number of dirty books in a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">-204-</a></span>
+strap flew out and hit him with projectile violence.</p>
+
+<p>"Blow!" said the young gentleman recoiling, and
+Trafford recovering said: "Hullo, Theodore!"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord!" said Theodore breathless, "It's you!
+<i>What</i> a lark! Your name's never mentioned&mdash;no
+how. What <i>did</i> you do?... Wish I could stop
+and see it! I'm ten minutes late. <i>Ave atque vale</i>.
+So long!"</p>
+
+<p>He vanished with incredible velocity. And Mr.
+Trafford was alone in possession of the open doorway
+except for Toupee, who after a violent outbreak of
+hostility altered his mind and cringed to his feet in
+abject and affectionate propitiation. A pseudo-twin
+appeared, said "Hello!" and vanished, and then he
+had an instant's vision of Mr. Pope, newspaper in
+hand, appearing from the dining-room. His expression
+of surprise changed to malevolence, and he darted
+back into the room from which he had emerged.
+Trafford decided to take the advice of a small brass
+plate on his left hand, and "ring also."</p>
+
+<p>A housemaid came out of the bowels of the earth
+very promptly and ushered him up two flights of
+stairs into what was manifestly Mr. Pope's study.</p>
+
+<p>It was a narrow, rather dark room lit by two
+crimson-curtained windows, and with a gas fire before
+which Mr. Pope's walking boots were warming for
+the day. The apartment revealed to Trafford's cursory
+inspection many of the stigmata of an Englishman
+of active intelligence and literary tastes. There
+in the bookcase were the collected works of Scott, a
+good large illustrated Shakespeare in numerous volumes,
+and a complete set of bound <i>Punches</i> from the
+beginning. A pile of back numbers of the <i>Times</i>
+stood on a cane stool in a corner, and in a little bookcase
+handy for the occupier of the desk were Whitaker,
+Wisden and an old peerage. The desk bore<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">-205-</a></span>
+traces of recent epistolary activity, and was littered
+with the printed matter of Aunt Plessington's movements.
+Two or three recent issues of <i>The Financial
+Review of Reviews</i> were also visible. About the room
+hung steel engravings apparently of defunct judges
+or at any rate of exceedingly grim individuals, and
+over the mantel were trophies of athletic prowess, a
+bat witnessing that Mr. Pope had once captained the
+second eleven at Harrogby.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope entered with a stern expression and a
+sentence prepared. "Well, sir," he said with a note
+of ironical affability, "to what may I ascribe this&mdash;intrusion?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Trafford was about to reply when Mr. Pope
+interrupted. "Will you be seated," he said, and
+turned his desk chair about for himself, and occupying
+it, crossed his legs and pressed the finger tips of
+his two hands together. "Well, sir?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>Trafford remained standing astraddle over the
+boots before the gas fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, sir," he said; "I am in love with your
+daughter. She's one and twenty, and I want to see
+her&mdash;and in fact&mdash;&mdash;" He found it hard to express
+himself. He could think only of a phrase that sounded
+ridiculous. "I want&mdash;in fact&mdash;to pay my addresses
+to her."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, I don't want you to do so. That is
+too mild. I object strongly&mdash;very strongly. My
+daughter has been engaged to a very distinguished
+and able man, and I hope very shortly to hear that
+that engagement&mdash;&mdash; Practically it is still going on.
+I don't want you to intrude upon my daughter further."</p>
+
+<p>"But look here, sir. There's a certain justice&mdash;I
+mean a certain reasonableness&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope held out an arresting hand. "I don't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">-206-</a></span>
+wish it. Let that be enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it isn't enough. I'm in love with her&mdash;and
+she with me. I'm an entirely reputable and
+decent person&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"May I be allowed to judge what is or is not
+suitable companionship for my daughter&mdash;and what
+may or may not be the present state of her affections?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, that's rather the point we are discussing.
+After all, Marjorie isn't a baby. I want to do all
+this&mdash;this affair, openly and properly if I can, but,
+you know, I mean to marry Marjorie&mdash;anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>"There are two people to consult in that matter."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll take the risk of that."</p>
+
+<p>"Permit me to differ."</p>
+
+<p>A feeling of helplessness came over Trafford. The
+curious irritation Mr. Pope always roused in him
+began to get the better of him. His face flushed
+hotly. "Oh really! really! this is&mdash;this is nonsense!"
+he cried. "I never heard anything so childish
+and pointless as your objection&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Be careful, sir!" cried Mr. Pope, "be careful!"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to marry Marjorie."</p>
+
+<p>"If she marries you, sir, she shall never darken
+my doors again!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you had a thing against me!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Haven't</i> I!"</p>
+
+<p>"What have you?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a quite perceptible pause before Pope
+fired his shot.</p>
+
+<p>"Does any decent man want the name of Trafford
+associated with his daughter. Trafford! Look
+at the hoardings, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>A sudden blaze of anger lit Trafford. "My
+God!" he cried and clenched his fists and seemed for
+a moment ready to fall upon the man before him.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">-207-</a></span>
+Then he controlled himself by a violent effort. "You
+believe in that libel on my dead father?" he said,
+with white lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Has it ever been answered?"</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred times. And anyhow!&mdash;Confound it!
+I don't believe&mdash;<i>you</i> believe it. You've raked it up&mdash;as
+an excuse! You want an excuse for your infernal
+domestic tyranny! That's the truth of it. You can't
+bear a creature in your household to have a will or
+preference of her own. I tell you, sir, you are
+intolerable&mdash;intolerable!"</p>
+
+<p>He was shouting, and Pope was standing now and
+shouting too. "Leave my house, sir. Get out of
+my house, sir. You come here to insult me, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>A sudden horror of himself and Pope seized the
+younger man. He stiffened and became silent. Never
+in his life before had he been in a bawling quarrel.
+He was amazed and ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>"Leave my house!" cried Pope with an imperious
+gesture towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>Trafford made an absurd effort to save the situation.
+"I am sorry, sir, I lost my temper. I had no
+business to abuse you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You've said enough."</p>
+
+<p>"I apologise for that. I've done what I could to
+manage things decently."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you go, sir?" threatened Mr. Pope.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sorry I came," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Pope took his stand with folded arms and an
+expression of weary patience.</p>
+
+<p>"I did what I could," said Trafford at the door.</p>
+
+<p>The staircase and passage were deserted. The
+whole house seemed to have caught from Mr. Pope
+that same quality of seeing him out....</p>
+
+<p>"Confound it!" said Trafford in the street.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">-208-</a></span>
+"How on earth did all this happen?"...</p>
+
+<p>He turned eastward, and then realized that work
+would be impossible that day. He changed his direction
+for Kensington Gardens, and in the flower-bordered
+walk near the Albert Memorial he sat down
+on a chair, and lugged at his moustache and wondered.
+He was extraordinarily perplexed, as well as
+ashamed and enraged by this uproar. How had it
+begun? Of course, he had been stupidly abusive, but
+the insult to his father had been unendurable. Did a
+man of Pope's sort quite honestly believe that stuff?
+If he didn't, he deserved kicking. If he did, of course
+he was entitled to have it cleared up. But then he
+wouldn't listen! Was there any case for the man at
+all? Had he, Trafford, really put the thing so that
+Pope would listen? He couldn't remember. What
+was it he had said in reply to Pope? What was it
+exactly that Pope had said?</p>
+
+<p>It was already vague; it was a confused memory
+of headlong words and answers; what wasn't vague,
+what rang in his ears still, was the hoarse discord of
+two shouting voices.</p>
+
+<p>Could Marjorie have heard?</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 9</p>
+
+<p>So Marjorie carried her point. She wasn't to be
+married tamely after the common fashion which trails
+home and all one's beginnings into the new life. She
+was to be eloped with, romantically and splendidly,
+into a glorious new world. She walked on shining
+clouds, and if she felt some remorse, it was a very
+tender and satisfactory remorse, and with a clear
+conviction below it that in the end she would be
+forgiven.</p>
+
+<p>They made all their arrangements elaborately and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">-209-</a></span>
+carefully. Trafford got a license to marry her; she
+was to have a new outfit from top to toe to go away
+with on that eventful day. It accumulated in the
+shop, and they marked the clothes <i>M.T.</i> She was
+watched, she imagined, but as her father did not
+know she had seen Trafford, nothing had been said to
+her, and no attempt was made to prohibit her going
+out and coming in. Trafford entered into the conspiracy
+with a keen interest, a certain amusement,
+and a queer little feeling of distaste. He hated to
+hide any act of his from any human being. The very
+soul of scientific work, you see, is publication. But
+Marjorie seemed to justify all things, and when his
+soul turned against furtiveness, he reminded it that
+the alternative was bawling.</p>
+
+<p>One eventful afternoon he went to the college, and
+Marjorie slipped round by his arrangement to have
+tea with Mrs. Trafford....</p>
+
+<p>He returned about seven in a state of nervous
+apprehension; came upstairs two steps at a time, and
+stopped breathless on the landing. He gulped as he
+came in, and his eyes were painfully eager. "She's
+been?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>But Marjorie had won Mrs. Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"She's been," she answered. "Yes, she's all right,
+my dear."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, mother!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"She's a beautiful creature, dear&mdash;and such a
+child! Oh! such a child! And God bless you, dear,
+God bless you....</p>
+
+<p>"I think all young people are children. I want to
+take you both in my arms and save you.... I'm
+talking nonsense, dear."</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her, and she clung to him as if he were
+something too precious to release.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 10</p>
+
+<p>The elopement was a little complicated by a surprise<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">-210-</a></span>
+man&#339;uvre of Mrs. Pope's. She was more alive
+to the quality of the situation, poor lady! than her
+daughter suspected; she was watching, dreading,
+perhaps even furtively sympathizing and trying to
+arrange&mdash;oh! trying dreadfully to arrange. She had
+an instinctive understanding of the deep blue quiet in
+Marjorie's eyes, and the girl's unusual tenderness
+with Daffy and the children. She peeped under the
+blind as Marjorie went out, noted the care in her
+dress, watched her face as she returned, never plumbed
+her with a question for fear of the answer. She
+did not dare to breathe a hint of her suspicions to
+her husband, but she felt things were adrift in swift,
+smooth water, and all her soul cried out for delay.
+So presently there came a letter from Cousin Susan
+Pendexter at Plymouth. The weather was beautiful,
+Marjorie must come at once, pack up and come and
+snatch the last best glow of the dying autumn away
+there in the west. Marjorie's jerry-built excuses,
+her manifest chagrin and reluctance, confirmed her
+mother's worst suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>She submitted and went, and Mrs. Pope and Syd
+saw her off.</p>
+
+<p>I do not like to tell how a week later Marjorie
+explained herself and her dressing-bag and a few
+small articles back to London from Plymouth. Suffice
+it that she lied desperately and elaborately. Her
+mother had never achieved such miracles of mis-statement,
+and she added a vigour that was all her own.
+It is easier to sympathize with her than exonerate
+her. She was in a state of intense impatience, and&mdash;what
+is strange&mdash;extraordinarily afraid that something
+would separate her from her lover if she did
+not secure him. She was in a fever of determination.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">-211-</a></span>
+She could not eat or sleep or attend to anything whatever;
+she was occupied altogether with the thought of
+assuring herself to Trafford. He towered in her
+waking vision over town and land and sea.</p>
+
+<p>He didn't hear the lies she told; he only knew she
+was magnificently coming back to him. He met her at
+Paddington, a white-faced, tired, splendidly resolute
+girl, and they went to the waiting registrar's forthwith.</p>
+
+<p>She bore herself with the intentness and dignity of
+one who is taking the cardinal step in life. They
+kissed as though it was a symbol, and were keenly
+business-like about cabs and luggage and trains. At
+last they were alone in the train together. They
+stared at one another.</p>
+
+<p>"We've done it, Mrs. Trafford!" said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>She snapped like an over-taut string, crumpled,
+clung to him, and without a word was weeping passionately
+in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>It surprised him that she could weep as she did,
+and still more to see her as she walked by his side
+along the Folkestone pier, altogether recovered,
+erect, a little flushed and excited like a child. She
+seemed to miss nothing. "Oh, smell the sea!" she
+said, "Look at the lights! Listen to the swish of the
+water below." She watched the luggage spinning on
+the wire rope of the giant crane, and he watched her
+face and thought how beautiful she was. He wondered
+why her eyes could sometimes be so blue and
+sometimes dark as night.</p>
+
+<p>The boat cleared the pier and turned about and
+headed for France. They walked the upper deck
+together and stood side by side, she very close to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I've never crossed the sea before," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Old England," she whispered. "It's like leaving
+a nest. A little row of lights and that's all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">-212-</a></span>
+world I've ever known, shrunken to that already."</p>
+
+<p>Presently they went forward and peered into the
+night.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" she said. "<i>Italy!</i> There's sunshine
+and all sorts of beautiful things ahead. Warm sunshine,
+wonderful old ruins, green lizards...."
+She paused and whispered almost noiselessly:
+"<i>love</i>&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>They pressed against each other.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet isn't it strange? All you can see is
+darkness, and clouds&mdash;and big waves that hiss as they
+come near...."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 11</p>
+
+<p>Italy gave all her best to welcome them. It was a
+late year, a golden autumn, with skies of such blue as
+Marjorie had never seen before. They stayed at first
+in a pretty little Italian hotel with a garden on the
+lake, and later they walked over Salvator to Morcote
+and by boat to Ponte Tresa, and thence they had the
+most wonderful and beautiful tramp in the world to
+Luino, over the hills by Castelrotto. To the left of
+them all day was a broad valley with low-lying villages
+swimming in a luminous mist, to the right were
+purple mountains. They passed through paved
+streets with houses the colour of flesh and ivory, with
+balconies hung with corn and gourds, with tall church
+campaniles rising high, and great archways giving
+upon the blue lowlands; they tramped along avenues
+of sweet chestnut and between stretches of exuberant
+vineyard, in which men and women were gathering
+grapes&mdash;purple grapes, a hatful for a soldo, that
+rasped the tongue. Everything was strange and
+wonderful to Marjorie's eyes; now it would be a wayside
+shrine and now a yoke of soft-going, dewlapped<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">-213-</a></span>
+oxen, now a chapel hung about with <i>ex votos</i>, and
+now some unfamiliar cultivation&mdash;or a gipsy-eyed
+child&mdash;or a scorpion that scuttled in the dust. The
+very names of the villages were like jewels to her,
+Varasca, Croglio, Ronca, Sesia, Monteggio. They
+walked, or sat by the wayside and talked, or rested at
+the friendly table of some kindly albergo. A woman
+as beautiful as Ceres, with a white neck all open,
+made them an omelette, and then fetched her baby
+from its cradle to nurse it while she talked to them
+as they made their meal. And afterwards she filled
+their pockets with roasted chestnuts, and sent them
+with melodious good wishes upon their way. And
+always high over all against the translucent blue
+hung the white shape of Monte Rosa, that warmed
+in colour as the evening came.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie's head was swimming with happiness
+and beauty, and with every fresh delight she recurred
+again to the crowning marvel of this clean-limbed
+man beside her, who smiled and carried all her luggage
+in a huge rucksack that did not seem to exist for
+him, and watched her and caressed her&mdash;and was
+hers, <i>hers!</i></p>
+
+<p>At Baveno there were letters. They sat at a little
+table outside a café and read them, suddenly mindful
+of England again. Incipient forgiveness showed
+through Mrs. Pope's reproaches, and there was also a
+simple, tender love-letter (there is no other word for
+it) from old Mrs. Trafford to her son.</p>
+
+<p>From Baveno they set off up Monte Mottarone&mdash;whence
+one may see the Alps from Visto to Ortler
+Spitz&mdash;trusting to find the inn still open, and if it was
+closed to get down to Orta somehow before night. Or
+at the worst sleep upon the mountain side.</p>
+
+<p>(Monte Mottarone! Just for a moment taste the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">-214-</a></span>
+sweet Italian name upon your lips.) These were the
+days before the funicular from Stresa, when one
+trudged up a rude path through the chestnuts and
+walnuts.</p>
+
+<p>As they ascended the long windings through the
+woods, they met an old poet and his wife, coming down
+from sunset and sunrise. There was a word or two
+about the inn, and they went upon their way. The
+old man turned ever and again to look at them.</p>
+
+<p>"Adorable young people," he said. "Adorable
+happy young people....</p>
+
+<p>"Did you notice, dear, how she held that dainty
+little chin of hers?...</p>
+
+<p>"Pride is such a good thing, my dear, clear,
+straight pride like theirs&mdash;and they were both so
+proud!...</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it good, dear, to think that once you and I
+may have looked like that to some passer-by. I wish
+I could bless them&mdash;sweet, swift young things! I
+wish, dear, it was possible for old men to bless young
+people without seeming to set up for saints...."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center"><br />
+<span class="smcap">BOOK THE SECOND</span><br />
+<br />
+<big>MARJORIE MARRIED</big></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER THE FIRST</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Settling Down</span></h3>
+
+<p class="title">§ 1</p>
+
+<p>It was in a boat among reeds upon the lake of Orta<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">-217-</a></span>
+that Trafford first became familiarized with the idea
+that Marjorie was capable of debt.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I ought to have told you," she began,
+apropos of nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Her explanation was airy; she had let the thing
+slip out of her mind for a time. But there were
+various debts to Oxbridge tradespeople. How much?
+Well, rather a lot. Of course, the tradespeople were
+rather enticing when first one went up&mdash;&mdash;How much,
+anyhow?</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, about fifty pounds," said Marjorie, after
+her manner. "Not <i>more</i>. I've not kept all the bills;
+and some haven't come in. You know how slow they
+are."</p>
+
+<p>"These things <i>will</i> happen," said Trafford,
+though, as a matter of fact, nothing of the sort had
+happened in his case. "However, you'll be able to
+pay as soon as you get home, and get them all off
+your mind."</p>
+
+<p>"I think fifty pounds will clear me," said Marjorie,
+clinging to her long-established total, "if you'll
+let me have that."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, we don't do things like that," said Trafford.
+"I'm arranging that my current account will be a
+sort of joint account, and your signature will be as
+good as mine&mdash;for the purpose of drawing, at least.
+You'll have your own cheque-book&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand, quite," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have your own cheque-book and write<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">-218-</a></span>
+cheques as you want them. That seems the simplest
+way to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Marjorie. "But isn't this&mdash;rather
+unusual? Father always used to allowance
+mother."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the only decent way according to my ideas,"
+said Trafford. "A man shouldn't marry when he
+can't trust."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not," said Marjorie. Something between
+fear and compunction wrung her. "Do you
+think you'd better?" she asked, very earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>"Better?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do this."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's&mdash;it's so generous."</p>
+
+<p>He didn't answer. He took up an oar and began
+to push out from among the reeds with something of
+the shy awkwardness of a boy who becomes apprehensive
+of thanks. He stole a glance at her presently and
+caught her expression&mdash;there was something very
+solemn and intent in her eyes&mdash;and he thought what a
+grave, fine thing his Marjorie could be.</p>
+
+<p>But, indeed, her state of mind was quite exceptionally
+confused. She was disconcerted&mdash;and horribly
+afraid of herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean that I can spend what I like?"
+asked Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Just as I may," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," said Marjorie again, "if I'd better."</p>
+
+<p>She was tingling with delight at this freedom, and
+she knew she was not fit for its responsibility. She
+just came short of a passionate refusal of his proposal.
+He was still so new to her, and things were
+so wonderful, or I think she would have made that
+refusal.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got to," said Trafford, and ended the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">-219-</a></span>
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>So Marjorie was silent&mdash;making good resolutions.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 2</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps some day it may be possible to tell in
+English again, in the language of Shakspeare and
+Herrick, of the passion, the tenderness, the beauty,
+and the delightful familiarizations of a happy honeymoon;
+suffice it now, in this delicate period, to record
+only how our two young lovers found one day that
+neither had a name for the other. He said she could
+be nothing better than Marjorie to him; and she,
+after a number of unsuccessful experiments, settled
+down to the old school-boy nickname made out of his
+initials, R. A. G.</p>
+
+<p>"Dick," she said, "is too bird-like and boy-like.
+Andrew I can't abide. Goodwin gives one no chances
+for current use. Rag you must be. Mag and Rag&mdash;poor
+innocents! Old rag!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mag," he said, "has its drawbacks! The street-boy
+in London says, 'Shut your mag.' No, I think I
+shall stick to Marjorie...."</p>
+
+<p>All honeymoons must end at last, so back they
+came to London, still very bright and happy. And
+then, Marjorie, whose eyes had changed from flashing
+stones to darkly shining pools of blue, but whose
+soul had still perhaps to finds its depths, set herself
+to the business of decorating and furnishing the little
+house Mrs. Trafford had found for them within
+ten minutes of her own. Meanwhile they lived in
+lodgings.</p>
+
+<p>There can be no denying that Marjorie began her
+furnishing with severely virtuous intentions. She was
+very particular to ask Trafford several times what he
+thought she might spend upon the enterprise. He had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">-220-</a></span>
+already a bedroom and a study equipped, and he
+threw out three hundred pounds as his conception of
+an acceptable figure. "Very well," said Marjorie,
+with a note of great precision, "now I shall know,"
+and straightway that sum took a place in her imagination
+that was at once definitive and protective, just
+as her estimate of fifty pounds for her Oxbridge debts
+had always been. She assured herself she was going
+to do things, and she assured herself she was doing
+things, on three hundred pounds. At times the astonishment
+of two or three school friends, who joined
+her in her shopping, stirred her to a momentary surprise
+at the way she was managing to keep things
+within that limit, and following a financial method
+that had, after all, in spite of some momentary and
+already nearly forgotten distresses, worked very well
+at Oxbridge, she refrained from any additions until
+all the accounts had come to hand.</p>
+
+<p>It was an immense excitement shopping to make a
+home. There was in her composition a strain of constructive
+artistry with such concrete things, a strain
+that had hitherto famished. She was making a beautiful,
+secure little home for Trafford, for herself, for
+possibilities&mdash;remote perhaps, but already touching
+her imagination with the anticipation of warm, new,
+wonderful delights. There should be simplicity indeed
+in this home, but no bareness, no harshness,
+never an ugliness nor a discord. She had always
+loved colour in the skies, in the landscapes, in the
+texture of stuffs and garments; now out of the chaotic
+skein of countless shops she could choose and pick
+and mingle her threads in a glow of feminine self-expression.</p>
+
+<p>On three hundred pounds, that is to say&mdash;as a
+maximum.</p>
+
+<p>The house she had to deal with was, like Mrs.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">-221-</a></span>
+Trafford's, old and rather small; it was partly to
+its lack of bedroom accommodation, but much more
+to the invasion of the street by the back premises of
+Messrs. Siddons &amp; Thrale, the great Chelsea outfitters,
+that the lowness of the rent was due, a lowness
+which brought it within the means of Trafford. Marjorie
+knew very clearly that her father would say her
+husband had taken her to live in a noisy slum, and
+that made her all the keener to ensure that every
+good point in the interior told to its utmost, and that
+whatever was to be accessible to her family should
+glow with a refined but warm prosperity. The room
+downstairs was shapely, and by ripping off the papered
+canvas of the previous occupier, some very
+dilapidated but admirably proportioned panelling
+was brought to light. The dining-room and study
+door on the ground floor, by a happy accident, were
+of mahogany, with really very beautiful brass furnishings;
+and the dining-room window upon the minute
+but by no means offensive paved garden behind,
+was curved and had a little shallow balcony of ironwork,
+half covered by a devitalized but leafy grapevine.
+Moreover, the previous occupier had equipped
+the place with electric light and a bathroom of almost
+American splendour on the landing, glass-shelved,
+white-tiled, and white painted, so that it was a delight
+to go into.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie's mind leapt very rapidly to the possibilities
+of this little establishment. The panelling must
+be done and done well, anyhow; that would be no more
+than a wise economy, seeing it might at any time help
+them to re-let; it would be painted white, of course,
+and thus set the key for a clean brightness of colour
+throughout. The furniture would stand out against
+the softly shining white, and its line and proportions
+must be therefore the primary qualities to consider as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">-222-</a></span>
+she bought it. The study was much narrower than the
+dining-room, and so the passage, which the agent
+called the hall, was much broader and more commodious
+behind the happily wide staircase than in
+front, and she was able to banish out of the sight of
+the chance visitor all that litter of hat-stand and
+umbrella-stand, letters, boxes arriving and parcels
+to post, which had always offended her eye at home.
+At home there had been often the most unsightly
+things visible, one of Theo's awful caps, or his school
+books, and not infrequently her father's well-worn
+and all too fatally comfortable house slippers. A
+good effect at first is half the victory of a well done
+house, and Marjorie accomplished another of her
+real economies here by carpeting hall and staircase
+with a fine-toned, rich-feeling and rather high-priced
+blue carpet, held down by very thick brass stair-rods.
+She hung up four well-chosen steel engravings, put a
+single Chippendale chair in the hall, and a dark old
+Dutch clock that had turned out to be only five pounds
+when she had expected the shopman to say eleven or
+twelve, on the half-landing. That was all. Round the
+corner by the study door was a mahogany slab, and
+the litter all went upon a capacious but very simple
+dark-stained hat-stand and table that were out of the
+picture entirely until you reached the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>Her dining-room was difficult for some time. She
+had equipped that with a dark oak Welsh dresser
+made very bright with a dessert service that was, in
+view of its extremely decorative quality, remarkably
+cheap, and with some very pretty silver-topped glass
+bottles and flasks. This dresser and a number of
+simple but shapely facsimiles of old chairs, stood out
+against a nearly primrose paper, very faintly patterned,
+and a dark blue carpet with a margin of dead
+black-stained wood. Over the mantel was a German<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">-223-</a></span>
+colour-print of waves full of sunlight breaking under
+cliffs, and between this and the window were dark
+bookshelves and a few bright-coloured books. On the
+wall, black-framed, were four very good Japanese
+prints, rich in greenish-blues and blueish-greys that
+answered the floor, and the window curtains took up
+some of the colours of the German print. But something
+was needed towards the window, she felt, to
+balance the warmly shining plates upon the dresser.
+The deep rose-red of the cherries that adorned them
+was too isolated, usurped too dominating a value.
+And while this was weighing upon her mind she saw
+in a window in Regent Street a number of Bokhara
+hangings very nobly displayed. They were splendid
+pieces of needlework, particularly glorious in their
+crimsons and reds, and suddenly it came to her that
+it was just one of these, one that had great ruby
+flowers upon it with dead-blue interlacings, that was
+needed to weld her gay-coloured scheme together. She
+hesitated, went half-way to Piccadilly Circus, turned
+back and asked the prices. The prices were towering
+prices, ten, fifteen, eighteen guineas, and when at last
+the shopman produced one with all the charm of
+colour she sought at eight, it seemed like ten guineas
+snatched back as they dropped from her hands. And
+still hesitating, she had three that pleased her most
+sent home, "on approval," before she decided finally
+to purchase one of them. But the trial was conclusive.
+And then, struck with a sudden idea, she
+carried off a long narrow one she had had no idea of
+buying before into the little study behind. Suppose,
+she thought, instead of hanging two curtains as anybody
+else would do in that window, she ran this glory
+of rich colour across from one side on a great rod of
+brass.</p>
+
+<p>She was giving the study the very best of her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">-224-</a></span>
+attention. After she had lapsed in some other part
+of the house from the standards of rigid economy she
+had set up, she would as it were restore the balance by
+adding something to the gracefully dignified arrangement
+of this den he was to use. And the brass rod
+of the Bokhara hanging that was to do instead of
+curtains released her mind somehow to the purchase of
+certain old candlesticks she had hitherto resisted.
+They were to stand, bored to carry candle electric
+lights, on either corner of the low bookcase that faced
+the window. They were very heavy, very shapely
+candlesticks, and they cost thirty-five shillings. They
+looked remarkably well when they were put up, except
+that a sort of hollowness appeared between them and
+clamoured for a delightful old brass-footed workbox
+she had seen in a shop in Baker Street. Enquiry
+confirmed her quick impression that this was a genuine
+piece (of quite exceptional genuineness) and that
+the price&mdash;they asked five pounds ten and came down
+to five guineas&mdash;was in accordance with this. It was
+a little difficult (in spite of the silent hunger between
+the candlesticks) to reconcile this particular article
+with her dominating idea of an austerely restrained
+expenditure, until she hit upon the device of calling
+it a <i>hors d'&#339;uvre</i>, and regarding it not as furniture
+but as a present from herself to Trafford that happened
+to fall in very agreeably with the process of
+house furnishing. She decided she would some day
+economise its cost out of her dress allowance. The
+bookcase on which it stood was a happy discovery
+in Kensington, just five feet high, and with beautiful
+oval glass fronts, and its capacity was supplemented
+and any excess in its price at least morally compensated
+by a very tall, narrow, distinguished-looking
+set of open shelves that had been made for some
+special corner in another house, and which anyhow<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">-225-</a></span>
+were really and truly dirt cheap. The desk combined
+grace and good proportions to an admirable extent,
+the fender of pierced brass looked as if it had always
+lived in immediate contact with the shapely old white
+marble fireplace, and the two arm-chairs were marvels
+of dignified comfort. By the fireplace were a
+banner-shaped needlework firescreen, a white sheepskin
+hearthrug, a little patch and powder table
+adapted to carry books, and a green-shaded lamp,
+grouped in a common inaudible demand for a reader
+in slippers. Trafford, when at last the apartment
+was ready for his inspection, surveyed these arrangements
+with a kind of dazzled admiration.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove!" he said. "How little people know
+of the homes of the Poor!"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie was so delighted with his approval that
+she determined to show Mrs. Trafford next day how
+prettily at least her son was going to live. The good
+lady came and admired everything, and particularly
+the Bokhara hangings. She did not seem to appraise,
+but something set Marjorie talking rather nervously
+of a bargain-hunter's good fortune. Mrs. Trafford
+glanced at the candlesticks and the low bookcase, and
+returned to the glowing piece of needlework that
+formed the symmetrical window curtain in the study.
+She took it in her hand, and whispered, "beautiful!"</p>
+
+<p>"But aren't these rather good?" asked Mrs.
+Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie answered, after a little pause. "They're
+not too good for <i>him</i>," she said.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 3</p>
+
+<p>And now these young people had to resume life in
+London in earnest. The orchestral accompaniment
+of the world at large began to mingle with their hitherto<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">-226-</a></span>
+unsustained duet. It had been inaudible in Italy.
+In Chelsea it had sounded, faintly perhaps but distinctly,
+from their very first inspection of the little
+house. A drawing-room speaks of callers, a dining-room
+of lunch-parties and dinners. It had swayed
+Marjorie from the front door inward.</p>
+
+<p>During their honeymoon they had been gloriously
+unconscious of comment. Now Marjorie began to
+show herself keenly sensitive to the advent of a score
+of personalities, and very anxious to show just how
+completely successful in every sense her romantic disobedience
+had been. She knew she had been approved
+of, admired, condemned, sneered at, thoroughly discussed.
+She felt it her first duty to Trafford, to all
+who had approved of her flight, to every one, herself
+included, to make this marriage obviously, indisputably,
+a success, a success not only by her own standards
+but by the standards of anyonesoever who chose
+to sit in judgment on her.</p>
+
+<p>There was Trafford. She felt she had to extort
+the admission from every one that he was the handsomest,
+finest, ablest, most promising and most
+delightful man a prominent humorist was ever jilted
+for. She wanted them to understand clearly just all
+that Trafford was&mdash;and that involved, she speedily
+found in practice, making them believe a very great
+deal that as yet Trafford wasn't. She found it practically
+impossible not to anticipate his election to the
+Royal Society and the probability of a more important
+professorship. She felt that anyhow he was an
+F.R.S. in the sight of God....</p>
+
+<p>It was almost equally difficult not to indicate a
+larger income than facts justified.</p>
+
+<p>It was entirely in Marjorie's vein in those early
+days that she would want to win on every score and
+by every standard of reckoning. If Marjorie had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">-227-</a></span>
+been a general she would have counted no victory
+complete if the struggle was not sustained and desperate,
+and if it left the enemy with a single gun or
+flag, or herself with so much as a man killed or
+wounded. The people she wanted to impress varied
+very widely. She wanted to impress the Carmel girls,
+and the Carmel girls, she knew, with their racial
+trick of acute appraisement, were only to be won by
+the very highest quality all round. They had, she
+knew, two standards of quality, cost and distinction.
+As far as possible, she would give them distinction.
+But whenever she hesitated over something on the
+verge of cheapness the thought of those impending
+judgments tipped the balance. The Carmel girls
+were just two influential representatives of a host.
+She wanted to impress quite a number of other school
+and college friends. There were various shy, plastic-spirited,
+emotional creatures, of course, for the most
+part with no confidence in their own appearance,
+who would be impressed quite adequately enough by
+Trafford's good looks and witty manner and easy
+temper. They might perhaps fall in love with him
+and become slavish to her after the way of their
+kind, and anyhow they would be provided for, but
+there were plenty of others of a harder texture whose
+tests would be more difficult to satisfy. There were
+girls who were the daughters of prominent men, who
+must be made to understand that Trafford was prominent,
+girls who were well connected, who must be
+made to realize the subtle excellence of Trafford's
+blood. As she thought of Constance Graham, for
+example, or Ottiline Winchelsea, she felt the strongest
+disposition to thicken the by no means well
+authenticated strands that linked Trafford with the
+Traffords of Trafford-over-Lea. She went about the
+house dreaming a little apprehensively of these coming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">-228-</a></span>
+calls, and the pitiless light of criticism they would
+bring to bear, not indeed upon her happiness&mdash;that
+was assured&mdash;but upon her success.</p>
+
+<p>The social side of the position would have to be
+strained to the utmost, Marjorie felt, with Aunt
+Plessington. The thought of Aunt Plessington made
+her peculiarly apprehensive. Aunt Plessington had
+to the fullest extent that contempt for merely artistic
+or scientific people which sits so gracefully upon the
+administrative English. You see people of that sort
+do not get on in the sense that a young lawyer or
+barrister gets on. They do not make steps; they
+boast and quarrel and are jealous perhaps, but that
+steady patient shove upward seems beyond their intelligence.
+The energies God manifestly gave them
+for shoving, they dissipate in the creation of weak
+beautiful things and unremunerative theories, or in
+the establishment of views sometimes diametrically
+opposed to the ideas of influential people. And they
+are "queer"&mdash;socially. They just moon about
+doing this so-called "work" of theirs, and even
+when the judgment of eccentric people forces a kind
+of reputation upon them&mdash;Heaven knows why?&mdash;they
+make no public or social use of it. It seemed to
+Aunt Plessington that the artist and the scientific
+man were dealt with very neatly and justly in the
+Parable of the Buried Talent. Moreover their
+private lives were often scandalous, they married for
+love instead of interest, often quite disadvantageously,
+and their relationships had all the instability
+that is natural upon such a foundation. And, after
+all, what good were they? She had never met an
+artist or a prominent imaginative writer or scientific
+man that she had not been able to subdue in a minute
+or so by flat contradiction, and if necessary slightly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">-229-</a></span>
+raising her voice. They had little or no influence
+even upon their own public appointments....</p>
+
+<p>The thought of the invasion of her agreeable little
+back street establishment by this Britannic system of
+judgments filled Marjorie's heart with secret terrors.
+She felt she had to grapple with and overcome Aunt
+Plessington, or be for ever fallen&mdash;at least, so far as
+that amiable lady's report went, and she knew it went
+pretty far. She wandered about the house trying to
+imagine herself Aunt Plessington.</p>
+
+<p>Immediately she felt the gravest doubts whether
+the whole thing wasn't too graceful and pretty. A
+rich and rather massive ugliness, of course, would
+have been the thing to fetch Aunt Plessington. Happily,
+it was Aunt Plessington's habit to veil her eyes
+with her voice. She might not see very much.</p>
+
+<p>The subjugation of Aunt Plessington was difficult,
+but not altogether hopeless, Marjorie felt, provided
+her rejection of Magnet had not been taken as an act
+of personal ingratitude. There was a case on her
+side. She was discovering, for example, that Trafford
+had a really very considerable range of acquaintance
+among quite distinguished people; big figures
+like Evesham and MacHaldo, for example, were intelligently
+interested in the trend of his work. She
+felt this gave her a basis for Plessingtonian justifications.
+She could produce those people&mdash;as one shows
+one's loot. She could imply, "Oh, Love and all that
+nonsense! Certainly not! <i>This</i> is what I did it for."
+With skill and care and good luck, and a word here
+and there in edgeways, she believed she might be able
+to represent the whole adventure as the well-calculated
+opening of a campaign on soundly Plessingtonian
+lines. Her marriage to Trafford, she tried to
+persuade herself, might be presented as something
+almost as brilliant and startling as her aunt's swoop<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">-230-</a></span>
+upon her undistinguished uncle.</p>
+
+<p>She might pretend that all along she had seen her
+way to things, to coveted dinner-tables and the familiarity
+of coveted guests, to bringing people together
+and contriving arrangements, to influence and prominence,
+to culminations and intrigues impossible in
+the comparatively specialized world of a successful
+humorist and playwright, and so at last to those
+high freedoms of authoritative and if necessary offensive
+utterance in a strangulated contralto, and
+from a position of secure eminence, which is the goal
+of all virtuously ambitious Englishwomen of the governing
+classes&mdash;that is to say, of all virtuously ambitious
+Englishwomen....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 4</p>
+
+<p>And while such turbid solicitudes as these were
+flowing in again from the London world to which she
+had returned, and fouling the bright, romantic clearness
+of Marjorie's life, Trafford, in his ampler, less
+detailed way was also troubled about their coming
+re-entry into society. He, too, had his old associations.</p>
+
+<p>For example, he was by no means confident of the
+favourable judgments of his mother upon Marjorie's
+circle of school and college friends, whom he gathered
+from Marjorie's talk were destined to play a large
+part in this new phase of his life. She had given him
+very ample particulars of some of them; and he found
+them interesting rather than richly attractive personalities.
+It is to be noted that while he thought
+always of Marjorie as a beautiful, grown-up woman,
+and his mate and equal, he was still disposed to regard
+her intimate friends as schoolgirls of an advanced and
+aggressive type....</p>
+
+<p>Then that large circle of distinguished acquaintances<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">-231-</a></span>
+which Marjorie saw so easily and amply utilized
+for the subjugation of Aunt Plessington didn't
+present itself quite in that service to Trafford's private
+thoughts. He hadn't that certitude of command
+over them, nor that confidence in their unhesitating
+approval of all he said and did. Just as Marjorie
+wished him to shine in the heavens over all her people,
+so, in regard to his associates, he was extraordinarily
+anxious that they should realize, and realize from the
+outset without qualification or hesitation, how beautiful,
+brave and delightful she was. And you know
+he had already begun to be aware of an evasive feeling
+in his mind that at times she did not altogether
+do herself justice&mdash;he scarcely knew as yet how or
+why....</p>
+
+<p>She was very young....</p>
+
+<p>One or two individuals stood out in his imagination,
+representatives and symbols of the rest. Particularly
+there was that old giant, Sir Roderick
+Dover, who had been, until recently, the Professor of
+Physics in the great Oxford laboratories. Dover
+and Trafford had one of those warm friendships
+which spring up at times between a rich-minded man
+whose greatness is assured and a young man of brilliant
+promise. It was all the more affectionate
+because Dover had been a friend of Trafford's father.
+These two and a group of other careless-minded, able,
+distinguished, and uninfluential men at the Winton
+Club affected the end of the smoking-room near the
+conservatory in the hours after lunch, and shared the
+joys of good talk and fine jesting about the big fireplace
+there. Under Dover's broad influence they
+talked more ideas and less gossip than is usual with
+English club men. Twaddle about appointments,
+about reputations, topics from the morning's papers,
+London architecture, and the commerce in "good<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">-232-</a></span>
+stories" took refuge at the other end in the window
+bays or by the further fireplace. Trafford only began
+to realize on his return to London how large a share
+this intermittent perennial conversation had contributed
+to the atmosphere of his existence. Amidst the
+romantic circumstances of his flight with Marjorie he
+had forgotten the part these men played in his life
+and thoughts. Now he was enormously exercised in
+the search for a reconciliation between these, he felt,
+incommensurable factors.</p>
+
+<p>He was afraid of what might be Sir Roderick's
+unspoken judgment on Marjorie and the house she
+had made&mdash;though what was there to be afraid of?
+He was still more afraid&mdash;and this was even more
+remarkable&mdash;of the clear little judgments&mdash;hard as
+loose, small diamonds in a bed&mdash;that he thought Marjorie
+might pronounce on Sir Roderick. He had
+never disguised from himself that Sir Roderick was
+fat&mdash;nobody who came within a hundred yards of
+him could be under any illusion about that&mdash;and that
+he drank a good deal, ate with a cosmic spaciousness,
+loved a cigar, and talked and laughed with a freedom
+that sometimes drove delicate-minded new members
+into the corners remotest from the historical fireplace.
+Trafford knew himself quite definitely that
+there was a joy in Dover's laugh and voice, a beauty
+in his face (that was somehow mixed up with his
+healthy corpulence), and a breadth, a charity, a
+leonine courage in his mind (that was somehow mixed
+up with his careless freedom of speech) that made
+him an altogether satisfactory person.</p>
+
+<p>But supposing Marjorie didn't see any of that!</p>
+
+<p>Still, he was on the verge of bringing Sir Roderick
+home when a talk at the club one day postponed
+that introduction of the two extremes of Trafford's
+existence for quite a considerable time.</p>
+
+<p>Those were the days of the first enthusiasms of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">-233-</a></span>
+the militant suffrage movement, and the occasional
+smashing of a Downing Street window or an assault
+upon a minister kept the question of woman's distinctive
+intelligence and character persistently before
+the public. Godley Buzard, the feminist novelist,
+had been the guest of some member to lunch, and the
+occasion was too provocative for any one about
+Dover's fireplace to avoid the topic. Buzard's presence,
+perhaps, drove Dover into an extreme position
+on the other side; he forgot Trafford's new-wedded
+condition, and handled this great argument, an argument
+which has scarcely progressed since its beginning
+in the days of Plato and Aristophanes, with
+the freedoms of an ancient Greek and the explicitness
+of a modern scientific man.</p>
+
+<p>He opened almost apropos of nothing. "Women,"
+he said, "are inferior&mdash;and you can't get away from
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"You can deny it," said Buzard.</p>
+
+<p>"In the face of the facts," said Sir Roderick.
+"To begin with, they're several inches shorter, several
+pounds lighter; they've less physical strength in
+footpounds."</p>
+
+<p>"More endurance," said Buzard.</p>
+
+<p>"Less sensitiveness merely. All those are demonstrable
+things&mdash;amenable to figures and apparatus.
+Then they stand nervous tensions worse, the
+breaking-point comes sooner. They have weaker inhibitions,
+and inhibition is the test of a creature's
+position in the mental scale."</p>
+
+<p>He maintained that in the face of Buzard's animated
+protest. Buzard glanced at their moral
+qualities. "More moral!" cried Dover, "more self-restraint!
+Not a bit of it! Their desires and passions
+are weaker even than their controls; that's all.
+Weaken restraints and they show their quality. A<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">-234-</a></span>
+drunken woman is far worse than a drunken man.
+And as for their biological significance&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They are the species," said Buzard, "and we
+are the accidents."</p>
+
+<p>"They are the stolon and we are the individualized
+branches. They are the stem and we are the
+fruits. Surely it's better to exist than just transmit
+existence. And that's a woman's business, though
+we've fooled and petted most of 'em into forgetting
+it...."</p>
+
+<p>He proceeded to an attack on the intellectual
+quality of women. He scoffed at the woman artist, at
+feminine research, at what he called the joke of feminine
+philosophy. Buzard broke in with some sentences
+of reply. He alleged the lack of feminine
+opportunity, inferior education.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't or won't understand me," said Dover.
+"It isn't a matter of education or opportunity, or
+simply that they're of inferior capacity; it lies deeper
+than that. They don't <i>want</i> to do these things.
+They're different."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely," ejaculated Buzard, as if he claimed
+a score.</p>
+
+<p>"They don't care for these things. They don't
+care for art or philosophy, or literature or anything
+except the things that touch them directly. That's
+their peculiar difference. Hunger they understand,
+and comfort, and personal vanity and desire, furs
+and chocolate and husbands, and the extreme importance
+conferred upon them by having babies at infrequent
+intervals. But philosophy or beauty for its
+own sake, or dreams! Lord! no! The Mahometans
+know they haven't souls, and they say it. We know,
+and keep it up that they have. Haven't all we
+scientific men had 'em in our laboratories working;
+don't we know the papers they turn out? Every sane<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">-235-</a></span>
+man of five and forty knows something of the disillusionment
+of the feminine dream, but we who've had
+the beautiful creatures under us, weighing rather
+badly, handling rather weakly, invariably missing
+every fine detail and all the implications of our researches,
+never flashing, never leaping, never being
+even thoroughly bad,&mdash;we're specialists in the subject.
+At the present time there are far more educated
+young women than educated young men available
+for research work&mdash;and who wants them? Oh,
+the young professors who've still got ideals perhaps.
+And in they come, and if they're dull, they just
+voluminously do nothing, and if they're bright, they
+either marry your demonstrator or get him into a
+mess. And the work&mdash;&mdash;? It's nothing to them. No
+woman ever painted for the love of painting, or sang
+for the sounds she made, or philosophized for the
+sake of wisdom as men do&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Buzard intervened with instances. Dover would
+have none of them. He displayed astonishing and
+distinctive knowledge. "Madame Curie," clamoured
+Buzard, "Madame Curie."</p>
+
+<p>"There was Curie," said Dover. "No woman
+alone has done such things. I don't say women aren't
+clever," he insisted. "They're too clever. Give them
+a man's track or a man's intention marked and defined,
+they'll ape him to the life&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Buzard renewed his protests, talking at the same
+time as Dover, and was understood to say that women
+had to care for something greater than art or philosophy.
+They were custodians of life, the future
+of the race&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And that's my crowning disappointment," cried
+Dover. "If there was one thing in which you might
+think women would show a sense of some divine purpose
+in life, it is in the matter of children&mdash;and they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">-236-</a></span>
+show about as much care in that matter, oh!&mdash;as rabbits.
+Yes, rabbits! I stick to it. Look at the things
+a nice girl will marry; look at the men's children
+she'll consent to bring into the world. Cheerfully!
+Proudly! For the sake of the home and the clothes.
+Nasty little beasts they'll breed without turning a
+hair. All about us we see girls and women marrying
+ugly men, dull and stupid men, ill-tempered dyspeptic
+wrecks, sickly young fools, human rats&mdash;<i>rats!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no!" cried Trafford to Dover.</p>
+
+<p>Buzard's voice clamoured that all would be different
+when women had the vote.</p>
+
+<p>"If ever we get a decent care for Eugenics, it will
+come from men," said a white-faced little man on the
+sofa beside Trafford, in the confidential tone of one
+who tells a secret.</p>
+
+<p>"Doing it cheerfully!" insisted Dover.</p>
+
+<p>Trafford in mid-protest was suddenly stricken
+into silence by a memory. It was as if the past had
+thrown a stone at the back of his head and hit it
+smartly. He nipped his sentence in the bud. He left
+the case for women to Buzard....</p>
+
+<p>He revived that memory again on his way home.
+It had been in his mind overlaid by a multitude of
+newer, fresher things, but now he took it out and
+looked at it. It was queer, it was really very queer,
+to think that once upon a time, not so very long ago,
+Marjorie had been prepared to marry Magnet. Of
+course she had hated it, but still&mdash;&mdash;....</p>
+
+<p>There is much to be discovered about life, even by
+a brilliant and rising young Professor of Physics....</p>
+
+<p>Presently Dover, fingering the little glass of yellow
+chartreuse he had hitherto forgotten in the heat
+of controversy, took a more personal turn.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't we know," he said, and made the limpid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">-237-</a></span>
+amber vanish in his pause. "Don't we know we've
+got to manage and control 'em&mdash;just as we've got to
+keep 'em and stand the racket of their misbehaviour?
+Don't our instincts tell us? Doesn't something tell
+us all that if we let a woman loose with our honour
+and trust, some other man will get hold of her?
+We've tried it long enough now, this theory that a
+woman's a partner and an equal; we've tried it long
+enough to see some of the results, and does it work?
+Does it? A woman's a prize, a possession, a responsibility,
+something to take care of and be careful
+about.... You chaps, if you'll forgive me, you
+advanced chaps, seem to want to have the women take
+care of you. You seem always to want to force
+decisions on them, make them answerable for things
+that you ought to decide and answer for.... If
+one could, if one could! If!... But they're not
+helps&mdash;that's a dream&mdash;they're distractions, gratifications,
+anxieties, dangers, undertakings...."</p>
+
+<p>Buzard got in his one effective blow at this point.
+"That's why you've never married, Sir Roderick?"
+he threw out.</p>
+
+<p>The big man was checked for a moment. Trafford
+wondered what memory lit that instant's pause.
+"I've had my science," said Dover.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 5</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope was of course among the first to visit
+the new home so soon as it was open to inspection.
+She arrived, looking very bright and neat in a new
+bonnet and some new black furs that suited her, bearing
+up bravely but obviously in a state of dispersed
+and miscellaneous emotion....</p>
+
+<p>In many ways Marjorie's marriage had been a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">-238-</a></span>
+great relief to her mother. Particularly it had been
+a financial relief. Marjorie had been the most expensive
+child of her family, and her cessation had led
+to increments both of Mrs. Pope's and Daphne's all
+too restricted allowances. Mrs. Pope had been able
+therefore to relapse from the orthodox Anglicanism
+into which poverty had driven her, and indulge for
+an hour weekly in the consolations of Higher
+Thought. These exercises in emancipated religiosity
+occurred at the house of Mr. Silas Root, and were
+greatly valued by a large circle of clients. Essentially
+they were orgies of vacuity, and they cost six
+guineas for seven hours. They did her no end of
+good. All through the precious weekly hour she sat
+with him in a silent twilight, very, very still and
+feeling&mdash;oh! "higher" than anything, and when she
+came out she wore an inane smile on her face and was
+prepared not to worry, to lie with facility, and to
+take the easiest way in every eventuality in an entirely
+satisfactory and exalted manner. Moreover
+he was "treating" her investments. Acting upon
+his advice, and doing the whole thing quietly with the
+idea of preparing a pleasant surprise for her husband,
+she had sold out of certain Home Railway
+debentures and invested in a company for working the
+auriferous waste which is so abundant in the drainage
+of Philadelphia, a company whose shareholders were
+chiefly higher thought disciples and whose profits
+therefore would inevitably be greatly enhanced by
+their concerted mental action. It was to the prospective
+profits in this that she owed the new black
+furs she was wearing.</p>
+
+<p>The furs and the bonnet and the previous day's
+treatment she had had, all helped to brace her up on
+Marjorie's doorstep for a complex and difficult situation,
+and to carry her through the first tensions of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">-239-</a></span>
+her call. She was so much to pieces as it was that
+she could not help feeling how much more to pieces
+she might have been&mdash;but for the grace of Silas Root.
+She knew she ought to have very strong feelings
+about Trafford, though it was not really clear to her
+what feelings she ought to have. On the whole she
+was inclined to believe she was experiencing moral
+disapproval mixed up with a pathetic and rather
+hopeless appeal for the welfare of the tender life that
+had entrusted itself so recklessly to these brutal and
+discreditable hands, though indeed if she had really
+dared to look inside her mind her chief discovery
+would have been a keenly jealous appreciation of
+Trafford's good looks and generous temper, and a
+feeling of injustice as between her own lot and Marjorie's.
+However, going on her assumed basis she
+managed to be very pale, concise and tight-lipped at
+any mention of her son-in-law, and to put a fervour
+of helpless devotion into her embraces of her daughter.
+She surveyed the house with a pained constrained
+expression, as though she tried in vain to conceal
+from herself that it was all slightly improper, and
+even such objects as the Bokhara hangings failed to
+extort more than an insincere, "Oh, very nice, dear&mdash;<i>very</i>
+nice."</p>
+
+<p>In the bedroom, she spoke about Mr. Pope. "He
+was dreadfully upset," she said. "His first thought
+was to come after you both with a pistol. If&mdash;if <i>he</i>
+hadn't married you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But dear Mummy, of <i>course</i> we meant to marry!
+We married right away."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, dear, of course. But if he hadn't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She paused, and Marjorie, with a momentary
+flush of indignation in her cheeks, did not urge her to
+conclude her explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"He's <i>wounded</i>," said Mrs. Pope. "Some day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">-240-</a></span>
+perhaps he'll come round&mdash;you were always his favourite
+daughter."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," said Marjorie concisely, with a faint
+flavour of cynicism in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid dear, at present&mdash;he will do nothing
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think Rag would like him to," said Marjorie
+with an unreal serenity; "<i>ever</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"For a time I'm afraid he'll refuse to see you.
+He just wants to forget&mdash;&mdash;. Everything."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor old Dad! I wish he wouldn't put himself
+out like this. Still, I won't bother him, Mummy, if
+you mean that."</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly into Mrs. Pope's unsystematic,
+unstable mind, started perhaps by the ring in her
+daughter's voice, there came a wave of affectionate
+feeling. That she had somehow to be hostile and
+unsympathetic to Marjorie, that she had to pretend
+that Trafford was wicked and disgusting, and not be
+happy in the jolly hope and happiness of this bright
+little house, cut her with a keen swift pain. She didn't
+know clearly why she was taking this coldly hostile
+attitude, or why she went on doing so, but the sense
+of that necessity hurt her none the less. She put out
+her hands upon her daughter's shoulders and whimpered:
+"Oh my dear! I do wish things weren't so
+difficult&mdash;so very difficult."</p>
+
+<p>The whimper changed by some inner force of its
+own to honest sobs and tears.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie passed through a flash of amazement
+to a sudden understanding of her mother's case.
+"Poor dear Mummy," she said. "Oh! poor dear
+Mummy. It's a shame of us!"</p>
+
+<p>She put her arms about her mother and held her
+for awhile.</p>
+
+<p>"It <i>is</i> a shame," said her mother in a muffled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">-241-</a></span>
+voice, trying to keep hold of this elusive thing that
+had somehow both wounded her and won her daughter
+back. But her poor grasp slipped again. "I
+knew you'd come to see it," she said, dabbing with her
+handkerchief at her eyes. "I knew you would." And
+then with the habitual loyalty of years resuming its
+sway: "He's always been so good to you."...</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Pope had something more definite to
+say to Marjorie, and came to it at last with a tactful
+offhandedness. Marjorie communicated it to Trafford
+about an hour later on his return from the
+laboratory. "I say," she said, "old Daffy's engaged
+to Magnet!"</p>
+
+<p>She paused, and added with just the faintest
+trace of resentment in her voice: "She can have him,
+as far as I'm concerned."</p>
+
+<p>"He didn't wait long," said Trafford tactlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Marjorie; "he didn't wait long....
+Of course she got him on the rebound."...</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 6</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope was only a day or so ahead of a cloud
+of callers. The Carmel girls followed close upon her,
+tall figures of black fur, with costly-looking muffs
+and a rich glitter at neck and wrist. Marjorie displayed
+her house, talking fluently about other things,
+and watching for effects. The Carmel girls ran their
+swift dark eyes over her appointments, glanced
+quickly from side to side of her rooms, saw only too
+certainly that the house was narrow and small&mdash;&mdash;.
+But did they see that it was clever? They saw at any
+rate that she meant it to be clever, and with true
+Oriental politeness said as much urgently and extravagantly.
+Then there were the Rambord girls<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">-242-</a></span>
+and their mother, an unobservant lot who chattered
+about the ice at Prince's; then Constance Graham
+came with a thoroughbred but very dirty aunt, and
+then Ottiline Winchelsea with an American minor poet,
+who wanted a view of mountains from the windows at
+the back, and said the bathroom ought to be done in
+pink. Then Lady Solomonson came; an extremely
+expensive-looking fair lady with an affectation of
+cynicism, a keen intelligence, acutely apt conversation,
+and a queer effect of thinking of something else
+all the time she was talking. She missed nothing....</p>
+
+<p>Hardly anybody failed to appreciate the charm
+and decision of Marjorie's use of those Bokhara
+embroideries.</p>
+
+<p>They would have been cheap at double the price.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 7</p>
+
+<p>And then our two young people went out to their
+first dinner-parties together. They began with Trafford's
+rich friend Solomonson, who had played so
+large and so passive a part in their first meeting. He
+had behaved with a sort of magnanimous triumph
+over the marriage. He made it almost his personal
+affair, as though he had brought it about. "I knew
+there was a girl in it," he insisted, "and you told me
+there wasn't. O-a-ah! And you kept me in that
+smell of disinfectant and things&mdash;what a chap that
+doctor was for spilling stuff!&mdash;for six blessed days!..."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie achieved a dress at once simple and
+good with great facility by not asking the price until
+it was all over. (There is no half-success with dinner-dresses,
+either the thing is a success and inestimable,
+or not worth having at any price at all.) It
+was blue with a thread of gold, and she had a necklace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">-243-</a></span>
+of blueish moonstones, gold-set, and her hair
+ceased to be copper and became golden, and her eyes
+unfathomable blue. She was radiant with health and
+happiness, no one else there had her clear freshness,
+and her manner was as restrained and dignified
+and ready as a proud young wife's can be. Everyone
+seemed to like her and respect her and be interested
+in her, and Trafford kissed her flushed cheek in the
+hansom as they came home again and crowned her
+happiness. It had been quite a large party, and
+really much more splendid and brilliant than anything
+she had ever seen before. There had been one
+old gentleman with a coloured button and another
+with a ribbon; there had been a countess with historical
+pearls, and half-a-dozen other people one
+might fairly call distinguished. The house was tremendous
+in its way, spacious, rich, glowing with
+lights, abounding in vistas and fine remote backgrounds.
+In the midst of it all she had a sudden
+thrill at the memory that less than a year ago she
+had been ignominiously dismissed from the dinner-table
+by her father for a hiccup....</p>
+
+<p>A few days after Aunt Plessington suddenly asked
+the Traffords to one of her less important but still
+interesting gatherings; not one of those that swayed
+the world perhaps, but one which Marjorie was given
+to understand achieved important subordinate wagging.
+Aunt Plessington had not called, she explained
+in her note, because of the urgent demands the Movement
+made upon her time; it was her wonderful hard-breathing
+way never to call on anyone, and it added
+tremendously to her reputation; none the less it appeared&mdash;though
+here the scrawl became illegible&mdash;she
+meant to shove and steer her dear niece upward at a
+tremendous pace. They were even asked to come a
+little early so that she might make Trafford's acquaintance.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">-244-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The dress was duly admired, and then Aunt Plessington&mdash;assuming
+the hearthrug and forgetting the
+little matter of their career&mdash;explained quite Napoleonic
+and wonderful things she was going to do
+with her Movement, fresh principles, fresh applications,
+a big committee of all the "names"&mdash;they were
+easy to get if you didn't bother them to do things&mdash;a
+new and more attractive title, "Payment in Kind"
+was to give way to "Reality of Reward," and she
+herself was going to have her hair bleached bright
+white (which would set off her eyes and colour and
+the general geniality of appearance due to her projecting
+teeth), and so greatly increase her "platform
+efficiency." Hubert, she said, was toiling away hard
+at the detail of these new endeavours. He would be
+down in a few minutes' time. Marjorie, she said,
+ought to speak at their meetings. It would help both
+the Traffords to get on if Marjorie cut a dash at the
+outset, and there was no such dash to be cut as speaking
+at Aunt Plessington's meetings. It was catching
+on; all next season it was sure to be the thing. So
+many promising girls allowed themselves to be submerged
+altogether in marriage for a time, and when
+they emerged everyone had forgotten the promise of
+their début. She had an air of rescuing Marjorie
+from an impending fate by disabusing Trafford from
+injurious prepossessions....</p>
+
+<p>Presently the guests began to drop in, a vegetarian
+health specialist, a rising young woman factory
+inspector, a phrenologist who was being induced to
+put great talents to better uses under Aunt Plessington's
+influence, his dumb, obscure, but inevitable wife,
+a colonial bishop, a baroness with a taste rather than
+a capacity for intellectual society, a wealthy jam
+and pickle manufacturer and his wife, who had subscribed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">-245-</a></span>
+largely to the funds of the Movement and
+wanted to meet the lady of title, and the editor of
+the Movement's organ, <i>Upward and On</i>, a young
+gentleman of abundant hair and cadaverous silences,
+whom Aunt Plessington patted on the shoulder and
+spoke of as "one of our discoveries." And then
+Uncle Hubert came down, looking ruffled and overworked,
+with his ready-made dress-tie&mdash;he was one
+of those men who can never master the art of tying
+a bow&mdash;very much askew. The conversation turned
+chiefly on the Movement; if it strayed Aunt Plessington
+reached out her voice after it and brought it
+back in a masterful manner.</p>
+
+<p>Through soup and fish Marjorie occupied herself
+with the inflexible rigour of the young editor, who had
+brought her down. When she could give her attention
+to the general conversation she discovered her
+husband a little flushed and tackling her aunt with
+an expression of quiet determination. The phrenologist
+and the vegetarian health specialist were regarding
+him with amazement, the jam and pickle manufacturer's
+wife was evidently deeply shocked. He
+was refusing to believe in the value of the Movement,
+and Aunt Plessington was manifestly losing her
+temper.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see, Mrs. Plessington," he was saying,
+"that all this amounts to more than a kind of Glorious
+District Visiting. That is how I see it. You
+want to attack people in their homes&mdash;before they
+cry out to you. You want to compel them by this
+Payment in Kind of yours to do what you want them
+to do instead of trying to make them want to do it.
+Now, I think your business is to make them want to
+do it. You may perhaps increase the amount of
+milk in babies, and the amount of whitewash in cottages
+and slums by your methods&mdash;I don't dispute<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">-246-</a></span>
+the promise of your statistics&mdash;but you're going to
+do it at a cost of human self-respect that's out of all
+proportion&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Hubert's voice, with that thick utterance
+that always suggested a mouthful of plums, came
+booming down the table. "All these arguments," he
+said, "have been answered long ago."</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt," said Trafford with a faint asperity.
+"But tell me the answers."</p>
+
+<p>"It's ridiculous," said Aunt Plessington, "to talk
+of the self-respect of the kind of people&mdash;oh! the
+very dregs!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's just because the plant is delicate that you've
+got to handle it carefully," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"Here's Miss Gant," said Aunt Plessington,
+"<i>she</i> knows the strata we are discussing. She'll tell
+you they have positively <i>no</i> self-respect&mdash;none at
+all."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>My</i> people," said Miss Gant, as if in conclusive
+testimony, "actually conspire with their employers
+to defeat me."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see the absence of self-respect in that,"
+said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"But all their interests&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm thinking of their pride."...</p>
+
+<p>The discussion lasted to the end of dinner and
+made no headway. As soon as the ladies were in the
+drawing-room, Aunt Plessington, a little flushed from
+the conflict, turned on Marjorie and said, "I <i>like</i>
+your husband. He's wrong-headed, but he's young,
+and he's certainly spirited. He <i>ought</i> to get on if
+he wants to. Does he do nothing but his researches?"</p>
+
+<p>"He lectures in the spring term," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Aunt Plessington with a triumphant
+note, "you must alter all that. You must interest
+him in wider things. You must bring him out of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">-247-</a></span>
+shell, and let him see what it is to deal with Affairs.
+Then he wouldn't talk such nonsense about our
+Work."</p>
+
+<p>Marjory was at a momentary loss for a reply,
+and in the instant's respite Aunt Plessington turned
+to the jam and pickle lady and asked in a bright,
+encouraging note: "Well! And how's the Village
+Club getting on?"...</p>
+
+<p>She had another lunge at Trafford as he took
+his leave. "You must come again soon," she said.
+"I <i>love</i> a good wrangle, and Hubert and I never
+want to talk about our Movement to any one but unbelievers.
+You don't know the beginnings of it yet.
+Only I warn you they have a way of getting converted.
+I warn you."...</p>
+
+<p>On this occasion there was no kissing in the cab.
+Trafford was exasperated.</p>
+
+<p>"Of all the intolerable women!" he said, and was
+silent for a time.</p>
+
+<p>"The astounding part of it is," he burst out,
+"that this sort of thing, this Movement and all the
+rest of it, does really give the quality of English
+public affairs. It's like a sample&mdash;dredged. The&mdash;the
+<i>cheapness</i> of it! Raised voices, rash assertions,
+sham investigations, meetings and committees and
+meetings, that's the stuff of it, and politicians really
+have to attend to it, and silly, ineffective, irritating
+bills really get drafted and messed about with and
+passed on the strength of it. Public affairs are still
+in the Dark Ages. Nobody now would think of
+getting together a scratch committee of rich old
+women and miscellaneous conspicuous people to design
+an electric tram, and jabbering and jabbering
+and jabbering, and if any one objects"&mdash;a note of
+personal bitterness came into his voice&mdash;"jabbering
+faster; but nobody thinks it ridiculous to attempt the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">-248-</a></span>
+organization of poor people's affairs in that sort of
+way. This project of the supersession of Wages by
+Payment in Kind&mdash;oh! it's childish. If it wasn't it
+would be outrageous and indecent. Your uncle and
+aunt haven't thought for a moment of any single one
+of the necessary consequences of these things they
+say their confounded Movement aims at, effects upon
+the race, upon public spirit, upon people's habits and
+motives. They've just a queer craving to feel powerful
+and influential, which they think they can best
+satisfy by upsetting the lives of no end of harmless
+poor people&mdash;the only people they dare upset&mdash;and
+that's about as far as they go.... Your aunt's
+detestable, Marjorie."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie had never seen him so deeply affected by
+anything but herself. It seemed to her he was needlessly
+disturbed by a trivial matter. He sulked for
+a space, and then broke out again.</p>
+
+<p>"That confounded woman talks of my physical
+science," he said, "as if research were an amiable
+weakness, like collecting postage stamps. And it's
+changed human conditions more in the last ten years
+than all the parliamentary wire-pullers and legislators
+and administrative experts have done in two centuries.
+And for all that, there's more clerks in Whitehall
+than professors of physics in the whole of England."...</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it's the way that sort of thing gets
+done," said Marjorie, after an interval.</p>
+
+<p>"That sort of thing doesn't get done," snapped
+Trafford. "All these people burble about with their
+movements and jobs, and lectures and stuff&mdash;and
+<i>things happen</i>. Like some one getting squashed to
+death in a crowd. Nobody did it, but anybody in
+the muddle can claim to have done it&mdash;if only they've<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">-249-</a></span>
+got the cheek of your Aunt Plessington."</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to have finished.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Done!</i>" he suddenly broke out again. "Why!
+people like your Aunt Plessington don't even know
+where the handle is. If they ventured to look for it,
+they'd give the whole show away! Done, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Here we are!" said Marjorie, a little relieved to
+find the hansom turning out of King's Road into
+their own side street....</p>
+
+<p>And then Marjorie wore the blue dress with great
+success at the Carmels'. The girls came and looked
+at it and admired it&mdash;it was no mere politeness.
+They admitted there was style about it, a quality&mdash;there
+was no explaining. "You're <i>wonderful</i>,
+Madge!" cried the younger Carmel girl.</p>
+
+<p>The Carmel boy, seizing the opportunity of a
+momentary seclusion in a corner, ended a short but
+rather portentous silence with "I say, you <i>do</i> look
+ripping," in a voice that implied the keenest regret
+for the slacknesses of a summer that was now infinitely
+remote to Marjorie. It was ridiculous that the
+Carmel boy should have such emotions&mdash;he was six
+years younger than Trafford and only a year older
+than Marjorie, and yet she was pleased by his
+manifest wound....</p>
+
+<p>There was only one little thing at the back of
+her mind that alloyed her sense of happy and complete
+living that night, and that was the ghost of an
+addition sum. At home, in her pretty bureau, a little
+gathering pile of bills, as yet unpaid, and an empty
+cheque-book with appealing counterfoils, awaited her
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie had still to master the fact that all the
+fine braveries and interests and delights of life that
+offer themselves so amply to the favoured children<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">-250-</a></span>
+of civilization, trail and, since the fall of man at
+any rate, have trailed after them something&mdash;something,
+the justification of morality, the despair of
+all easy, happy souls, the unavoidable drop of bitterness
+in the cup of pleasure&mdash;the Reckoning.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER THE SECOND</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Child of the Ages</span></h3>
+
+<p class="title">§ 1</p>
+
+<p>When the intellectual history of this time comes to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">-251-</a></span>
+be written, nothing I think will stand out more
+strikingly than the empty gulf in quality between the
+superb and richly fruitful scientific investigations
+that are going on and the general thought of other
+educated sections of the community. I do not mean
+that the scientific men are as a whole a class of supermen,
+dealing with and thinking about everything in
+a way altogether better than the common run of
+humanity, but that in their own field, they think and
+work with an intensity, an integrity, a breadth, boldness,
+patience, thoroughness and faithfulness that
+(excepting only a few artists) puts their work out
+of all comparison with any other human activity.
+Often the field in which the work is done is very
+narrow, and almost universally the underlying philosophy
+is felt rather than apprehended. A scientific
+man may be large and deep-minded, deliberate and
+personally detached in his work, and hasty, commonplace
+and superficial in every other relation of life.
+Nevertheless it is true that in these particular directions
+the human mind has achieved a new and higher
+quality of attitude and gesture, a veracity, self-detachment
+and self-abnegating vigour of criticism
+that tend to spread out and must ultimately spread
+out to every other human affair. In these uncontroversial
+issues at least mankind has learnt the rich
+rewards that ensue from patience and infinite pains.</p>
+
+<p>The peculiar circumstances of Trafford's birth<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">-252-</a></span>
+and upbringing had accentuated his natural disposition
+toward this new thoroughness of intellectual
+treatment which has always distinguished the great
+artist, and which to-day is also the essential quality
+of the scientific method. He had lived apart from
+any urgency to produce and compete in the common
+business of the world; his natural curiosities, fed and
+encouraged by his natural gifts, had grown into a
+steady passion for clarity and knowledge. But with
+him there was no specialization. He brought out
+from his laboratory into the everyday affairs of the
+world the same sceptical restraint of judgment which
+is the touchstone of scientific truth. This made him
+a tepid and indeed rather a scornful spectator of
+political and social life. Party formulae, international
+rivalries, social customs, and very much of the
+ordinary law of our state impressed him as a kind of
+fungoid growth out of a fundamental intellectual
+muddle. It all maintained itself hazardously, changing
+and adapting itself unintelligently to unseen conditions.
+He saw no ultimate truth in this seething
+welter of human efforts, no tragedy as yet in its
+defeats, no value in its victories. It had to go on, he
+believed, until the spreading certitudes of the scientific
+method pierced its unsubstantial thickets, burst
+its delusive films, drained away its folly. Aunt Plessington's
+talk of order and progress and the influence
+of her Movement impressed his mind very much as the
+cackle of some larger kind of hen&mdash;which cackles
+because it must. Only Aunt Plessington being human
+simply imagined the egg. She laid&mdash;on the
+plane of the ideal. When the great nonsensical issues
+between liberal and conservative, between socialist
+and individualist, between "Anglo-Saxon" and
+"Teuton," between the "white race" and the "yellow
+race" arose in Trafford's company, he would if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">-253-</a></span>
+he felt cheerful take one side or the other as chance
+or his amusement with his interlocutors determined,
+and jest and gibe at the opponent's inconsistencies,
+and if on the other hand he chanced to be irritable he
+would lose his temper at this "chewing of mesembryanthemum"
+and sulk into silence. "Chewing mesembryanthemum"
+was one of Trafford's favourite
+images,&mdash;no doubt the reader knows that abundant
+fleshy Mediterranean weed and the weakly unpleasant
+wateriness of its substance. He went back to his
+laboratory and his proper work after such discussions
+with a feeling of escape, as if he shut a door
+upon a dirty and undisciplined market-place crowded
+with mental defectives. Yet even before he met and
+married Marjorie, there was a queer little undertow
+of thought in his mind which insisted that this business
+could not end with door-slamming, that he didn't
+altogether leave the social confusion outside his
+panels when he stood alone before his apparatus, and
+that sooner or later that babble of voices would force
+his defences and overcome his disdain.</p>
+
+<p>His particular work upon the intimate constitution
+of matter had broadened very rapidly in his
+hands. The drift of his work had been to identify
+all colloids as liquid solutions of variable degrees of
+viscosity, and to treat crystalline bodies as the only
+solids. He had dealt with oscillating processes in
+colloid bodies with especial reference to living matter.
+He had passed from a study of the melting and toughening
+of glass to the molecular structure of a number
+of elastic bodies, and so, by a characteristic leap
+into botanical physiology, to the states of resinous
+and gummy substances at the moment of secretion.
+He worked at first upon a false start, and then resumed
+to discover a growing illumination. He found
+himself in the presence of phenomena that seemed to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">-254-</a></span>
+him to lie near the still undiscovered threshold to the
+secret processes of living protoplasm. He was, as it
+were, breaking into biology by way of molecular
+physics. He spent many long nights of deep excitement,
+calculating and arranging the development of
+these seductive intimations. It was this work which
+his marriage had interrupted, and to which he was
+now returning.</p>
+
+<p>He was surprised to find how difficult it was to
+take it up again. He had been only two months
+away from it, and yet already it had not a little of
+the feeling of a relic taken from a drawer. Something
+had faded. It was at first as if a film had
+come over his eyes, so that he could no longer see
+these things clearly and subtly and closely. His
+senses, his emotions, had been living in a stirring and
+vivid illumination. Now in this cool quietude bright
+clouds of coloured memory-stuff swam distractingly
+before his eyes. Phantom kisses on his lips, the memory
+of touches and the echoing vibrations of an
+adorable voice, the thought of a gay delightful fireside
+and the fresh recollection of a companion
+intensely felt beside him, effaced the delicate profundities
+of this dim place. Durgan hovered about
+him, helpful and a mute reproach. Trafford had to
+force his attention daily for the better part of two
+weeks before he had fully recovered the fine enchanting
+interest of that suspended work.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 2</p>
+
+<p>At last one day he had the happiness of possession
+again. He had exactly the sensation one gets
+when some hitherto intractable piece of a machine
+one is putting together, clicks neatly and beyond all
+hoping, into its place. He found himself working in
+the old style, with the hours slipping by disregarded.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">-255-</a></span>
+He sent out Durgan to get him tobacco and tea and
+smoked-salmon sandwiches, and he stayed in the
+laboratory all night. He went home about half-past
+five, and found a white-faced, red-eyed Marjorie still
+dressed, wrapped in a travelling-rug, and crumpled
+and asleep in his study arm-chair beside the grey
+ashes of an extinct fire.</p>
+
+<p>In the instant before she awoke he could see what
+a fragile and pitiful being a healthy and happy
+young wife can appear. Her pose revealed an unsuspected
+slender weakness of body, her face something
+infantile and wistful he had still to reckon
+with. She awoke with a start and stared at him for
+a moment, and at the room about her. "Oh, where
+have you been?" she asked almost querulously.
+"Where <i>have</i> you been?"</p>
+
+<p>"But my dear!" he said, as one might speak to
+a child, "why aren't you in bed? It's just dawn."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," she said, "I waited and I waited. It
+seemed you <i>must</i> come. I read a book. And then I
+fell asleep." And then with a sob of feeble self-pity,
+"And here I am!" She rubbed the back of her hand
+into one eye and shivered. "I'm cold," she said,
+"and I want some tea."</p>
+
+<p>"Let's make some," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"It's been horrible waiting," said Marjorie without
+moving; "horrible! Where have you been?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've been working. I got excited by my work.
+I've been at the laboratory. I've had the best spell
+of work I've ever had since our marriage."</p>
+
+<p>"But I have been up all night!" she cried with
+her face and voice softening to tears. "How <i>could</i>
+you? How <i>could</i> you?"</p>
+
+<p>He was surprised by her weeping. He was still
+more surprised by the self-abandonment that allowed
+her to continue. "I've been working," he repeated,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">-256-</a></span>
+and then looked about with a man's helplessness for
+the tea apparatus. One must have hot water and a
+teapot and a kettle; he would find those in the
+kitchen. He strolled thoughtfully out of the room,
+thinking out the further details of tea-making all
+mixed up with amazement at Marjorie, while she sat
+wiping her eyes with a crumpled pocket-handkerchief.
+Presently she followed him down with the rug
+about her like a shawl, and stood watching him as he
+lit a fire of wood and paper among the ashes in the
+kitchen fireplace. "It's been dreadful," she said, not
+offering to help.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he said, on his knees, "I'd really got
+hold of my work at last."</p>
+
+<p>"But you should have sent&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I was thinking of my work. I clean forgot."</p>
+
+<p>"Forgot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Absolutely."</p>
+
+<p>"Forgot&mdash;<i>me!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Trafford, with a slightly
+puzzled air, "you don't see it as I do."</p>
+
+<p>The kettle engaged him for a time. Then he
+threw out a suggestion. "We'll have to have a
+telephone."</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't imagine where you were. I thought
+of all sorts of things. I almost came round&mdash;but I
+was so horribly afraid I mightn't find you."</p>
+
+<p>He renewed his suggestion of a telephone.</p>
+
+<p>"So that if I really want you&mdash;&mdash;" said Marjorie.
+"Or if I just want to feel you're there."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Trafford slowly, jabbing a piece of
+firewood into the glow; but it was chiefly present in
+his mind that much of that elaborate experimenting
+of his wasn't at all a thing to be cut athwart by the
+exasperating gusts of a telephone bell clamouring
+for attention. Hitherto the laboratory telephone<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">-257-</a></span>
+had been in the habit of disconnecting itself early in
+the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>And yet after all it was this instrument, the same
+twisted wire and little quivering tympanum, that had
+brought back Marjorie into his life.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 3</p>
+
+<p>And now Trafford fell into a great perplexity of
+mind. His banker had called his attention to the fact
+that his account was overdrawn to the extent of
+three hundred and thirteen pounds, and he had been
+under that vague sort of impression one always has
+about one's current account that he was a hundred
+and fifty or so to the good. His first impression was
+that those hitherto infallible beings, those unseen
+gnomes of the pass-book whose lucid figures, neat
+tickings, and unrelenting additions constituted banks
+to his imagination, must have made a mistake; his
+second that some one had tampered with a cheque.
+His third thought pointed to Marjorie and the easy
+circumstances of his home. For a fortnight now
+she had been obviously ailing, oddly irritable; he did
+not understand the change in her, but it sufficed to
+prevent his taking the thing to her at once and going
+into it with her as he would have done earlier.
+Instead he had sent for his pass-book, and in the
+presence of its neat columns realized for the first
+time the meaning of Marjorie's "three hundred
+pounds." Including half-a-dozen cheques to Oxbridge
+tradesmen for her old debts, she had spent,
+he discovered, nearly seven hundred and fifty.</p>
+
+<p>He sat before the little bundle of crumpled strips
+of pink and white, perforated, purple stamped and
+effaced, in a state of extreme astonishment. It was no
+small factor in his amazement to note how very carelessly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">-258-</a></span>
+some of those cheques of Marjorie's had been
+written. Several she had not even crossed. The effect
+of it all was that she'd just spent his money&mdash;freely&mdash;with
+an utter disregard of the consequences.</p>
+
+<p>Up to that moment it had never occurred to
+Trafford that anybody one really cared for, could be
+anything but punctilious about money. Now here,
+with an arithmetical exactitude of demonstration, he
+perceived that Marjorie wasn't.</p>
+
+<p>It was so tremendous a discovery for him, so disconcerting
+and startling, that he didn't for two days
+say a word to her about it. He couldn't think of a
+word to say. He felt that even to put these facts
+before her amounted to an accusation of disloyalty
+and selfishness that he hadn't the courage to make.
+His work stopped altogether. He struggled hourly
+with that accusation. Did she realize&mdash;&mdash;? There
+seemed no escape from his dilemma; either she didn't
+care or she didn't understand!</p>
+
+<p>His thoughts went back to the lake of Orta, when
+he had put all his money at her disposal. She had
+been surprised, and now he perceived she had also
+been a little frightened. The chief excuse he could
+find for her was that she was inexperienced&mdash;absolutely
+inexperienced.</p>
+
+<p>Even now, of course, she was drawing fresh
+cheques....</p>
+
+<p>He would have to pull himself together, and go
+into the whole thing&mdash;for all its infinite disagreeableness&mdash;with
+her....</p>
+
+<p>But it was Marjorie who broached the subject.</p>
+
+<p>He had found work at the laboratory unsatisfactory,
+and after lunching at his club he had come
+home and gone to his study in order to think out the
+discussion he contemplated with her. She came in to
+him as he sat at his desk. "Busy?" she said. "Not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">-259-</a></span>
+very," he answered, and she came up to him, kissed
+his head, and stood beside him with her hand on his
+shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Pass-book?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been overrunning."</p>
+
+<p>"No end."</p>
+
+<p>The matter was opened. What would she say?</p>
+
+<p>She bent to his ear and whispered. "I'm going
+to overrun some more."</p>
+
+<p>His voice was resentful. "You <i>can't</i>," he said
+compactly without looking at her. "You've spent&mdash;enough."</p>
+
+<p>"There's&mdash;things."</p>
+
+<p>"What things?"</p>
+
+<p>Her answer took some time in coming. "We'll
+have to give a wedding present to Daffy.... I shall
+want&mdash;some more furniture."</p>
+
+<p>Well, he had to go into it now. "I don't think
+you can have it," he said, and then as she remained
+silent, "Marjorie, do you know how much money
+I've got?"</p>
+
+<p>"Six thousand."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>had</i>. But we've spent nearly a thousand
+pounds. Yes&mdash;one thousand pounds&mdash;over and
+above income. We meant to spend four hundred.
+And now, we've got&mdash;hardly anything over five."</p>
+
+<p>"Five thousand," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Five thousand."</p>
+
+<p>"And there's your salary."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but at this pace&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear," said Marjorie, and her hands came
+about his neck, "dear&mdash;there's something&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She broke off. An unfamiliar quality in her voice
+struck into him. He turned his head to see her face,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">-260-</a></span>
+rose to his feet staring at her.</p>
+
+<p>This remarkable young woman had become soft
+and wonderful as April hills across which clouds are
+sweeping. Her face was as if he had never seen it
+before; her eyes bright with tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! don't let's spoil things by thinking of
+money," she said. "I've got something&mdash;&mdash;" Her
+voice fell to a whisper. "Don't let's spoil things by
+thinking of money.... It's too good, dear, to be
+true. It's too good to be true. It makes everything
+perfect.... We'll have to furnish that
+little room. I didn't dare to hope it&mdash;somehow.
+I've been so excited and afraid. But we've got to
+furnish that little room there&mdash;that empty little
+room upstairs, dear, that we left over.... Oh
+my <i>dear!</i> my <i>dear!</i>"</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 4</p>
+
+<p>The world of Trafford and Marjorie was filled
+and transfigured by the advent of their child.</p>
+
+<p>For two days of abundant silences he had been
+preparing a statement of his case for her, he had been
+full of the danger to his research and all the waste of
+his life that her extravagance threatened. He wanted
+to tell her just all that his science meant to him,
+explain how his income and life had all been arranged
+to leave him, mind and time and energy, free for these
+commanding investigations. His life was to him the
+service of knowledge&mdash;or futility. He had perceived
+that she did not understand this in him; that for her,
+life was a blaze of eagerly sought experiences and
+gratifications. So far he had thought out things
+and had them ready for her. But now all this impending
+discussion vanished out of his world. Their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">-261-</a></span>
+love was to be crowned by the miracle of parentage.
+This fact flooded his outlook and submerged every
+other consideration.</p>
+
+<p>This manifest probability came to him as if it were
+an unforeseen marvel. It was as if he had never
+thought of such a thing before, as though a fact
+entirely novel in the order of the universe had come
+into existence. Marjorie became again magical and
+wonderful for him, but in a manner new and strange,
+she was grave, solemn, significant. He was filled with
+a passionate solicitude for her welfare, and a passionate
+desire to serve her. It seemed impossible to
+him that only a day or so ago he should have been
+accusing her in his heart of disloyalty, and searching
+for excuses and mitigations....</p>
+
+<p>All the freshness of his first love for Marjorie
+returned, his keen sense of the sweet gallantry of her
+voice and bearing, his admiration for the swift, falconlike
+swoop of her decisions, for the grace and poise
+of her body, and the steady frankness of her eyes; but
+now it was all charged with his sense of this new joint
+life germinating at the heart of her slender vigour,
+spreading throughout her being to change it altogether
+into womanhood for ever. In this new light
+his passion for research and all the scheme of his life
+appeared faded and unworthy, as much egotism as if
+he had been devoted to hunting or golf or any such
+aimless preoccupation. Fatherhood gripped him and
+faced him about. It was manifestly a monstrous
+thing that he should ever have expected Marjorie to
+become a mere undisturbing accessory to the selfish
+intellectualism of his career, to shave and limit herself
+to a mere bachelor income, and play no part of
+her own in the movement of the world. He knew better
+now. Research must fall into its proper place,
+and for his immediate business he must set to work to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">-262-</a></span>
+supplement his manifestly inadequate resources.</p>
+
+<p>At first he could form no plan at all for doing
+that. He determined that research must still have
+his morning hours until lunch-time, and, he privately
+resolved, some part of the night. The rest of his
+day, he thought, he would set aside for a time to
+money-making. But he was altogether inexperienced
+in the methods of money-making; it was a new problem,
+and a new sort of problem to him altogether. He
+discovered himself helpless and rather silly in the
+matter. The more obvious possibilities seemed to be
+that he might lecture upon his science or write. He
+communicated with a couple of lecture agencies, and
+was amazed at their scepticism; no doubt he knew his
+science, on that point they were complimentary in a
+profuse, unconvincing manner, but could he interest
+like X&mdash;and here they named a notorious quack&mdash;could
+he <i>draw</i>? He offered Science Notes to a weekly
+periodical; the editor answered that for the purposes
+of his publication he preferred, as between professors
+and journalists, journalists. "You real
+scientific men," he said, "are no doubt a thousand
+times more accurate and novel and all that, but as
+no one seems able to understand you&mdash;&mdash;" He went
+to his old fellow-student, Gwenn, who was editing
+<i>The Scientific Review</i>, and through him he secured
+some semi-popular lectures, which involved, he found,
+travelling about twenty-nine miles weekly at the rate
+of four-and-sixpence a mile&mdash;counting nothing for
+the lectures. Afterwards Gwenn arranged for some
+regular notes on physics and micro-chemistry. Trafford
+made out a weekly time-table, on whose white
+of dignity, leisure, and the honourable pursuit of
+knowledge, a diaper of red marked the claims of
+domestic necessity.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 5</p>
+
+<p>It was astonishing how completely this coming<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">-263-</a></span>
+child dominated the whole atmosphere and all the
+circumstances of the Traffords. It became their
+central fact, to which everything else turned and
+pointed. Its effect on Marjorie's circle of school and
+college friends was prodigious. She was the first of
+their company to cross the mysterious boundaries of
+a woman's life. She became to them a heroine mingled
+with something of the priestess. They called
+upon her more abundantly and sat with her, noted
+the change in her eyes and voice and bearing, talking
+with a kind of awe and a faint diffidence of the promised
+new life.</p>
+
+<p>Many of them had been deeply tinged by the
+women's suffrage movement, the feminist note was
+strong among them, and when one afternoon Ottiline
+Winchelsea brought round Agatha Alimony, the
+novelist, and Agatha said in that deep-ringing voice
+of hers: "I hope it will be a girl, so that presently she
+may fight the battle of her sex," there was the profoundest
+emotion. But when Marjorie conveyed that
+to Trafford he was lacking in response.</p>
+
+<p>"I want a boy," he said, and, being pressed for a
+reason, explained: "Oh, one likes to have a boy. I
+want him with just your quick eyes and ears, my
+dear, and just my own safe and certain hands."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Pope received the news with that depth and
+aimless complexity of emotion which had now become
+her habitual method with Marjorie. She kissed and
+clasped her daughter, and thought confusedly over
+her shoulder, and said: "Of course, dear&mdash;&mdash;. Oh, I
+<i>do</i> so hope it won't annoy your father." Daffy was
+"nice," but vague, and sufficiently feminist to wish it
+a daughter, and the pseudo-twins said "<i>Hoo</i>-ray!"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">-264-</a></span>
+and changed the subject at the earliest possible opportunity.
+But Theodore was deeply moved at the
+prospect of becoming an uncle, and went apart and
+mused deeply and darkly thereon for some time. It
+was difficult to tell just what Trafford's mother
+thought, she was complex and subtle, and evidently
+did not show Marjorie all that was in her mind; but
+at any rate it was clear the prospect of a grandchild
+pleased and interested her. And about Aunt Plessington's
+views there was no manner of doubt at all.
+She thought, and remarked judicially, as one might
+criticize a game of billiards, that on the whole it was
+just a little bit too soon.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 6</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie kept well throughout March and April,
+and then suddenly she grew unutterably weary and
+uncomfortable in London. The end of April came
+hot and close and dry&mdash;it might have been July for
+the heat&mdash;the scrap of garden wilted, and the streets
+were irritating with fine dust and blown scraps of
+paper and drifting straws. She could think of nothing
+but the shade of trees, and cornfields under sunlight
+and the shadows of passing clouds. So Trafford
+took out an old bicycle and wandered over the
+home counties for three days, and at last hit upon a
+little country cottage near Great Missenden, a cottage
+a couple of girl artists had furnished and now
+wanted to let. It had a long, untidy vegetable garden
+and a small orchard and drying-ground, with an
+old, superannuated humbug of a pear-tree near the
+centre surrounded by a green seat, and high hedges
+with the promise of honeysuckle and dog-roses, and
+gaps that opened into hospitable beechwoods&mdash;woods
+not so thick but that there were glades of bluebells,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">-265-</a></span>
+bracken and, to be exact, in places embattled stinging-nettles.
+He took it and engaged a minute, active,
+interested, philoprogenitive servant girl for it, and
+took Marjorie thither in a taxi-cab. She went out,
+wrapped in a shawl, and sat under the pear-tree and
+cried quietly with weakness and sentiment and the
+tenderness of afternoon sunshine, and forthwith
+began to pick up wonderfully, and was presently
+writing to Trafford to buy her a dog to go for walks
+with, while he was away in London.</p>
+
+<p>Trafford was still struggling along with his research
+in spite of a constant gravitation to the
+cottage and Marjorie's side, but he was also doing
+his best to grapple with the difficulties of his financial
+situation. His science notes, which were very uncongenial
+and difficult to do, and his lecturing, still left
+his income far behind his expenditure, and the problem
+of minimising the inevitable fresh inroads on his
+capital was insistent and distracting. He discovered
+that he could manage his notes more easily and write
+a more popular article if he dictated to a typist
+instead of writing out the stuff in his own manuscript.
+Dictating made his sentences more copious and open,
+and the effect of the young lady's by no means acquiescent
+back was to make him far more explicit than he
+tended to be pen in hand. With a pen and alone he
+felt the boredom of the job unendurably, and, to be
+through with it, became more and more terse, allusive,
+and compactly technical, after the style of his original
+papers. One or two articles by him were accepted
+and published by the monthly magazines, but
+as he took what the editors sent him, he did not find
+this led to any excessive opulence....</p>
+
+<p>But his heart was very much with Marjorie
+through all this time. Hitherto he had taken her
+health and vigour and companionship for granted,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">-266-</a></span>
+and it changed his attitudes profoundly to find her
+now an ailing thing, making an invincible appeal for
+restraint and consideration and help. She changed
+marvellously, she gained a new dignity, and her complexion
+took upon itself a fresh, soft beauty. He
+would spend three or four days out of a week at the
+cottage, and long hours of that would be at her side,
+paper and notes of some forthcoming lecture at hand
+neglected, talking to her consolingly and dreamingly.
+His thoughts were full of ideas about education; he
+was obsessed, as are most intelligent young parents of
+the modern type, by the enormous possibilities of human
+improvement that might be achieved&mdash;if only
+one could begin with a baby from the outset, on the
+best lines, with the best methods, training and preparing
+it&mdash;presumably for a cleaned and chastened
+world. Indeed he made all the usual discoveries of
+intelligent modern young parents very rapidly, fully
+and completely, and overlooked most of those practical
+difficulties that finally reduce them to human
+dimensions again in quite the normal fashion.</p>
+
+<p>"I sit and muse sometimes when I ought to be
+computing," he said. "Old Durgan watches me and
+grunts. But think, if we take reasonable care, watch
+its phases, stand ready with a kindergarten toy directly
+it stretches out its hand&mdash;think what we can
+make of it!"...</p>
+
+<p>"We will make it the most wonderful child in the
+world," said Marjorie. "Indeed! what else can it
+be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your eyes," said Trafford, "and my hands."</p>
+
+<p>"A girl."</p>
+
+<p>"A boy."</p>
+
+<p>He kissed her white and passive wrist.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 7</p>
+
+<p>The child was born a little before expectation at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">-267-</a></span>
+the cottage throughout a long summer's night and
+day in early September. Its coming into the world
+was a long and painful struggle; the general practitioner
+who had seemed two days before a competent
+and worthy person enough, revealed himself as hesitating,
+old-fashioned, and ill-equipped. He had a
+lingering theological objection to the use of chloroform,
+and the nurse from London sulked under his
+directions and came and discussed his methods scornfully
+with Trafford. From sundown until daylight
+Trafford chafed in the little sitting-room and tried
+to sleep, and hovered listening at the foot of the narrow
+staircase to the room above. He lived through
+interminable hours of moaning and suspense....</p>
+
+<p>The dawn and sunrise came with a quality of
+beautiful horror. For years afterwards that memory
+stood out among other memories as something peculiarly
+strange and dreadful. Day followed an interminable
+night and broke slowly. Things crept out of
+darkness, awoke as it were out of mysteries and
+reclothed themselves in unsubstantial shadows and
+faint-hued forms. All through that slow infiltration
+of the world with light and then with colour, the
+universe it seemed was moaning and endeavouring,
+and a weak and terrible struggle went on and kept on
+in that forbidden room whose windows opened upon
+the lightening world, dying to a sobbing silence, rising
+again to agonizing cries, fluctuating, a perpetual
+obstinate failure to achieve a tormenting end. He
+went out, and behold the sky was a wonder of pink
+flushed level clouds and golden hope, and nearly
+every star except the morning star had gone, the
+supine moon was pale and half-dissolved in blue, and
+the grass which had been grey and wet, was green<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">-268-</a></span>
+again, and the bushes and trees were green. He
+returned and hovered in the passage, washed his face,
+listened outside the door for age-long moments, and
+then went out again to listen under the window....</p>
+
+<p>He went to his room and shaved, sat for a long
+time thinking, and then suddenly knelt by his bed and
+prayed. He had never prayed before in all his
+life....</p>
+
+<p>He returned to the garden, and there neglected
+and wet with dew was the camp chair Marjorie had
+sat on the evening before, the shawl she had been
+wearing, the novel she had been reading. He brought
+these things in as if they were precious treasures....</p>
+
+<p>Light was pouring into the world again now. He
+noticed with an extreme particularity the detailed
+dewy delicacy of grass and twig, the silver edges to
+the leaves of briar and nettle, the soft clearness of the
+moss on bank and wall. He noted the woods with
+the first warmth of autumn tinting their green, the
+clear, calm sky, with just a wisp or so of purple
+cloud waning to a luminous pink on the brightening
+east, the exquisite freshness of the air. And still
+through the open window, incessant, unbearable,
+came this sound of Marjorie moaning, now dying
+away, now reviving, now weakening again....</p>
+
+<p>Was she dying? Were they murdering her? It
+was incredible this torture could go on. Somehow it
+must end. Chiefly he wanted to go in and kill the
+doctor. But it would do no good to kill the doctor!</p>
+
+<p>At last the nurse came out, looking a little scared,
+to ask him to cycle three miles away and borrow some
+special sort of needle that the fool of a doctor had
+forgotten. He went, outwardly meek, and returning
+was met by the little interested servant, very alert and
+excited and rather superior&mdash;for here was something
+no man can do&mdash;with the news that he had a beautiful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">-269-</a></span>
+little daughter, and that all was well with
+Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>He said "Thank God, thank God!" several times,
+and then went out into the kitchen and began to eat
+some flabby toast and drink some lukewarm tea he
+found there. He was horribly fatigued. "Is she
+all right?" he asked over his shoulder, hearing the
+doctor's footsteps on the stairs....</p>
+
+<p>They were very pontifical and official with him.</p>
+
+<p>Presently they brought out a strange, wizened
+little animal, wailing very stoutly, with a face like a
+very, very old woman, and reddish skin and hair&mdash;it
+had quite a lot of wet blackish hair of an incredible
+delicacy of texture. It kicked with a stumpy monkey's
+legs and inturned feet. He held it: his heart
+went out to it. He pitied it beyond measure, it was
+so weak and ugly. He was astonished and distressed
+by the fact of its extreme endearing ugliness. He
+had expected something strikingly pretty. It clenched
+a fist, and he perceived it had all its complement
+of fingers and ridiculous, pretentious little finger
+nails. Inside that fist it squeezed his heart....
+He did not want to give it back to them. He wanted
+to protect it. He felt they could not understand it
+or forgive, as he could forgive, its unjustifiable
+feebleness....</p>
+
+<p>Later, for just a little while, he was permitted to
+see Marjorie&mdash;Marjorie so spent, so unspeakably
+weary, and yet so reassuringly vital and living, so
+full of gentle pride and gentler courage amidst the
+litter of surgical precaution, that the tears came
+streaming down his face and he sobbed shamelessly as
+he kissed her. "Little daughter," she whispered and
+smiled&mdash;just as she had always smiled&mdash;that sweet,
+dear smile of hers!&mdash;and closed her eyes and said no<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">-270-</a></span>
+more....</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards as he walked up and down the garden
+he remembered their former dispute and thought how
+characteristic of Marjorie it was to have a daughter
+in spite of all his wishes.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 8</p>
+
+<p>For weeks and weeks this astonishing and unprecedented
+being filled the Traffords' earth and sky.
+Very speedily its minute quaintness passed, and it
+became a vigorous delightful baby that was, as the
+nurse explained repeatedly and very explicitly, not
+only quite exceptional and distinguished, but exactly
+everything that a baby should be. Its weight became
+of supreme importance; there was a splendid week
+when it put on nine ounces, and an indifferent one
+when it added only one. And then came a terrible
+crisis. It was ill; some sort of infection had reached
+it, an infantile cholera. Its temperature mounted to
+a hundred and three and a half. It became a flushed
+misery, wailing with a pathetic feeble voice. Then it
+ceased to wail. Marjorie became white-lipped and
+heavy-eyed from want of sleep, and it seemed to
+Trafford that perhaps his child might die. It seemed
+to him that the spirit of the universe must be a monstrous
+calivan since children had to die. He
+went for a long walk through the October beechwoods,
+under a windy sky, and in a drift of falling
+leaves, wondering with a renewed freshness at the
+haunting futilities of life.... Life was not futile&mdash;anything
+but that, but futility seemed to be stalking it,
+waiting for it.... When he returned the child
+was already better, and in a few days it was well
+again&mdash;but very light and thin.</p>
+
+<p>When they were sure of its safety, Marjorie and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">-271-</a></span>
+he confessed the extremity of their fears to one another.
+They had not dared to speak before, and
+even now they spoke in undertones of the shadow
+that had hovered and passed over the dearest thing
+in their lives.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER THE THIRD</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The New Phase</span></h3>
+
+<p class="title">§ 1</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the next six months the child of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">-272-</a></span>
+ages became an almost ordinary healthy baby, and
+Trafford began to think consecutively about his
+scientific work again&mdash;in the intervals of effort of a
+more immediately practical sort.</p>
+
+<p>The recall of molecular physics and particularly
+of the internal condition of colloids to something like
+their old importance in his life was greatly accelerated
+by the fact that a young Oxford don named
+Behrens was showing extraordinary energy in what
+had been for a time Trafford's distinctive and undisputed
+field. Behrens was one of those vividly clever
+energetic people who are the despair of originative
+men. He had begun as Trafford's pupil and sedulous
+ape; he had gone on to work that imitated Trafford's
+in everything except its continual freshness, and
+now he was ransacking every scrap of suggestion to
+be found in Trafford's work, and developing it with
+an intensity of uninspired intelligence that most
+marvellously simulated originality. He was already
+being noted as an authority; sometimes in an article
+his name would be quoted and Trafford's omitted in
+relation to Trafford's ideas, and in every way his
+emergence and the manner of his emergence threatened
+and stimulated his model and master. A great
+effort had to be made. Trafford revived the drooping
+spirits of Durgan by a renewed punctuality in
+the laboratory. He began to stay away from home
+at night and work late again, now, however, under
+no imperative inspiration, but simply because it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">-273-</a></span>
+only by such an invasion of the evening and night
+that it would be possible to make headway against
+Behren's unremitting industry. And this new demand
+upon Trafford's already strained mental and nervous
+equipment began very speedily to have its effect
+upon his domestic life.</p>
+
+<p>It is only in romantic fiction that a man can work
+strenuously to the limit of his power and come home
+to be sweet, sunny and entertaining. Trafford's preoccupation
+involved a certain negligence of Marjorie,
+a certain indisposition to be amused or interested by
+trifling things, a certain irritability....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 2</p>
+
+<p>And now, indeed, the Traffords were coming to the
+most difficult and fatal phase in marriage. They had
+had that taste of defiant adventure which is the
+crown of a spirited love affair, they had known the
+sweetness of a maiden passion for a maid, and they
+had felt all those rich and solemn emotions, those
+splendid fears and terrible hopes that weave themselves
+about the great partnership in parentage.
+And now, so far as sex was concerned, there might be
+much joy and delight still, but no more wonder, no
+fresh discoveries of incredible new worlds and unsuspected
+stars. Love, which had been a new garden, an
+unknown land, a sunlit sea to launch upon, was now a
+rich treasure-house of memories. And memories, although
+they afford a perpetually increasing enrichment
+to emotion, are not sufficient in themselves for
+the daily needs of life.</p>
+
+<p>For this, indeed, is the truth of passionate love,
+that it works outs its purpose and comes to an end.
+A day arrives in every marriage when the lovers must
+face each other, disillusioned, stripped of the last<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">-274-</a></span>
+shred of excitement&mdash;undisguisedly themselves. And
+our two were married; they had bound themselves
+together under a penalty of scandalous disgrace, to
+take the life-long consequences of their passionate
+association.</p>
+
+<p>It was upon Trafford that this exhaustion of the
+sustaining magic of love pressed most severely, because
+it was he who had made the greatest adaptations
+to the exigencies of their union. He had
+crippled, he perceived more and more clearly, the
+research work upon which his whole being had once
+been set, and his hours were full of tiresome and
+trivial duties and his mind engaged and worried by
+growing financial anxieties. He had made these
+abandonments in a phase of exalted passion for the
+one woman in the world and her unprecedented child,
+and now he saw, in spite of all his desire not to see,
+that she was just a weak human being among human
+beings, and neither she nor little Margharita so very
+marvellous.</p>
+
+<p>But while Marjorie shrank to the dimensions of
+reality, research remained still a luminous and commanding
+dream. In love one fails or one wins home,
+but the lure of research is for ever beyond the hills,
+every victory is a new desire. Science has inexhaustibly
+fresh worlds to conquer....</p>
+
+<p>He was beginning now to realize the dilemma of
+his life, the reality of the opposition between Marjorie
+and child and home on the one hand and on the
+other this big wider thing, this remoter, severer
+demand upon his being. He had long perceived these
+were distinct and different things, but now it appeared
+more and more inevitable that they should be
+antagonistic and mutually disregardful things. Each
+claimed him altogether, it seemed, and suffered compromise
+impatiently. And this is where the particular<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">-275-</a></span>
+stress of his situation came in. Hitherto he had
+believed that nothing of any importance was secret
+or inexplicable between himself and Marjorie. His
+ideal of his relationship had assumed a complete
+sympathy of feeling, an almost instinctive identity of
+outlook. And now it was manifest they were living
+in a state of inadequate understanding, that she
+knew only in the most general and opaque forms, the
+things that interested him so profoundly, and had
+but the most superficial interest in his impassioned
+curiosities. And missing as she did the strength of
+his intellectual purpose she missed too, she had no
+inkling of, the way in which her careless expansiveness
+pressed upon him. She was unaware that she
+was destroying an essential thing in his life.</p>
+
+<p>He could not tell how far this antagonism was
+due to inalterable discords of character, how far it
+might not be an ineradicable sex difference, a necessary
+aspect of marriage. The talk of old Sir Roderick
+Dover at the Winton Club germinated in his
+mind, a branching and permeating suggestion. And
+then would come a phase of keen sympathy with
+Marjorie; she would say brilliant and penetrating
+things, display a swift cleverness that drove all these
+intimations of incurable divergence clean out of his
+head again. Then he would find explanations in the
+differences between his and Marjorie's training and
+early associations. He perceived his own upbringing
+had had a steadfastness and consistency that had
+been altogether lacking in hers. He had had the
+rare advantage of perfect honesty in the teaching
+and tradition of his home. There had never been
+any shams or sentimentalities for him to find out and
+abandon. From boyhood his mother's hand had
+pointed steadily to the search for truth as the
+supreme ennobling fact in life. She had never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">-276-</a></span>
+preached this to him, never delivered discourses upon
+his father's virtues, but all her conversation and life
+was saturated with this idea. Compared with this
+atmosphere of high and sustained direction, the
+intellectual and moral quality of the Popes, he saw,
+was the quality of an agitated rag bag. They had
+thought nothing out, joined nothing together, they
+seemed to believe everything and nothing, they were
+neither religious nor irreligious, neither moral nor
+adventurous. In the place of a religion, and tainting
+their entire atmosphere, they had the decaying remains
+of a dead Anglicanism; it was clear they did
+not believe in its creed, and as clear that they did
+not want to get rid of it; it afforded them no guidance,
+but only vague pretensions, and the dismal
+exercises of Silas Root flourished in its shadows, a
+fungus, a post-mortem activity of the soul. None of
+them had any idea of what they were for or what
+their lives as a whole might mean; they had no standards,
+but only instincts and an instinctive fear of
+instincts; Pope wanted to be tremendously respected
+and complimented by everybody and get six per cent.
+for his money; Mrs. Pope wanted things to go
+smoothly; the young people had a general indisposition
+to do anything that might "look bad," and
+otherwise "have a good time." But neither Marjorie
+nor any of them had any test for a good time,
+and so they fluctuated in their conceptions of what
+they wanted from day to day. Now it was Plessingtonian
+standards, now Carmel standards, now
+the standards of Agatha Alimony; now it was a stimulating
+novel, now a gleam of ćsthetic imaginativeness
+come, Heaven knows whence, that dominated her
+mood. He was beginning to understand all this at
+last, and to see the need of coherence in Marjorie's
+mood.</p>
+
+<p>He realized the unfairness of keeping his thoughts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">-277-</a></span>
+to himself, the need of putting his case before her,
+and making her realize their fatal and widening
+divergence. He wanted to infect her with his scientific
+passion, to give her his sense of the gravity of
+their practical difficulties. He would sit amidst his
+neglected work in his laboratory framing explanatory
+phrases. He would prepare the most lucid and
+complete statements, and go about with these in his
+mind for days waiting for an opportunity of saying
+what he felt so urgently had to be said.</p>
+
+<p>But the things that seemed so luminous and effective
+in the laboratory had a curious way of fading
+and shrinking beside the bright colours of Marjorie's
+Bokhara hangings, in the presence of little Margharita
+pink and warm and entertaining in her bath,
+or amidst the fluttering rustle of the afternoon tea-parties
+that were now becoming frequent in his
+house. And when he was alone with her he discovered
+they didn't talk now any more&mdash;except in
+terms of a constrained and formal affection.</p>
+
+<p>What had happened to them? What was the
+matter between himself and Marjorie that he couldn't
+even intimate his sense of their divergence? He
+would have liked to discuss the whole thing with his
+mother, but somehow that seemed disloyal to Marjorie....</p>
+
+<p>One day they quarrelled.</p>
+
+<p>He came in about six in the afternoon, jaded
+from the delivery of a suburban lecture, and the
+consequent tedium of suburban travel, and discovered
+Marjorie examining the effect of a new picture
+which had replaced the German print of sunlit waves
+over the dining-room mantelpiece. It was a painting
+in the post-impressionist manner, and it had arrived
+after the close of the exhibition in Weldon Street, at
+which Marjorie had bought it. She had bought it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">-278-</a></span>
+in obedience to a sudden impulse, and its imminence
+had long weighed upon her conscience. She had
+gone to the show with Sydney Flor and old Mrs.
+Flor, Sydney's mother, and a kind of excitement had
+come upon them at the idea of possessing this particular
+picture. Mrs. Flor had already bought three
+Herbins, and her daughter wanted to dissuade her
+from more. "But they're so delightful," said Mrs.
+Flor. "You're overrunning your allowance," said
+Sydney. Disputing the point, they made inquiries
+for the price, and learnt that this bright epigram in
+colour was going begging&mdash;was even offered at a
+reduction from the catalogue price. A reduced
+price always had a strong appeal nowadays to Marjorie's
+mind. "If you don't get it," she said abruptly,
+"I shall."</p>
+
+<p>The transition from that attitude to ownership
+was amazingly rapid. Then nothing remained but
+to wait for the picture. She had dreaded a mistake,
+a blundering discord, but now with the thing hung
+she could see her quick eye had not betrayed her. It
+was a mass of reds, browns, purples, and vivid greens
+and greys; an effect of roof and brick house facing
+upon a Dutch canal, and it lit up the room and was
+echoed and reflected by all the rest of her courageous
+colour scheme, like a coal-fire amidst mahogany and
+metal. It justified itself to her completely, and she
+faced her husband with a certain confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo!" he cried.</p>
+
+<p>"A new picture," she said. "What do you think
+of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"A town or something&mdash;never mind. Look at
+the colour. It heartens everything."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford looked at the painting with a reluctant<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">-279-</a></span>
+admiration.</p>
+
+<p>"It's brilliant&mdash;and impudent. He's an artist&mdash;whoever
+he is. He hits the thing. But&mdash;I say&mdash;how
+did you get it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I bought it."</p>
+
+<p>"Bought it! Good Lord! How much?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! ten guineas," said Marjorie, with an affectation
+of ease; "it will be worth thirty in ten years'
+time."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford's reply was to repeat: "Ten guineas!"</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met, and there was singularly little
+tenderness in their eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It was priced at thirteen," said Marjorie, ending
+a pause, and with a sinking heart.</p>
+
+<p>Trafford had left her side. He walked to the
+window and sat down in a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"I think this is too much," he said, and his voice
+had disagreeable notes in it she had never heard
+before. "I have just been earning two guineas at
+Croydon, of all places, administering comminuted
+science to fools&mdash;and here I find&mdash;this exploit! Ten
+guineas' worth of picture. To say we can't afford it
+is just to waste a mild expression. It's&mdash;mad extravagance.
+It's waste of money&mdash;it's&mdash;oh!&mdash;monstrous
+disloyalty. Disloyalty!" He stared resentful at the
+cheerful, unhesitating daubs of the picture for a
+moment. Its affected carelessness goaded him to
+fresh words. He spoke in a tone of absolute hostility.
+"I think this winds me up to something," he said.
+"You'll have to give up your cheque-book, Marjorie."</p>
+
+<p>"Give up my cheque-book!"</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at her and nodded. There was a
+warm flush in her cheeks, her lips panted apart, and
+tears of disappointment and vexation were shining
+beautifully in her eyes. She mingled the quality of an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">-280-</a></span>
+indignant woman with the distress and unreasonable
+resentment of a child.</p>
+
+<p>"Because I've bought this picture?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can we go on like this?" he asked, and felt how
+miserably he had bungled in opening this question
+that had been in his mind so long.</p>
+
+<p>"But it's <i>beautiful!</i>" she said.</p>
+
+<p>He disregarded that. He felt now that he had to
+go on with these long-premeditated expostulations.
+He was tired and dusty from his third-class carriage,
+his spirit was tired and dusty, and he said what he
+had to say without either breadth or power, an undignified
+statement of personal grievances, a mere
+complaint of the burthen of work that falls upon a
+man. That she missed the high aim in him, and all
+sense of the greatness they were losing had vanished
+from his thoughts. He had too heavy a share of
+the common burthen, and she pressed upon him unthinkingly;
+that was all he could say. He girded at
+her with a bitter and loveless truth; it was none the
+less cruel that in her heart she knew these things he
+said were true. But he went beyond justice&mdash;as
+every quarrelling human being does; he called the
+things she had bought and the harmonies she had
+created, "this litter and rubbish for which I am
+wasting my life." That stabbed into her pride
+acutely and deeply. She knew anyhow that it wasn't
+so simple and crude as that. It was not mere witlessness
+she contributed to their trouble. She tried to
+indicate her sense of that. But she had no power of
+ordered reasoning, she made futile interruptions, she
+was inexpressive of anything but emotion, she felt
+gagged against his flow of indignant, hostile words.
+They blistered her.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she went to her little desk in the corner,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">-281-</a></span>
+unlocked it with trembling hands, snatched her
+cheque-book out of a heap of still unsettled bills, and
+having locked that anti-climax safe away again,
+turned upon him. "Here it is," she said, and stood
+poised for a moment. Then she flung down the little
+narrow grey cover&mdash;nearly empty, it was, of cheques,
+on the floor before him.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it," she cried, "take it. I never asked
+you to give it me."</p>
+
+<p>A memory of Orta and its reeds and sunshine and
+love rose like a luminous mist between them....</p>
+
+<p>She ran weeping from the room.</p>
+
+<p>He leapt to his feet as the door closed. "Marjorie!"
+he cried.</p>
+
+<p>But she did not hear him....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 3</p>
+
+<p>The disillusionment about marriage which had
+discovered Trafford a thwarted, overworked, and
+worried man, had revealed Marjorie with time on her
+hands, superabundant imaginative energy, and no
+clear intimation of any occupation. With them, as
+with thousands of young couples in London to-day,
+the breadwinner was overworked, and the spending
+partner's duty was chiefly the negative one of not
+spending. You cannot consume your energies merely
+in not spending money. Do what she could, Marjorie
+could not contrive to make house and child fill
+the waking hours. She was far too active and irritable
+a being to be beneficial company all day for
+genial, bubble-blowing little Margharita; she could
+play with that young lady and lead her into ecstasies
+of excitement and delight, and she could see with an
+almost instinctive certainty when anything was going
+wrong; but for the rest that little life reposed far<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">-282-</a></span>
+more beneficially upon the passive acquiescence of
+May, her pink and wholesome nurse. And the household
+generally was in the hands of a trustworthy
+cook-general, who maintained a tolerable routine.
+Marjorie did not dare to have an idea about food or
+domestic arrangements; if she touched that routine
+so much as with her little finger it sent up the bills.
+She could knock off butcher and greengrocer and do
+every scrap of household work that she could touch,
+in a couple of hours a day. She tried to find some
+work to fill her leisure; she suggested to Trafford
+that she might help him by writing up his Science
+Notes from rough pencil memoranda, but when it
+became clear that the first step to her doing this
+would be the purchase of a Remington typewriter
+and a special low table to carry it, he became bluntly
+discouraging. She thought of literary work, and sat
+down one day to write a short story and earn
+guineas, and was surprised to find that she knew
+nothing of any sort of human being about whom she
+could invent a story. She tried a cheap subscription
+at Mudie's and novels, and they filled her with a
+thirst for events; she tried needlework, and found her
+best efforts aesthetically feeble and despicable, and
+that her mind prowled above the silks and colours
+like a hungry wolf.</p>
+
+<p>The early afternoons were the worst time, from
+two to four, before calling began. The devil was
+given great power over Marjorie's early afternoon.
+She could even envy her former home life then, and
+reflect that there, at any rate, one had a chance of a
+game or a quarrel with Daffy or Syd or Rom or
+Theodore. She would pull herself together and go
+out for a walk, and whichever way she went there
+were shops and shops and shops, a glittering array
+of tempting opportunities for spending money.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">-283-</a></span>
+Sometimes she would give way to spending exactly
+as a struggling drunkard decides to tipple. She
+would fix on some object, some object trivial and a
+little rare and not too costly, as being needed&mdash;when
+she knew perfectly well it wasn't needed&mdash;and choose
+the most remotest shops and display the exactest insistence
+upon her requirements. Sometimes she would
+get home from these raids without buying at all.
+After four the worst of the day was over; one could
+call on people or people might telephone and follow
+up with a call; and there was a chance of Trafford
+coming home....</p>
+
+<p>One day at the Carmels' she found herself engaged
+in a vigorous flirtation with young Carmel. She
+hadn't noticed it coming on, but there she was in a
+windowseat talking quite closely to him. He said he
+was writing a play, a wonderful passionate play
+about St. Francis, and only she could inspire and
+advise him. Wasn't there some afternoon in the week
+when she sat and sewed, so that he might come and
+sit by her and read to her and talk to her? He made
+his request with a certain confidence, but it filled her
+with a righteous panic; she pulled him up with an
+abruptness that was almost inartistic. On her way
+home she was acutely ashamed of herself; this was
+the first time she had let any man but Trafford think
+he might be interesting to her, but once or twice on
+former occasions she had been on the verge of such
+provocative intimations. This sort of thing anyhow
+mustn't happen.</p>
+
+<p>But if she didn't dress with any distinction&mdash;because
+of the cost&mdash;and didn't flirt and trail men in
+her wake, what was she to do at the afternoon gatherings
+which were now her chief form of social contact?
+What was going to bring people to her house?
+She knew that she was more than ordinarily beautiful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">-284-</a></span>
+and that she could talk well, but that does not
+count for much if you are rather dowdy, and quite
+uneventfully virtuous.</p>
+
+<p>It became the refrain of all her thoughts that she
+must find something to do.</p>
+
+<p>There remained "Movements."</p>
+
+<p>She might take up a movement. She was a rather
+exceptionally good public speaker. Only her elopement
+and marriage had prevented her being president
+of her college Debating Society. If she devoted herself
+to some movement she would be free to devise an
+ostentatiously simple dress for herself and stick to it,
+and she would be able to give her little house a significance
+of her own, and present herself publicly
+against what is perhaps quite the best of all backgrounds
+for a good-looking, clear-voiced, self-possessed
+woman, a platform. Yes; she had to go in
+for a Movement.</p>
+
+<p>She reviewed the chief contemporary Movements
+much as she might have turned over dress fabrics in a
+draper's shop, weighing the advantages and disadvantages
+of each....</p>
+
+<p>London, of course, is always full of Movements.
+Essentially they are absorbents of superfluous feminine
+energy. They have a common flavour of progress
+and revolutionary purpose, and common features
+in abundant meetings, officials, and organization
+generally. Few are expensive, and still fewer produce
+any tangible results in the world. They direct
+themselves at the most various ends; the Poor, that
+favourite butt, either as a whole or in such typical
+sections as the indigent invalid or the indigent aged,
+the young, public health, the woman's cause, the
+prevention of animal food, anti-vivisection, the gratuitous
+advertisement of Shakespear (that neglected
+poet), novel but genteel modifications of medical or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">-285-</a></span>
+religious practice, dress reform, the politer aspects
+of socialism, the encouragement of ćronautics,
+universal military service, garden suburbs, domestic
+arts, proportional representation, duodecimal arithmetic,
+and the liberation of the drama. They range
+in size and importance from campaigns on a Plessingtonian
+scale to sober little intellectual Beckingham
+things that arrange to meet half-yearly, and
+die quietly before the second assembly. If Heaven
+by some miracle suddenly gave every Movement in
+London all it professed to want, our world would be
+standing on its head and everything would be
+extremely unfamiliar and disconcerting. But, as
+Mr. Roosevelt once remarked, the justifying thing
+about life is the effort and not the goal, and few
+Movements involve any real and impassioned struggle
+to get to the ostensible object. They exist as an
+occupation; they exercise the intellectual and moral
+activities without undue disturbance of the normal
+routines of life. In the days when everybody was
+bicycling an ingenious mechanism called Hacker's
+Home Bicycle used to be advertised. Hacker's Home
+Bicycle was a stand bearing small rubber wheels upon
+which one placed one's bicycle (properly equipped
+with a cyclometer) in such a way that it could be
+mounted and ridden without any sensible forward
+movement whatever. In bad weather, or when the
+state of the roads made cycling abroad disagreeable
+Hacker's Home Bicycle could be placed in front of
+an open window and ridden furiously for any length
+of time. Whenever the rider tired, he could descend&mdash;comfortably
+at home again&mdash;and examine the
+cyclometer to see how far he had been. In exactly
+the same way the ordinary London Movement gives
+scope for the restless and progressive impulse in
+human nature without the risk of personal entanglements<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">-286-</a></span>
+or any inconvenient disturbance of the milieu.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie considered the Movements about her.
+She surveyed the accessible aspects of socialism, but
+that old treasure-house of constructive suggestion
+had an effect like a rich château which had been
+stormed and looted by a mob. For a time the
+proposition that "we are all Socialists nowadays"
+had prevailed. The blackened and discredited frame
+remained, the contents were scattered; Aunt Plessington
+had a few pieces, the Tory Democrats had
+taken freely, the Liberals were in possession of a
+hastily compiled collection. There wasn't, she perceived,
+and there never had been a Socialist Movement;
+the socialist idea which had now become part
+of the general consciousness, had always been too big
+for polite domestication. She weighed Aunt Plessington,
+too, in the balance, and found her not so
+much wanting indeed as excessive. She felt that a
+Movement with Aunt Plessington in it couldn't
+possibly offer even elbow-room for anybody else.
+Philanthropy generally she shunned. The movements
+that aim at getting poor people into rooms and shouting
+at them in an improving, authoritative way,
+aroused an instinctive dislike in her. Her sense of
+humour, again, would not let her patronize Shakespear
+or the stage, or raise the artistic level of the
+country by means of green-dyed deal, and the influence
+of Trafford on her mind debarred her from
+attempting the physical and moral regeneration of
+humanity by means of beans and nut butter. It was
+indeed rather by the elimination of competing movements
+than by any positive preference that she
+found herself declining at last towards Agatha
+Alimony's section of the suffrage movement....
+It was one of the less militant sections, but it held
+more meetings and passed more resolutions than any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">-287-</a></span>
+two others.</p>
+
+<p>One day Trafford, returning from an afternoon
+of forced and disappointing work in his laboratory,&mdash;his
+mind had been steadfastly sluggish and inelastic,&mdash;discovered
+Marjorie's dining room crowded
+with hats and all the rustle and colour which plays
+so large a part in constituting contemporary feminine
+personality. Buzard, the feminist writer, and a
+young man just down from Cambridge who had
+written a decadent poem, were the only men present.
+The chairs were arranged meeting-fashion, but a
+little irregularly to suggest informality; the post-impressionist
+picture was a rosy benediction on the
+gathering, and at a table in the window sat Mrs.
+Pope in the chair, looking quietly tactful in an unusually
+becoming bonnet, supported by her daughter
+and Agatha Alimony. Marjorie was in a simple
+gown of blueish-grey, hatless amidst a froth of foolish
+bows and feathers, and she looked not only beautiful
+and dignified but deliberately and conscientiously
+patient until she perceived the new arrival. Then he
+noted she was a little concerned for him, and made
+some futile sign he did not comprehend. The meeting
+was debating the behaviour of women at the
+approaching census, and a small, earnest, pale-faced
+lady with glasses was standing against the fireplace
+with a crumpled envelope covered with pencil notes
+in her hand, and making a speech. Trafford wanted
+his tea badly, but he had not the wit to realize that
+his study had been converted into a refreshment
+room for the occasion; he hesitated, and seated himself
+near the doorway, and so he was caught; he
+couldn't, he felt, get away and seem to slight a
+woman who was giving herself the pains of addressing
+him.</p>
+
+<p>The small lady in glasses was giving a fancy picture<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">-288-</a></span>
+of the mind of Mr. Asquith and its attitude to
+the suffrage movement, and telling with a sort of
+inspired intimacy just how Mr. Asquith had hoped to
+"bully women down," and just how their various
+attempts to bring home to him the eminent reasonableness
+of their sex by breaking his windows, interrupting
+his meetings, booing at him in the streets
+and threatening his life, had time after time baffled
+this arrogant hope. There had been many signs
+lately that Mr. Asquith's heart was failing him.
+Now here was a new thing to fill him with despair.
+When Mr. Asquith learnt that women refused to be
+counted in the census, then at least she was convinced
+he must give in. When he gave in it would not be
+long&mdash;she had her information upon good authority&mdash;before
+they got the Vote. So what they had to do
+was not to be counted in the census. That was their
+paramount duty at the present time. The women of
+England had to say quietly but firmly to the census
+man when he came round: "No, we don't count in an
+election, and we won't count now. Thank you."
+No one could force a woman to fill in a census paper
+she didn't want to, and for her own part, said the
+little woman with the glasses, she'd starve first. (Applause.)
+For her own part she was a householder
+with a census paper of her own, and across that she
+was going to write quite plainly and simply what she
+thought of Mr. Asquith. Some of those present
+wouldn't have census papers to fill up; they would be
+sent to the man, the so-called Head of the House.
+But the W.S.P.U. had foreseen that. Each householder
+had to write down the particulars of the
+people who slept in his house on Sunday night, or who
+arrived home before mid-day on Monday; the reply
+of the women of England must be not to sleep in a
+house that night where census papers were properly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">-289-</a></span>
+filled, and not to go home until the following afternoon.
+All through that night the women of England
+must be abroad. She herself was prepared, and her
+house would be ready. There would be coffee and
+refreshments enough for an unlimited number of
+refugees, there would be twenty or thirty sofas and
+mattresses and piles of blankets for those who chose
+to sleep safe from all counting. In every quarter of
+London there would be houses of refuge like hers.
+And so they would make Mr. Asquith's census fail,
+as it deserved to fail, as every census would fail until
+women managed these affairs in a sensible way. For
+she supposed they were all agreed that only women
+could manage these things in a sensible way. That
+was <i>her</i> contribution to this great and important
+question. (Applause, amidst which the small lady
+with the glasses resumed her seat.)</p>
+
+<p>Trafford glanced doorward, but before he could
+move another speaker was in possession of the room.
+This was a very young, tall, fair, round-shouldered
+girl who held herself with an unnatural rigidity, fixed
+her eyes on the floor just in front of the chairwoman,
+and spoke with knitted brows and an effect of extreme
+strain. She remarked that some people did
+not approve of this proposed boycott of the census.
+She hung silent for a moment, as if ransacking her
+mind for something mislaid, and then proceeded to
+remark that she proposed to occupy a few moments
+in answering that objection&mdash;if it could be called an
+objection. They said that spoiling the census was
+an illegitimate extension of the woman movement.
+Well, she objected&mdash;she objected fiercely&mdash;to every
+word of that phrase. Nothing was an illegitimate
+extension of the woman movement. Nothing could
+be. (Applause.) That was the very principle they
+had been fighting for all along. So that, examined<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">-290-</a></span>
+in this way, this so-called objection resolved itself
+into a mere question begging phrase. Nothing more.
+And her reply therefore to those who made it was
+that they were begging the question, and however
+well that might do for men, it would certainly not
+do, they would find, for women. (Applause.) For
+the freshly awakened consciousness of women. (Further
+applause.) This was a war in which quarter
+was neither asked nor given; if it were not so things
+might be different. She remained silent after that
+for the space of twenty seconds perhaps, and then
+remarked that that seemed to be all she had to say,
+and sat down amidst loud encouragement.</p>
+
+<p>Then with a certain dismay Trafford saw his wife
+upon her feet. He was afraid of the effect upon himself
+of what she was going to say, but he need have
+had no reason for his fear. Marjorie was a seasoned
+debater, self-possessed, with a voice very well controlled
+and a complete mastery of that elaborate
+appearance of reasonableness which is so essential to
+good public speaking. She could speak far better
+than she could talk. And she startled the meeting in
+her opening sentence by declaring that she meant to
+stay at home on the census night, and supply her
+husband with every scrap of information he hadn't
+got already that might be needed to make the return
+an entirely perfect return. (Marked absence of applause.)</p>
+
+<p>She proceeded to avow her passionate interest in
+the feminist movement of which this agitation for the
+vote was merely the symbol. (A voice: "No!") No
+one could be more aware of the falsity of woman's
+position at the present time than she was&mdash;she seemed
+to be speaking right across the room to Trafford&mdash;they
+were neither pets nor partners, but something
+between the two; now indulged like spoilt children,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">-291-</a></span>
+now blamed like defaulting partners; constantly provoked
+to use the arts of their sex, constantly mischievous
+because of that provocation. She caught
+her breath and stopped for a moment, as if she had
+suddenly remembered the meeting intervening between
+herself and Trafford. No, she said, there was no
+more ardent feminist and suffragist than herself in
+the room. She wanted the vote and everything it
+implied with all her heart. With all her heart. But
+every way to get a thing wasn't the right way, and
+she felt with every fibre of her being that this petulant
+hostility to the census was a wrong way and an
+inconsistent way, and likely to be an unsuccessful
+way&mdash;one that would lose them the sympathy and
+help of just that class of men they should look to for
+support, the cultivated and scientific men. (A voice:
+"<i>Do</i> we want them?") What was the commonest
+charge made by the man in the street against women?&mdash;that
+they were unreasonable and unmanageable,
+that it was their way to get things by crying and
+making an irrelevant fuss. And here they were, as
+a body, doing that very thing! Let them think what
+the census and all that modern organization of vital
+statistics of which it was the central feature stood
+for. It stood for order, for the replacement of
+guesses and emotional generalization by a clear
+knowledge of facts, for the replacement of instinctive
+and violent methods, by which women had everything
+to lose (a voice: "No!") by reason and knowledge
+and self-restraint, by which women had everything
+to gain. To her the advancement of science, the
+progress of civilization, and the emancipation of
+womanhood were nearly synonymous terms. At any
+rate, they were different phases of one thing. They
+were different aspects of one wider purpose. When
+they struck at the census, she felt, they struck at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">-292-</a></span>
+themselves. She glanced at Trafford as if she would
+convince him that this was the real voice of the suffrage
+movement, and sat down amidst a brief, polite
+applause, that warmed to rapture as Agatha Alimony,
+the deep-voiced, stirring Agatha, rose to
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Alimony, who was wearing an enormous hat
+with three nodding ostrich feathers, a purple bow, a
+gold buckle and numerous minor ornaments of various
+origin and substance, said they had all of them
+listened with the greatest appreciation and sympathy
+to the speech of their hostess. Their hostess was a
+newcomer to the movement, she knew she might say
+this without offence, and was passing through a
+phase, an early phase, through which many of them
+had passed. This was the phase of trying to take a
+reasonable view of an unreasonable situation. (Applause.)
+Their hostess had spoken of science, and
+no doubt science was a great thing; but there was
+something greater than science, and that was the
+ideal. It was woman's place to idealize. Sooner or
+later their hostess would discover, as they had all
+discovered, that it was not to science but the ideal
+that women must look for freedom. Consider, she
+said, the scientific men of to-day. Consider, for example,
+Sir James Crichton-Browne, the physiologist.
+Was he on their side? On the contrary, he said the
+most unpleasant things about them on every occasion.
+He went out of his way to say them. Or consider
+Sir Almroth Wright, did he speak well of
+women? Or Sir Ray Lankester, the biologist, who
+was the chief ornament of the Anti-Suffrage Society.
+Or Sir Roderick Dover, the physicist, who&mdash;forgetting
+Madame Curie, a far more celebrated physicist
+than himself, she ventured to say (Applause.) had
+recently gone outside his province altogether to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">-293-</a></span>
+abuse feminine research. There were your scientific
+men. Mrs. Trafford had said their anti-census campaign
+would annoy scientific men; well, under the
+circumstances, she wanted to annoy scientific men.
+(Applause.) She wanted to annoy everybody. Until
+women got the vote (loud applause) the more
+annoying they were the better. When the whole
+world was impressed by the idea that voteless women
+were an intolerable nuisance, then there would cease
+to be voteless women. (Enthusiasm.) Mr. Asquith
+had said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And so on for quite a long time....</p>
+
+<p>Buzard rose out of waves of subsiding emotion.
+Buzard was a slender, long-necked, stalk-shaped man
+with gilt glasses, uneasy movements and a hypersensitive
+manner. He didn't so much speak as thrill with
+thought vibrations; he spoke like an entranced but
+still quite gentlemanly sibyl. After Agatha's deep
+trumpet calls, he sounded like a solo on the piccolo.
+He picked out all his more important words with a
+little stress as though he gave them capitals. He said
+their hostess's remarks had set him thinking. He
+thought it was possible to stew the Scientific Argument
+in its own Juice. There was something he might
+call the Factuarial Estimate of Values. Well, it was
+a High Factuarial Value on their side, in his opinion
+at any rate, when Anthropologists came and told him
+that the Primitive Human Society was a Matriarchate.
+("But it wasn't!" said Trafford to himself.)
+It had a High Factuarial Value when they assured
+him that Every One of the Great Primitive Inventions
+was made by a Woman, and that it was to
+Women they owed Fire and the early Epics and
+Sagas. ("Good Lord!" said Trafford.) It had a
+High Factuarial Value when they not only asserted
+but proved that for Thousands of Years, and perhaps<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">-294-</a></span>
+for Hundreds of Thousands of Years, Women
+had been in possession of Articulate Speech before
+men rose to that Level of Intelligence....</p>
+
+<p>It occurred suddenly to Trafford that he could go
+now; that it would be better to go; that indeed he
+<i>must</i> go; it was no doubt necessary that his mind
+should have to work in the same world as Buzard's
+mental processes, but at any rate those two sets of
+unsympathetic functions need not go on in the same
+room. Something might give way. He got up, and
+with those elaborate efforts to be silent that lead to
+the violent upsetting of chairs, got himself out of the
+room and into the passage, and was at once rescued
+by the sympathetic cook-general, in her most generalized
+form, and given fresh tea in his study&mdash;which
+impressed him as being catastrophically disarranged....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 4</p>
+
+<p>When Marjorie was at last alone with him she
+found him in a state of extreme mental stimulation.
+"Your speech," he said, "was all right. I didn't
+know you could speak like that, Marjorie. But it
+soared like the dove above the waters. Waters! I
+never heard such a flood of rubbish.... You
+know, it's a mistake to <i>mass</i> women. It brings out
+something silly.... It affected Buzard as badly
+as any one. The extraordinary thing is they have a
+case, if only they'd be quiet. Why did you get them
+together?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's our local branch."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but <i>why?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if they talk about things&mdash;Discussions
+like this clear up their minds."</p>
+
+<p>"Discussion! It wasn't discussion."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">-295-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh! it was a beginning."</p>
+
+<p>"Chatter of that sort isn't the beginning of discussion,
+it's the end. It's the death-rattle. Nobody
+was meeting the thoughts of any one. I admit Buzard,
+who's a man, talked the worst rubbish of all.
+That Primitive Matriarchate of his! So it isn't sex.
+I've noticed before that the men in this movement of
+yours are worse than the women. It isn't sex. It's
+something else. It's a foolishness. It's a sort of
+irresponsible looseness." He turned on her gravely.
+"You ought not to get all these people here. It's
+contagious. Before you know it you'll find your own
+mind liquefy and become enthusiastic and slop about.
+You'll begin to talk monomania about Mr. Asquith."</p>
+
+<p>"But it's a great movement, Rag, even if incidentally
+they say and do silly things!"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear! aren't I feminist? Don't I want
+women fine and sane and responsible? Don't I want
+them to have education, to handle things, to vote like
+men and bear themselves with the gravity of men?
+And these meetings&mdash;all hat and flutter! These displays
+of weak, untrained, hysterical vehemence!
+These gatherings of open-mouthed impressionable
+young girls to be trained in incoherence! You can't
+go on with it!"</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie regarded him quietly for a moment. "I
+must go on with something," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, not this."</p>
+
+<p>"Then <i>what?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Something sane."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what."</p>
+
+<p>"It must come out of yourself."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie thought sullenly for a moment. "Nothing
+comes out of myself," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you realize a bit what my life has
+become," she went on; "how much I'm like some one<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">-296-</a></span>
+who's been put in a pleasant, high-class prison."</p>
+
+<p>"This house! It's your own!"</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't give me an hour's mental occupation
+in the day. It's all very well to say I might do more
+in it. I can't&mdash;without absurdity. Or expenditure.
+I can't send the girl away and start scrubbing. I
+can't make jam or do ornamental needlework. The
+shops do it better and cheaper, and I haven't been
+trained to it. I've been trained <i>not</i> to do it. I've
+been brought up on games and school-books, and fed
+on mixed ideas. I can't sit down and pacify myself
+with a needle as women used to do. Besides, I not
+only detest doing needlework but I hate it&mdash;the sort
+of thing a woman of my kind does anyhow&mdash;when
+it's done. I'm no artist. I'm not sufficiently interested
+in outside things to spend my time in serious
+systematic reading, and after four or five novels&mdash;oh,
+these meetings are better than that! You see, you've
+got a life&mdash;too much of it&mdash;<i>I</i> haven't got enough. I
+wish almost I could sleep away half the day. Oh! I
+want something <i>real</i>, Rag; something more than I've
+got." A sudden inspiration came to her. "Will you
+let me come to your laboratory and work with you?"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped abruptly. She caught up her own
+chance question and pointed it at him, a vitally important
+challenge. "Will you let me come to your
+laboratory and work?" she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>Trafford thought. "No," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I'm in love with you. I can't think of
+my work when you're about.... And you're too
+much behind. Oh my dear! don't you see how you're
+behind?" He paused. "I've been soaking in this
+stuff of mine for ten long years."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," assented Marjorie flatly.</p>
+
+<p>He watched her downcast face, and then it lifted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">-297-</a></span>
+to him with a helpless appeal in her eyes, and lift in
+her voice. "But look here, Rag!" she cried&mdash;"what
+on earth am I to <i>DO?</i>"</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 5</p>
+
+<p>At least there came out of these discussions one
+thing, a phrase, a purpose, which was to rule the lives
+of the Traffords for some years. It expressed their
+realization that instinct and impulse had so far
+played them false, that life for all its rich gifts of
+mutual happiness wasn't adjusted between them.
+"We've got," they said, "to talk all this out between
+us. We've got to work this out." They
+didn't mean to leave things at a misfit, and that was
+certainly their present relation. They were already
+at the problem of their joint lives, like a tailor with
+his pins and chalk. Marjorie hadn't rejected a
+humorist and all his works in order to decline at last
+to the humorous view of life, that rather stupid,
+rather pathetic, grin-and-bear-it attitude compounded
+in incalculable proportions of goodwill, evasion,
+indolence, slovenliness, and (nevertheless) spite
+(masquerading indeed as jesting comment), which
+supplies the fabric of everyday life for untold thousands
+of educated middle-class people. She hated
+the misfit. She didn't for a moment propose to pretend
+that the ungainly twisted sleeve, the puckered
+back, was extremely jolly and funny. She had married
+with a passionate anticipation of things fitting
+and fine, and it was her nature, in great matters as in
+small, to get what she wanted strenuously before she
+counted the cost. About both their minds there was
+something sharp and unrelenting, and if Marjorie
+had been disposed to take refuge from facts in swathings
+of aesthetic romanticism, whatever covering she
+contrived would have been torn to rags very speedily<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">-298-</a></span>
+by that fierce and steely veracity which swung down
+out of the laboratory into her home.</p>
+
+<p>One may want to talk things out long before one
+hits upon the phrases that will open up the matter.</p>
+
+<p>There were two chief facts in the case between
+them and so far they had looked only one in the face,
+the fact that Marjorie was unemployed to a troublesome
+and distressing extent, and that there was nothing
+in her nature or training to supply, and something
+in their circumstances and relations to prevent
+any adequate use of her energies. With the second
+fact neither of them cared to come to close quarters
+as yet, and neither as yet saw very distinctly how it
+was linked to the first, and that was the steady excess
+of her expenditure over their restricted means. She
+was secretly surprised at her own weakness. Week
+by week and month by month, they were spending all
+his income and eating into that little accumulation of
+capital that had once seemed so sufficient against the
+world....</p>
+
+<p>And here it has to be told that although Trafford
+knew that Marjorie had been spending too much
+money, he still had no idea of just how much money
+she had spent. She was doing her utmost to come to
+an understanding with him, and at the same time&mdash;I
+don't explain it, I don't excuse it&mdash;she was keeping
+back her bills from him, keeping back urgent second
+and third and fourth demands, that she had no
+cheque-book now to stave off even by the most partial
+satisfaction. It kept her awake at nights, that
+catastrophic explanation, that all unsuspected by
+Trafford hung over their attempts at mutual elucidation;
+it kept her awake but she could not bring it to
+the speaking point, and she clung, in spite of her own
+intelligence, to a persuasion that <i>after</i> they had got
+something really settled and defined then it would be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">-299-</a></span>
+time enough to broach the particulars of this second
+divergence....</p>
+
+<p>Talking one's relations over isn't particularly
+easy between husband and wife at any time; we are
+none of us so sure of one another as to risk loose
+phrases or make experiments in expression in matters
+so vital; there is inevitably an excessive caution
+on the one hand and an abnormal sensitiveness to
+hints and implications on the other. Marjorie's bills
+were only an extreme instance of these unavoidable
+suppressions that always occur. Moreover, when
+two people are continuously together, it is amazingly
+hard to know when and where to begin; where intercourse
+is unbroken it is as a matter of routine being
+constantly interrupted. You cannot broach these
+broad personalities while you are getting up in the
+morning, or over the breakfast-table while you make
+the coffee, or when you meet again after a multitude
+of small events at tea, or in the evening when one is
+rather tired and trivial after the work of the day.
+Then Miss Margharita Trafford permitted no sustained
+analysis of life in her presence. She synthesized
+things fallaciously, but for the time convincingly;
+she insisted that life wasn't a thing you discussed,
+but pink and soft and jolly, which you crowed at and
+laughed at and addressed as "Goo." Even without
+Margharita there were occasions when the Traffords
+were a forgetfulness to one another. After an ear
+has been pinched or a hand has been run through a
+man's hair, or a pretty bare shoulder kissed, all sorts
+of broader interests lapse into a temporary oblivion.
+They found discussion much more possible when they
+walked together. A walk seemed to take them out of
+the everyday sequence, isolate them from their household,
+abstract them a little from one another. They
+set out one extravagant spring Sunday to Great Missenden,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">-300-</a></span>
+and once in spring also they discovered the
+Waterlow Park. On each occasion they seemed to
+get through an enormous amount of talking. But
+the Great Missenden walk was all mixed up with a
+sweet keen wind, and beechwoods just shot with
+spring green and bursting hedges and the extreme
+earliness of honeysuckle, which Trafford noted for the
+first time, and a clamorous rejoicing of birds. And
+in the Waterlow Park there was a great discussion of
+why the yellow crocus comes before white and purple,
+and the closest examination of the manner in which
+daffodils and narcissi thrust their green noses out of
+the garden beds. Also they found the ugly, ill-served,
+aggressively propagandist non-alcoholic refreshment-room
+in that gracious old house a scandal and
+disappointment, and Trafford scolded at the stupidity
+of officialdom that can control so fine a thing so
+ill.</p>
+
+<p>Though they talked on these walks they were still
+curiously evasive. Indeed, they were afraid of each
+other. They kept falling away from their private
+thoughts and intentions. They generalized, they discussed
+Marriage and George Gissing and Bernard
+Shaw and the suffrage movement and the agitation
+for the reform of the divorce laws. They pursued
+imaginary cases into distant thickets of contingency
+remotely far from the personal issues between
+them....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 6</p>
+
+<p>One day came an incident that Marjorie found
+wonderfully illuminating. Trafford had a fit of rage.
+Stung by an unexpected irritation, he forgot himself,
+as people say, and swore, and was almost physically
+violent, and the curious thing was that so he lit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">-301-</a></span>
+up things for her as no premeditated attempt of his
+had ever done.</p>
+
+<p>A copy of the <i>Scientific Bulletin</i> fired the explosion.
+He sat down at the breakfast-table with the
+heaviness of a rather overworked and worried man,
+tasted his coffee, tore open a letter and crumpled it
+with his hand, turned to the <i>Bulletin</i>, regarded its
+list of contents with a start, opened it, read for a
+minute, and expressed himself with an extraordinary
+heat of manner in these amazing and unprecedented
+words:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Damnation and damnation!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he shied the paper into the corner of the
+room and pushed his plate from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Damn the whole scheme of things!" he said, and
+met the blank amazement of Marjorie's eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Behrens!" he said with an air of explanation.</p>
+
+<p>"Behrens?" she echoed with a note of inquiry.</p>
+
+<p>"He's doing my stuff!"</p>
+
+<p>He sat darkling for a time and then hit the table
+with his fist so hard that the breakfast things seemed
+to jump together&mdash;to Marjorie's infinite amazement.
+"I can't <i>stand</i> it!" he said.</p>
+
+<p>She waited some moments. "I don't understand,"
+she began. "What has he done?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" was Trafford's answer. He got up, recovered
+the crumpled paper and stood reading.
+"Fool and thief," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie was amazed beyond measure. She felt
+as though she had been effaced from Trafford's life.
+"Ugh!" he cried and slapped back the <i>Bulletin</i> into
+the corner with quite needless violence. He became
+aware of Marjorie again.</p>
+
+<p>"He's doing my work," he said.</p>
+
+<p>And then as if he completed the explanation:<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">-302-</a></span>
+"And I've got to be in Croydon by half-past ten to
+lecture to a pack of spinsters and duffers, because
+they're too stupid to get the stuff from books. It's
+all in books,&mdash;every bit of it."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and went on in tones of unendurable
+wrong. "It isn't as though he was doing it right.
+He isn't. He can't. He's a fool. He's a clever,
+greedy, dishonest fool with a twist. Oh! the pile, the
+big Pile of silly muddled technicalities he's invented
+already! The solemn mess he's making of it! And
+there he is, I can't get ahead of him, I can't get at
+him. I've got no time. I've got no room or leisure
+to swing my mind in! Oh, curse these engagements,
+curse all these silly fretting entanglements of lecture
+and article! I never get the time, I can't get the
+time, I can't get my mind clear! I'm worried! I'm
+badgered! And meanwhile Behrens&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is he discovering what you want to discover?"</p>
+
+<p>"Behrens! <i>No!</i> He's going through the breaches
+I made. He's guessing out what I meant to do. And
+he's getting it set out all wrong,&mdash;misleading
+terminology,&mdash;distinctions made in the wrong place.
+Oh, the fool he is!"</p>
+
+<p>"But afterwards&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Afterwards I may spend my life&mdash;removing the
+obstacles he's made. He'll be established and I
+shan't. You don't know anything of these things.
+You don't understand."</p>
+
+<p>She didn't. Her next question showed as much.
+"Will it affect your F.R.S.?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! <i>that's</i> safe enough, and it doesn't matter
+anyhow. The F.R.S.! Confound the silly little F.R.S.!
+As if that mattered. It's seeing all my great openings&mdash;misused.
+It's seeing all I might be doing. This
+brings it all home to me. Don't you understand,
+Marjorie? Will you never understand? I'm getting<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">-303-</a></span>
+away from all <i>that!</i> I'm being hustled away by all
+this work, this silly everyday work to get money.
+Don't you see that unless I can have time for thought
+and research, life is just darkness to me? I've made
+myself master of that stuff. I had at any rate. No
+one can do what I can do there. And when I find myself&mdash;oh,
+shut out, shut out! I come near raving. As
+I think of it I want to rave again." He paused.
+Then with a swift transition: "I suppose I'd better
+eat some breakfast. Is that egg boiled?"</p>
+
+<p>She gave him an egg, brought his coffee, put
+things before him, seated herself at the table. For a
+little while he ate in silence. Then he cursed Behrens.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here!" she said. "Bad as I am, you've
+got to reason with me, Rag. I didn't know all this. I
+didn't understand... I don't know what to do."</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>is</i> there to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've got to do something. I'm beginning to see
+things. It's just as though everything had become
+clear suddenly." She was weeping. "Oh, my dear!
+I want to help you. I have so wanted to help you.
+Always. And it's come to this!"</p>
+
+<p>"But it's not <i>your</i> fault. I didn't mean that.
+It's&mdash;it's in the nature of things."</p>
+
+<p>"It's my fault."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not your fault."</p>
+
+<p>"It is."</p>
+
+<p>"Confound it, Marjorie. When I swear at Behrens
+I'm not swearing at you."</p>
+
+<p>"It's my fault. All this is my fault. I'm eating
+you up. What's the good of your pretending, Rag.
+You know it is. Oh! When I married you I meant
+to make you happy, I had no thought but to make
+you happy, to give myself to you, my body, my
+brains, everything, to make life beautiful for you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, <i>haven't</i> you?" He thrust out a hand she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">-304-</a></span>
+did not take.</p>
+
+<p>"I've broken your back," she said.</p>
+
+<p>An unwonted resolution came into her face. Her
+lips whitened. "Don't you know, Rag," she said,
+forcing herself to speak&mdash;&mdash;"Don't you guess?
+You don't know half! In that bureau there&mdash;&mdash;In
+there! It's stuffed with bills. Unpaid bills."</p>
+
+<p>She was weeping, with no attempt to wipe the
+streaming tears away; terror made the expression of
+her wet face almost fierce. "Bills," she repeated.
+"More than a hundred pounds still. Yes! Now.
+<i>Now!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He drew back, stared at her and with no trace of
+personal animus, like one who hears of a common
+disaster, remarked with a quiet emphasis: "Oh,
+<i>damn!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"I know," she said, "Damn!" and met his eyes.
+There was a long silence between them. She produced
+a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. "That's
+what I amount to," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"It's your silly upbringing," he said after a
+long pause.</p>
+
+<p>"And my silly self."</p>
+
+<p>She stood up, unlocked and opened her littered
+desk, turned and held out the key to him.</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it. You gave me a cheque-book of my
+own and a corner of my own, and they&mdash;they are just
+ambushes&mdash;against you."</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"Take it," said Marjorie with quiet insistence.</p>
+
+<p>He obeyed. She stood with her eyes on the
+crumpled heap of bills. They were not even tidily
+arranged. That seemed to her now an extreme aggravation
+of her offence.</p>
+
+<p>"I ought to be sent to the chemist's," she remarked,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">-305-</a></span>
+"as one sends a worthless cat."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford weighed this proposition soberly for
+some moments. "You're a bother, Marjorie," he
+said with his eyes on the desk; "no end of a bother.
+I'd better have those bills."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her, stood up, put his hands on her
+shoulders, drew her to him and kissed her forehead.
+He did it without passion, without tenderness, with
+something like resignation in his manner. She clung
+to him tightly, as though by clinging she could warm
+and soften him.</p>
+
+<p>"Rag," she whispered; "all my heart is yours....
+I want to help you.... And this is what I have
+done."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," he said&mdash;almost grimly.</p>
+
+<p>He repeated his kiss.</p>
+
+<p>Then he seemed to explode again. "Gods!" he
+cried, "look at the clock. I shall miss that Croydon
+lecture!" He pushed her from him. "Where are my
+boots?..."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 7</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie spent the forenoon and the earlier part
+of the afternoon repeating and reviewing this conversation.
+Her mind was full of the long disregarded
+problem of her husband's state of mind. She thought
+with a sympathetic astonishment of his swearing, of
+his startling blow upon the table. She hadn't so far
+known he could swear. But this was the real thing,
+the relief of vehement and destructive words. His
+voice, saying "damnation and damnation," echoed
+and re-echoed in her ears. Somehow she understood
+that as she had never understood any sober
+statement of his case. Such women as Marjorie, I
+think, have an altogether keener understanding of
+people who have lost control of themselves than they<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">-306-</a></span>
+have of reasoned cases. Perhaps that is because they
+themselves always reserve something when they state
+a reasoned case.</p>
+
+<p>She went on to the apprehension of a change in
+him that hitherto she had not permitted herself to
+see&mdash;a change in his attitude to her. There had been
+a time when she had seemed able without an effort to
+nestle inside his heart. Now she felt distinctly for the
+first time that that hadn't happened. She had instead
+a sense of her embrace sliding over a rather deliberately
+contracted exterior.... Of course he had
+been in a hurry....</p>
+
+<p>She tried to follow him on his journey to Croydon.
+Now he'd have just passed out of London
+Bridge. What was he thinking and feeling about her
+in the train? Now he would be going into the place,
+wherever it was, where he gave his lecture. Did he
+think of Behrens and curse her under his breath as he
+entered that tiresome room?...</p>
+
+<p>It seemed part of the prevailing inconvenience of
+life that Daffy should see fit to pay an afternoon call.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie heard the sobs and uproar of an arrested
+motor, and glanced discreetly from the window
+to discover the dark green car with its green-clad
+chauffeur which now adorned her sister's life, and
+which might under different circumstances, have
+adorned her own. Wilkins&mdash;his name was Wilkins, his
+hair was sandy and his expression discreet, and he
+afforded material for much quiet humorous observation&mdash;descended
+smartly and opened the door. Daffy
+appeared in black velvet, with a huge black fur muff,
+and an air of being unaware that there were such
+things as windows in the world.</p>
+
+<p>It was just four, and the cook-general, who ought
+to have been now in her housemaid's phase, was still
+upstairs divesting herself of her more culinary characteristics.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">-307-</a></span>
+Marjorie opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, old Daffy!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, old Madge!" and there was an exchange
+of sisterly kisses and a mutual inspection.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing wrong?" asked Daffy, surveying her.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Wrong?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"You look pale and&mdash;tired about the eyes," said
+Daffy, leading the way into the drawing-room.
+"Thought you might be a bit off it, that's all. No
+offence, Madge."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm all right," said Marjorie, getting her back
+to the light. "Want a holiday, perhaps. How's
+every one?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right. <i>We're</i> off to Lake Garda next week.
+This new play has taken it out of Will tremendously.
+He wants a rest and fresh surroundings. It's to be the
+biggest piece of work he's done&mdash;so far, and it's
+straining him. And people worry him here; receptions,
+first nights, dinners, speeches. He's so neat,
+you know, in his speeches.... But it wastes him. He
+wants to get away. How's Rag?"</p>
+
+<p>"Busy."</p>
+
+<p>"Lecturing?"</p>
+
+<p>"And his Research of course."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! of course. How's the Babe?"</p>
+
+<p>"Just in. Come up and see the little beast,
+Daffy! It is getting so pretty, and it talks&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Margharita dominated intercourse for a time.
+She was one of those tactful infants who exactly resemble
+their fathers and exactly resemble their
+mothers, and have a charm and individuality quite
+distinctly their own, and she was now beginning to
+converse with startling enterprise and intelligence.</p>
+
+<p>"Big, big, bog," she said at the sight of Daffy.</p>
+
+<p>"Remembers you," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Bog! Go ta-ta!" said Margharita.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">-308-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"There!" said Marjorie, and May, the nurse in
+the background, smiled unlimited appreciation.</p>
+
+<p>"Bably," said Margharita.</p>
+
+<p>"That's herself!" said Marjorie, falling on her
+knees. "She talks like this all day. Oh de sweetums,
+den!" <i>Was</i> it?</p>
+
+<p>Daffy made amiable gestures and canary-like
+noises with her lips, and Margharita responded
+jovially.</p>
+
+<p>"You darling!" cried Marjorie, "you delight of
+life," kneeling by the cot and giving the crowing,
+healthy little mite a passionate hug.</p>
+
+<p>"It's really the nicest of babies," Daffy conceded,
+and reflected....</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what I should do with a kiddy,"
+said Daffy, as the infant worship came to an end;
+"I'm really glad we haven't one&mdash;yet. He'd love
+it, I know. But it would be a burthen in some ways.
+They <i>are</i> a tie. As he says, the next few years means
+so much for him. Of course, here his reputation is
+immense, and he's known in Germany, and there are
+translations into Russian; but he's still got to conquer
+America, and he isn't really well known yet in France.
+They read him, of course, and buy him in America,
+but they're&mdash;<i>restive</i>. Oh! I do so wish they'd give
+him the Nobel prize, Madge, and have done with it!
+It would settle everything. Still, as he says, we mustn't
+think of that&mdash;yet, anyhow. He isn't venerable
+enough. It's doubtful, he thinks, that they would give
+the Nobel prize to any humorist now that Mark
+Twain is dead. Mark Twain was different, you see,
+because of the German Emperor and all that white
+hair and everything."</p>
+
+<p>At this point Margharita discovered that the conversation
+had drifted away from herself, and it was
+only when they got downstairs again that Daffy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">-309-</a></span>
+could resume the thread of Magnet's career, which
+had evidently become the predominant interest in her
+life. She brought out all the worst elements of Marjorie's
+nature and their sisterly relationship. There
+were moments when it became nakedly apparent that
+she was magnifying Magnet to belittle Trafford.
+Marjorie did her best to counter-brag. She played
+her chief card in the F. R. S.</p>
+
+<p>"They always ask Will to the Royal Society
+Dinner," threw out Daffy; "but of course he can't
+always go. He's asked to so many things."</p>
+
+<p>Five years earlier Marjorie would have kicked
+her shins for that.</p>
+
+<p>Instead she asked pointedly, offensively, if Magnet
+was any balder.</p>
+
+<p>"He's not really bald," said Daffy unruffled, and
+went on to discuss the advisability of a second motor
+car&mdash;purely for town use. "I tell him I don't want
+it," said Daffy, "but he's frightfully keen upon getting
+one."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 8</p>
+
+<p>When Daffy had at last gone Marjorie went back
+into Trafford's study and stood on the hearthrug
+regarding its appointments, with something of the air
+of one who awakens from a dream. She had developed
+a new, appalling thought. Was Daffy really a
+better wife than herself? It was dawning upon Marjorie
+that she hadn't been doing the right thing by
+her husband, and she was as surprised as if it had been
+suddenly brought home to her that she was neglecting
+Margharita. This was her husband's study&mdash;and
+it showed just a little dusty in the afternoon sunshine,
+and everything about it denied the pretensions
+of serene sustained work that she had always made to
+herself. Here were the crumpled galley proofs of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">-310-</a></span>
+science notes; here were unanswered letters. There,
+she dare not touch them, were computations, under a
+glass paper-weight. What did they amount to now?
+On the table under the window were back numbers of
+the <i>Scientific Bulletin</i> in a rather untidy pile, and on
+the footstool by the arm-chair she had been accustomed
+to sit at his feet when he stayed at home to work, and
+look into the fire, and watch him furtively, and sometimes
+give way to an overmastering tenderness and
+make love to him. The thought of Magnet, pampered,
+fenced around, revered in his industrious tiresome
+repetitions, variations, dramatizations and so
+forth of the half-dozen dry little old jokes which the
+British public accepted as his characteristic offering
+and rewarded him for so highly, contrasted vividly
+with her new realization of Trafford's thankless work
+and worried face.</p>
+
+<p>And she loved him, she loved him&mdash;<i>so</i>. She told
+herself in the presence of all these facts, and without
+a shadow of doubt in her mind that all she wanted in
+the world was to make him happy.</p>
+
+<p>It occurred to her as a rather drastic means to
+this end that she might commit suicide.</p>
+
+<p>She had already gone some way in the composition
+of a touching letter of farewell to him, containing
+a luminous analysis of her own defects, before her
+common-sense swept away this imaginative exercise.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, as if it had been working at her problem
+all the time that this exciting farewell epistle had
+occupied the foreground of her thoughts, her natural
+lucidity emerged with the manifest conclusion that she
+had to alter her way of living. She had been extraordinarily
+regardless of him, she only began to see
+that, and now she had to take up the problem of his
+necessities. Her self-examination now that it had
+begun was thorough. She had always told herself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">-311-</a></span>
+before that she had made a most wonderful and beautiful
+little home for him. But had she made it for
+him? Had he as a matter of fact ever wanted it, except
+that he was glad to have it through her? No
+doubt it had given him delight and happiness, it had
+been a marvellous little casket of love for them, but
+how far did that outweigh the burthen and limitation
+it had imposed upon him? She had always assumed
+he was beyond measure grateful to her for his home,
+in spite of all her bills, but was he? It was like sticking
+a knife into herself to ask that, but she was now in
+a phase heroic enough for the task&mdash;was he? She
+had always seen herself as the giver of bounties; greatest
+bounty of all was Margharita. She had faced
+pains and terrors and the shadow of death to give
+him Margharita. Now with Daffy's illuminating
+conversation in her mind, she could turn the light
+upon a haunting doubt that had been lurking in the
+darkness for a long time. Had he really so greatly
+wanted Margharita? Had she ever troubled to get
+to the bottom of that before? Hadn't she as a matter
+of fact wanted Margharita ten thousand times
+more than he had done? Hadn't she in effect imposed
+Margharita upon him, as she had imposed her distinctive
+and delightful home upon him, regardlessly,
+because these things were the natural and legitimate
+developments of herself?</p>
+
+<p>These things were not his ends.</p>
+
+<p>Had she hitherto ever really cared what his ends
+might be?</p>
+
+<p>A phrase she had heard abundantly enough in
+current feminist discussion recurred to her mind,
+"the economic dependence of women," and now for
+the first time it was charged with meaning. She had
+imposed these things upon him not because she loved
+him, but because these things that were the expansions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">-312-</a></span>
+and consequences of her love for him were only
+obtainable through him. A woman gives herself to a
+man out of love, and remains clinging parasitically to
+him out of necessity. Was there no way of evading
+that necessity?</p>
+
+<p>For a time she entertained dreams of marvellous
+social reconstructions. Suppose the community kept
+all its women, suppose all property in homes and
+furnishings and children vested in them! That was
+Marjorie's version of that idea of the Endowment of
+Womanhood which has been creeping into contemporary
+thought during the last two decades. Then
+every woman would be a Princess to the man she
+loved.... He became more definitely personal. Suppose
+she herself was rich, then she could play the
+Princess to Trafford; she could have him free, unencumbered,
+happy and her lover! Then, indeed, her
+gifts would be gifts, and all her instincts and motives
+would but crown his unhampered life! She could not
+go on from that idea, she lapsed into a golden reverie,
+from which she was roused by the clock striking five.</p>
+
+<p>In half an hour perhaps Trafford would be home
+again. She could at least be so much of a princess as
+to make his home sweet for his home-coming. There
+should be tea in here, where callers did not trouble.
+She glanced at an empty copper vase. It ached.
+There was no light in the room. There would be just
+time to dash out into High Street and buy some
+flowers for it before he came....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 9</p>
+
+<p>Spring and a renewed and deepened love for her
+husband were in Marjorie's blood. Her mind worked
+rapidly during the next few days, and presently she
+found herself clearly decided upon her course of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">-313-</a></span>
+action. She had to pull herself together and help
+him, and if that meant a Spartan and strenuous way
+of living, then manifestly she must be Spartan and
+strenuous. She must put an end once for all to her
+recurrent domestic deficits, and since this could only
+be done by getting rid of May, she must get rid of
+May and mind the child herself. (Every day, thank
+Heaven! Margharita became more intelligent, more
+manageable, and more interesting.) Then she must
+also make a far more systematic and thorough study
+of domestic economy than she had hitherto done, and
+run the shopping and housekeeping on severer lines;
+she bought fruit carelessly, they had far too many
+joints; she never seemed able to restrain herself when
+it came to flowers. And in the evenings, which would
+necessarily be very frequently lonely evenings if
+Trafford's researches were to go on, she would typewrite,
+and either acquire great speed at that or learn
+shorthand, and so save Trafford's present expenditure
+on a typist. That unfortunately would mean buying
+a typewriter.</p>
+
+<p>She found one afternoon in a twopenny book-box,
+with which she was trying to allay her craving for
+purchases, a tattered little pamphlet entitled: "Proposals
+for the Establishment of an Order of Samurai,"
+which fell in very exactly with her mood.
+The title "dated"; it carried her mind back to her
+middle girlhood and the defeats of Kuropatki and the
+futile earnest phase in English thought which followed
+the Boer War. The order was to be a sort of
+self-appointed nobility serving the world. It shone
+with the light of a generous dawn, but cast, I fear,
+the shadow of the prig. Its end was the Agenda
+Club.... She read and ceased to read&mdash;and dreamt.</p>
+
+<p>The project unfolded the picture of a new method<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">-314-</a></span>
+of conduct to her, austere, yet picturesque and richly
+noble. These Samurai, it was intimated, were to lead
+lives of hard discipline and high effort, under self-imposed
+rule and restraint. They were to stand a
+little apart from the excitements and temptations of
+everyday life, to eat sparingly, drink water, resort
+greatly to self-criticism and self-examination, and
+harden their spirits by severe and dangerous exercises.
+They were to dress simply, work hard, and be the
+conscious and deliberate salt of the world. They
+were to walk among mountains. Incidentally, great
+power was to be given them. Such systematic effort
+and self-control as this, seemed to Marjorie to give
+just all she wasn't and needed to be, to save her life
+and Trafford's from a common disaster....</p>
+
+<p>It particularly appealed to her that they were to
+walk among mountains....</p>
+
+<p>But it is hard to make a change in the colour of
+one's life amidst the routine one has already established
+about oneself, in the house that is grooved by
+one's weaknesses, amidst hangings and ornaments
+living and breathing with the life of an antagonistic
+and yet insidiously congenial ideal. A great desire
+came upon Marjorie to go away with Trafford for a
+time, out of their everyday life into strange and cool
+and spacious surroundings. She wanted to leave
+London and its shops, and the home and the movements
+and the callers and rivalries, and even dimpled
+little Margharita's insistent claims, and get free and
+think. It was the first invasion of their lives by this
+conception, a conception that was ever afterwards to
+leave them altogether, of retreat and reconstruction.
+She knelt upon the white sheepskin hearthrug at
+Trafford's feet one night, and told him of her desire.
+He, too, was tired of his work and his vexations, and
+ripe for this suggestion of an altered life. The Easter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">-315-</a></span>
+holiday was approaching, and nearly twenty unencumbered
+days. Mrs. Trafford, they knew, would
+come into the house, meanwhile, and care for Margharita.
+They would go away somewhere together
+and walk, no luggage but a couple of knapsacks, no
+hotel but some homely village inn. They would be in
+the air all day, until they were saturated with sweet
+air and spirit of clean restraints. They would plan
+out their new rule, concentrate their aims. "And I
+could think," said Trafford, "of this new work I
+can't begin here. I might make some notes."
+Presently came the question of where the great walk
+should be. Manifestly, it must be among mountains,
+manifestly, and Marjorie's eye saw those mountains
+with snow upon their summits and cold glaciers on
+their flanks. Could they get to Switzerland? If they
+travelled second class throughout, and took the
+cheaper way, as Samurai should?...</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 10</p>
+
+<p>That holiday seemed to Marjorie as if they had
+found a lost and forgotten piece of honeymoon. She
+had that same sense of fresh beginnings that had made
+their first walk in Italian Switzerland so unforgettable.
+She was filled with the happiness of recovering
+Trafford when he had seemed to be slipping from her.
+All day they talked of their outlook, and how they
+might economise away the need of his extra work,
+and so release him for his search again. For the first
+time he talked of his work to her, and gave her some
+intimation of its scope and quality. He became enthusiastic
+with the sudden invention of experimental
+devices, so that it seemed to her almost worth while if
+instead of going on they bolted back, he to his laboratory
+and she to her nursery, and so at once inaugurated<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">-316-</a></span>
+the new régime. But they went on, to finish
+the holiday out. And the delight of being together
+again with unfettered hours of association! They rediscovered
+each other, the same&mdash;and a little changed.
+If their emotions were less bright and intense, their
+interest was far wider and deeper.</p>
+
+<p>The season was too early for high passes, and the
+weather was changeable. They started from Fribourg
+and walked to Thun and then back to Bulle,
+and so to Bultigen, Saanen, Montbovon and the Lake
+of Geneva. They had rain several days, the sweet,
+soft, windless mountain rain that seemed so tolerable
+to those who are accustomed to the hard and driven
+downpours of England, and in places they found
+mud and receding snow; the inns were at their homeliest,
+and none the worse for that, and there were days
+of spring sunshine when a multitude of minute and
+delightful flowers came out as it seemed to meet them&mdash;it
+was impossible to suppose so great a concourse
+universal&mdash;and spread in a scented carpet before
+their straying feet. The fruit trees in the valleys were
+powdered with blossom, and the new grass seemed
+rather green-tinted sunlight than merely green. And
+they walked with a sort of stout leisureliness, knapsacks
+well-hung and cloaks about them, with their
+faces fresh and bright under the bracing weather,
+and their lungs deep charged with mountain air,
+talking of the new austerer life that was now beginning.
+With great snow-capped mountains in the background,
+streaming precipices overhead, and a sward
+of flowers to go upon, that strenuous prospect was
+altogether delightful. They went as it pleased them,
+making detours into valleys, coming back upon their
+steps. The interludes of hot, bright April sunshine
+made them indolent, and they would loiter and halt
+where some rock or wall invited, and sit basking like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">-317-</a></span>
+happy, animals, talking very little, for long hours together.
+Trafford seemed to have forgotten all the
+strain and disappointment of the past two years, to
+be amazed but in no wise incredulous at this enormous
+change in her and in their outlook; it filled her with
+a passion of pride and high resolve to think that so
+she could recover and uplift him.</p>
+
+<p>He was now very deeply in love with her again.
+He talked indeed of his research, but so that it might
+interest her, and when he thought alone, he thought,
+not of it, but of her, making again the old discoveries,
+his intense delight in the quality of her voice, his joy
+in a certain indescribable gallantry in her bearing.
+He pitied all men whose wives could not carry themselves,
+and whose voices failed and broke under the
+things they had to say. And then again there was
+the way she moved her arms, the way her hands took
+hold of things, the alert lucidity of her eyes, and then
+that faint, soft shadow of a smile upon her lips when
+she walked thinking or observant, all unaware that he
+was watching her.</p>
+
+<p>It rained in the morning of their eleventh day and
+then gave way to warmth and sunshine, so that they
+arrived at Les Avants in the afternoon a little muddy
+and rather hot. At one of the tables under the trees
+outside the Grand Hotel was a small group of people
+dressed in the remarkable and imposing costume
+which still in those days distinguished the motorist.
+They turned from their tea to a more or less frank inspection
+of the Traffords, and suddenly broke out
+into cries of recognition and welcome. Solomonson&mdash;for
+the most part brown leather&mdash;emerged with
+extended hands, and behind him, nestling in the midst
+of immense and costly furs, appeared the kindly salience
+and brightness of his Lady's face. "Good luck!"
+cried Solomonson. "Good luck! Come and have tea<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">-318-</a></span>
+with us! But this is a happy encounter!"</p>
+
+<p>"We're dirty&mdash;but so healthy!" cried Marjorie,
+saluting Lady Solomonson.</p>
+
+<p>"You look, oh!&mdash;splendidly well," that Lady responded.</p>
+
+<p>"We've been walking."</p>
+
+<p>"With just that knapsack!"</p>
+
+<p>"It's been glorious."</p>
+
+<p>"But the courage!" said Lady Solomonson, and
+did not add, "the tragic hardship!" though her tone
+conveyed it. She had all the unquestioning belief of
+her race in the sanity of comfort. She had ingrained
+in her the most definite ideas of man's position and
+woman's, and that any one, man or woman, should
+walk in mud except under dire necessity, was outside
+the range of her philosophy. She thought Marjorie's
+thick boots and short skirts quite the most appalling
+feminine costume she had ever seen. She saw only a
+ruined complexion and damaged womanhood in Marjorie's
+rain-washed, sun-bit cheek. Her benevolent
+heart rebelled at the spectacle. It was dreadful, she
+thought, that nice young people like the Traffords
+should have come to this.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the party were now informally introduced.
+They were all very splendid and disconcertingly
+free from mud. One was Christabel Morrison,
+the actress, a graceful figure in a green baize coat
+and brown fur, who looked ever so much more charming
+than her innumerable postcards and illustrated-paper
+portraits would have led one to expect; her
+neighbour was Solomonson's cousin Lee, the organizer
+of the Theatre Syndicate, a brown-eyed, attenuated,
+quick-minded little man with an accent that struck
+Trafford as being on the whole rather Dutch, and the
+third lady was Lady Solomonson's sister, Mrs. Lee.
+It appeared they were all staying at Lee's villa above<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">-319-</a></span>
+Vevey, part of an amusing assembly of people who
+were either vividly rich or even more vividly clever,
+an accumulation which the Traffords in the course of
+the next twenty minutes were three times invited, with
+an increasing appreciation and earnestness, to join.</p>
+
+<p>From the first our two young people were not indisposed
+to do so. For eleven days they had maintained
+their duologue at the very highest level; seven
+days remained to them before they must go back to
+begin the hard new life in England, and there was
+something very attractive&mdash;they did not for a moment
+seek to discover the elements of that attractiveness&mdash;in
+this proposal of five or six days of luxurious indolence
+above the lake, a sort of farewell to the worldly
+side of worldly things, before they set forth upon
+the high and narrow path they had resolved to tread.</p>
+
+<p>"But we've got no clothes," cried Marjorie, "no
+clothes at all! We've these hobnail boots and a pair
+each of heelless slippers."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear!" cried Lady Solomonson in real distress,
+and as much aside as circumstances permitted,
+"my dear! My sister can manage all that!" Her
+voice fell to earnest undertones. "We can really
+manage all that. The house is packed with things.
+We'll come to dinner in fancy dress. And Scott, my
+maid, is so clever."</p>
+
+<p>"But really!" said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear!" said Lady Solomonson. "Everything."
+And she changed places with Lee in order to
+be perfectly confidential and explicit. "Rachel!"
+she cried, and summoned her sister for confirmatory
+assurances....</p>
+
+<p>"But my husband!" Marjorie became audible.</p>
+
+<p>"We've long Persian robes," said Mrs. Lee, with
+a glance of undisguised appraisement. "He'll be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">-320-</a></span>
+splendid. He'll look like a Soldan...."</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the company forced a hectic conversation
+in order not to seem to listen, and presently Lady
+Solomonson and her sister were triumphant. They
+packed Marjorie into the motor car, and Trafford
+and Solomonson returned to Vevey by train and
+thence up to the villa by a hired automobile.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 11</p>
+
+<p>They didn't go outside the magic confines of the
+Lees' villa for three days, and when they did they were
+still surrounded by their host's service and possessions;
+they made an excursion to Chillon in his motor-cars,
+and went in his motor-boat to lunch with the Maynards
+in their lake-side villa close to Geneva. During
+all that time they seemed lifted off the common earth
+into a world of fine fabrics, agreeable sounds,
+noiseless unlimited service, and ample untroubled
+living. It had an effect of enchantment, and the long
+healthy arduous journey thither seemed a tale of incredible
+effort amidst these sunny excesses. The
+weather had the whim to be serenely fine, sunshine
+like summer and the bluest of skies shone above the
+white wall and the ilex thickets and cypresses that
+bounded them in from the great world of crowded
+homes and sous and small necessities. And through
+the texture of it all for Trafford ran a thread of
+curious new suggestion. An intermittent discussion
+of economics and socialism was going on between
+himself and Solomonson and an agreeable little stammering
+man in brown named Minter, who walked up
+in the afternoon from Vevey,&mdash;he professed to be
+writing a novel&mdash;during the earlier half of the day.
+Minter displayed the keenest appreciation of everything
+in his entertainment, and blinked cheerfully<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">-321-</a></span>
+and expressed opinions of the extremest socialistic and
+anarchistic flavour to an accompaniment of grateful
+self-indulgence. "Your port-wine is wonderful, Lee,"
+he would say, sipping it. "A terrible retribution will
+fall upon you some day for all this."</p>
+
+<p>The villa had been designed by Lee to please his
+wife, and if it was neither very beautiful nor very dignified,
+it was at any rate very pretty and amusing.
+It might have been built by a Parisian dressmaker&mdash;in
+the châteauesque style. It was of greyish-white
+stone, with a roof of tiles. It had little balconies and
+acutely roofed turrets, and almost burlesque buttresses,
+pierced by doors and gates; and sun-trap loggias,
+as pleasantly casual as the bows and embroideries
+of a woman's dress; and its central hall, with an
+impluvium that had nothing to do with rain-water,
+and its dining-room, to which one ascended from this
+hall between pillars up five broad steps, were entirely
+irrelevant to all its exterior features. Unobtrusive
+men-servants in grey with scarlet facings hovered
+serviceably.</p>
+
+<p>From the little terrace, all set with orange-trees
+in tubs, one could see, through the branches and stems
+of evergreens and over a foreground of budding, starting
+vineyard, the clustering roofs of Vevey below, an
+agglomeration veiled ever so thinly in the morning
+by a cobweb of wood smoke, against the blue background
+of lake with its winged sailing-boats, and sombre
+Alpine distances. Minter made it all significant
+by a wave of the hand. "All this," he said, and of
+the crowded work-a-day life below, "all that."</p>
+
+<p>"All this," with its rich litter of stuffs and ornaments,
+its fine profusion, its delicacies of flower and
+food and furniture, its frequent inconsecutive pleasures,
+its noiseless, ready service, was remarkably
+novel and yet remarkably familiar to Trafford. For<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">-322-</a></span>
+a time he could not understand this undertone of familiarity,
+and then a sunlit group of hangings in one
+of the small rooms that looked out upon the lake took
+his mind back to his own dining-room, and the little
+inadequate, but decidedly good, Bokhara embroidery
+that dominated it like a flag, that lit it, and now lit
+his understanding, like a confessed desire. Of course,
+Mrs. Lee&mdash;happy woman!&mdash;was doing just everything
+that Marjorie would have loved to do. Marjorie
+had never confessed as much, perhaps she had
+never understood as much, but now in the presence
+of Mrs. Lee's ćsthetic exuberances, Trafford at
+least understood. He surveyed the little room, whose
+harmonies he had at first simply taken for granted,
+noted the lustre-ware that answered to the gleaming
+Persian tiles, the inspiration of a metallic thread in
+the hangings, and the exquisite choice of the deadened
+paint upon the woodwork, and realized for the
+first time how little aimless extravagance can be, and
+all the timid, obstinately insurgent artistry that
+troubled his wife. He stepped through the open window
+into a little loggia, and stared unseeingly over
+glittering, dark-green leaves to the mysteries of distance
+in the great masses above St. Gingolph, and it
+seemed for the first time that perhaps in his thoughts
+he had done his wife a wrong. He had judged her
+fickle, impulsive, erratic, perhaps merely because
+her mind followed a different process from his, because
+while he went upon the lines of constructive
+truth, her guide was a more immediate and instinctive
+sense of beauty.</p>
+
+<p>He was very much alive to her now, and deeply in
+love with her. He had reached Les Avants with all
+his sense of their discordance clean washed and
+walked out of his mind, by rain and sun and a flow of
+high resolutions, and the brotherly swing of their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">-323-</a></span>
+strides together. They had come to the Lee's villa,
+mud-splashed, air-sweet comrades, all unaware of the
+subtle differences of atmosphere they had to encounter.
+They had no suspicion that it was only
+about half of each other that had fraternized. Now
+here they were in a company that was not only
+altogether alien to their former mood, but extremely
+interesting and exciting and closely akin to the latent
+factors in Marjorie's composition. Their hostess
+and her sister had the keen, quick ćsthetic sensibilities
+of their race, with all that freedom of reading
+and enfranchisement of mind which is the lot of the
+Western women. Lee had an immense indulgent
+affection for his wife, he regarded her arrangements
+and exploits with an admiration that was almost
+American. And Mrs. Lee's imagination had run
+loose in pursuit of beautiful and remarkable people
+and splendours rather than harmonies of line and
+colour. Lee, like Solomonson, had that inexplicable
+alchemy of mind which distils gold from
+the commerce of the world ("All this," said Minter
+to Trafford, "is an exhalation from all that"); he
+accumulated wealth as one grows a beard, and found
+his interest in his uxorious satisfactions, and so Mrs.
+Lee, with her bright watchful eyes, quick impulsive
+movements and instinctive command had the utmost
+freedom to realize her ideals.</p>
+
+<p>In the world at large Lee and Solomonson seemed
+both a little short and a little stout, and a little too
+black and bright for their entirely conventional clothing,
+but for the dinner and evening of the villa they
+were now, out of consideration for Trafford, at their
+ease, and far more dignified in Oriental robes. Trafford
+was accommodated with a long, black, delicately
+embroidered garment that reached to his feet, and
+suited something upstanding and fine in his bearing;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">-324-</a></span>
+Minter, who had stayed on from an afternoon call,
+was gorgeous in Chinese embroidery. The rest of the
+men clung boldly or bashfully to evening dress....</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of his arrival Trafford, bathed and
+robed, found the rest of the men assembling about an
+open wood fire in the smaller hall at the foot of the
+main staircase. Lee was still upstairs, and Solomonson,
+with a new grace of gesture begotten by his costume,
+made the necessary introductions; a little man
+with fine-cut features and a Galway accent was Rex
+the playwright; a tall, grey-haired, clean-shaven man
+was Bright from the New York Central Museum; and
+a bearded giant with a roof of red hair and a remote
+eye was Radlett Barns, the great portrait-painter,
+who consents to paint your portrait for posterity as
+the King confers a knighthood. These were presently
+joined by Lee and Pacey, the blond-haired musician,
+and Mottersham, whose patents and inventions control
+electric lighting and heating all over the world,
+and then, with the men duly gathered and expectant,
+the women came down the wide staircase.</p>
+
+<p>The staircase had been planned and lit for these
+effects, and Mrs. Lee meant to make the most of her
+new discovery. Her voice could be heard in the unseen
+corridor above arranging the descent: "You go
+first, dear. Will you go with Christabel?" The conversation
+about the fire checked and ceased with the
+sound of voices above and the faint rustle of skirts.
+Then came Christabel Morrison, her slender grace
+beautifully contrasted with the fuller beauties of that
+great lady of the stage, Marion Rufus. Lady Solomonson
+descended confidently in a group of three,
+with Lady Mottersham and sharp-tongued little Mrs.
+Rex, all very rich and splendid. After a brief interval
+their hostess preceded Marjorie, and was so much of
+an artist that she had dressed herself merely as a foil<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">-325-</a></span>
+to this new creation. She wore black and scarlet,
+that made the white face and bright eyes under her
+sombre hair seem the face of an inspiring spirit. A
+step behind her and to the right of her came Marjorie,
+tall and wonderful, as if she were the queen of
+earth and sunshine, swathed barbarically in gold and
+ruddy brown, and with her abundant hair bound back
+by a fillet of bloodstones and gold. Radlett Barns
+exclaimed at the sight of her. She was full of the
+manifest consciousness of dignity as she descended,
+quite conscious and quite unembarrassed; two borrowed
+golden circlets glittered on her shining arm,
+and a thin chain of gold and garnets broke the contrast
+of the warm, sun-touched neck above, with the
+unsullied skin below.</p>
+
+<p>She sought and met her husband's astonishment
+with the faintest, remotest of smiles. It seemed to him
+that never before had he appreciated her beauty.
+His daily companion had become this splendour in
+the sky. She came close by him with hand extended to
+greet Sir Philip Mottersham. He was sensible of
+the glow of her, as it were of a scented aura about
+her. He had a first full intimation of the cult and
+worship of woman and the magnificence of women,
+old as the Mediterranean and its goddesses, and altogether
+novel to his mind....</p>
+
+<p>Christabel Morrison found him a pleasant but not
+very entertaining or exciting neighbor at the dinner-table,
+and was relieved when the time came for her to
+turn an ear to the artistic compliments of Radlett
+Barns. But Trafford was too interested and amused
+by the general effect of the dinner to devote himself
+to the rather heavy business of really exhilarating
+Christabel. He didn't give his mind to her. He found
+the transformation of Sir Rupert into a turbanned
+Oriental who might have come out of a picture by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">-326-</a></span>
+Carpaccio, gently stimulating and altogether delightful.
+His attention returned again and again to that
+genial swarthiness. Mrs. Lee on his left lived in her
+eyes, and didn't so much talk to him as rattle her mind
+at him almost absent-mindedly, as one might dangle
+keys at a baby while one talked to its mother. Yet it
+was evident she liked the look of him. Her glance
+went from his face to his robe, and up and down the
+table, at the bright dresses, the shining arms, the
+glass and light and silver. She asked him to tell her
+just where he had tramped and just what he had seen,
+and he had scarcely begun answering her question
+before her thoughts flew off to three trophies of china
+and silver, struggling groups of china boys bearing
+up great silver shells of fruit and flowers that stood
+down the centre of the table. "What do you think
+of my chubby boys?" she asked. "They're German
+work. They came from a show at Düsseldorf last
+week. Ben saw I liked them, and sent back for them
+secretly, and here they, are! I thought they might
+be too colourless. But are they?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Trafford, "they're just cool. Under
+that glow of fruit. Is this salt-cellar English cut
+glass?"</p>
+
+<p>"Old Dutch," said Mrs. Lee. "Isn't it jolly?"
+She embarked with a roving eye upon the story of
+her Dutch glass, which was abundant and admirable,
+and broke off abruptly to say, "Your wife is wonderful."</p>
+
+<p>"Her hair goes back," she said, "like music.
+You know what I mean&mdash;a sort of easy rhythm. You
+don't mind my praising your wife?"</p>
+
+<p>Trafford said he didn't.</p>
+
+<p>"And there's a sort of dignity about her. All my
+life, Mr. Trafford, I've wanted to be tall. It stopped
+my growth."</p>
+
+<p>She glanced off at a tangent. "Tell me, Mr.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">-327-</a></span>
+Trafford," she asked, "was your wife beautiful like
+this when you married her? I mean&mdash;of course she
+was a beautiful girl and adorable and all that; but
+wasn't she just a slender thing?"</p>
+
+<p>She paused, but if she had a habit of asking disconcerting
+questions she did not at any rate insist
+upon answers, and she went on to confess that she believed
+she would be a happier woman poor than rich&mdash;"not
+that Ben isn't all he should be"&mdash;but that then
+she would have been a fashionable dressmaker.
+"People want help," she said, "so much more help
+than they get. They go about with themselves&mdash;what
+was it Mr. Radlett Barns said the other night&mdash;oh!&mdash;like
+people leading horses they daren't ride.
+I think he says such good things at times, don't you?
+So wonderful to be clever in two ways like that.
+Just look <i>now</i> at your wife&mdash;now I mean, that they've
+drawn that peacock-coloured curtain behind her.
+My brother-in-law has been telling me you keep
+the most wonderful and precious secrets locked up in
+your breast, that you know how to make gold and
+diamonds and all sorts of things. If I did,&mdash;I should
+make them."</p>
+
+<p>She pounced suddenly upon Rex at her left with
+questions about the Keltic Renascence, was it still
+going on&mdash;or what? and Trafford was at liberty for
+a time to enjoy the bright effects about him, the
+shadowed profile and black hair of Christabel to the
+right of him, and the coruscating refractions and
+reflections of Lady Solomonson across the white and
+silver and ivory and blossom of the table. Then Mrs.
+Lee dragged him into a sudden conflict with Rex, by
+saying abruptly&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, Mr. Trafford wouldn't believe that."</p>
+
+<p>He looked perhaps a little lost.</p>
+
+<p>"I was telling Mrs. Lee," said Rex, "that I don't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">-328-</a></span>
+believe there's any economy of human toil in
+machinery whatever. I mean that the machine itself
+really embodies all the toil it seems to save, toil that
+went to the making of it and preparing it and getting
+coal for it...."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 12</p>
+
+<p>Next morning they found their hostess at breakfast
+in the dining-room and now the sun was streaming
+through a high triple window that had been curtained
+overnight, and they looked out through clean,
+bright plate-glass upon mountains half-dissolved in a
+luminous mist, and a mist-veiled lake below. Great
+stone jars upon the terrace bore a blaze of urged and
+early blossom, and beyond were cypresses. Their
+hostess presided at one of two round tables, at a side
+table various breakfast dishes kept warm over spirit
+lamps, and two men servants dispensed tea and coffee.
+In the bay of the window was a fruit table,
+with piled fruit-plates and finger-bowls.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lee waved a welcoming hand, and drew
+Marjorie to a seat beside her. Rex was consuming
+trout and Christabel peaches, and Solomonson, all
+his overnight Orientalism abandoned, was in outspoken
+tweeds and quite under the impression that he
+was interested in golf. Trafford got frizzled bacon
+for Marjorie and himself, and dropped into a desultory
+conversation, chiefly sustained by Christabel,
+about the peculiarly exalting effect of beautiful scenery
+on Christabel's mind. Mrs. Lee was as usual
+distraught, and kept glancing towards the steps that
+led up from the hall. Lady Solomonson appeared
+with a rustle in a wrapper of pink Chinese silk. "I
+came down after all," she said. "I lay in bed weighing
+rolls and coffee and relaxed muscles against your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">-329-</a></span>
+English breakfast downstairs. And suddenly I remembered
+your little sausages!"</p>
+
+<p>She sat down with a distribution of handkerchief,
+bag, letters, a gold fountain pen and suchlike
+equipments, and Trafford got her some of the coveted
+delicacies. Mrs. Lee suddenly cried out, "<i>Here</i>
+they come! <i>Here</i> they come!" and simultaneously
+the hall resonated with children's voices and the yapping
+of a Skye terrier.</p>
+
+<p>Then a gay little procession appeared ascending
+the steps. First came a small but princely little boy
+of three, with a ruddy face and curly black hair,
+behind him was a slender, rather awkward girl of
+perhaps eleven, and a sturdier daughter of Israel of
+nine. A nurse in artistic purple followed, listening
+inattentively to some private whisperings of a
+knickerbockered young man of five, and then came
+another purple-robed nurse against contingencies,
+and then a nurse of a different, white-clad, and
+more elaborately costumed sort, carrying a sumptuous
+baby of eight or nine months. "Ah! the <i>darlings!</i>"
+cried Christabel, springing up quite beautifully,
+and Lady Solomonson echoed the cry. The
+procession broke against the tables and split about
+the breakfast party. The small boy in petticoats
+made a confident rush for Marjorie, Christabel set
+herself to fascinate his elder brother, the young
+woman of eleven scrutinized Trafford with speculative
+interest and edged towards him coyly, and Mrs.
+Lee interviewed her youngest born. The amiable
+inanities suitable to the occasion had scarcely begun
+before a violent clapping of hands announced the
+appearance of Lee.</p>
+
+<p>It was Lee's custom, Mrs. Lee told Marjorie over
+her massively robed baby, to get up very early and
+work on rolls and coffee; he never breakfasted nor<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">-330-</a></span>
+joined them until the children came. All of them
+rushed to him for their morning kiss, and it seemed
+to Trafford that Lee at least was an altogether
+happy creature as he accepted the demonstrative
+salutations of this struggling, elbowing armful of
+offspring, and emerged at last like a man from a
+dive, flushed and ruffled and smiling, to wish his adult
+guests good morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Come upstairs with us, daddy," cried the children,
+tugging at him. "Come upstairs!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Lee ran her eye about her table and rose.
+"It's the children's hour," she said to Marjorie.
+"You don't I hope, mind children?"</p>
+
+<p>"But," said Trafford incredulous, and with a
+friendly arm about his admirer, "is this tall young
+woman yours?"</p>
+
+<p>The child shot him a glance of passionate appreciation
+for this scrap of flattery.</p>
+
+<p>"We began young," said Mrs. Lee, with eyes of
+uncritical pride for the ungainly one, and smiled at
+her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"Upstairs," cried the boy of five and the girl of
+nine. "Upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>"May we come?" asked Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"May we all come?" asked Christabel, determined
+to be in the movement.</p>
+
+<p>Rex strolled towards the cigars, with disentanglement
+obviously in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you really care?" asked Mrs. Lee. "You
+know, I'm so proud of their nursery. Would you
+care&mdash;&mdash;? Always I go up at this time."</p>
+
+<p>"I've my little nursery, too," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course!" cried Mrs. Lee, "I forgot. Of
+course;" and overwhelmed Marjorie with inquiries as
+she followed her husband. Every one joined the
+nurseryward procession except Rex, who left himself<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">-331-</a></span>
+behind with an air of inadvertency, and escaped to
+the terrace and a cigar....</p>
+
+<p>It was a wonderful nursery, a suite of three bedrooms,
+a green and white, well-lit schoolroom and a
+vast playroom, and hovering about the passage Trafford
+remarked a third purple nurse and a very
+efficient and serious-looking Swiss governess. The
+schoolroom and the nursery displayed a triumph of
+judicious shopping and arrangement, the best of
+German and French and English things had been
+blended into a harmony at once hygienic and pedagogic
+and humanly charming. For once Marjorie
+had to admire the spending of another woman, and
+admit to herself that even she could not have done
+better with the money.</p>
+
+<p>There were clever little desks for the elder children
+to work at, adjustable desks scientifically lit so that
+they benefited hands and shoulders and eyes; there
+were artistically coloured and artistically arranged
+pictures, and a little library held all the best of Lang
+and Lucas, rare good things like "Uncle Lubin,"
+Maurice Baring's story of "Forget-me-not," "Johnny
+Crow's Garden," "The Bad Child's Book of
+Beasts," animal books and bird books, costume books
+and story books, colour books and rhyme books,
+abundant, yet every one intelligently chosen, no costly
+meretricious printed rubbish such as silly Gentile
+mothers buy. Then in the great nursery, with its
+cork carpet on which any toy would stand or run,
+was an abundance of admirable possessions and shelving
+for everything, and great fat cloth elephants
+to ride, and go-carts, and hooks for a swing. Marjorie's
+quick eye saw, and she admired effusively and
+envied secretly, and Mrs. Lee appreciated her appreciation.
+A skirmishing romp of the middle children
+and Lee went on about the two of them, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">-332-</a></span>
+Trafford was led off by his admirer into a cubby-house
+in one corner (with real glass windows made
+to open) and the muslin curtains were drawn while
+he was shown a secret under vows. Lady Solomonson
+discovered some soldiers, and was presently on her
+knees in a corner with the five-year old boy.</p>
+
+<p>"These are like my Teddy's," she was saying.
+"My Billy has some of these."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford emerged from the cubby-house, which
+was perhaps a little cramped for him, and surveyed
+the room, with his admirer lugging at his arm unheeded,
+and whispering: "Come back with me."</p>
+
+<p>Of course this was the clue to Lee and Solomonson.
+How extremely happy Lee appeared to be!
+Enormous vistas of dark philoprogenitive parents
+and healthy little Jews and Jewesses seemed to open
+out to Trafford, hygienically reared, exquisitely
+trained and educated. And he and Marjorie had
+just one little daughter&mdash;with a much poorer educational
+outlook. She had no cloth elephant to ride,
+no elaborate cubby-house to get into, only a half-dozen
+picture books or so, and later she wouldn't
+when she needed it get that linguistic Swiss.</p>
+
+<p>He wasn't above the normal human vanity of
+esteeming his own race and type the best, and certain
+vulgar aspects of what nowadays one calls Eugenics
+crossed his mind.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 13</p>
+
+<p>During those few crowded days of unfamiliar
+living Trafford accumulated a vast confused mass
+of thoughts and impressions. He realized acutely
+the enormous gulf between his attitudes towards
+women and those of his host and Solomonson&mdash;and
+indeed of all the other men. It had never occurred to
+him before that there was any other relationship<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">-333-</a></span>
+possible between a modern woman and a modern man
+but a frank comradeship and perfect knowledge, helpfulness,
+and honesty. That had been the continual
+implication of his mother's life, and of all that he
+had respected in the thought and writing of his time.
+But not one of these men in their place&mdash;with the
+possible exception of Minter, who remained brilliant
+but ambiguous&mdash;believed anything of the sort. It
+necessarily involved in practice a share of hardship
+for women, and it seemed fundamental to them that
+women should have no hardship. He sought for a
+word, and hung between chivalry and orientalism. He
+inclined towards chivalry. Their women were lifted
+a little off the cold ground of responsibility. Charm
+was their obligation. "A beautiful woman should
+be beautifully dressed," said Radlett Barns in the
+course of the discussion of a contemporary portrait
+painter. Lee nodded to endorse an obvious
+truth. "But she ought to dress herself," said Barns.
+"It ought to be herself to the points of the old lace&mdash;chosen
+and assimilated. It's just through not being
+that, that so many rich women are&mdash;detestable.
+Heaps of acquisition. Caddis-women...."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford ceased to listen, he helped himself to a
+cigar and pinched its end and lit it, while his mind
+went off to gnaw at: "A beautiful woman should be
+beautifully dressed," as a dog retires with a bone.
+He couldn't escape from its shining truth, and withal
+it was devastating to all the purposes of his life.</p>
+
+<p>He rejected the word orientalism; what he was
+dealing with here was chivalry. "All this," was indeed,
+under the thinnest of disguises, the castle and
+the pavilion, and Lee and Solomonson were valiant
+knights, who entered the lists not indeed with spear
+and shield but with prospectus and ingenious enterprise,
+who drew cheques instead of swords for their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">-334-</a></span>
+ladies' honour, who held "all that" in fee and subjection
+that these exquisite and wonderful beings
+should flower in rich perfection. All these women
+lived in a magic security and abundance, far above
+the mire and adventure of the world; their knights
+went upon quests for them and returned with villas
+and pictures and diamonds and historical pearls.
+And not one of them all was so beautiful a being as
+his Marjorie, whom he made his squaw, whom he expected
+to aid and follow him, and suffer uncomplainingly
+the rough services of the common life.
+Not one was half so beautiful as Marjorie, nor half
+so sweet and wonderful....</p>
+
+<p>If such thoughts came in Lee's villa, they returned
+with redoubled force when Trafford found himself
+packed painfully with Marjorie in the night train to
+Paris. His head ached with the rattle and suffocation
+of the train, and he knew hers must ache more.
+The windows of the compartment and the door were
+all closed, the litigious little commercial traveller in
+shiny grey had insisted upon that, there was no corner
+seat either for Marjorie or himself, the dim big
+package over her head swayed threateningly. The
+green shade over the light kept opening with the
+vibration of the train, the pallid old gentleman
+with the beard had twisted himself into a ghastly
+resemblance to a broken-necked corpse, and pressed
+his knees hard and stiffly against Trafford, and the
+small, sniffing, bow-legged little boy beside the rusty
+widow woman in the corner smelt mysteriously and
+penetratingly of Roquefort cheese. For the seventeenth
+time the little commercial traveller jumped
+up with an unbecoming expletive, and pulled the
+shade over the light, and the silent young man in the
+fourth corner stirred and readjusted his legs.</p>
+
+<p>For a time until the crack of light overhead had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">-335-</a></span>
+widened again every one became a dark head-dangling
+outline....</p>
+
+<p>He watched the dim shape before him and noted
+the weary droop of her pose. He wished he had
+brought water. He was intolerably thirsty, and his
+thirst gave him the measure of hers. This jolting
+f&#339;tid compartment was a horrible place for her, an
+intolerably horrible place. And she was standing it,
+for all her manifest suffering, with infinite gallantry
+and patience. What a gallant soul indeed she was!
+Whatever else she did she never failed to rise to a
+challenge. Her very extravagance that had tried
+their lives so sorely was perhaps just one aspect of
+that same quality. It is so easy to be saving if one is
+timid; so hard if one is unaccustomed to fear. How
+beautiful she had shone at times in the lights and
+glitter of that house behind there, and now she was
+back in her weather-stained tweeds again, like a shining
+sword thrust back into a rusty old sheath.</p>
+
+<p>Was it fair that she should come back into the
+sheath because of this passion of his for a vast
+inexhaustible research?</p>
+
+<p>He had never asked himself before if it was fair
+to assume she would follow his purpose and his fortunes.
+He had taken that for granted. And she
+too had taken that for granted, which was so generously
+splendid of her. All her disloyalties had been
+unintentional, indeed almost instinctive, breaches of
+her subordination to this aim which was his alone.
+These breaches he realized had been the reality of
+her nature fighting against her profoundest resolutions.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered what Lee must think of this sort of
+married life. How ugly and selfish it must seem from
+that point of view.</p>
+
+<p>He perceived for the first time the fundamental<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">-336-</a></span>
+incongruity of Marjorie's position, she was made to
+shine, elaborately prepared and trained to shine,
+desiring keenly to shine, and then imprisoned and
+hidden in the faded obscurity of a small, poor home.
+How conspicuously, how extremely he must be wanting
+in just that sort of chivalry in which Lee excelled!
+Those business men lived for their women to
+an extent he had hitherto scarcely dreamt of doing....</p>
+
+<p>His want of chivalry was beyond dispute. And
+was there not also an extraordinary egotism in this
+concentration upon his own purposes, a self-esteem,
+a vanity? Had her life no rights? Suppose now he
+were to give her&mdash;two years, three years perhaps of
+his life&mdash;altogether. Or even four. Was it too much
+to grudge her four? Solomonson had been at his
+old theme with him, a theme the little man had never
+relinquished since their friendship first began years
+ago, possibilities of a business alliance and the application
+of a mind of exceptional freshness and penetration
+to industrial development. Why shouldn't
+that be tried? Why not "make money" for a brief
+strenuous time, and then come back, when Marjorie's
+pride and comfort were secure?...</p>
+
+<p>(Poor dear, how weary she looked!)</p>
+
+<p>He wondered how much more remained of this
+appalling night. It would have made so little difference
+if they had taken the day train and travelled
+first-class. Wasn't she indeed entitled to travel first-class?
+Pictures of the immense spaciousness, the
+softness, cleanliness and dignity of first-class compartments
+appeared in his mind....</p>
+
+<p>He would have looked at his watch, but to get at
+it would mean disturbing the silent young man on
+his left.</p>
+
+<p>Outside in the corridor there broke out a noisy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">-337-</a></span>
+dispute about a missing coupon, a dispute in that
+wonderful language that is known to the facetious as
+<i>entente cordiale</i>, between an Englishman and the
+conductor of the train....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 14</p>
+
+<p>In Paris there was a dispute with an extortionate
+cabman, and the crossing from Dieppe to Newhaven
+was rough and bitterly cold. They were both ill.
+They reached home very dirty and weary, and among
+the pile of letters and papers on Trafford's desk
+was a big bundle of Science Note proofs, and two
+letters from Croydon and Pinner to alter the hours
+of his lectures for various plausible and irritating
+reasons.</p>
+
+<p>The little passage looked very small and rather
+bare as the door shut behind them, and the worn
+places that had begun to be conspicuous during the
+last six months, and which they had forgotten during
+the Swiss holiday, reasserted themselves. The dining-room,
+after spacious rooms flooded with sunshine,
+betrayed how dark it was, and how small. Those
+Bokhara embroideries that had once shone so splendid,
+now, after Mrs. Lee's rich and unlimited harmonies,
+seemed skimpy and insufficient, mere loin-cloths
+for the artistic nakedness of the home. They felt,
+too, they were beginning to find out their post-impressionist
+picture. They had not remembered it as
+nearly so crude as it now appeared. The hole a
+flying coal had burnt in the unevenly faded dark-blue
+carpet looked larger than it had ever done before,
+and was indeed the only thing that didn't appear
+faded and shrunken.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 15</p>
+
+<p>The atmosphere of the Lees' villa had disturbed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">-338-</a></span>
+Marjorie's feelings and ideas even more than it had
+Trafford's. She came back struggling to recover
+those high resolves that had seemed so secure when
+they had walked down to Les Avantes. There was a
+curiously tormenting memory of that vast, admirable
+nursery, and the princely procession of children that
+would not leave her mind. No effort of her reason
+could reconcile her to the inferiority of Margharita's
+equipment. She had a detestable craving for a uniform
+for May. But May was going....</p>
+
+<p>But indeed she was not so sure that May was
+going.</p>
+
+<p>She was no longer buoyantly well, she was full of
+indefinable apprehensions of weakness and failure.
+She struggled to control an insurgence of emotions
+that rose out of the deeps of her being. She had now,
+she knew, to take on her share of the burden, to
+become one of the Samurai, to show her love no longer
+as a demand but as a service. Yet from day to day
+she procrastinated under the shadow of apprehended
+things; she forebore to dismiss May, to buy that
+second-hand typewriter she needed, to take any irrevocable
+step towards the realization of the new way
+of living. She tried to think away her fears, but they
+would not leave her. She felt that Trafford watched
+her pale face with a furtive solicitude and wondered
+at her hesitations; she tried in vain to seem cheerful
+and careless in his presence, with an anxiety, with
+premonitions that grew daily.</p>
+
+<p>There was no need to worry him unduly....</p>
+
+<p>But soon the matter was beyond all doubting.
+One night she gathered her courage together suddenly
+and came down into his study in her dressing-gown
+with her hair about her shoulders. She opened<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">-339-</a></span>
+the door and her heart failed her.</p>
+
+<p>"Rag," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said busily from his desk, without
+looking round.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to speak to you," she answered, and came
+slowly, and stood beside him silently.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, old Marjorie?" he said presently, drawing
+a little intricate pattern in the corner of his blotting paper,
+and wondering whether this was a matter
+of five pounds or ten.</p>
+
+<p>"I meant so well," she said and caught herself
+back into silence again.</p>
+
+<p>He started at the thought, at a depth and meaning
+in her voice, turned his chair about to look
+at her, and discovered she was weeping and choking
+noiselessly. He stood up close to her, moving
+very slowly and silently, his eyes full of this new surmise,
+and now without word or gesture from her he
+knew his thought was right. "My dear," he
+whispered.</p>
+
+<p>She turned her face from him. "I meant so
+well," she sobbed. "My dear! I meant so well."
+Still with an averted face her arms came out to him
+in a desperate, unreasoning appeal for love. He
+took her and held her close to him. "Never mind,
+dear," he said. "Don't mind." Her passion now was
+unconstrained. "I thought&mdash;" he began, and left
+the thing unsaid.</p>
+
+<p>"But your work," she said; "your research?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must give up research," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dearest!"</p>
+
+<p>"I must give up research," he repeated. "I've
+been seeing it for days. Clearer and clearer. <i>This</i>
+dear, just settles things. Even&mdash;as we were coming
+home in the train&mdash;I was making up my mind. At<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">-340-</a></span>
+Vevey I was talking to Solomonson."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," she whispered, clinging to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I talked to Solomonson. He had ideas&mdash;a
+proposal."</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said. "I've left the thing too long."</p>
+
+<p>He repeated. "I must give up research&mdash;for
+years. I ought to have done it long before."</p>
+
+<p>"I had meant so well," she said. "I meant to
+work. I meant to deny myself...."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm glad," he whispered. "Glad! Why should
+you weep?" It seemed nothing to him then, that so
+he should take a long farewell to the rare, sweet air
+of that wonderland his mind had loved so dearly. All
+he remembered was that Marjorie was very dear to
+him, very dear to him, and that all her being was now
+calling out for him and his strength. "I had thought
+anyhow of giving up research," he repeated. "This
+merely decides. It happens to decide. I love you,
+dear. I put my research at your feet. Gladly. This
+is the end, and I do not care, my dear, at all. I
+do not care at all&mdash;seeing I have you...."</p>
+
+<p>He stood beside her for a moment, and then sat
+down again, sideways, upon his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't you, my dear, or me," he said, "but life
+that beats us&mdash;that beautiful, irrational mother....
+Life does not care for research or knowledge, but
+only for life. Oh! the world has to go on yet for tens
+of thousands of years before&mdash;before we are free for
+that. I've got to fight&mdash;as other men fight...."</p>
+
+<p>He thought in silence for a time, oddly regardless
+of her. "But if it was not you," he said, staring at
+the fireplace with knitted brows, "if I did not love
+you.... Thank God, I love you, dear! Thank God,
+our children are love children! I want to live&mdash;to my
+finger-tips, but if I didn't love you&mdash;oh! love you!<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">-341-</a></span>
+then I think now&mdash;I'd be glad&mdash;I'd be glad, I think,
+to cheat life of her victory."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear!" she cried, and clung weeping to
+him, and caught at him and sat herself upon his
+knees, and put her arms about his head, and kissed
+him passionately with tear-salt lips, with her hair
+falling upon his face.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," she whispered....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 16</p>
+
+<p>So soon as Trafford could spare an afternoon
+amidst his crowded engagements he went to talk to
+Solomonson, who was now back in London. "Solomonson,"
+he said, "you were talking about rubber at
+Vevey."</p>
+
+<p>"I remember," said Solomonson with a note of
+welcome.</p>
+
+<p>"I've thought it over."</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>thought</i> you would."</p>
+
+<p>"I've thought things over. I'm going to give up
+my professorship&mdash;and science generally, and come
+into business&mdash;if that is what you are meaning."</p>
+
+<p>Solomonson turned his paper-weight round very
+carefully before replying. Then he said: "You
+mustn't give up your professorship yet, Trafford.
+For the rest&mdash;I'm glad."</p>
+
+<p>He reflected, and then his bright eyes glanced up
+at Trafford. "I knew," he said, "you would."</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't," said Trafford. "Things have happened
+since."</p>
+
+<p>"Something was bound to happen. You're too
+good&mdash;for what it gave you. I didn't talk to you
+out there for nothing. I saw things.... Let's go
+into the other room, and smoke and talk it over." He<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">-342-</a></span>
+stood up as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would," he repeated, leading the
+way. "I knew you would. You see,&mdash;one <i>has</i> to.
+You can't get out of it."</p>
+
+<p>"It was all very well before you were married,"
+said Solomonson, stopping short to say it, "but
+when a man's married he's got to think. He can't
+go on devoting himself to his art and his science and
+all that&mdash;not if he's married anything worth having.
+No. Oh, I understand. He's got to look about him,
+and forget the distant prospect for a bit. I saw
+you'd come to it. <i>I</i> came to it. Had to. I had
+ambitions&mdash;just as you have. I've always had an
+inclination to do a bit of research on my own. I
+<i>like</i> it, you know. Oh! I could have done things.
+I'm sure I could have done things. I'm not a born
+money-maker. But&mdash;&mdash;." He became very close
+and confidential. "It's&mdash;&mdash;<i>them</i>.
+You said good-bye to science for a bit when you
+flopped me down on that old croquet-lawn, Trafford."
+He went off to reminiscences. "Lord, how we went
+over! No more aviation for me, Trafford!"</p>
+
+<p>He arranged chairs, and produced cigars. "After
+all&mdash;this of course&mdash;it's interesting. Once you get
+into the movement of it, it takes hold of you. It's a
+game."</p>
+
+<p>"I've thought over all you said," Trafford began,
+using premeditated phrases. "Bluntly&mdash;I want
+three thousand a year, and I don't make eight hundred.
+It's come home to me. I'm going to have
+another child."</p>
+
+<p>Solomonson gesticulated a congratulation.</p>
+
+<p>"All the same, I hate dropping research. It's
+stuff I'm made to do. About that, Solomonson, I'm
+almost superstitious. I could say I had a call....
+It's the maddest state of affairs! Now that I'm doing<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">-343-</a></span>
+absolutely my best work for mankind, work I
+firmly believe no one else can do, I just manage to
+get six hundred&mdash;nearly two hundred of my eight
+hundred is my own. What does the world think I
+could do better&mdash;that would be worth four times as
+much."</p>
+
+<p>"The world doesn't think anything at all about
+it," said Solomonson.</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose it did!"</p>
+
+<p>The thought struck Sir Rupert. He knitted his
+brows and looked hard obliquely at the smoke of his
+cigar. "Oh, it won't," he said, rejecting a disagreeable
+idea. "There isn't any world&mdash;not in that sense.
+That's the mistake you make, Trafford."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not what your work is worth," he explained.
+"It's what your advantages can get for you. People
+are always going about supposing&mdash;just what
+you suppose&mdash;that people ought to get paid in proportion
+to the good they do. It's forgetting what
+the world is, to do that. Very likely some day civilization
+will get to that, but it hasn't got to it yet. It
+isn't going to get to it for hundreds and hundreds of
+years."</p>
+
+<p>His manner became confidential. "Civilization's
+just a fight, Trafford&mdash;just as savagery is a fight,
+and being a wild beast is a fight,&mdash;only you have
+paddeder gloves on and there's more rules. We aren't
+out for everybody, we're out for ourselves&mdash;and a few
+friends perhaps&mdash;within limits. It's no good hurrying
+ahead and pretending civilization's something
+else, when it isn't. That's where all these socialists
+and people come a howler. Oh, <i>I</i> know the Socialists.
+I see 'em at my wife's At Homes. They come along
+with the literary people and the artists' wives and the
+actors and actresses, and none of them take much
+account of me because I'm just a business man and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">-344-</a></span>
+rather dark and short, and so I get a chance of looking
+at them from the side that isn't on show while
+the other's turned to the women, and they're just as
+fighting as the rest of us, only they humbug more and
+they don't seem to me to have a decent respect for
+any of the common rules. And that's about what it
+all comes to, Trafford."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert paused, and Trafford was about to
+speak when the former resumed again, his voice very
+earnest, his eyes shining with purpose. He liked
+Trafford, and he was doing his utmost to make a
+convincing confession of the faith that was in him.
+"It's when it comes to the women," said Sir Rupert,
+"that one finds it out. That's where <i>you've</i> found it
+out. You say, I'm going to devote my life to the
+service of Humanity in general. You'll find Humanity
+in particular, in the shape of all the fine, beautiful,
+delightful and desirable women you come across,
+preferring a narrower turn of devotion. See? That's
+all. <i>Caeteris paribus</i>, of course. That's what I
+found out, and that's what you've found out, and
+that's what everybody with any sense in his head
+finds out, and there you are."</p>
+
+<p>"You put it&mdash;graphically," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel it graphically. I may be all sorts of
+things, but I do know a fact when I see it. I'm here
+with a few things I want and a woman or so I have
+and want to keep, and the kids upstairs, bless 'em!
+and I'm in league with all the others who want the
+same sort of things. Against any one or anything
+that upsets us. We stand by the law and each other,
+and that's what it all amounts to. That's as far
+as my patch of Humanity goes. Humanity at large!
+Humanity be blowed! <i>Look</i> at it! It isn't that I'm
+hostile to Humanity, mind you, but that I'm not disposed
+to go under as I should do if I didn't say that.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">-345-</a></span>
+So I say it. And that's about all it is, and there you
+are."</p>
+
+<p>He regarded Trafford over his cigar, drawing
+fiercely at it for some moments. Then seeing Trafford
+on the point of speaking, he snatched it from
+his lips, demanded silence by waving it at his hearer,
+and went on.</p>
+
+<p>"I say all this in order to dispose of any idea
+that you can keep up the open-minded tell-everybody-every-thing
+scientific attitude if you come into
+business. You can't. Put business in two words
+and what is it? Keeping something from somebody
+else, and making him pay for it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, look here!" protested Trafford. "That's
+not the whole of business."</p>
+
+<p>"There's making him want it, of course, advertisement
+and all that, but that falls under making
+him pay for it, really."</p>
+
+<p>"But a business man organizes public services,
+consolidates, economizes."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert made his mouth look very wide by
+sucking in the corners. "Incidentally," he said,
+and added after a judicious pause: "Sometimes...
+I thought we were talking of making money."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"You set me thinking," said Solomonson. "It's
+the thing I always like about you. I tell you,
+Trafford, I don't believe that the majority of people
+who make money help civilization forward any more
+than the smoke that comes out of the engine helps
+the train forward. If you put it to me, I don't. I've
+got no illusions of that sort. They're about as much
+help as&mdash;fat. They accumulate because things happen
+to be arranged so."</p>
+
+<p>"Things will be arranged better some day."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">-346-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"They aren't arranged better now. Grip that!
+<i>Now</i>, it's a sort of paradox. If you've got big gifts
+and you choose to help forward the world, if you
+choose to tell all you know and give away everything
+you can do in the way of work, you've got to give up
+the ideas of wealth and security, and that means fine
+women and children. You've got to be a <i>deprived</i>
+sort of man. 'All right,' you say, 'That's me!' But
+how about your wife being a deprived sort of woman?
+Eh? That's where it gets you! And meanwhile,
+you know, while <i>you</i> make your sacrifices and do your
+researches, there'll be little mean sharp active beasts
+making money all over you like maggots on a cheese.
+And if everybody who'd got gifts and altruistic ideas
+gave themselves up to it, then evidently only the
+mean and greedy lot would breed and have the glory.
+They'd get everything. Every blessed thing.
+There wouldn't be an option they didn't hold. And the
+other chaps would produce the art and the science
+and the literature, as far as the men who'd got hold
+of things would let 'em, and perish out of the
+earth altogether....
+There you are! Still, that's how things are made...."</p>
+
+<p>"But it isn't worth it. It isn't worth extinguishing
+oneself in order to make a world for those others,
+anyhow. Them and their children. Is it? Eh?
+It's like building a temple for flies to buzz in....
+There is such a thing as a personal side to Eugenics,
+you know."</p>
+
+<p>Solomonson reflected over the end of his cigar.
+"It isn't good enough," he concluded.</p>
+
+<p>"You're infernally right," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well," said Solomonson, "and now we can
+get to business."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 17</p>
+
+<p>The immediate business was the systematic exploitation<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">-347-</a></span>
+of the fact that Trafford had worked out the
+problem of synthesizing indiarubber. He had done
+so with an entire indifference to the commercial possibilities
+of the case, because he had been irritated by
+the enormous publicity given to Behrens' assertion
+that he had achieved this long-sought end. Of course
+the production of artificial rubbers and rubber-like
+substances had been one of the activities of the
+synthetic chemist for many years, from the appearance
+of Tilden's isoprene rubber onward, and there
+was already a formidable list of collaterals, dimethybutadiene,
+and so forth, by which the coveted goal
+could be approached. Behrens had boldly added to
+this list as his own a number of variations upon a
+theme of Trafford's, originally designed to settle certain
+curiosities about elasticity. Behrens' products
+were not only more massively rubber-like than anything
+that had gone before them, but also extremely
+cheap to produce, and his bold announcement of success
+had produced a check in rubber sales and widespread
+depression in the quiveringly sensitive market
+of plantation shares. Solomonson had consulted
+Trafford about this matter at Vevey, and had heard
+with infinite astonishment that Trafford had already
+roughly prepared and was proposing to complete and
+publish, unpatented and absolutely unprotected, first
+a smashing demonstration of the unsoundness of
+Behrens' claim and then a lucid exposition of just
+what had to be done and what could be done to make
+an indiarubber absolutely indistinguishable from the
+natural product. The business man could not believe
+his ears.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear chap, positively&mdash;you mustn't," Solomonson
+had screamed, and he had opened his fingers<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">-348-</a></span>
+and humped his shoulders and for all his public
+school and university training lapsed undisguisedly
+into the Oriental. "Don't you <i>see</i> all you are throwing
+away?" he squealed.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose it's our quality to throw such things
+away," said Trafford, when at last Solomonson's
+point of view became clear to him. They had embarked
+upon a long rambling discussion of that issue
+of publication, a discussion they were now taking
+up again. "When men dropped that idea of concealing
+knowledge, alchemist gave place to chemist,"
+said Trafford, "and all that is worth having in modern
+life, all that makes it better and safer and more
+hopeful than the ancient life, began."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear fellow," said Solomonson, "I know, I
+know. But to give away the synthesis of rubber! To
+just shove it out of the window into the street! <i>Gare
+l'eau!</i> O! And when you could do with so much
+too!"....</p>
+
+<p>Now they resumed the divergent threads of that
+Vevey talk.</p>
+
+<p>Solomonson had always entertained the warmest
+friendship and admiration for Trafford, and it was
+no new thing that he should desire a business co-operation.
+He had been working for that in the old days
+at Riplings; he had never altogether let the possibility
+drop out of sight between them in spite of Trafford's
+repudiations. He believed himself to be a
+scientific man turned to business, but indeed his whole
+passion was for organization and finance. He knew
+he could do everything but originate, and in Trafford
+he recognized just that rare combination of an
+obstinate and penetrating simplicity with constructive
+power which is the essential blend in the making
+of great intellectual initiatives. To Trafford belonged
+the secret of novel and unsuspected solutions;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">-349-</a></span>
+what were fixed barriers and unsurmountable conditions
+to trained investigators and commonplace minds,
+would yield to his gift of magic inquiry. He could
+startle the accepted error into self-betrayal. Other
+men might play the game of business infinitely better
+than he&mdash;Solomonson knew, indeed, quite well that
+he himself could play the game infinitely better than
+Trafford&mdash;but it rested with Trafford by right divine
+of genius to alter the rules. If only he could be
+induced to alter the rules secretly, unostentatiously,
+on a business footing, instead of making catastrophic
+plunges into publicity! And everything that had
+made Trafford up to the day of his marriage was
+antagonistic to such strategic reservations. The
+servant of science has as such no concern with personal
+consequences; his business is the steady, relentless
+clarification of knowledge. The human affairs
+he changes, the wealth he makes or destroys, are no
+concern of his; once these things weigh with him,
+become primary, he has lost his honour as a scientific
+man.</p>
+
+<p>"But you <i>must</i> think of consequences," Solomonson
+had cried during those intermittent talks at
+Vevey. "Here you are, shying this cheap synthetic
+rubber of yours into the world&mdash;for it's bound to be
+cheap! any one can see that&mdash;like a bomb into a market-place.
+What's the good of saying you don't care
+about the market-place, that <i>your</i> business is just
+to make bombs and drop them out of the window?
+You smash up things just the same. Why! you'll
+ruin hundreds and thousands of people, people living
+on rubber shares, people working in plantations, old,
+inadaptable workers in rubber works...."</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert was now still a little incredulous of
+Trafford's change of purpose, and for a time argued
+conceded points. Then slowly he came to the conditions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">-350-</a></span>
+and methods of the new relationship. He
+sketched out a scheme of co-operation and understandings
+between his firm and Trafford, between
+them both and his associated group in the city.</p>
+
+<p>Behrens was to have rope and produce his slump
+in plantation shares, then Trafford was to publish
+his criticism of Behrens, reserving only that catalytic
+process which was his own originality, the process
+that was to convert the inert, theoretically correct
+synthetic rubber, with a mysterious difference in the
+quality of its phases, into the real right thing. With
+Behrens exploded, plantation shares would recover,
+and while their friends in the city manipulated that,
+Trafford would resign his professorship and engage
+himself to an ostentatious promotion syndicate for
+the investigation of synthetic rubber. His discovery
+would follow immediately the group had cleared itself
+of plantation shares; indeed he could begin planning
+the necessary works forthwith; the large scale operations
+in the process were to be protected as far as
+possible by patents, but its essential feature, the
+addition of a specific catalytic agent, could be safely
+dealt with as a secret process.</p>
+
+<p>"I hate secrecy," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"Business," interjected Solomonson, and went on
+with his exposition of the relative advantages of
+secrecy and patent rights. It was all a matter of
+just how many people you had to trust. As that
+number increased, the more and more advisable did
+it become to put your cards on the table and risk the
+complex uncertain protection of the patent law.
+They went into elaborate calculations, clerks were
+called upon to hunt up facts and prices, and the table
+was presently littered with waste arithmetic.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe we can do the stuff at tenpence a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">-351-</a></span>
+pound," said Solomonson, leaning back in his chair
+at last, and rattling his fountain pen between his
+teeth, "so soon, that is, as we deal in quantity. Tenpence!
+We can lower the price and spread the market,
+sixpence by sixpence. In the end&mdash;there won't
+be any more plantations. Have to grow tea.... I
+say, let's have an invalid dinner of chicken and champagne,
+and go on with this. It's fascinating. You
+can telephone."</p>
+
+<p>They dined together, and Solomonson on champagne
+rather than chicken. His mind, which had
+never shown an instant's fatigue, began to glow and
+sparkle. This enterprise, he declared, was to be only
+the first of a series of vigorous exploitations. The
+whole thing warmed him. He would rather make ten
+thousand by such developments, than a hundred
+thousand by mere speculation. Trafford had but
+scratched the surface of his mine of knowledge.
+"Let's think of other things," said Sir Rupert Solomonson.
+"Diamonds! No! They've got too many
+tons stowed away already. A diamond now&mdash;it's an
+absolutely artificial value. At any time a new discovery
+and one wild proprietor might bust that show.
+Lord!&mdash;diamonds! Metals? Of course you've worked
+the colloids chiefly. I suppose there's been more
+done in metals and alloys than anywhere. There's
+a lot of other substances. Business has hardly begun
+to touch substances yet, you know, Trafford&mdash;flexible
+glass, for example, and things like that. So
+far we've always taken substances for granted. On
+our side, I mean. It's extraordinary how narrow the
+outlook of business and finance is&mdash;still. It never
+seems to lead to things, never thinks ahead. In this
+case of rubber, for example&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"When men fight for their own hands and for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">-352-</a></span>
+profit and position in the next ten years or so, I
+suppose they tend to become narrow."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose they must." Sir Rupert's face glowed
+with a new idea, and his voice dropped a little lower.
+"But what a pull they get, Trafford, if perhaps&mdash;they
+don't, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Trafford with a smile and a sigh,
+"the other sort gets the pull."</p>
+
+<p>"Not <i>this</i> time," said Solomonson; "not with
+you to spot processes and me to figure out the
+cost&mdash;" he waved his hands to the litter that had
+been removed to a side table&mdash;"and generally see
+how the business end of things is going...." </p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p class="center">
+<span class="smcap">BOOK THE THIRD</span><br />
+<br />
+<big>MARJORIE AT LONELY HUT</big></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER THE FIRST</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Successes</span></h3>
+
+<p class="title">§ 1</p>
+
+<p>I find it hard to trace the accumulation of moods<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">-355-</a></span>
+and feelings that led Trafford and Marjorie at last
+to make their extraordinary raid upon Labrador.
+In a week more things happen in the thoughts of
+such a man as Trafford, changes, revocations, deflections,
+than one can chronicle in the longest of
+novels. I have already in an earlier passage of this
+story sought to give an image of the confused content
+of a modern human mind, but that pool was to
+represent a girl of twenty, and Trafford now was
+a man of nearly thirty-five, and touching life at a
+hundred points for one of the undergraduate Marjorie's.
+Perhaps that made him less confused, but it
+certainly made him fuller. Let me attempt therefore
+only the broad outline of his changes of purpose and
+activity until I come to the crucial mood that made
+these two lives a little worth telling about, amidst
+the many thousands of such lives that people are living
+to-day....</p>
+
+<p>It took him seven years from his conclusive agreement
+with Solomonson to become a rich and influential
+man. It took him only seven years, because already
+by the mere accidents of intellectual interest
+he was in possession of knowledge of the very greatest
+economic importance, and because Solomonson
+was full of that practical loyalty and honesty that
+distinguishes his race. I think that in any case
+Trafford's vigor and subtlety of mind would have
+achieved the prosperity he had found necessary to
+himself, but it might have been, under less favorable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">-356-</a></span>
+auspices, a much longer and more tortuous struggle.
+Success and security were never so abundant nor so
+easily attained by men with capacity and a sense of
+proportion as they are in the varied and flexible
+world of to-day. We live in an affluent age with a
+nearly incredible continuous fresh increment of power
+pouring in from mechanical invention, and compared
+with our own, most other periods have been meagre
+and anxious and hard-up times. Our problems are
+constantly less the problems of submission and consolation
+and continually more problems of opportunity....</p>
+
+<p>Trafford found the opening campaign, the operation
+with the plantation shares and his explosion
+of Behrens' pretensions extremely uncongenial. It
+left upon his mind a confused series of memories of
+interviews and talks in offices for the most part dingy
+and slovenly, of bales of press-cuttings and blue-pencilled
+financial publications, of unpleasing encounters
+with a number of bright-eyed, flushed, excitable
+and extremely cunning men, of having to be
+reserved and limited in his talk upon all occasions,
+and of all the worst aspects of Solomonson. All
+that part of the new treatment of life that was to
+make him rich gave him sensations as though he had
+ceased to wash himself mentally, until he regretted
+his old life in his laboratory as a traveller in a crowded
+night train among filthy people might regret the
+bathroom he had left behind him....</p>
+
+<p>But the development of his manufacture of rubber
+was an entirely different business, and for a time
+profoundly interesting. It took him into a new astonishing
+world, the world of large-scale manufacture
+and industrial organization. The actual planning
+of the works was not in itself anything essentially
+new to him. So far as all that went it was scarcely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">-357-</a></span>
+more than the problem of arranging an experiment
+upon a huge and permanent scale, and all that quick
+ingenuity, that freshness and directness of mind that
+had made his purely scientific work so admirable had
+ample and agreeable scope. Even the importance of
+cost and economy at every point in the process involved
+no system of considerations that was altogether
+novel to him. The British investigator knows
+only too well the necessity for husbanded material
+and inexpensive substitutes. But strange factors
+came in, a new region of interest was opened with
+the fact that instead of one experimenter working
+with the alert responsive assistance of Durgan, a multitude
+of human beings&mdash;even in the first drafts of
+his project they numbered already two hundred, before
+the handling and packing could be considered&mdash;had
+to watch, control, assist or perform every stage
+in a long elaborate synthesis. For the first time in
+his life Trafford encountered the reality of Labour,
+as it is known to the modern producer.</p>
+
+<p>It will be difficult in the future, when things now
+subtly or widely separated have been brought together
+by the receding perspectives of time, for the
+historian to realize just how completely out of the
+thoughts of such a young man as Trafford the millions
+of people who live and die in organized productive
+industry had been. That vast world of toil and
+weekly anxiety, ill-trained and stupidly directed
+effort and mental and moral feebleness, had been as
+much beyond the living circle of his experience as the
+hosts of Genghis Khan or the social life of the Forbidden
+City. Consider the limitations of his world.
+In all his life hitherto he had never been beyond a
+certain prescribed area of London's immensities,
+except by the most casual and uninstructive straying.
+He knew Chelsea and Kensington and the north bank<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">-358-</a></span>
+and (as a boy) Battersea Park, and all the strip
+between Kensington and Charing Cross, with some
+scraps of the Strand as far as the Law Courts, a shop
+or so in Tottenham Court Road and fragments about
+the British Museum and Holborn and Regent's Park,
+a range up Edgware Road to Maida Vale, the routes
+west and south-west through Uxbridge and Putney
+to the country, and Wimbledon Common and Putney
+Heath. He had never been on Hampstead Heath nor
+visited the Botanical Gardens nor gone down the
+Thames below London Bridge, nor seen Sydenham
+nor Epping Forest nor the Victoria Park. Take a
+map and blot all he knew and see how vast is the area
+left untouched. All industrial London, all wholesale
+London, great oceans of human beings fall into
+that excluded area. The homes he knew were comfortable
+homes, the poor he knew were the parasitic
+and dependent poor of the West, the shops, good
+retail shops, the factories for the most part engaged
+in dressmaking.</p>
+
+<p>Of course he had been informed about this vast
+rest of London. He knew that as a matter of fact
+it existed, was populous, portentous, puzzling. He
+had heard of "slums," read "Tales of Mean Streets,"
+and marvelled in a shallow transitory way at such
+wide wildernesses of life, apparently supported by
+nothing at all in a state of grey, darkling but prolific
+discomfort. Like the princess who wondered why
+the people having no bread did not eat cake, he could
+never clearly understand why the population remained
+there, did not migrate to more attractive surroundings.
+He had discussed the problems of those
+wildernesses as young men do, rather confidently,
+very ignorantly, had dismissed them, recurred to
+them, and forgotten them amidst a press of other
+interests, but now it all suddenly became real to him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">-359-</a></span>
+with the intensity of a startling and intimate contact.
+He discovered this limitless, unknown, greater London,
+this London of the majority, as if he had never
+thought of it before. He went out to inspect favourable
+sites in regions whose very names were unfamiliar
+to him, travelled on dirty little intraurban railway
+lines to hitherto unimagined railway stations, found
+parks, churches, workhouses, institutions, public-houses,
+canals, factories, gas-works, warehouses,
+foundries and sidings, amidst a multitudinous
+dinginess of mean houses, shabby back-yards, and
+ill-kept streets. There seemed to be no limits to this
+thread-bare side of London, it went on northward,
+eastward, and over the Thames southward, for mile
+after mile&mdash;endlessly. The factories and so forth
+clustered in lines and banks upon the means of communication,
+the homes stretched between, and infinitude
+of parallelograms of grimy boxes with public-houses
+at the corners and churches and chapels in
+odd places, towering over which rose the council
+schools, big, blunt, truncated-looking masses, the
+means to an education as blunt and truncated, born
+of tradition and confused purposes, achieving by accident
+what they achieve at all.</p>
+
+<p>And about this sordid-looking wilderness went a
+population that seemed at first as sordid. It was in
+no sense a tragic population. But it saw little of
+the sun, felt the wind but rarely, and so had a white,
+dull skin that looked degenerate and ominous to a
+West-end eye. It was not naked nor barefooted, but
+it wore cheap clothes that were tawdry when new,
+and speedily became faded, discoloured, dusty, and
+draggled. It was slovenly and almost wilfully ugly
+in its speech and gestures. And the food it ate was
+rough and coarse if abundant, the eggs it consumed
+"tasted"&mdash;everything "tasted"; its milk, its beer, its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">-360-</a></span>
+bread was degraded by base adulterations, its meat
+was hacked red stuff that hung in the dusty air until
+it was sold; east of the city Trafford could find no
+place where by his standards he could get a tolerable
+meal tolerably served. The entertainment of this
+eastern London was jingle, its religion clap-trap, its
+reading feeble and sensational rubbish without kindliness
+or breadth. And if this great industrial multitude
+was neither tortured nor driven nor cruelly
+treated&mdash;as the slaves and common people of other
+days have been&mdash;yet it was universally anxious, perpetually
+anxious about urgent small necessities and
+petty dissatisfying things....</p>
+
+<p>That was the general effect of this new region in
+which he had sought out and found the fortunate
+site for his manufacture of rubber, and against this
+background it was that he had now to encounter a
+crowd of selected individuals, and weld them into a
+harmonious and successful "process." They came out
+from their millions to him, dingy, clumsy, and at
+first it seemed without any individuality. Insensibly
+they took on character, rounded off by unaccustomed
+methods into persons as marked and distinctive as
+any he had known.</p>
+
+<p>There was Dowd, for instance, the technical assistant,
+whom he came to call in his private thoughts
+Dowd the Disinherited. Dowd had seemed a rather
+awkward, potentially insubordinate young man of
+unaccountably extensive and curiously limited attainments.
+He had begun his career in a crowded
+home behind and above a baker's shop in Hoxton, he
+had gone as a boy into the works of a Clerkenwell
+electric engineer, and there he had developed that
+craving for knowledge which is so common in poor
+men of the energetic type. He had gone to classes,
+read with a sort of fury, feeding his mind on the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">-361-</a></span>
+cheap and adulterated instruction of grant-earning
+crammers and on stale, meretricious and ill-chosen
+books; his mental food indeed was the exact parallel
+of the rough, abundant, cheap and nasty groceries
+and meat that gave the East-ender his spots
+and dyspeptic complexion, the cheap text-books
+were like canned meat and dangerous with intellectual
+ptomaines, the rascally encyclopćdias like
+weak and whitened bread, and Dowd's mental
+complexion, too, was leaden and spotted. Yet essentially
+he wasn't, Trafford found, by any means
+bad stuff; where his knowledge had had a chance of
+touching reality it became admirable, and he was full
+of energy in his work and a sort of honest zeal about
+the things of the mind. The two men grew from an
+acute mutual criticism into a mutual respect.</p>
+
+<p>At first it seemed to Trafford that when he met
+Dowd he was only meeting Dowd, but a time came
+when it seemed to him that in meeting Dowd he was
+meeting all that vast new England outside the range
+of ruling-class dreams, that multitudinous greater
+England, cheaply treated, rather out of health, angry,
+energetic and now becoming intelligent and
+critical, that England which organized industrialism
+has created. There were nights when he thought
+for hours about Dowd. Other figures grouped themselves
+round him&mdash;Markham, the head clerk, the
+quintessence of East-end respectability, who saw to
+the packing; Miss Peckover, an ex-telegraph operator,
+a woman so entirely reliable and unobservant
+that the most betraying phase of the secret process
+could be confidently entrusted to her hands. Behind
+them were clerks, workmen, motor-van men, work-girls,
+a crowd of wage-earners, from amidst which
+some individual would assume temporary importance
+and interest by doing something wrong, getting into<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">-362-</a></span>
+trouble, becoming insubordinate, and having contributed
+a little vivid story to Trafford's gathering
+impressions of life, drop back again into undistinguished
+subordination.</p>
+
+<p>Dowd became at last entirely representative.</p>
+
+<p>When first Trafford looked Dowd in the eye, he
+met something of the hostile interest one might encounter
+in a swordsman ready to begin a duel. There
+was a watchfulness, an immense reserve. They discussed
+the work and the terms of their relationship,
+and all the while Trafford felt there was something
+almost threateningly not mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>Presently he learnt from a Silvertown employer
+what that concealed aspect was. Dowd was "that
+sort of man who makes trouble," disposed to strike
+rather than not upon a grievance, with a taste for
+open-air meetings, a member, obstinately adherent
+in spite of friendly remonstrance, of the Social Democratic
+Party. This in spite of his clear duty to a
+wife and two small white knobby children. For a
+time he would not talk to Trafford of anything but
+business&mdash;Trafford was so manifestly the enemy, not
+to be trusted, the adventurous plutocrat, the exploiter&mdash;when
+at last Dowd did open out he did so
+defiantly, throwing opinions at Trafford as a mob
+might hurl bricks at windows. At last they achieved
+a sort of friendship and understanding, an amiability
+as it were, in hostility, but never from first to last
+would he talk to Trafford as one gentleman to another;
+between them, and crossed only by flimsy, temporary
+bridges, was his sense of incurable grievances
+and fundamental injustice. He seemed incapable of
+forgetting the disadvantages of his birth and upbringing,
+the inferiority and disorder of the house that
+sheltered him, the poor food that nourished him, the
+deadened air he breathed, the limited leisure, the inadequate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">-363-</a></span>
+books. Implicit in his every word and act
+was the assurance that but for this handicap he
+could have filled Trafford's place, while Trafford
+would certainly have failed in his.</p>
+
+<p>For all these things Dowd made Trafford responsible;
+he held him to that inexorably.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>You</i> sweat us," he said, speaking between his
+teeth; "<i>you</i> limit us, <i>you</i> stifle us, and away there in
+the West-end, <i>you</i> and the women you keep waste
+the plunder."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford attempted palliation. "After all," he
+said, "it's not me so particularly&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But it is," said Dowd.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the system things go upon."</p>
+
+<p>"You're the responsible part of it. <i>You</i> have
+freedom, <i>you</i> have power and endless opportunity&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Trafford shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"It's because your sort wants too much," said
+Dowd, "that my sort hasn't enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me how to organize things better."</p>
+
+<p>"Much you'd care. They'll organize themselves.
+Everything is drifting to class separation, the
+growing discontent, the growing hardship of the
+masses.... Then you'll see."</p>
+
+<p>"Then what's going to happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Overthrow. And social democracy."</p>
+
+<p>"How is that going to work?"</p>
+
+<p>Dowd had been cornered by that before. "I don't
+care if it <i>doesn't</i> work," he snarled, "so long as we
+smash up this. We're getting too sick to care what
+comes after."</p>
+
+<p>"Dowd," said Trafford abruptly, "<i>I'm</i> not so
+satisfied with things."</p>
+
+<p>Dowd looked at him askance. "You'll get reconciled
+to it," he said. "It's ugly here&mdash;but it's all
+right there&mdash;at the spending end.... Your sort<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">-364-</a></span>
+has got to grab, your sort has got to spend&mdash;until
+the thing works out and the social revolution makes
+an end of you."</p>
+
+<p>"And then?"</p>
+
+<p>Dowd became busy with his work.</p>
+
+<p>Trafford stuck his hands in his pockets and stared
+out of the dingy factory window.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't object so much to your diagnosis," he
+said, "as to your remedy. It doesn't strike me as a
+remedy."</p>
+
+<p>"It's an end," said Dowd, "anyhow. My God!
+When I think of all the women and shirkers flaunting
+and frittering away there in the West, while here men
+and women toil and worry and starve...." He
+stopped short like one who feels too full for controlled
+speech.</p>
+
+<p>"Dowd," said Trafford after a fair pause, "What
+would you do if you were me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do?" said Dowd.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Trafford as one who reconsiders
+it, "what would you do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Now that's a curious question, Mr. Trafford,"
+said Dowd, turning to regard him. "Meaning&mdash;if I
+were in your place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Trafford. "What would you do in
+my place?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should sell out of this place jolly quick," he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Sell!</i>" said Trafford softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;sell. And start a socialist daily right
+off. An absolutely independent, unbiassed socialist
+daily."</p>
+
+<p>"And what would that do?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would stir people up. Every day it would stir
+people up."</p>
+
+<p>"But you see I can't edit. I haven't the money<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">-365-</a></span>
+for half a year of a socialist daily.... And meanwhile
+people want rubber."</p>
+
+<p>Dowd shook his head. "You mean that you and
+your wife want to have the spending of six or eight
+thousand a year," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't make half of that," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;half of that," pressed Dowd. "It's all the
+same to me."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford reflected. "The point where I don't
+agree with you," he said, "is in supposing that my
+scale of living&mdash;over there, is directly connected
+with the scale of living&mdash;about here."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"'Directly,' I said. No. If we just stopped it&mdash;over
+there&mdash;there'd be no improvement here. In
+fact, for a time it would mean dislocations. It might
+mean permanent, hopeless, catastrophic dislocation.
+You know that as well as I do. Suppose the West-end
+became&mdash;Tolstoyan; the East would become
+chaos."</p>
+
+<p>"Not much likelihood," sneered Dowd.</p>
+
+<p>"That's another question. That we earn together
+here and that I spend alone over there, it's
+unjust and bad, but it isn't a thing that admits of
+any simple remedy. Where we differ, Dowd, is about
+that remedy. I admit the disease as fully as you do.
+I, as much as you, want to see the dawn of a great
+change in the ways of human living. But I don't
+think the diagnosis is complete and satisfactory; our
+problem is an intricate muddle of disorders, not one
+simple disorder, and I don't see what treatment is
+indicated."</p>
+
+<p>"Socialism," said Dowd, "is indicated."</p>
+
+<p>"You might as well say that health is indicated,"
+said Trafford with a note of impatience in his voice.
+"Does any one question that if we could have this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">-366-</a></span>
+socialist state in which every one is devoted and
+every one is free, in which there is no waste and no
+want, and beauty and brotherhood prevail universally,
+we wouldn't? But&mdash;&mdash;. You socialists have
+no scheme of government, no scheme of economic organization,
+no intelligible guarantees of personal
+liberty, no method of progress, no ideas about marriage,
+no plan&mdash;except those little pickpocket plans
+of the Fabians that you despise as much as I do&mdash;for
+making this order into that other order you've
+never yet taken the trouble to work out even in principle.
+Really you know, Dowd, what is the good of
+pointing at my wife's dresses and waving the red flag
+at me, and talking of human miseries&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to wake you up a bit," said Dowd with
+characteristic irrelevance.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 2</p>
+
+<p>The accusing finger of Dowd followed Trafford
+into his dreams.</p>
+
+<p>Behind it was his grey-toned, intelligent, resentful
+face, his smouldering eyes, his slightly frayed
+collar and vivid, ill-chosen tie. At times Trafford
+could almost hear his flat insistent voice, his measured
+h-less speech. Dowd was so penetratingly right,&mdash;and
+so ignorant of certain essentials, so wrong in his
+forecasts and ultimates. It was true beyond disputing
+that Trafford as compared with Dowd had opportunity,
+power of a sort, the prospect and possibility
+of leisure. He admitted the liability that followed
+on that advantage. It expressed so entirely
+the spirit of his training that with Trafford the noble
+maxim of the older socialists; "from each according
+to his ability, to each according to his need,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">-367-</a></span>
+received an intuitive acquiescence. He had no more
+doubt than Dowd that Dowd was the victim of a subtle
+evasive injustice, innocently and helplessly underbred,
+underfed, cramped and crippled, and that all
+his own surplus made him in a sense Dowd's debtor.</p>
+
+<p>But Dowd's remedies!</p>
+
+<p>Trafford made himself familiar with the socialist
+and labor newspapers, and he was as much impressed
+by their honest resentments and their enthusiastic
+hopefulness as he was repelled by their haste and ignorance,
+their cocksure confidence in untried reforms
+and impudent teachers, their indiscriminating progressiveness,
+their impulsive lapses into hatred, misrepresentation
+and vehement personal abuse. He
+was in no mood for the humours of human character,
+and he found the ill-masked feuds and jealousies of the
+leaders, the sham statecraft of G. B. Magdeberg,
+M.P., the sham Machiavellism of Dorvil, the sham
+persistent good-heartedness of Will Pipes, discouraging
+and irritating. Altogether it seemed to him the
+conscious popular movement in politics, both in and
+out of Parliament, was a mere formless and indeterminate
+aspiration. It was a confused part of the
+general confusion, symptomatic perhaps, but exercising
+no controls and no direction.</p>
+
+<p>His attention passed from the consideration of
+this completely revolutionary party to the general
+field of social reform. With the naďve directness of
+a scientific man, he got together the published literature
+of half a dozen flourishing agitations and philanthropies,
+interviewed prominent and rather embarrassed personages,
+attended meetings, and when
+he found the speeches too tiresome to follow watched
+the audience about him. He even looked up Aunt
+Plessington's Movement, and filled her with wild
+hopes and premature boastings about a promising<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">-368-</a></span>
+convert. "Marjorie's brought him round at last!"
+said Aunt Plessington. "I knew I could trust my
+little Madge!" His impression was not the cynic's
+impression of these wide shallows of activity. Progress
+and social reform are not, he saw, mere cloaks
+of hypocrisy; a wealth of good intention lies behind
+them in spite of their manifest futility. There is
+much dishonesty due to the blundering desire for consistency
+in people of hasty intention, much artless
+and a little calculated self-seeking, but far more vanity
+and amiable feebleness of mind in their general
+attainment of failure. The Plessingtons struck him
+as being after all very typical of the publicist at
+large, quite devoted, very industrious, extremely presumptuous
+and essentially thin-witted. They would
+cheat like ill-bred children for example, on some petty
+point of reputation, but they could be trusted to expend,
+ineffectually indeed, but with the extremest
+technical integrity, whatever sums of money their adherents
+could get together....</p>
+
+<p>He emerged from this inquiry into the proposed
+remedies and palliatives for Dowd's wrongs with a
+better opinion of people's hearts and a worse one of
+their heads than he had hitherto entertained.</p>
+
+<p>Pursuing this line of thought he passed from the
+politicians and practical workers to the economists
+and sociologists. He spent the entire leisure of the
+second summer after the establishment of the factory
+upon sociological and economic literature. At the
+end of that bout of reading he attained a vivid realization
+of the garrulous badness that rules in this field
+of work, and the prevailing slovenliness and negligence
+in regard to it. He chanced one day to look
+up the article on Socialism in the new Encyclopćdia
+Britannica, and found in its entire failure to state
+the case for or against modern Socialism, to trace<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">-369-</a></span>
+its origins, or to indicate any rational development
+in the movement, a symptom of the universal laxity
+of interest in these matters. Indeed, the writer did
+not appear to have heard of modern Socialism at all;
+he discussed collective and individualist methods very
+much as a rather ill-read schoolgirl in a hurry for her
+college debating society might have done. Compared
+with the treatment of engineering or biological science
+in the same compilation, this article became almost
+symbolical of the prevailing habitual incompetence
+with which all this system of questions is still handled.
+The sciences were done scantily and carelessly
+enough, but they admitted at any rate the possibility
+of completeness; this did not even pretend to
+thoroughness.</p>
+
+<p>One might think such things had no practical
+significance. And at the back of it all was Dowd,
+remarkably more impatient each year, confessing the
+failure of parliamentary methods, of trades unionism,
+hinting more and more plainly at the advent of
+a permanent guerilla war against capital, at the general
+strike and sabotage.</p>
+
+<p>"It's coming to that," said Dowd; "it's coming to
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>What's the good of it?</i>" he said, echoing Trafford's
+words. "It's a sort of relief to the feelings.
+Why shouldn't we?"</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 3</p>
+
+<p>But you must not suppose that at any time these
+huge grey problems of our social foundations and the
+riddle of intellectual confusion one reaches through
+them, and the yet broader riddles of human purpose
+that open beyond, constitute the whole of Trafford's
+life during this time. When he came back to Marjorie<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">-370-</a></span>
+and his home, a curtain of unreality fell between him
+and all these things. It was as if he stepped through
+such boundaries as Alice passed to reach her Wonderland;
+the other world became a dream again; as
+if he closed the pages of a vivid book and turned to
+things about him. Or again it was as if he drew
+down the blind of a window that gave upon a landscape,
+grave, darkling, ominous, and faced the warm
+realities of a brightly illuminated room....</p>
+
+<p>In a year or so he had the works so smoothly
+organized and Dowd so reconciled, trained and encouraged
+that his own daily presence was unnecessary,
+and he would go only three and then only two
+mornings a week to conduct those secret phases in
+the preparation of his catalytic that even Dowd could
+not be trusted to know. He reverted more and more
+completely to his own proper world.</p>
+
+<p>And the first shock of discovering that greater
+London which "isn't in it" passed away by imperceptible
+degrees. Things that had been as vivid and
+startling as new wounds became unstimulating and
+ineffective with repetition. He got used to the change
+from Belgravia to East Ham, from East Ham to Belgravia.
+He fell in with the unusual persuasion in
+Belgravia, that, given a firm and prompt Home
+Secretary, East Ham could be trusted to go on&mdash;for
+quite a long time anyhow. One cannot sit down for
+all one's life in the face of insoluble problems. He
+had a motor-car now that far outshone Magnet's,
+and he made the transit from west to east in the
+minimum of time and with the minimum of friction.
+It ceased to be more disconcerting that he should have
+workers whom he could dismiss at a week's notice to
+want or prostitution than that he should have a servant
+waiting behind his chair. Things were so. The
+main current of his life&mdash;and the main current of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">-371-</a></span>
+life flowed through Marjorie and his home&mdash;carried
+him on. Rubber was his, but there were still limitless
+worlds to conquer. He began to take up, working
+under circumstances of considerable secrecy at
+Solomonson's laboratories at Riplings, to which he
+would now go by motor-car for two or three days at
+a time, the possibility of a cheap, resilient and very
+tough substance, rubber glass, that was to be, Solomonson
+was assured, the road surface of the future.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 4</p>
+
+<p>The confidence of Solomonson had made it impossible
+for Trafford to alter his style of living almost
+directly upon the conclusion of their agreement. He
+went back to Marjorie to broach a financially emancipated
+phase. They took a furnished house at
+Shackleford, near Godalming in Surrey, and there
+they lived for nearly a year&mdash;using their Chelsea
+home only as a town apartment for Trafford when
+business held him in London. And there it was, in
+the pretty Surrey country, with the sweet air of pine
+and heather in Marjorie's blood, that their second
+child was born. It was a sturdy little boy, whose
+only danger in life seemed to be the superfluous
+energy with which he resented its slightest disrespect
+of his small but important requirements.</p>
+
+<p>When it was time for Marjorie to return to London,
+spring had come round again, and Trafford's
+conceptions of life were adapting themselves to the
+new scale upon which they were now to do things.
+While he was busy creating his factory in the East
+End, Marjorie was displaying an equal if a less original
+constructive energy in Sussex Square, near Lancaster
+Gate, for there it was the new home was to be
+established. She set herself to furnish and arrange<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">-372-</a></span>
+it so as to produce the maximum of surprise and chagrin
+in Daphne, and she succeeded admirably. The
+Magnets now occupied a flat in Whitehall Court, the
+furniture Magnet had insisted upon buying himself
+with all the occult cunning of the humorist in these
+matters, and not even Daphne could blind herself to
+the superiority both in arrangement and detail of
+Marjorie's home. That was very satisfactory, and
+so too was the inevitable exaggeration of Trafford's
+financial importance. "He can do what he likes in
+the rubber world," said Marjorie. "In Mincing
+Lane, where they deal in rubber shares, they used to
+call him and Sir Rupert the invaders; now they call
+them the Conquering Heroes.... Of course, it's
+mere child's play to Godwin, but, as he said, 'We
+want money.' It won't really interfere with his more
+important interests...."</p>
+
+<p>I do not know why both those sisters were more
+vulgarly competitive with each other than with any
+one else; I have merely to record the fact that they
+were so.</p>
+
+<p>The effect upon the rest of Marjorie's family was
+equally gratifying. Mr. Pope came to the house-warming
+as though he had never had the slightest
+objection to Trafford's antecedents, and told him
+casually after dinner that Marjorie had always been
+his favourite daughter, and that from the first he had
+expected great things of her. He told Magnet, who
+was the third man of the party, that he only hoped
+Syd and Rom would do as well as their elder sisters.
+Afterwards, in the drawing-room, he whacked Marjorie
+suddenly and very startlingly on the shoulder-blade&mdash;it
+was the first bruise he had given her since
+Buryhamstreet days. "You've made a man of him,
+Maggots," he said.</p>
+
+<p>The quiet smile of the Christian Scientist was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">-373-</a></span>
+becoming now the fixed expression of Mrs. Pope's
+face, and it scarcely relaxed for a moment as she
+surveyed her daughter's splendours. She had triumphantly
+refused to worry over a rather serious
+speculative disappointment, but her faith in her prophet's
+spiritual power had been strengthened rather
+than weakened by the manifest insufficiency of his
+financial prestidigitations, and she was getting
+through life quite radiantly now, smiling at (but not,
+of course, giving way to) beggars, smiling at toothaches
+and headaches, both her own and other people's,
+smiling away doubts, smiling away everything
+that bows the spirit of those who are still in the bonds
+of the flesh....</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards the children came round, Syd and
+Rom now with skirts down and hair up, and rather
+stiff in the fine big rooms, and Theodore in a high
+collar and very anxious to get Trafford on his side
+in his ambition to chuck a proposed bank clerkship
+and go in for professional aviation....</p>
+
+<p>It was pleasant to be respected by her family
+again, but the mind of Marjorie was soon reaching
+out to the more novel possibilities of her changed
+position. She need no longer confine herself to teas
+and afternoons. She could now, delightful thought!
+give dinners. Dinners are mere vulgarities for the
+vulgar, but in the measure of your brains does a dinner
+become a work of art. There is the happy blending
+of a modern and distinguished simplicity with a
+choice of items essentially good and delightful and
+just a little bit not what was expected. There is the
+still more interesting and difficult blending and arrangement
+of the diners. From the first Marjorie
+resolved on a round table, and the achievement of that
+rare and wonderful thing, general conversation. She
+had a clear centre, with a circle of silver bowls filled<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">-374-</a></span>
+with short cut flowers and low shaded, old silver
+candlesticks adapted to the electric light. The first
+dinner was a nervous experience for her, but happily
+Trafford seemed unconscious of the importance of
+the occasion and talked very easily and well; at last
+she attained her old ambition to see Sir Roderick
+Dover in her house, and there was Remington, the
+editor of the <i>Blue Weekly</i> and his silent gracious
+wife; Edward Crampton, the historian, full of surprising
+new facts about Kosciusko; the Solomonsons
+and Mrs. Millingham, and Mary Gasthorne the novelist.
+It was a good talking lot. Remington sparred
+agreeably with the old Toryism of Dover, flank attacks
+upon them both were delivered by Mrs. Millingham
+and Trafford, Crampton instanced Hungarian
+parallels, and was happily averted by Mary Gasthorne
+with travel experiences in the Carpathians;
+the diamonds of Lady Solomonson and Mrs. Remington
+flashed and winked across the shining table, as
+their wearers listened with unmistakable intelligence,
+and when the ladies had gone upstairs Sir Rupert
+Solomonson told all the men exactly what he thought
+of the policy of the <i>Blue Weekly</i>, a balanced, common-sense
+judgment. Upstairs Lady Solomonson betrayed
+a passion of admiration for Mrs. Remington, and
+Mrs. Millingham mumbled depreciation of the same
+lady's intelligence in Mary Gasthorne's unwilling
+ear. "She's <i>passive</i>," said Mrs. Millingham. "She
+bores him...."</p>
+
+<p>For a time Marjorie found dinner-giving delightful&mdash;it
+is like picking and arranging posies of human
+flowers&mdash;and fruits&mdash;and perhaps a little dried
+grass, and it was not long before she learnt that she
+was esteemed a success as a hostess. She gathered
+her earlier bunches in the Carmel and Solomonson
+circle, with a stiffening from among the literary and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">-375-</a></span>
+scientific friends of Trafford and his mother, and one
+or two casual and undervalued blossoms from Aunt
+Plessington's active promiscuities. She had soon a
+gaily flowering garden of her own to pick from. Its
+strength and finest display lay in its increasing proportion
+of political intellectuals, men in and about the
+House who relaxed their minds from the tense detailed
+alertness needed in political intrigues by conversation
+that rose at times to the level of the smarter
+sort of article in the half-crown reviews. The women
+were more difficult than the men, and Marjorie found
+herself wishing at times that girl novelists and playwrights
+were more abundant, or women writers on
+the average younger. These talked generally well,
+and one or two capable women of her own type talked
+and listened with an effect of talking; so many other
+women either chattered disturbingly, or else did not
+listen, with an effect of not talking at all, and so made
+gaps about the table. Many of these latter had to be
+asked because they belonged to the class of inevitable
+wives, <i>sine-qua-nons</i>, and through them she learnt the
+value of that priceless variety of kindly unselfish men
+who can create the illusion of attentive conversation
+in the most uncomfortable and suspicious natures
+without producing backwater and eddy in the general
+flow of talk.</p>
+
+<p>Indisputably Marjorie's dinners were successful.
+Of course, the abundance and ćsthetic achievements
+of Mrs. Lee still seemed to her immeasurably out of
+reach, but it was already possible to show Aunt
+Plessington how the thing ought really to be done,
+Aunt Plessington with her narrow, lank, austerely
+served table, with a sort of quarter-deck at her own
+end and a subjugated forecastle round Hubert. And
+accordingly the Plessingtons were invited and shown,
+and to a party, too, that restrained Aunt Plessington<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">-376-</a></span>
+from her usual conversational prominence....</p>
+
+<p>These opening years of Trafford's commercial
+phase were full of an engaging activity for Marjorie
+as for him, and for her far more completely than for
+him were the profounder solicitudes of life lost sight
+of in the bright succession of immediate events.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie did not let her social development interfere
+with her duty to society in the larger sense. Two
+years after the vigorous and resentful Godwin came
+a second son, and a year and a half later a third.
+"That's enough," said Marjorie, "now we've got to
+rear them." The nursery at Sussex Square had always
+been a show part of the house, but it became
+her crowning achievement. She had never forgotten
+the Lee display at Vevey, the shining splendours of
+modern maternity, the books, the apparatus, the
+space and light and air. The whole second floor was
+altered to accommodate these four triumphant beings,
+who absorbed the services of two nurses, a Swiss nursery
+governess and two housemaids&mdash;not to mention
+those several hundred obscure individuals who were
+yielding a sustaining profit in the East End. At any
+rate, they were very handsome and promising children,
+and little Margharita could talk three languages
+with a childish fluency, and invent and write a short
+fable in either French or German&mdash;with only as much
+misspelling as any child of eight may be permitted....</p>
+
+<p>Then there sprang up a competition between
+Marjorie and the able, pretty wife of Halford Wallace,
+most promising of under-secretaries. They gave
+dinners against each other, they discovered young
+artists against each other, they went to first-nights
+and dressed against each other. Marjorie was ruddy
+and tall, Mrs. Halford Wallace dark and animated;
+Halford Wallace admired Marjorie, Trafford was insensible
+to Mrs. Halford Wallace. They played for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">-377-</a></span>
+points so vague that it was impossible for any one
+to say which was winning, but none the less they
+played like artists, for all they were worth....</p>
+
+<p>Trafford's rapid prosperity and his implicit
+promise of still wider activities and successes brought
+him innumerable acquaintances and many friends.
+He joined two or three distinguished clubs, he derived
+an uncertain interest from a series of week-end visits
+to ample, good-mannered households, and for a time
+he found a distraction in little flashes of travel to
+countries that caught at his imagination, Morocco,
+Montenegro, Southern Russia.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know whether Marjorie might not have
+been altogether happy during this early Sussex
+Square period, if it had not been for an unconquerable
+uncertainty about Trafford. But ever and again
+she became vaguely apprehensive of some perplexing
+unreality in her position. She had never had any
+such profundity of discontent as he experienced. It
+was nothing clear, nothing that actually penetrated,
+distressing her. It was at most an uneasiness. For
+him the whole fabric of life was, as it were, torn and
+pieced by a provocative sense of depths unplumbed
+that robbed it of all its satisfactions. For her these
+glimpses were as yet rare, mere moments of doubt
+that passed again and left her active and assured.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 5</p>
+
+<p>It was only after they had been married six or
+seven years that Trafford began to realize how widely
+his attitudes to Marjorie varied. He emerged
+slowly from a naďve unconsciousness of his fluctuations,&mdash;a
+naďve unconsciousness of inconsistency
+that for most men and women remains throughout
+life. His ruling idea that she and he were friends,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">-378-</a></span>
+equals, confederates, knowing everything about each
+other, co-operating in everything, was very fixed
+and firm. But indeed that had become the remotest
+rendering of their relationship. Their lives were lives
+of intimate disengagement. They came nearest to
+fellowship in relation to their children; there they
+shared an immense common pride. Beyond that
+was a less confident appreciation of their common
+house and their joint effect. And then they liked
+and loved each other tremendously. They could play
+upon each other and please each other in a hundred
+different ways, and they did so, quite consciously,
+observing each other with the completest externality.
+She was still in many ways for him the bright
+girl he had admired in the examination, still the mysterious
+dignified transfiguration of that delightful
+creature on the tragically tender verge of motherhood;
+these memories were of more power with him
+than the present realities of her full-grown strength
+and capacity. He petted and played with the girl
+still; he was still tender and solicitous for that early
+woman. He admired and co-operated also with the
+capable, narrowly ambitious, beautiful lady into
+which Marjorie had developed, but those remoter experiences
+it was that gave the deeper emotions to
+their relationship.</p>
+
+<p>The conflict of aims that had at last brought
+Trafford from scientific investigation into business,
+had left behind it a little scar of hostility.
+He felt his sacrifice. He felt that he had given something
+for her that she had had no right to exact,
+that he had gone beyond the free mutualities of
+honest love and paid a price for her; he had deflected
+the whole course of his life for her and he was
+entitled to repayments. Unconsciously he had become
+a slightly jealous husband. He resented inattentions<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">-379-</a></span>
+and absences. He felt she ought to be with
+him and orient all her proceedings towards him. He
+did not like other people to show too marked an appreciation
+of her. She had a healthy love of admiration,
+and in addition her social ambitions made
+it almost inevitable that at times she should use her
+great personal charm to secure and retain adherents.
+He was ashamed to betray the resentments thus
+occasioned, and his silence widened the separation
+more than any protest could have done....</p>
+
+<p>For his own part he gave her no cause for a reciprocal
+jealousy. Other women did not excite his
+imagination very greatly, and he had none of the
+ready disposition to lapse to other comforters which
+is so frequent a characteristic of the husband out of
+touch with his life's companion. He was perhaps
+an exceptional man in his steadfast loyalty to his
+wife. He had come to her as new to love as she had
+been. He had never in his life taken that one decisive
+illicit step which changes all the aspects of
+sexual life for a man even more than for a woman.
+Love for him was a thing solemn, simple, and unspoilt.
+He perceived that it was not so for most
+other men, but that did little to modify his own private
+attitude. In his curious scrutiny of the people
+about him, he did not fail to note the drift of adventures
+and infidelities that glimmers along beneath
+the even surface of our social life. One or two of his
+intimate friends, Solomonson was one of them, passed
+through "affairs." Once or twice those dim proceedings
+splashed upward to the surface in an open
+scandal. There came Remington's startling elopement
+with Isabel Rivers, the writer, which took two
+brilliant and inspiring contemporaries suddenly and
+distressingly out of Trafford's world. Trafford
+felt none of that rage and forced and jealous contempt<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">-380-</a></span>
+for the delinquents in these matters which is
+common in the ill-regulated, virtuous mind. Indeed,
+he was far more sympathetic with than hostile to the
+offenders. He had brains and imagination to appreciate
+the grim pathos of a process that begins as a
+hopeful quest, full of the suggestion of noble possibilities,
+full of the craving for missed intensities of
+fellowship and realization, that loiters involuntarily
+towards beauties and delights, and ends at last too
+often after gratification of an appetite, in artificially
+hideous exposures, and the pelting misrepresentations
+of the timidly well-behaved vile. But the general effect
+of pitiful evasions, of unavoidable meannesses, of
+draggled heroics and tortuously insincere explanations
+confirmed him in his aversion from this labyrinthine
+trouble of extraneous love....</p>
+
+<p>But if Trafford was a faithful husband, he ceased
+to be a happy and confident one. There grew up in
+him a vast hinterland of thoughts and feelings, an accumulation
+of unspoken and largely of unformulated
+things in which his wife had no share. And it was in
+that hinterland that his essential self had its abiding
+place....</p>
+
+<p>It came as a discovery; it remained for ever after
+a profoundly disturbing perplexity that he had talked
+to Marjorie most carelessly, easily and seriously,
+during their courtship and their honeymoon. He
+remembered their early intercourse now as an immense
+happy freedom in love. Then afterwards a
+curtain had fallen. That almost delirious sense of
+escaping from oneself, of having at last found some
+one from whom there need be no concealment, some
+one before whom one could stand naked-souled and assured
+of love as one stands before one's God, faded so
+that he scarce observed its passing, but only discovered
+at last that it had gone. He misunderstood and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">-381-</a></span>
+met misunderstanding. He found he could hurt her
+by the things he said, and be exquisitely hurt by her
+failure to apprehend the spirit of some ill-expressed
+intention. And it was so vitally important not to
+hurt, not to be hurt. At first he only perceived that
+he reserved himself; then there came the intimation
+of the question, was she also perhaps in such another
+hinterland as his, keeping herself from him?</p>
+
+<p>He had perceived the cessation of that first bright
+outbreak of self-revelation, this relapse into the secrecies
+of individuality, quite early in their married
+life. I have already told of his first efforts to bridge
+their widening separation by walks and talks in the
+country, and by the long pilgrimage among the Alps
+that had ended so unexpectedly at Vevey. In the
+retrospect the years seemed punctuated with phases
+when "we must talk" dominated their intercourse,
+and each time the impulse of that recognized need
+passed away by insensible degrees again&mdash;with nothing
+said.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 6</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie cherished an obstinate hope that Trafford
+would take up political questions and go into
+Parliament. It seemed to her that there was something
+about him altogether graver and wider than
+most of the active politicians she knew. She liked
+to think of those gravities assuming a practical form,
+of Trafford very rapidly and easily coming forward
+into a position of cardinal significance. It gave her
+general expenditure a quality of concentration without
+involving any uncongenial limitation to suppose
+it aimed at the preparation of a statesman's circle
+whenever Trafford chose to adopt that assumption.
+Little men in great positions came to her house and
+talked with opaque self-confidence at her table; she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">-382-</a></span>
+measured them against her husband while she played
+the admiring female disciple to their half-confidential
+talk. She felt that he could take up these questions
+and measures that they reduced to trite twaddle, open
+the wide relevancies behind them, and make them magically
+significant, sweep away the encrusting pettiness,
+the personalities and arbitrary prejudices. But
+why didn't he begin to do it? She threw out hints he
+seemed blind towards, she exercised miracles of
+patience while he ignored her baits. She came near
+intrigue in her endeavor to entangle him in political
+affairs. For a time it seemed to her that she was succeeding&mdash;I
+have already told of his phase of inquiry
+and interest in socio-political work&mdash;and then he relapsed
+into a scornful restlessness, and her hopes
+weakened again.</p>
+
+<p>But he could not concentrate his mind, he could
+not think where to begin. Day followed day, each
+with its attacks upon his intention, its petty just
+claims, its attractive novelties of aspect. The telephone
+bell rang, the letters flopped into the hall, Malcom
+the butler seemed always at hand with some distracting
+oblong on his salver. Dowd was developing
+ideas for a reconstructed organization of the factory,
+Solomonson growing enthusiastic about rubber-glass,
+his house seemed full of women, Marjorie
+had an engagement for him to keep or the children
+were coming in to say good-night. To his irritated
+brain the whole scheme of his life presented itself at
+last as a tissue of interruptions which prevented his
+looking clearly at reality. More and more definitely
+he realized he wanted to get away and think. His
+former life of research became invested with an effect
+of immense dignity and of a steadfast singleness
+of purpose....</p>
+
+<p>But Trafford was following his own lights, upon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">-383-</a></span>
+his own lines. He was returning to that faith in the
+supreme importance of thought and knowledge, upon
+which he had turned his back when he left pure
+research behind him. To that familiar end he came
+by an unfamiliar route, after his long, unsatisfying
+examination of social reform movements and social
+and political theories. Immaturity, haste and presumption
+vitiated all that region, and it seemed to
+him less and less disputable that the only escape for
+mankind from a continuing extravagant futility lay
+through the attainment of a quite unprecedented
+starkness and thoroughness of thinking about all
+these questions. This conception of a needed Renascence
+obsessed him more and more, and the persuasion,
+deeply felt if indistinctly apprehended, that
+somewhere in such an effort there was a part for him
+to play....</p>
+
+<p>Life is too great for us or too petty. It gives us
+no tolerable middle way between baseness and greatness.
+We must die daily on the levels of ignoble compromise
+or perish tragically among the precipices.
+On the one hand is a life&mdash;unsatisfying and secure,
+a plane of dulled gratifications, mean advantages,
+petty triumphs, adaptations, acquiescences and submissions,
+and on the other a steep and terrible climb,
+set with sharp stones and bramble thickets and the
+possibilities of grotesque dislocations, and the snares
+of such temptation as comes only to those whose minds
+have been quickened by high desire, and the challenge
+of insoluble problems and the intimations of issues
+so complex and great, demanding such a nobility of
+purpose, such a steadfastness, alertness and openness
+of mind, that they fill the heart of man with
+despair....</p>
+
+<p>There were moods when Trafford would, as people say,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">-384-</a></span>
+pull himself together, and struggle with his
+gnawing discontent. He would compare his lot with
+that of other men, reproach himself for a monstrous
+greed and ingratitude. He remonstrated with himself
+as one might remonstrate with a pampered child
+refusing to be entertained by a whole handsome nursery
+full of toys. Other men did their work in the
+world methodically and decently, did their duty by
+their friends and belongings, were manifestly patient
+through dullness, steadfastly cheerful, ready to meet
+vexations with a humorous smile, and grateful for
+orderly pleasures. Was he abnormal? Or was he in
+some unsuspected way unhealthy? Trafford neglected
+no possible explanations. Did he want this great
+Renascence of the human mind because he was suffering
+from some subtle form of indigestion? He invoked,
+independently of each other, the aid of two
+distinguished specialists. They both told him in exactly
+the same voice and with exactly the same air
+of guineas well earned: "What you want, Mr. Trafford,
+is a change."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford brought his mind to bear upon the instances
+of contentment about him. He developed an
+opinion that all men and many women were potentially
+at least as restless as himself. A huge proportion
+of the usage and education in modern life
+struck upon him now as being a training in contentment.
+Or rather in keeping quiet and not upsetting
+things. The serious and responsible life of an ordinary
+prosperous man fulfilling the requirements
+of our social organization fatigues and neither completely
+satisfies nor completely occupies. Still less
+does the responsible part of the life of a woman of
+the prosperous classes engage all her energies or
+hold her imagination. And there has grown up a
+great informal organization of employments, games,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">-385-</a></span>
+ceremonies, social routines, travel, to consume these
+surplus powers and excessive cravings, which might
+otherwise change or shatter the whole order of human
+living. He began to understand the forced preoccupation
+with cricket and golf, the shooting, visiting, and
+so forth, to which the young people of the economically
+free classes in the community are trained. He
+discovered a theory for hobbies and specialized interests.
+He began to see why people go to Scotland to
+get away from London, and come to London to get
+away from Scotland, why they crowd to and fro
+along the Riviera, swarm over Switzerland, shoot,
+yacht, hunt, and maintain an immense apparatus of
+racing and motoring. Because so they are able to remain
+reasonably contented with the world as it is. He
+perceived, too, that a man who has missed or broken
+through the training to this kind of life, does not
+again very readily subdue himself to the security of
+these systematized distractions. His own upbringing
+had been antipathetic to any such adaptations; his
+years of research had given him the habit of naked
+intimacy with truth, filled him with a craving for
+reality and the destructive acids of a relentless critical
+method.</p>
+
+<p>He began to understand something of the psychology
+of vice, to comprehend how small a part mere
+sensuality, how large a part the spirit of adventure
+and the craving for illegality, may play, in the career
+of those who are called evil livers. Mere animal impulses
+and curiosities it had always seemed possible
+to him to control, but now he was beginning to apprehend
+the power of that passion for escape, at any
+cost, in any way, from the petty, weakly stimulating,
+competitive motives of low-grade and law-abiding
+prosperity....</p>
+
+<p>For a time Trafford made an earnest effort to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">-386-</a></span>
+adjust himself to the position in which he found himself,
+and make a working compromise with his disturbing
+forces. He tried to pick up the scientific preoccupation
+of his earlier years. He made extensive
+schemes, to Solomonson's great concern, whereby he
+might to a large extent disentangle himself from business.
+He began to hunt out forgotten note-books
+and yellowing sheets of memoranda. He found the
+resumption of research much more difficult than he
+had ever supposed possible. He went so far as to
+plan a laboratory, and to make some inquiries as to
+site and the cost of building, to the great satisfaction
+not only of Marjorie but of his mother. Old Mrs.
+Trafford had never expressed her concern at his
+abandonment of molecular physics for money-making,
+but now in her appreciation of his return to
+pure investigation she betrayed her sense of his departure.</p>
+
+<p>But in his heart he felt that this methodical establishment
+of virtue by limitation would not suffice
+for him. He said no word of this scepticism as it
+grew in his mind. Marjorie was still under the impression
+that he was returning to research, and that
+she was free to contrive the steady preparation for
+that happier day when he should assume his political
+inheritance. And then presently a queer little dispute
+sprang up between them. Suddenly, for the
+first time since he took to business, Trafford found
+himself limiting her again. She was disposed, partly
+through the natural growth of her circle and her
+setting and partly through a movement on the part
+of Mrs. Halford Wallace, to move from Sussex Square
+into a larger, more picturesquely built house in a
+more central position. She particularly desired a
+good staircase. He met her intimations of this development
+with a curious and unusual irritation.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">-387-</a></span>
+The idea of moving bothered him. He felt that exaggerated
+annoyance which is so often a concomitant
+of overwrought nerves. They had a dispute that
+was almost a quarrel, and though Marjorie dropped
+the matter for a time, he could feel she was still at
+work upon it.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER THE SECOND</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Trafford Decides to Go</span></h3>
+
+<p class="title">§ 1</p>
+
+<p>A <span class="smcap">Haunting</span> desire to go away into solitude grew<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">-388-</a></span>
+upon Trafford very steadily. He wanted intensely
+to think, and London and Marjorie would not let him
+think. He wanted therefore to go away out of London
+and Marjorie's world. He wanted, he felt, to go
+away alone and face God, and clear things up in his
+mind. By imperceptible degrees this desire anticipated
+its realization. His activities were affected
+more and more by intimations of a determined crisis.
+One eventful day it seemed to him that his mind
+passed quite suddenly from desire to resolve. He found
+himself with a project, already broadly definite. Hitherto
+he hadn't been at all clear where he could go.
+From the first almost he had felt that this change he
+needed, the change by which he was to get out of the
+thickets of work and perplexity and distraction that
+held him captive, must be a physical as well as a
+mental removal; he must go somewhere, still and isolated,
+where sustained detached thinking was possible....
+His preference, if he had one, inclined
+him to some solitude among the Himalaya Mountains.
+That came perhaps from Kim and the precedent
+of the Hindoo's religious retreat from the
+world. But this retreat he contemplated was a retreat
+that aimed at a return, a clarified and strengthened
+resumption of the world. And then suddenly,
+as if he had always intended it, Labrador flashed
+through his thoughts, like a familiar name that had
+been for a time quite unaccountably forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>The word "Labrador" drifted to him one day<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">-389-</a></span>
+from an adjacent table as he sat alone at lunch in
+the Liberal Union Club. Some bore was reciting the
+substance of a lecture to a fellow-member. "Seems
+to be a remarkable country," said the speaker.
+"Mineral wealth hardly glanced at, you know. Furs
+and a few score Indians. And at our doors. Practically&mdash;at
+our doors."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford ceased to listen. His mind was taking
+up this idea of Labrador. He wondered why he had
+not thought of Labrador before.</p>
+
+<p>He had two or three streams of thought flowing
+in his mind, as a man who muses alone is apt to do.
+Marjorie's desire to move had reappeared; a particular
+group of houses between Berkeley Square
+and Park Lane had taken hold of her fancy, she
+had urged the acquisition of one upon him that
+morning, and this kept coming up into consciousness
+like a wrong thread in a tapestry. Moreover,
+he was watching his fellow-members with a critical
+rather than a friendly eye. A half-speculative, half-hostile
+contemplation of his habitual associates was
+one of the queer aspects of this period of unsettlement.
+They exasperated him by their massive contentment
+with the surface of things. They came in
+one after another patting their ties, or pulling at
+the lapels of their coats, and looked about them for
+vacant places with a conscious ease of manner that
+irritated his nerves. No doubt they were all more
+or less successful and distinguished men, matter for
+conversation and food for anecdotes, but why did
+they trouble to give themselves the air of it? They
+halted or sat down by friends, enunciated vapid
+remarks in sonorous voices, and opened conversations
+in trite phrases, about London architecture, about
+the political situation or the morning's newspaper,
+conversations that ought, he felt, to have been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">-390-</a></span>
+thrown away unopened, so stale and needless they
+seemed to him. They were judges, lawyers of all
+sorts, bankers, company promoters, railway managers,
+stockbrokers, pressmen, politicians, men of
+leisure. He wondered if indeed they were as opaque
+as they seemed, wondered with the helpless wonder
+of a man of exceptional mental gifts whether any
+of them at any stage had had such thoughts as his,
+had wanted as acutely as he did now to get right
+out of the world. Did old Booch over there, for example,
+guzzling oysters, cry at times upon the unknown
+God in the vast silences of the night? But
+Booch, of course, was a member or something of the
+House of Laymen, and very sound on the thirty-nine
+articles&mdash;a man who ate oysters like that could
+swallow anything&mdash;and in the vast silences of the
+night he was probably heavily and noisily asleep....</p>
+
+<p>Blenkins, the gentlemanly colleague of Denton in
+the control of the <i>Old Country Gazette</i>, appeared on
+his way to the pay-desk, gesticulating amiably <i>en-route</i>
+to any possible friend. Trafford returned his
+salutation, and pulled himself together immediately
+after in fear that he had scowled, for he hated to
+be churlish to any human being. Blenkins, too, it
+might be, had sorrow and remorse and periods of
+passionate self-distrust and self-examination; maybe
+Blenkins could weep salt tears, as Blenkins no
+doubt under suitable sword-play would reveal heart
+and viscera as quivering and oozy as any man's.</p>
+
+<p>But to Trafford's jaundiced eyes just then, it
+seemed that if you slashed Blenkins across he would
+probably cut like a cheese....</p>
+
+<p>Now, in Labrador&mdash;&mdash;....</p>
+
+<p>So soon as Blenkins had cleared, Trafford followed
+him to the pay-desk, and went on upstairs to the
+smoking-room, thinking of Labrador. Long ago he<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">-391-</a></span>
+had read the story of Wallace and Hubbard in that
+wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>There was much to be said for a winter in Labrador.
+It was cold, it was clear, infinitely lonely, with
+a keen edge of danger and hardship and never a
+letter or a paper.</p>
+
+<p>One could provision a hut and sit wrapped in
+fur, watching the Northern Lights....</p>
+
+<p>"I'm off to Labrador," said Trafford, and entered
+the smoking-room.</p>
+
+<p>It was, after all, perfectly easy to go to Labrador.
+One had just to go....</p>
+
+<p>As he pinched the end of his cigar, he became
+aware of Blenkins, with a gleam of golden glasses and
+a flapping white cuff, beckoning across the room to
+him. With that probable scowl on his conscience
+Trafford was moved to respond with an unreal
+warmth, and strolled across to Blenkins and a group
+of three or four other people, including that vigorous
+young politician, Weston Massinghay, and Hart,
+K.C., about the further fireplace. "We were talking
+of you," said Blenkins. "Come and sit down with us.
+Why don't you come into Parliament?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've just arranged to go for some months to
+Labrador."</p>
+
+<p>"Industrial development?" asked Blenkins, all
+alive.</p>
+
+<p>"No. Holiday."</p>
+
+<p>No Blenkins believes that sort of thing, but of
+course, if Trafford chose to keep his own counsel&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Well, come into Parliament as soon as you get
+back."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford had had that old conversation before.
+He pretended insensibility when Blenkins gestured
+to a vacant chair. "No," he said, still standing, "we
+settled all that. And now I'm up to my neck in&mdash;detail<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">-392-</a></span>
+about Labrador. I shall be starting&mdash;before
+the month is out."</p>
+
+<p>Blenkins and Hart simulated interest. "It's
+immoral," said Blenkins, "for a man of your standing
+to keep out of politics."</p>
+
+<p>"It's more than immoral," said Hart; "it's
+American."</p>
+
+<p>"Solomonson comes in to represent the firm,"
+smiled Trafford, signalled the waiter for coffee, and
+presently disentangled himself from their company.</p>
+
+<p>For Blenkins Trafford concealed an exquisite
+dislike and contempt; and Blenkins had a considerable
+admiration for Trafford, based on extensive misunderstandings.
+Blenkins admired Trafford because
+he was good-looking and well-dressed, with a beautiful
+and successful wife, because he had become reasonably
+rich very quickly and easily, was young
+and a Fellow of the Royal Society with a reputation
+that echoed in Berlin, and very perceptibly did not
+return Blenkins' admiration. All these things filled
+Blenkins with a desire for Trafford's intimacy, and
+to become the associate of the very promising political
+career that it seemed to him, in spite of Trafford's
+repudiations, was the natural next step in a
+deliberately and honourably planned life. He
+mistook Trafford's silences and detachment for the
+marks of a strong, silent man, who was scheming the
+immense, vulgar, distinguished-looking achievements
+that appeal to the Blenkins mind. Blenkins was
+a sentimentally loyal party Liberal, and as he said
+at times to Hart and Weston Massinghay: "If those
+other fellows get hold of him&mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>Blenkins was the fine flower of Oxford Liberalism
+and the Tennysonian days. He wanted to be like
+King Arthur and Sir Galahad, with the merest touch
+of Launcelot, and to be perfectly upright and splendid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">-393-</a></span>
+and very, very successful. He was a fair, tenoring
+sort of person with an Arthurian moustache and
+a disposition to long frock coats. It had been said
+of him that he didn't dress like a gentleman, but that
+he dressed more like a gentleman than a gentleman
+ought to dress. It might have been added that he didn't
+behave like a gentleman, but that he behaved more
+like a gentleman than a gentleman ought to behave.
+He didn't think, but he talked and he wrote more
+thoughtfully in his leaders, and in the little dialogues
+he wrote in imitation of Sir Arthur Helps, than any
+other person who didn't think could possibly do. He
+was an orthodox Churchman, but very, very broad;
+he held all the doctrines, a distinguished sort of thing
+to do in an age of doubt, but there was a quality
+about them as he held them&mdash;as though they had been
+run over by something rather heavy. It was a flattened
+and slightly obliterated breadth&mdash;nothing was
+assertive, but nothing, under examination, proved to
+be altogether gone. His profuse thoughtfulness was
+not confined to his journalistic and literary work, it
+overflowed into Talks. He was a man for Great
+Talks, interminable rambling floods of boyish observation,
+emotional appreciation, and silly, sapient
+comment. He loved to discuss "Who are the Best
+Talkers now Alive?" He had written an essay, <i>Talk
+in the Past</i>. He boasted of week-ends when the Talk
+had gone on from the moment of meeting in the train
+to the moment of parting at Euston, or Paddington,
+or Waterloo; and one or two hostesses with embittered
+memories could verify his boasting. He did his
+best to make the club a Talking Club, and loved to
+summon men to a growing circle of chairs....</p>
+
+<p>Trafford had been involved in Talks on one or
+two occasions, and now, as he sat alone in the corridor
+and smoked and drank his coffee, he could imagine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">-394-</a></span>
+the Talk he had escaped, the Talk that was going
+on in the smoking room&mdash;the platitudes, the sagacities,
+the digressions, the sudden revelation of deep,
+irrational convictions. He reflected upon the various
+Talks at which he had assisted. His chief impression
+of them all was of an intolerable fluidity. Never once
+had he known a Talk thicken to adequate discussion;
+never had a new idea or a new view come to him in a
+Talk. He wondered why Blenkins and his like talked
+at all. Essentially they lived for pose, not for expression;
+they did not greatly desire to discover,
+make, or be; they wanted to seem and succeed. Talking
+perhaps was part of their pose of great intellectual
+activity, and Blenkins was fortunate to have an
+easy, unforced running of mind....</p>
+
+<p>Over his cigar Trafford became profoundly philosophical
+about Talk. And after the manner of those
+who become profoundly philosophical he spread out
+the word beyond its original and proper intentions
+to all sorts of kindred and parallel things. Blenkins
+and his miscellany of friends in their circle of chairs
+were, after all, only a crude rendering of very much
+of intellectual activity of mankind. Men talked so
+often as dogs bark. Those Talkers never came to
+grips, fell away from topic to topic, pretended depth
+and evaded the devastating horrors of sincerity. Listening
+was a politeness amongst them that was presently
+rewarded with utterance. Tremendously like
+dogs they were, in a dog-fancying neighborhood on
+a summer week-day afternoon. Fluidity, excessive
+abundance, inconsecutiveness; these were the things
+that made Talk hateful to Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>Wasn't most literature in the same class? Wasn't
+nearly all present philosophical and sociological
+discussion in the world merely a Blenkins circle on a
+colossal scale, with every one looming forward to get<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">-395-</a></span>
+in a deeply thoughtful word edgeways at the first opportunity?
+Imagine any one in distress about his
+soul or about mankind, going to a professor of economics
+or sociology or philosophy! He thought of
+the endless, big, expensive, fruitless books, the windy
+expansions of industrious pedantry that mocked the
+spirit of inquiry. The fields of physical and biological
+science alone had been partially rescued from the
+floods of human inconsecutiveness. There at least
+a man must, on the whole, join on to the work of
+other men, stand a searching criticism, justify himself.
+Philosophically this was an age of relaxed schoolmen.
+He thought of Doctor Codger at Cambridge,
+bubbling away with his iridescent Hegelianism like
+a salted snail; of Doctor Quiller at Oxford, ignoring
+Bergson and fulminating a preposterous insular
+Pragmatism. Each contradicted the other fundamentally
+upon matters of universal concern; neither
+ever joined issue with the other. Why in the name
+of humanity didn't some one take hold of those two
+excellent gentlemen, and bang their busy heads together
+hard and frequently until they either compromised or cracked?</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 2</p>
+
+<p>He forgot these rambling speculations as he came
+out into the spring sunshine of Pall Mall, and halting
+for a moment on the topmost step, regarded the tidy
+pavements, the rare dignified shops, the waiting taxicabs,
+the pleasant, prosperous passers-by. His mind
+lapsed back to the thought that he meant to leave all
+this and go to Labrador. His mind went a step further,
+and reflected that he would not only go to Labrador,
+but&mdash;it was highly probable&mdash;come back
+again.</p>
+
+<p>And then?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">-396-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Why, after all, should he go to Labrador at all?
+Why shouldn't he make a supreme effort here?</p>
+
+<p>Something entirely irrational within him told him
+with conclusive emphasis that he had to go to Labrador....</p>
+
+<p>He remembered there was this confounded business
+of the proposed house in Mayfair to consider....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 3</p>
+
+<p>It occurred to him that he would go a little out
+of his way, and look at the new great laboratories
+at the Romeike College, of which his old bottle-washer
+Durgan was, he knew, extravagantly proud.
+Romeike's widow was dead now and her will executed,
+and her substance half turned already to bricks and
+stone and glazed tiles and all those excesses of space
+and appliance which the rich and authoritative imagine
+must needs give us Science, however ill-selected and
+underpaid and slighted the users of those opportunities
+may be. The architects had had great fun with
+the bequest; a quarter of the site was devoted to a
+huge square surrounded by dignified, if functionless,
+colonnades, and adorned with those stone seats of
+honour which are always so chill and unsatisfactory
+as resting places in our island climate. The Laboratories,
+except that they were a little shaded by the
+colonnades, were everything a laboratory should be;
+the benches were miracles of convenience, there wasn't
+anything the industrious investigator might want,
+steam, high pressures, electric power, that he couldn't
+get by pressing a button or turning a switch, unless
+perhaps it was inspiring ideas. And the new library
+at the end, with its greys and greens, its logarithmic
+computators at every table, was a miracle of mental<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">-397-</a></span>
+convenience.</p>
+
+<p>Durgan showed his old professor the marvels.</p>
+
+<p>"If he <i>chooses</i> to do something here," said Durgan
+not too hopefully, "a man can...."</p>
+
+<p>"What's become of the little old room where we
+two used to work?" asked Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"They'll turn 'em all out presently," said Durgan,
+"when this part is ready, but just at present it's
+very much as you left it. There's been precious little
+research done there since you went away&mdash;not what
+<i>I</i> call research. Females chiefly&mdash;and boys. Playing
+at it. Making themselves into D.Sc.'s by a baby
+research instead of a man's examination. It's like
+broaching a thirty-two gallon cask full of Pap to
+think of it. Lord, sir, the swill! Research! Counting
+and weighing things! Professor Lake's all right,
+I suppose, but his work was mostly mathematical;
+he didn't do much of it here. No, the old days ended,
+sir, when you...."</p>
+
+<p>He arrested himself, and obviously changed his
+words. "Got busy with other things."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford surveyed the place; it seemed to him to
+have shrunken a little in the course of the three years
+that had intervened since he resigned his position. On
+the wall at the back there still hung, fly-blown and a
+little crumpled, an old table of constants he had made
+for his elasticity researches. Lake had kept it there,
+for Lake was a man of generous appreciations, and
+rather proud to follow in the footsteps of an investigator
+of Trafford's subtlety and vigor. The old sink
+in the corner where Trafford had once swilled his
+watch glasses and filled his beakers had been replaced
+by one of a more modern construction, and the
+combustion cupboard was unfamiliar, until Durgan
+pointed out that it had been enlarged. The ground-glass
+window at the east end showed still the marks of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">-398-</a></span>
+an explosion that had banished a clumsy student from
+this sanctuary at the very beginning of Trafford's
+career.</p>
+
+<p>"By Jove!" he said after a silence, "but I did
+some good work here."</p>
+
+<p>"You did, sir," said Durgan.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder&mdash;I may take it up again presently."</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt it, sir," said Durgan.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! But suppose I come back?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you would find yourself coming
+back, sir," said Durgan after judicious consideration.</p>
+
+<p>He adduced no shadow of a reason for his doubt,
+but some mysterious quality in his words carried
+conviction to Trafford's mind. He knew that he
+would never do anything worth doing in molecular
+physics again. He knew it now conclusively for the
+first time.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 4</p>
+
+<p>He found himself presently in Bond Street. The
+bright May day had brought out great quantities of
+people, so that he had to come down from altitudes of
+abstraction to pick his way among them.</p>
+
+<p>He was struck by the prevailing interest and contentment
+in the faces he passed. There was no sense
+of insecurity betrayed, no sense of the deeps and
+mysteries upon which our being floats like a film.
+They looked solid, they looked satisfied; surely never
+before in the history of the world has there been so
+great a multitude of secure-feeling, satisfied-looking,
+uninquiring people as there is to-day. All the tragic
+great things of life seem stupendously remote from
+them; pain is rare, death is out of sight, religion has
+shrunken to an inconsiderable, comfortable, reassuring
+appendage of the daily life. And with the bright
+small things of immediacy they are so active and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">-399-</a></span>
+alert. Never before has the world seen such multitudes,
+and a day must come when it will cease to see
+them for evermore.</p>
+
+<p>As he shouldered his way through the throng before
+the Oxford Street shop windows he appreciated
+a queer effect, almost as it were of insanity, about all
+this rich and abundant and ultimately aimless life,
+this tremendous spawning and proliferation of uneventful
+humanity. These individual lives signified no
+doubt enormously to the individuals, but did all the
+shining, reflecting, changing existence that went by
+like bubbles in a stream, signify collectively anything
+more than the leaping, glittering confusion of shoaling
+mackerel on a sunlit afternoon? The pretty
+girl looking into the window schemed picturesque
+achievements with lace and ribbon, the beggar at the
+curb was alert for any sympathetic eye, the chauffeur
+on the waiting taxi-cab watched the twopences
+ticking on with a quiet satisfaction; each followed a
+keenly sought immediate end, but altogether? Where
+were they going altogether? Until he knew that,
+where was the sanity of statecraft, the excuse of any
+impersonal effort, the significance of anything beyond
+a life of appetites and self-seeking instincts?</p>
+
+<p>He found that perplexing suspicion of priggishness
+affecting him again. Why couldn't he take the
+gift of life as it seemed these people took it? Why
+was he continually lapsing into these sombre, dimly
+religious questionings and doubts? Why after all
+should he concern himself with these riddles of some
+collective and ultimate meaning in things? Was he
+for all his ability and security so afraid of the accidents
+of life that on that account he clung to this
+conception of a larger impersonal issue which the
+world in general seemed to have abandoned so cheerfully?
+At any rate he did cling to it&mdash;and his sense<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">-400-</a></span>
+of it made the abounding active life of this stirring,
+bristling thoroughfare an almost unendurable perplexity....</p>
+
+<p>By the Marble Arch a little crowd had gathered
+at the pavement edge. He remarked other little
+knots towards Paddington, and then still others, and
+inquiring, found the King was presently to pass.
+They promised themselves the gratification of seeing
+the King go by. They would see a carriage, they
+would see horses and coachmen, perhaps even they
+might catch sight of a raised hat and a bowing figure.
+And this would be a gratification to them, it would
+irradiate the day with a sense of experiences, exceptional
+and precious. For that some of them had already
+been standing about for two or three hours.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of these waiting people for a time,
+and then he fell into a speculation about the King.
+He wondered if the King ever lay awake at three
+o'clock in the morning and faced the riddle of the
+eternities or whether he did really take himself seriously
+and contentedly as being in himself the vital
+function of the State, performed his ceremonies, went
+hither and thither through a wilderness of gaping
+watchers, slept well on it. Was the man satisfied?
+Was he satisfied with his empire as it was and himself
+as he was, or did some vision, some high, ironical intimation
+of the latent and lost possibilities of his
+empire and of the world of Things Conceivable that
+lies beyond the poor tawdry splendours of our present
+loyalties, ever dawn upon him?</p>
+
+<p>Trafford's imagination conjured up a sleepless
+King Emperor agonizing for humanity....</p>
+
+<p>He turned to his right out of Lancaster Gate into
+Sussex Square, and came to a stop at the pavement
+edge.</p>
+
+<p>From across the road he surveyed the wide white<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">-401-</a></span>
+front and portals of the house that wasn't big enough
+for Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 5</p>
+
+<p>He let himself in with his latchkey.</p>
+
+<p>Malcolm, his man, hovered at the foot of the
+staircase, and came forward for his hat and gloves
+and stick.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Trafford in?" asked Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"She said she would be in by four, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford glanced at his watch and went slowly
+upstairs.</p>
+
+<p>On the landing there had been a rearrangement of
+the furniture, and he paused to survey it. The alterations
+had been made to accommodate a big cloisonné
+jar, that now glowed a wonder of white and tinted
+whites and luminous blues upon a dark, deep-shining
+stand. He noted now the curtain of the window had
+been changed from something&mdash;surely it had been a
+reddish curtain!&mdash;to a sharp clear blue with a black
+border, that reflected upon and sustained and encouraged
+the jar tremendously. And the wall behind&mdash;?
+Yes. Its deep brown was darkened to an absolute
+black behind the jar, and shaded up between the
+lacquer cabinets on either hand by insensible degrees
+to the general hue. It was wonderful, perfectly harmonious,
+and so subtly planned that it seemed it all
+might have grown, as flowers grow....</p>
+
+<p>He entered the drawing-room and surveyed its
+long and handsome spaces. Post-impressionism was
+over and gone; three long pictures by young Rogerson
+and one of Redwood's gallant bronzes faced the
+tall windows between the white marble fireplaces at
+either end. There were two lean jars from India, a
+young boy's head from Florence, and in a great bowl<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">-402-</a></span>
+in the remotest corner a radiant mass of azaleas....</p>
+
+<p>His mood of wondering at familiar things was
+still upon him. It came to him as a thing absurd and
+incongruous that this should be his home. It was all
+wonderfully arranged into one dignified harmony, but
+he felt now that at a touch of social earthquake, with
+a mere momentary lapse towards disorder, it would
+degenerate altogether into litter, lie heaped together
+confessed the loot it was. He came to a stop opposite
+one of the Rogersons, a stiffly self-conscious shop girl
+in her Sunday clothes, a not unsuccessful emulation of
+Nicholson's wonderful Mrs. Stafford of Paradise
+Row. Regarded as so much brown and grey and
+amber-gold, it was coherent in Marjorie's design, but
+regarded as a work of art, as a piece of expression,
+how madly irrelevant was its humour and implications
+to that room and the purposes of that room! Rogerson
+wasn't perhaps trying to say much, but at any
+rate he was trying to say something, and Redwood
+too was asserting freedom and adventure, and the
+thought of that Florentine of the bust, and the patient,
+careful Indian potter, and every maker of all
+the little casual articles about him, produced an effect
+of muffled, stifled assertions. Against this subdued
+and disciplined background of muted, inarticulate
+cries,&mdash;cries for beauty, for delight, for freedom,
+Marjorie and her world moved and rustled and chattered
+and competed&mdash;wearing the skins of beasts, the
+love-plumage of birds, the woven cocoon cases of little
+silkworms....</p>
+
+<p>"Preposterous," he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>He went to the window and stared out; turned
+about and regarded the gracious variety of that long,
+well-lit room again, then strolled thoughtfully upstairs.
+He reached the door of his study, and a
+sound of voices from the schoolroom&mdash;it had recently<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">-403-</a></span>
+been promoted from the rank of day nursery to this
+level&mdash;caught his mood. He changed his mind, crossed
+the landing, and was welcomed with shouts.</p>
+
+<p>The rogues had been dressing up. Margharita,
+that child of the dreadful dawn, was now a sturdy and
+domineering girl of eight, and she was attired in a
+gilt paper mitre and her governess's white muslin
+blouse so tied at the wrists as to suggest long sleeves,
+a broad crimson band doing duty as a stole. She
+was Becket prepared for martyrdom at the foot of
+the altar. Godwin, his eldest son, was a hot-tempered,
+pretty-featured pleasantly self-conscious boy of
+nearly seven and very happy now in a white dragoon's
+helmet and rude but effective brown paper breastplate
+and greaves, as the party of assassin knights. A
+small acolyte in what was in all human probably one
+of the governess's more intimate linen garments assisted
+Becket, while the general congregation of Canterbury
+was represented by Edward, aged two, and
+the governess, disguised with a Union Jack tied over
+her head after the well-known fashion of the middle
+ages. After the children had welcomed their father
+and explained the bloody work in hand, they returned
+to it with solemn earnestness, while Trafford surveyed
+the tragedy. Godwin slew with admirable gusto, and
+I doubt if the actual Thomas of Canterbury showed
+half the stately dignity of Margharita.</p>
+
+<p>The scene finished, they went on to the penance
+of Henry the Second; and there was a tremendous
+readjustment of costumes, with much consultation
+and secrecy. Trafford's eyes went from his offspring
+to the long, white-painted room, with its gay frieze
+of ships and gulls and its rug-variegated cork carpet
+of plain brick red. Everywhere it showed his wife's
+quick cleverness, the clean serviceable decorativeness
+of it all, the pretty patterned window curtains, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">-404-</a></span>
+writing desks, the little library of books, the flowers
+and bulbs in glasses, the counting blocks and bricks
+and jolly toys, the blackboard on which the children
+learnt to draw in bold wide strokes, the big, well-chosen
+German colour prints upon the walls. And
+the children did credit to their casket; they were not
+only full of vitality but full of ideas, even Edward
+was already a person of conversation. They were
+good stuff anyhow....</p>
+
+<p>It was fine in a sense, Trafford thought, to have
+given up his own motives and curiosities to afford this
+airy pleasantness of upbringing for them, and then
+came a qualifying thought. Would they in their turn
+for the sake of another generation have to give up
+fine occupations for mean occupations, deep thoughts
+for shallow? Would the world get them in turn?
+Would the girls be hustled and flattered into advantageous
+marriages, that dinners and drawing-rooms
+might still prevail? Would the boys, after this gracious
+beginning, presently have to swim submerged
+in another generation of Blenkinses and their Talk,
+toil in arduous self-seeking, observe, respect and
+manipulate shams, succeed or fail, and succeeding,
+beget amidst hope and beautiful emotions yet another
+generation doomed to insincerities and accommodations,
+and so die at last&mdash;as he must die?...</p>
+
+<p>He heard his wife's clear voice in the hall below,
+and went down to meet her. She had gone into the
+drawing-room, and he followed her in and through
+the folding doors to the hinder part of the room,
+where she stood ready to open a small bureau. She
+turned at his approach, and smiled a pleasant, habitual
+smile....</p>
+
+<p>She was no longer the slim, quick-moving girl who
+had come out of the world to him when he crawled
+from beneath the wreckage of Solomonson's plane,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">-405-</a></span>
+no longer the half-barbaric young beauty who had
+been revealed to him on the staircase of the Vevey
+villa. She was now a dignified, self-possessed woman,
+controlling her house and her life with a skilful, subtle
+appreciation of her every point and possibility.
+She was wearing now a simple walking dress of brownish
+fawn colour, and her hat was touched with a steely
+blue that made her blue eyes seem handsome and hard,
+and toned her hair to a merely warm brown. She
+had, as it were, subdued her fine colours into a sheath
+in order that she might presently draw them again
+with more effect.</p>
+
+<p>"Hullo, old man!" she said, "you home?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded. "The club bored me&mdash;and I couldn't
+work."</p>
+
+<p>Her voice had something of a challenge and defiance
+in it. "I've been looking at a house," she said.
+"Alice Carmel told me of it. It isn't in Berkeley
+Square, but it's near it. It's rather good."</p>
+
+<p>He met her eye. "That's&mdash;premature," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"We can't go on living in this one."</p>
+
+<p>"I won't go to another."</p>
+
+<p>"But why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I just won't."</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't the money?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Trafford, with sudden fierce resentment.
+"I've overtaken you and beaten you there,
+Marjorie."</p>
+
+<p>She stared at the harsh bitterness of his voice.
+She was about to speak when the door opened, and
+Malcom ushered in Aunt Plessington and Uncle
+Hubert. Husband and wife hung for a moment, and
+then realized their talk was at an end....</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie went forward to greet her aunt, careless
+now of all that once stupendous Influence might
+think of her. She had long ceased to feel even the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_406" id="Page_406">-406-</a></span>
+triumph of victory in her big house, her costly, dignified
+clothes, her assured and growing social importance.
+For five years Aunt Plessington had not even
+ventured to advise; had once or twice admired. All
+that business of Magnet was&mdash;even elaborately&mdash;forgotten....</p>
+
+<p>Seven years of feverish self-assertion had left
+their mark upon both the Plessingtons. She was
+leaner, more gauntly untidy, more aggressively ill-dressed.
+She no longer dressed carelessly, she defied
+the world with her clothes, waved her tattered and
+dingy banners in its face. Uncle Hubert was no fatter,
+but in some queer way he had ceased to be thin.
+Like so many people whose peripheries defy the manifest
+quaint purpose of Providence, he was in a state
+of thwarted adiposity, and with all the disconnectedness
+and weak irritability characteristic of his condition.
+He had developed a number of nervous movements,
+chin-strokings, cheek-scratchings, and incredulous
+pawings at his more salient features.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't it a lark?" began Aunt Plessington, with
+something like a note of apprehension in her highpitched
+voice, and speaking almost from the doorway,
+"we're making a call together. I and Hubert! It's
+an attack in force."</p>
+
+<p>Uncle Hubert goggled in the rear and stroked his
+chin, and tried to get together a sort of facial expression.</p>
+
+<p>The Traffords made welcoming noises, and Marjorie
+advanced to meet her aunt.</p>
+
+<p>"We want you to do something for us," said Aunt
+Plessington, taking two hands with two hands....</p>
+
+<p>In the intervening years the Movement had had
+ups and downs; it had had a boom, which had ended
+abruptly in a complete loss of voice for Aunt Plessington&mdash;she
+had tried to run it on a patent non-stimulating<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_407" id="Page_407">-407-</a></span>
+food, and then it had entangled itself with a new
+cult of philanthropic theosophy from which it had
+been extracted with difficulty and in a damaged condition.
+It had never completely recovered from that
+unhappy association. Latterly Aunt Plessington had
+lost her nerve, and she had taken to making calls upon
+people with considerable and sometimes embarrassing
+demand for support, urging them to join committees,
+take chairs, stake reputations, speak and act as foils
+for her. If they refused she lost her temper very
+openly and frankly, and became industriously vindictive.
+She circulated scandals or created them.
+Her old assurance had deserted her; the strangulated
+contralto was losing its magic power, she felt, in this
+degenerating England it had ruled so long. In the
+last year or so she had become extremely snappy with
+Uncle Hubert. She ascribed much of the Movement's
+futility to the decline of his administrative powers and
+the increasing awkwardness of his gestures, and she
+did her utmost to keep him up to the mark. Her
+only method of keeping him up to the mark was to
+jerk the bit. She had now come to compel Marjorie
+to address a meeting that was to inaugurate a new
+phase in the Movement's history, and she wanted
+Marjorie because she particularly wanted a daring,
+liberal, and spiritually amorous bishop, who had once
+told her with a note of profound conviction that Marjorie
+was a very beautiful woman. She was so intent
+upon her purpose that she scarcely noticed Trafford.
+He slipped from the room unobserved under cover
+of her playful preliminaries, and went to the untidy
+little apartment overhead which served in that house
+as his study. He sat down at the big desk, pushed
+his methodically arranged papers back, and drummed
+on the edge with his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm damned if we have that bigger house," said<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_408" id="Page_408">-408-</a></span>
+Trafford.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 6</p>
+
+<p>He felt he wanted to confirm and establish this
+new resolution, to go right away to Labrador for a
+year. He wanted to tell someone the thing definitely.
+He would have gone downstairs again to Marjorie,
+but she was submerged and swimming desperately
+against the voluble rapids of Aunt Plessington's purpose.
+It might be an hour before that attack withdrew.
+Presently there would be other callers. He decided
+to have tea with his mother and talk to her
+about this new break in the course of his life.</p>
+
+<p>Except that her hair was now grey and her brown
+eyes by so much contrast brighter, Mrs. Trafford's
+appearance had altered very little in the ten years of
+her only son's marriage. Whatever fresh realizations
+of the inevitably widening separation between parent
+and child these years had brought her, she had kept
+to herself. She had watched her daughter-in-law
+sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with perplexity,
+always with a jealous resolve to let no shadow of
+jealousy fall between them. Marjorie had been sweet
+and friendly to her, but after the first outburst of
+enthusiastic affection, she had neither offered nor
+invited confidences. Old Mrs. Trafford had talked
+of Marjorie to her son guardedly, and had marked
+and respected a growing indisposition on his part to
+discuss his wife. For a year or so after his marriage
+she had ached at times with a sense of nearly intolerable
+loneliness, and then the new interests she had
+found for herself had won their way against this depression.
+The new insurrectionary movement of women
+that had distinguished those years had attacked
+her by its emotion and repelled her by its crudity, and
+she had resolved, quite in the spirit of the man who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_409" id="Page_409">-409-</a></span>
+had shaped her life, to make a systematic study of all
+the contributory strands that met in this difficult
+tangle. She tried to write, but she found that the
+poetic gift, the gift of the creative and illuminating
+phrase which alone justifies writing, was denied to
+her, and so she sought to make herself wise, to read
+and hear, and discuss and think over these things, and
+perhaps at last inspire and encourage writing in
+others.</p>
+
+<p>Her circle of intimates grew, and she presently
+remarked with a curious interest that while she had
+lost the confidences of her own son and his wife, she
+was becoming the confidant of an increasing number
+of other people. They came to her, she perceived,
+because she was receptive and sympathetic and without
+a claim upon them or any interest to complicate
+the freedoms of their speech with her. They came to
+her, because she did not belong to them nor they to
+her. It is, indeed, the defect of all formal and established
+relationship, that it embarrasses speech, and
+taints each phase in intercourse with the flavour of
+diplomacy. One can be far more easily outspoken
+to a casual stranger one may never see again than to
+that inseparable other, who may misinterpret, who
+may disapprove or misunderstand, and who will certainly
+in the measure of that discord remember....</p>
+
+<p>It became at last a matter of rejoicing to Mrs.
+Trafford that the ties of the old instinctive tenderness
+between herself and her son, the memories of pain and
+tears and the passionate conflict of childhood, were
+growing so thin and lax and inconsiderable, that she
+could even hope some day to talk to him again&mdash;almost
+as she talked to the young men and young women
+who drifted out of the unknown to her and sat
+in her little room and sought to express their perplexities<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_410" id="Page_410">-410-</a></span>
+and listened to her advice....</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to her that afternoon the wished-for day
+had come.</p>
+
+<p>Trafford found her just returned from a walk in
+Kensington Gardens and writing a note at her desk
+under the narrow sunlit window that looked upon the
+High Street. "Finish your letter, little mother," he
+said, and took possession of the hearthrug.</p>
+
+<p>When she had sealed and addressed her letter, she
+turned her head and found him looking at his father's
+portrait.</p>
+
+<p>"Done?" he asked, becoming aware of her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>She took her letter into the hall and returned to
+him, closing the door behind her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going away, little mother," he said with an
+unconvincing off-handedness. "I'm going to take a
+holiday."</p>
+
+<p>"Alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I want a change. I'm going off somewhere&mdash;untrodden
+ground as near as one can get it
+nowadays&mdash;Labrador."</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it for long?"</p>
+
+<p>"The best part of a year."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were going on with your research
+work again."</p>
+
+<p>"No." He paused. "I'm going to Labrador."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to think."</p>
+
+<p>She found nothing to say for a moment. "It's
+good," she remarked, "to think." Then, lest she herself
+should seem to be thinking too enormously, she
+rang the bell to order the tea that was already on its
+way.</p>
+
+<p>"It surprises a mother," she said, when the maid<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_411" id="Page_411">-411-</a></span>
+had come and gone, "when her son surprises her."</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he repeated, as though it explained
+everything, "I want to think."</p>
+
+<p>Then after a pause she asked some questions about
+Labrador; wasn't it very cold, very desert, very dangerous
+and bitter, and he answered informingly.
+How was he going to stay there? He would go up
+the country with an expedition, build a hut and remain
+behind. Alone? Yes&mdash;thinking. Her eyes
+rested on his face for a time. "It will be&mdash;lonely,"
+she said after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>She saw him as a little still speck against immense
+backgrounds of snowy wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>The tea-things came before mother and son were
+back at essentials again. Then she asked abruptly:
+"Why are you going away like this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm tired of all this business and finance," he
+said after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you would be," she answered as deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I've had enough of things. I want to get
+clear. And begin again somehow."</p>
+
+<p>She felt they both hung away from the essential
+aspect. Either he or she must approach it. She
+decided that she would, that it was a less difficult
+thing for her than for him.</p>
+
+<p>"And Marjorie?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He looked into his mother's eyes very quietly.
+"You see," he went on deliberately disregarding her
+question, "I'm beached. I'm aground. I'm spoilt
+now for the old researches&mdash;spoilt altogether. And I
+don't like this life I'm leading. I detest it. While I
+was struggling it had a kind of interest. There was
+an excitement in piling up the first twenty thousand.
+But <i>now</i>&mdash;! It's empty, it's aimless, it's incessant...."</p>
+
+<p>He paused. She turned to the tea-things, and lit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_412" id="Page_412">-412-</a></span>
+the spirit lamp under the kettle. It seemed a little
+difficult to do, and her hand trembled. When she
+turned on him again it was with an effort.</p>
+
+<p>"Does Marjorie like the life you are leading?"
+she asked, and pressed her lips together tightly.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with a bitterness in his voice that astonished
+her. "Oh, <i>she</i> likes it."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you sure?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"She won't like it without you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's too much! It's her world. It's what
+she's done&mdash;what she's made. She can have it; she
+can keep it. I've played my part and got it for her.
+But now&mdash;now I'm free to go. I will go. She's got
+everything else. I've done my half of the bargain.
+But my soul's my own. If I want to go away and
+think, I will. Not even Marjorie shall stand in the
+way of that."</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer to this outburst for a couple
+of seconds. Then she threw out, "Why shouldn't
+Marjorie think, too?"</p>
+
+<p>He considered that for some moments. "She
+doesn't," he said, as though the words came from the
+roots of his being.</p>
+
+<p>"But you two&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We don't talk. It's astonishing&mdash;how we don't.
+We don't. We can't. We try to, and we can't. And
+she goes her way, and now&mdash;I will go mine."</p>
+
+<p>"And leave her?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"In London?"</p>
+
+<p>"With all the things she cares for."</p>
+
+<p>"Except yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm only a means&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She turned her quiet face to him. "You know,"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_413" id="Page_413">-413-</a></span>
+she said, "that isn't true."...</p>
+
+<p>"No," she repeated, to his silent contradiction.</p>
+
+<p>"I've watched her," she went on. "You're <i>not</i> a
+means. I'd have spoken long ago if I had thought
+that. Haven't I watched? Haven't I lain awake
+through long nights thinking about her and you,
+thinking over every casual mood, every little sign&mdash;longing
+to help&mdash;helpless." ... She struggled with
+herself, for she was weeping. "<i>It has come to this</i>,"
+she said in a whisper, and choked back a flood of
+tears.</p>
+
+<p>Trafford stood motionless, watching her. She
+became active. She moved round the table. She
+looked at the kettle, moved the cups needlessly, made
+tea, and stood waiting for a moment before she poured
+it out. "It's so hard to talk to you," she said,
+"and about all this.... I care so much. For her.
+And for you.... Words don't come, dear.... One
+says stupid things."</p>
+
+<p>She poured out the tea, and left the cups steaming,
+and came and stood before him.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," she said, "you're ill. You aren't
+just. You've come to an end. You don't know where
+you are and what you want to do. Neither does she,
+my dear. She's as aimless as you&mdash;and less able to
+help it. Ever so much less able."</p>
+
+<p>"But she doesn't show it. She goes on. She
+wants things and wants things&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And you want to go away. It's the same thing.
+It's exactly the same thing. It's dissatisfaction. Life
+leaves you empty and craving&mdash;leaves you with nothing
+to do but little immediate things that turn to dust
+as you do them. It's her trouble, just as it's your
+trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"But she doesn't show it."</p>
+
+<p>"Women don't. Not so much. Perhaps even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_414" id="Page_414">-414-</a></span>
+she doesn't know it. Half the women in our world
+don't know&mdash;and for a woman it's so much easier to
+go on&mdash;so many little things."...</p>
+
+<p>Trafford tried to grasp the intention of this.
+"Mother," he said, "I mean to go away."</p>
+
+<p>"But think of her!"</p>
+
+<p>"I've thought. Now I've got to think of myself."</p>
+
+<p>"You can't&mdash;without her."</p>
+
+<p>"I will. It's what I'm resolved to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Go right away?"</p>
+
+<p>"Right away."</p>
+
+<p>"And think?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"Find out&mdash;what it all means, my boy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. So far as I'm concerned."</p>
+
+<p>"And then&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come back, I suppose. I haven't thought."</p>
+
+<p>"To her?"</p>
+
+<p>He didn't answer. She went and stood beside him,
+leaning upon the mantel. "Godwin," she said, "she'd
+only be further behind.... You've got to take her
+with you."</p>
+
+<p>He stood still and silent.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got to think things out with her. If
+you don't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you ought to go away with her&mdash;&mdash;" She
+stopped.</p>
+
+<p>"For good?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>They were both silent for a space. Then Mrs.
+Trafford gave her mind to the tea that was cooling
+in the cups, and added milk and sugar. She spoke
+again with the table between them.</p>
+
+<p>"I've thought so much of these things," she said
+with the milk-jug in her hand. "It's not only you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_415" id="Page_415">-415-</a></span>
+two, but others. And all the movement about us....
+Marriage isn't what it was. It's become a different
+thing because women have become human beings.
+Only&mdash;&mdash;You know, Godwin, all these things are so
+difficult to express. Woman's come out of being a
+slave, and yet she isn't an equal.... We've had a
+sort of sham emancipation, and we haven't yet come
+to the real one."</p>
+
+<p>She put down the milk-jug on the tray with an air
+of grave deliberation. "If you go away from her
+and make the most wonderful discoveries about life
+and yourself, it's no good&mdash;unless she makes them
+too. It's no good at all.... You can't live without
+her in the end, any more than she can live without
+you. You may think you can, but I've watched you.
+You don't want to go away from her, you want to go
+away from the world that's got hold of her, from the
+dresses and parties and the competition and all this
+complicated flatness we have to live in.... It
+wouldn't worry you a bit, if it hadn't got hold of her.
+You don't want to get out of it for your own sake.
+You <i>are</i> out of it. You are as much out of it as any
+one can be. Only she holds you in it, because she
+isn't out of it. Your going away will do nothing.
+She'll still be in it&mdash;and still have her hold on you....
+You've got to take her away. Or else&mdash;if
+you go away&mdash;in the end it will be just like a ship,
+Godwin, coming back to its moorings."</p>
+
+<p>She watched his thoughtful face for some moments,
+then arrested herself just in time in the act of
+putting a second portion of sugar into each of the
+cups. She handed her son his tea, and he took it
+mechanically. "You're a wise little mother," he said.
+"I didn't see things in that light.... I wonder if
+you're right."</p>
+
+<p>"I know I am," she said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_416" id="Page_416">-416-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I've thought more and more,&mdash;it was Marjorie."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the world."</p>
+
+<p>"Women made the world. All the dress and display
+and competition."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trafford thought. "Sex made the world.
+Neither men nor women. But the world has got hold
+of the women tighter than it has the men. They're
+deeper in." She looked up into his face. "Take her
+with you," she said, simply.</p>
+
+<p>"She won't come," said Trafford, after considering
+it.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Trafford reflected. "She'll come&mdash;if you
+make her," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"She'll want to bring two housemaids."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think you know Marjorie as well as I
+do."</p>
+
+<p>"But she can't&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She can. It's you&mdash;you'll want to take two
+housemaids for her. Even you.... Men are not fair
+to women."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford put his untasted tea upon the mantelshelf,
+and confronted his mother with a question
+point blank. "Does Marjorie care for me?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You're the sun of her world."</p>
+
+<p>"But she goes her way."</p>
+
+<p>"She's clever, she's full of life, full of activities,
+eager to make and arrange and order; but there's
+nothing she is, nothing she makes, that doesn't centre
+on you."</p>
+
+<p>"But if she cared, she'd understand!"</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, do <i>you</i> understand?"</p>
+
+<p>He stood musing. "I had everything clear," he
+said. "I saw my way to Labrador...."</p>
+
+<p>Her little clock pinged the hour. "Good God!"
+he said, "I'm to be at dinner somewhere at seven.
+We're going to a first night. With the Bernards, I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_417" id="Page_417">-417-</a></span>
+think. Then I suppose we'll have a supper. Always
+life is being slashed to tatters by these things.
+Always. One thinks in snatches of fifty minutes.
+It's dementia...."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 7</p>
+
+<p>They dined at the Loretto Restaurant with the
+Bernards and Richard Hampden and Mrs. Godwin
+Capes, the dark-eyed, quiet-mannered wife of the
+dramatist, a woman of impulsive speech and long
+silences, who had subsided from an early romance
+(Capes had been divorced for her while she was still a
+mere girl) into a markedly correct and exclusive
+mother of daughters. Through the dinner Marjorie
+was watching Trafford and noting the deep preoccupation
+of his manner. He talked a little to Mrs.
+Bernard until it was time for Hampden to entertain
+her, then finding Mrs. Capes was interested in Bernard,
+he lapsed into thought. Presently Marjorie
+discovered his eyes scrutinizing herself.</p>
+
+<p>She hoped the play would catch his mind, but the
+play seemed devised to intensify his sense of the tawdry
+unreality of contemporary life. Bernard filled
+the intervals with a conventional enthusiasm. Capes
+didn't appear.</p>
+
+<p>"He doesn't seem to care to see his things," his
+wife explained.</p>
+
+<p>"It's so brilliant," said Bernard.</p>
+
+<p>"He has to do it," said Mrs. Capes slowly, her
+sombre eyes estimating the crowded stalls below. "It
+isn't what he cares to do."</p>
+
+<p>The play was in fact an admirable piece of English
+stagecraft, and it dealt exclusively with that unreal
+other world of beings the English theatre has
+for its own purposes developed. Just as Greece<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_418" id="Page_418">-418-</a></span>
+through the ages evolved and polished and perfected
+the idealized life of its Homeric poems, so the British
+mind has evolved their Stage Land to embody its
+more honourable dreams, full of heroic virtues, incredible
+honour, genial worldliness, childish villainies,
+profound but amiable waiters and domestics, pathetic
+shepherds and preposterous crimes. Capes, needing
+an income, had mastered the habits and customs of
+this imagined world as one learns a language; success
+endorsed his mastery; he knew exactly how deeply
+to underline an irony and just when it is fit and proper
+for a good man to call upon "God!" or cry out
+"Damn!" In this play he had invented a situation
+in which a charming and sympathetic lady had killed
+a gross and drunken husband in self-defence, almost
+but not quite accidentally, and had then appealed to
+the prodigious hero for assistance in the resulting
+complications. At a great cost of mental suffering
+to himself he had told his First and Only Lie to
+shield her. Then years after he had returned to
+England&mdash;the first act happened, of course in India&mdash;to
+find her on the eve of marrying, without any
+of the preliminary confidences common among human
+beings, an old school friend of his. (In plays all
+Gentlemen have been at school together, and one has
+been the other's fag.) The audience had to be interested
+in the problem of what the prodigious hero was
+to do in this prodigious situation. Should he maintain
+a colossal silence, continue his shielding, and let
+his friend marry the murderess saved by his perjury,
+or&mdash;&mdash;?... The dreadful quandary! Indeed, the
+absolute&mdash;inconvenience!</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie watched Trafford in the corner of the
+box, as he listened rather contemptuously to the
+statement of the evening's Problem and then lapsed
+again into a brooding quiet. She wished she understood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_419" id="Page_419">-419-</a></span>
+his moods better. She felt there was more in
+this than a mere resentment at her persistence about
+the new house....</p>
+
+<p>Why didn't he go on with things?...</p>
+
+<p>This darkling mood of his had only become manifest
+to her during the last three or four years of their
+life. Previously, of course, he had been irritable
+at times.</p>
+
+<p>Were they less happy now than they had been in
+the little house in Chelsea? It had really been a
+horrible little house. And yet there had been a
+brightness then&mdash;a nearness....</p>
+
+<p>She found her mind wandering away upon a sort
+of stock-taking expedition. How much of real happiness
+had she and Trafford had together? They
+ought by every standard to be so happy....</p>
+
+<p>She declined the Bernard's invitation to a chafing-dish
+supper, and began to talk so soon as she and
+Trafford had settled into the car.</p>
+
+<p>"Rag," she said, "something's the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;yes."</p>
+
+<p>"The house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;the house."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie considered through a little interval.</p>
+
+<p>"Old man, why are you so prejudiced against a
+bigger house?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, because the one we have bores me, and the
+next one will bore me more."</p>
+
+<p>"But try it."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," she said and lapsed into silence.</p>
+
+<p>"And then," he asked, "what are we going to
+do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Going to do&mdash;when?"</p>
+
+<p>"After the new house&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going to open out," she said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_420" id="Page_420">-420-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to open out. I want you to take your
+place in the world, the place you deserve."</p>
+
+<p>"A four-footman place?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! the house is only a means."</p>
+
+<p>He thought upon that. "A means," he asked,
+"to what? Look here, Marjorie, what do you think
+you are up to with me and yourself? What do you
+see me doing&mdash;in the years ahead?"</p>
+
+<p>She gave him a silent and thoughtful profile for
+a second or so.</p>
+
+<p>"At first I suppose you are going on with your
+researches."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then&mdash;&mdash;I must tell you what I think of you,
+Rag. Politics&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord!"</p>
+
+<p>"You've a sort of power. You could make things
+noble."</p>
+
+<p>"And then? Office?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not? Look at the little men they are."</p>
+
+<p>"And then perhaps a still bigger house?"</p>
+
+<p>"You're not fair to me."</p>
+
+<p>He pulled up the bearskin over his knees.</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie!" he said. "You see&mdash;&mdash;We aren't
+going to do any of those things at all.... <i>No!</i>..."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't go on with my researches," he explained.
+"That's what you don't understand. I'm not able
+to get back to work. I shall never do any good research
+again. That's the real trouble, Marjorie,
+and it makes all the difference. As for politics&mdash;&mdash;I
+can't touch politics. I despise politics. I think this
+empire and the monarchy and Lords and Commons
+and patriotism and social reform and all the rest of
+it, silly, <i>silly</i> beyond words; temporary, accidental,
+foolish, a mere stop-gap&mdash;like a gipsey's roundabout<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_421" id="Page_421">-421-</a></span>
+in a place where one will presently build a
+house.... You don't help make the house by riding
+on the roundabout.... There's no clear knowledge&mdash;no
+clear purpose.... Only research matters&mdash;and
+expression perhaps&mdash;I suppose expression is a
+sort of research&mdash;until we get that&mdash;that sufficient
+knowledge. And you see, I can't take up my work
+again. I've lost something...."</p>
+
+<p>She waited.</p>
+
+<p>"I've got into this stupid struggle for winning
+money," he went on, "and I feel like a woman must
+feel who's made a success of prostitution. I've been
+prostituted. I feel like some one fallen and diseased....
+Business and prostitution; they're the same
+thing. All business is a sort of prostitution, all prostitution
+is a sort of business. Why should one sell
+one's brains any more than one sells one's body?...
+It's so easy to succeed if one has good brains and
+cares to do it, and doesn't let one's attention or
+imagination wander&mdash;and it's so degrading. Hopelessly
+degrading.... I'm sick of this life, Marjorie.
+<i>I</i> don't want to buy things. I'm sick of buying.
+I'm at an end. I'm clean at an end. It's exactly as
+though suddenly in walking through a great house
+one came on a passage that ended abruptly in a
+door, which opened&mdash;on nothing! Nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>"This is a mood," she whispered to his pause.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't a mood, it's a fact.... I've got nothing
+ahead, and I don't know how to get back. My
+life's no good to me any more. I've spent myself."</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him with dismayed eyes. "But,"
+she said, "this <i>is</i> a mood."</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, "no mood, but conviction. I
+<i>know</i>...."</p>
+
+<p>He started. The car had stopped at their house,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_422" id="Page_422">-422-</a></span>
+and Malcolm was opening the door of the car. They
+descended silently, and went upstairs in silence.</p>
+
+<p>He came into her room presently and sat down by
+her fireside. She had gone to her dressing-table and
+unfastened a necklace; now with this winking and
+glittering in her hand she came and stood beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"Rag," she said, "I don't know what to say.
+This isn't so much of a surprise.... I <i>felt</i> that somehow
+life was disappointing you, that I was disappointing
+you. I've felt it endless times, but more so
+lately. I haven't perhaps dared to let myself know
+just how much.... But isn't it what life is? Doesn't
+every wife disappoint her husband? We're none of
+us inexhaustible. After all, we've had a good time;
+isn't it a little ungrateful to forget?..."</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Rag," she said. "I don't know
+what to do. If I did know, I would do it.... What
+are we to do?"</p>
+
+<p>"Think," he suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"We've got to live as well as think."</p>
+
+<p>"It's the immense troublesome futility of&mdash;everything,"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;let us cease to be futile. Let us <i>do</i>.
+You say there is no grip for you in research, that
+you despise politics.... There's no end of trouble
+and suffering. Cannot we do social work, social
+reform, change the lives of others less fortunate than
+ourselves...."</p>
+
+<p>"Who are we that we should tamper with the lives
+of others?"</p>
+
+<p>"But one must do something."</p>
+
+<p>He thought that over.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said "that's the universal blunder nowadays.
+One must do the right thing. And we don't
+know the right thing, Marjorie. That's the very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_423" id="Page_423">-423-</a></span>
+heart of the trouble.... Does this life satisfy <i>you?</i>
+If it did would you always be so restless?..."</p>
+
+<p>"But," she said, "think of the good things in
+life?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's just the good, the exquisite things in life,
+that make me rebel against this life we are leading.
+It's because I've seen the streaks of gold that I
+know the rest for dirt. When I go cheating and scheming
+to my office, and come back to find you squandering
+yourself upon a horde of chattering, overdressed
+women, when I think that that is our substance and
+everyday and what we are, then it is I remember most
+the deep and beautiful things.... It is impossible,
+dear, it is intolerable that life was made beautiful
+for us&mdash;just for these vulgarities."</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't there&mdash;&mdash;" She hesitated. "Love&mdash;still?"</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;&mdash;Has it been love? Love is a thing
+that grows. But we took it&mdash;as people take flowers
+out of a garden, cut them off, put them in water....
+How much of our daily life has been love? How
+much of it mere consequences of the love we've left
+behind us?... We've just cohabited and 'made
+love'&mdash;you and I&mdash;and thought of a thousand other
+things...."</p>
+
+<p>He looked up at her. "Oh, I love a thousand
+things about you," he said. "But do I love <i>you</i>,
+Marjorie? Have I got you? Haven't I lost you&mdash;haven't
+we both lost something, the very heart of it
+all? Do you think that we were just cheated by
+instinct, that there wasn't something in it we felt and
+thought was there? And where is it now? Where is
+that brightness and wonder, Marjorie, and the pride
+and the immense unlimited hope?"</p>
+
+<p>She was still for a moment, then knelt very swiftly
+before him and held out her arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh Rag!" she said, with a face of tender beauty.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_424" id="Page_424">-424-</a></span>
+He took her finger tips in his, dropped them and stood
+up above her.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," he cried, "my dear! why do you
+always want to turn love into&mdash;touches?... Stand
+up again. Stand up there, my dear; don't think I've
+ceased to love you, but stand up there and let me
+talk to you as one man to another. If we let this occasion
+slide to embraces...."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped short.</p>
+
+<p>She crouched before the fire at his feet. "Go on,"
+she said, "go on."</p>
+
+<p>"I feel now that all our lives now, Marjorie&mdash;&mdash;We
+have come to a crisis. I feel that now&mdash;&mdash;<i>now</i>
+is the time. Either we shall save ourselves now or
+we shall never save ourselves. It is as if something
+had gathered and accumulated and could wait no
+longer. If we do not seize this opportunity&mdash;&mdash;Then
+our lives will go on as they have gone on, will become
+more and more a matter of small excitements and
+elaborate comforts and distraction...."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped this halting speech and then broke
+out again.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! why <i>should</i> the life of every day conquer us?
+Why should generation after generation of men have
+these fine beginnings, these splendid dreams of youth,
+attempt so much, achieve so much and then, then
+become&mdash;<i>this!</i> Look at this room, this litter of little
+satisfactions! Look at your pretty books there, a
+hundred minds you have pecked at, bright things
+of the spirit that attracted you as jewels attract a
+jackdaw. Look at the glass and silver, and that silk
+from China! And we are in the full tide of our years,
+Marjorie. Now is the very crown and best of our
+lives. And this is what we do, we sample, we accumulate.
+For this we loved, for this we hoped. Do you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_425" id="Page_425">-425-</a></span>
+remember when we were young&mdash;that life seemed so
+splendid&mdash;it was intolerable we should ever die?...
+The splendid dream! The intimations of greatness!...
+The miserable failure!"</p>
+
+<p>He raised clenched fists. "I won't stand it,
+Marjorie. I won't endure it. Somehow, in some way,
+I will get out of this life&mdash;and you with me. I have
+been brooding upon this and brooding, but now I
+know...."</p>
+
+<p>"But how?" asked Marjorie, with her bare arms
+about her knees, staring into the fire. "<i>How?</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"We must get out of its constant interruptions,
+its incessant vivid, petty appeals...."</p>
+
+<p>"We might go away&mdash;to Switzerland."</p>
+
+<p>"We <i>went</i> to Switzerland. Didn't we agree&mdash;it
+was our second honeymoon. It isn't a honeymoon
+we need. No, we'll have to go further than that."</p>
+
+<p>A sudden light broke upon Marjorie's mind. She
+realized he had a plan. She lifted a fire-lit face to
+him and looked at him with steady eyes and asked&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ever so much further."</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"You do. You've planned something."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, Marjorie. At least&mdash;I haven't
+made up my mind. Where it is very lonely. Cold and
+remote. Away from all this&mdash;&mdash;" His mind stopped
+short, and he ended with a cry: "Oh! God! how I
+want to get out of all this!"</p>
+
+<p>He sat down in her arm-chair, and bowed his face
+on his hands.</p>
+
+<p>Then abruptly he stood up and went out of the
+room.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 8</p>
+
+<p>When in five minutes' time he came back into her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_426" id="Page_426">-426-</a></span>
+room she was still upon her hearthrug before the fire,
+with her necklace in her hand, the red reflections of
+the flames glowing and winking in her jewels and in
+her eyes. He came and sat again in her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"I have been ranting," he said. "I feel I've
+been&mdash;eloquent. You make me feel like an actor-manager,
+in a play by Capes.... You are the most
+difficult person for me to talk to in all the world&mdash;because
+you mean so much to me."</p>
+
+<p>She moved impulsively and checked herself and
+crouched away from him. "I mustn't touch your
+hand," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to explain."</p>
+
+<p>"You've got to explain."</p>
+
+<p>"I've got quite a definite plan.... But a sort
+of terror seized me. It was like&mdash;shyness."</p>
+
+<p>"I know. I knew you had a plan."</p>
+
+<p>"You see.... I mean to go to Labrador."</p>
+
+<p>He leant forward with his elbows on his knees and
+his hands extended, explanatory. He wanted intensely
+that she should understand and agree and his desire
+made him clumsy, now slow and awkward, now
+glibly and unsatisfyingly eloquent. But she comprehended
+his quality better than he knew. They were to
+go away to Labrador, this snowy desert of which she
+had scarcely heard, to camp in the very heart of the
+wilderness, two hundred miles or more from any human
+habitation&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But how long?" she asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"The better part of a year."</p>
+
+<p>"And we are to talk?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, "talk and think ourselves together&mdash;oh!&mdash;the
+old phrases carry it all&mdash;find
+God...."</p>
+
+<p>"It is what I dreamt of, Rag, years ago."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_427" id="Page_427">-427-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Will you come," he cried, "out of all this?"</p>
+
+<p>She leant across the hearthrug, and seized and
+kissed his hand....</p>
+
+<p>Then, with one of those swift changes of hers,
+she was in revolt. "But, Rag," she exclaimed, "this
+is dreaming. We are not free. There are the children!
+Rag! We cannot leave the children!"</p>
+
+<p>"We can," he said. "We must."</p>
+
+<p>"But, my dear!&mdash;our duty!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Is</i> it a mother's duty always to keep with her
+children? They will be looked after, their lives are
+organized, there is my mother close at hand....
+What is the good of having children at all&mdash;unless
+their world is to be better than our world?... What
+are we doing to save them from the same bathos as
+this&mdash;to which we have come? We give them food
+and health and pictures and lessons, that's all very
+well while they are just little children; but we've got
+no religion to give them, no aim, no sense of a general
+purpose. What is the good of bread and health&mdash;and
+no worship?... What can we say to them when
+they ask us why we brought them into the world?&mdash;<i>We</i>
+happened&mdash;<i>you</i> happened. What are we to tell
+them when they demand the purpose of all this training,
+all these lessons? When they ask what we are
+preparing them for? Just that <i>you</i>, too, may have
+children! Is that any answer? Marjorie, it's common-sense
+to try this over&mdash;to make this last supreme
+effort&mdash;just as it will be common-sense to separate
+if we can't get the puzzle solved together."</p>
+
+<p>"Separate!"</p>
+
+<p>"Separate. Why not? We can afford it. Of
+course, we shall separate."</p>
+
+<p>"But Rag!&mdash;separate!"</p>
+
+<p>He faced her protest squarely. "Life is not
+worth living," he said, "unless it has more to hold<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_428" id="Page_428">-428-</a></span>
+it together than ours has now. If we cannot escape
+together, then&mdash;<i>I will go alone</i>."...</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 9</p>
+
+<p>They parted that night resolved to go to Labrador
+together, with the broad outline of their subsequent
+journey already drawn. Each lay awake
+far into the small hours thinking of this purpose and
+of one another, with a strange sense of renewed association.
+Each woke to a morning of sunshine
+heavy-eyed. Each found that overnight decision
+remote and incredible. It was like something in a
+book or a play that had moved them very deeply.
+They came down to breakfast, and helped themselves
+after the wonted fashion of several years, Marjorie
+with a skilful eye to the large order of her household;
+the <i>Times</i> had one or two characteristic letters which
+interested them both; there was the usual picturesque
+irruption of the children and a distribution of early
+strawberries among them. Trafford had two notes
+in his correspondence which threw a new light upon
+the reconstruction of the Norton-Batsford company
+in which he was interested; he formed a definite conclusion
+upon the situation, and went quite normally
+to his study and the telephone to act upon that.</p>
+
+<p>It was only as the morning wore on that it became
+real to him that he and Marjorie had decided to
+leave the world. Then, with the Norton-Batsford business
+settled, he sat at his desk and mused. His
+apathy passed. His imagination began to present
+first one picture and then another of his retreat.
+He walked along Oxford Street to his Club thinking&mdash;"soon
+we shall be out of all this." By the time he
+was at lunch in his Club, Labrador had become again
+the magic refuge it had seemed the day before. After<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_429" id="Page_429">-429-</a></span>
+lunch he went to work in the library, finding out
+books about Labrador, and looking up the details of
+the journey.</p>
+
+<p>But his sense of futility and hopeless oppression
+had vanished. He walked along the corridor and
+down the great staircase, and without a trace of the
+despairful hostility of the previous day, passed Blenkins,
+talking grey bosh with infinite thoughtfulness.
+He nodded easily to Blenkins. He was going out of
+it all, as a man might do who discovers after years
+of weary incarceration that the walls of his cell are
+made of thin paper. The time when Blenkins seemed
+part of a prison-house of routine and invincible
+stupidity seemed ten ages ago.</p>
+
+<p>In Pall Mall Trafford remarked Lady Grampians
+and the Countess of Claridge, two women of
+great influence, in a big green car, on the way no
+doubt to create or sustain or destroy; and it seemed
+to him that it was limitless ages since these poor old
+dears with their ridiculous hats and their ridiculous
+airs, their luncheons and dinners and dirty aggressive
+old minds, had sent tidal waves of competitive anxiety
+into his home....</p>
+
+<p>He found himself jostling through the shopping
+crowd on the sunny side of Regent Street. He felt
+now that he looked over the swarming, preoccupied
+heads at distant things. He and Marjorie were going
+out of it all, going clean out of it all. They were
+going to escape from society and shopping, and petty
+engagements and incessant triviality&mdash;as a bird flies
+up out of weeds.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 10</p>
+
+<p>But Marjorie fluctuated more than he did.</p>
+
+<p>There were times when the expedition for which he
+was now preparing rapidly and methodically seemed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_430" id="Page_430">-430-</a></span>
+to her the most adventurously-beautiful thing that
+had ever come to her, and times when it seemed the
+maddest and most hopeless of eccentricities. There
+were times when she had devastating premonitions of
+filth, hunger, strain and fatigue, damp and cold, when
+her whole being recoiled from the project, when she
+could even think of staying secure in London and
+letting him go alone. She developed complicated
+anxieties for the children; she found reasons for further
+inquiries, for delay. "Why not," she suggested,
+"wait a year?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, "I won't. I mean we are to do
+this, and do it now, and nothing but sheer physical
+inability to do it will prevent my carrying it out....
+And you? Of course you are to come. I can't drag
+you shrieking all the way to Labrador; short of that
+I'm going to <i>make</i> you come with me."</p>
+
+<p>She sat and looked up at him with dark lights in
+her upturned eyes, and a little added warmth in her
+cheek. "You've never forced my will like this before,"
+she said, in a low voice. "Never."</p>
+
+<p>He was too intent upon his own resolve to heed
+her tones.</p>
+
+<p>"It hasn't seemed necessary somehow," he said,
+considering her statement. "Now it does."</p>
+
+<p>"This is something final," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"It is final."</p>
+
+<p>She found an old familiar phrasing running
+through her head, as she sat crouched together, looking
+up at his rather gaunt, very intent face, the
+speech of another woman echoing to her across a vast
+space of years: "Whither thou goest I will go&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"In Labrador," he began....</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER THE THIRD</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Pilgrimage to Lonely Hut</span></h3>
+
+<p class="title">§ 1</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie was surprised to find how easy it was at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_431" id="Page_431">-431-</a></span>
+last to part from her children and go with Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not sorry," she said, "not a bit sorry&mdash;but
+I am fearfully afraid. I shall dream they are
+ill.... Apart from that, it's strange how you grip
+me and they don't...."</p>
+
+<p>In the train to Liverpool she watched Trafford
+with the queer feeling which comes to all husbands
+and wives at times that that other partner is indeed
+an undiscovered stranger, just beginning to show perplexing
+traits,&mdash;full of inconceivable possibilities.</p>
+
+<p>For some reason his tearing her up by the roots
+in this fashion had fascinated her imagination. She
+felt a strange new wonder at him that had in it just
+a pleasant faint flavour of fear. Always before she
+had felt a curious aversion and contempt for those
+servile women who are said to seek a master, to want
+to be mastered, to be eager even for the physical
+subjugations of brute force. Now she could at least
+understand, sympathize even with them. Not only
+Trafford surprised her but herself. She found she was
+in an unwonted perplexing series of moods. All her
+feelings struck her now as being incorrect as well as
+unexpected; not only had life become suddenly full
+of novelty but she was making novel responses. She
+felt that she ought to be resentful and tragically
+sorry for her home and children. She felt this departure
+ought to have the quality of an immense sacrifice,
+a desperate and heroic undertaking for Trafford's sake.
+Instead she could detect little beyond<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_432" id="Page_432">-432-</a></span>
+an adventurous exhilaration when presently she
+walked the deck of the steamer that was to take her
+to St. John's. She had visited her cabin, seen her
+luggage stowed away, and now she surveyed the
+Mersey and its shipping with a renewed freshness
+of mind. She was reminded of the day, now nearly
+nine years ago, when she had crossed the sea for
+the first time&mdash;to Italy. Then, too, Trafford had
+seemed a being of infinitely wonderful possibilities....
+What were the children doing?&mdash;that ought
+to have been her preoccupation. She didn't know;
+she didn't care! Trafford came and stood beside her,
+pointed out this and that upon the landing stage,
+no longer heavily sullen, but alert, interested, almost
+gay....</p>
+
+<p>Neither of them could find any way to the great
+discussion they had set out upon, in this voyage to
+St. John's. But there was plenty of time before them.
+Plenty of time! They were both the prey of that
+uneasy distraction which seems the inevitable quality
+of a passenger steamship. They surveyed and criticized
+their fellow travellers, and prowled up and down
+through the long swaying days and the cold dark
+nights. They slept uneasily amidst fog-horn hootings
+and the startling sounds of waves swirling
+against the ports. Marjorie had never had a long sea
+voyage before; for the first time in her life she saw all
+the world, through a succession of days, as a circle of
+endless blue waters, with the stars and planets and
+sun and moon rising sharply from its rim. Until
+one has had a voyage no one really understands that
+old Earth is a watery globe.... They ran into
+thirty hours of storm, which subsided, and then came
+a slow time among icebergs, and a hooting, dreary
+passage through fog. The first three icebergs were
+marvels, the rest bores; a passing collier out of her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_433" id="Page_433">-433-</a></span>
+course and pitching heavily, a lonely black and dirty
+ship with a manner almost derelict, filled their
+thoughts for half a day. Their minds were in a state
+of tedious inactivity, eager for such small interests
+and only capable of such small interests. There was
+no hurry to talk, they agreed, no hurry at all, until
+they were settled away ahead there among the snows.
+"There we shall have plenty of time for everything...."</p>
+
+<p>Came the landfall and then St. John's, and they
+found themselves side by side watching the town draw
+near. The thought of landing and transference to
+another ship refreshed them both....</p>
+
+<p>They were going, Trafford said, in search of
+God, but it was far more like two children starting
+out upon a holiday.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 2</p>
+
+<p>There was trouble and procrastination about the
+half-breed guides that Trafford had arranged should
+meet them at St. John's, and it was three weeks from
+their reaching Newfoundland before they got themselves
+and their guides and equipment and general
+stores aboard the boat for Port Dupré. Thence he
+had planned they should go in the Gibson schooner
+to Manivikovik, the Marconi station at the mouth
+of the Green River, and thence past the new pulp-mills
+up river to the wilderness. There were delays
+and a few trivial, troublesome complications in carrying
+out this scheme, but at last a day came when
+Trafford could wave good-bye to the seven people
+and eleven dogs which constituted the population of
+Peter Hammond's, that last rude outpost of civilization
+twenty miles above the pulp-mill, and turn
+his face in good earnest towards the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>Neither he nor Marjorie looked back at the headland<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_434" id="Page_434">-434-</a></span>
+for a last glimpse of the little settlement they
+were leaving. Each stared ahead over the broad,
+smooth sweep of water, broken by one transverse bar
+of foaming shallows, and scanned the low, tree-clad
+hills beyond that drew together at last in the distant
+gorge out of which the river came. The morning
+was warm and full of the promise of a hot noon,
+so that the veils they wore against the assaults of
+sand-flies and mosquitoes were already a little inconvenient.
+It seemed incredible in this morning glow
+that the wooded slopes along the shore of the lake
+were the border of a land in which nearly half the
+inhabitants die of starvation. The deep-laden canoes
+swept almost noiselessly through the water with a
+rhythmic alternation of rush and pause as the dripping
+paddles drove and returned. Altogether there
+were four long canoes and five Indian breeds in their
+party, and when they came to pass through shallows
+both Marjorie and Trafford took a paddle.</p>
+
+<p>They came to the throat of the gorge towards
+noon, and found strong flowing deep water between
+its high purple cliffs. All hands had to paddle again,
+and it was only when they came to rest in a pool to
+eat a mid-day meal and afterwards to land upon a
+mossy corner for a stretch and a smoke, that Marjorie
+discovered the peculiar beauty of the rock
+about them. On the dull purplish-grey surfaces
+played the most extraordinary mist of luminous
+iridescence. It fascinated her. Here was a land
+whose common substance had this gemlike opalescence.
+But her attention was very soon withdrawn
+from these glancing splendours.</p>
+
+<p>She had had to put aside her veil to eat, and presently
+she felt the vividly painful stabs of the black-fly
+and discovered blood upon her face. A bigger
+fly, the size and something of the appearance of a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_435" id="Page_435">-435-</a></span>
+small wasp, with an evil buzz, also assailed her and
+Trafford. It was a bad corner for flies; the breeds
+even were slapping their wrists and swearing under
+the torment, and every one was glad to embark and
+push on up the winding gorge. It opened out for a
+time, and then the wooded shores crept in again, and
+in another half-hour they saw ahead of them a long
+rush of foaming waters among tumbled rocks that
+poured down from a brimming, splashing line of light
+against the sky. They crossed the river, ran the
+canoes into an eddy under the shelter of a big stone
+and began to unload. They had reached their first
+portage.</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the first day was spent in packing and
+lugging first the cargoes and then the canoes up
+through thickets and over boulders and across
+stretches of reindeer moss for the better part of two
+miles to a camping ground about half-way up the
+rapids. Marjorie and Trafford tried to help with the
+carrying, but this evidently shocked and distressed
+the men too much, so they desisted and set to work
+cutting wood and gathering moss for the fires and
+bedding for the camp. When the iron stove was
+brought up the man who had carried it showed them
+how to put it up on stakes and start a fire in it, and
+then Trafford went to the river to get water, and Marjorie
+made a kind of flour cake in the frying-pan in
+the manner an American woman from the wilderness
+had once shown her, and boiled water for tea. The
+twilight had deepened to night while the men were
+still stumbling up the trail with the last two canoes.</p>
+
+<p>It gave Marjorie a curiously homeless feeling to
+stand there in the open with the sunset dying away
+below the black scrubby outlines of the treetops uphill
+to the northwest, and to realize the nearest roof
+was already a day's toilsome journey away. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_436" id="Page_436">-436-</a></span>
+cool night breeze blew upon her bare face and arms&mdash;for
+now the insects had ceased from troubling and
+she had cast aside gloves and veil and turned up her
+sleeves to cook&mdash;and the air was full of the tumult
+of the rapids tearing seaward over the rocks below.
+Struggling through the bushes towards her was an
+immense, headless quadruped with unsteady legs
+and hesitating paces, two of the men carrying the
+last canoe. Two others were now assisting Trafford
+to put up the little tent that was to shelter her, and
+the fifth was kneeling beside her very solemnly and
+respectfully cutting slices of bacon for her to fry.
+The air was very sweet, and she wished she could
+sleep not in the tent but under the open sky.</p>
+
+<p>It was queer, she thought, how much of the wrappings
+of civilization had slipped from them already.
+Every day of the journey from London had released
+them or deprived them&mdash;she hardly knew
+which&mdash;of a multitude of petty comforts and easy
+accessibilities. The afternoon toil uphill intensified
+the effect of having clambered up out of things&mdash;to
+this loneliness, this twilight openness, this simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>The men ate apart at a fire they made for
+themselves, and after Trafford and Marjorie had
+supped on damper, bacon and tea, he smoked. They
+were both too healthily tired to talk very much.
+There was no moon but a frosty brilliance of stars,
+the air which had been hot and sultry at mid-day
+grew keen and penetrating, and after she had made
+him tell her the names of constellations she had forgotten,
+she suddenly perceived the wisdom of the
+tent, went into it&mdash;it was sweet and wonderful with
+sprigs of the Labrador tea-shrub&mdash;undressed, and
+had hardly rolled herself up into a cocoon of blankets
+before she was fast asleep.</p>
+
+<p>She was awakened by a blaze of sunshine pouring<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_437" id="Page_437">-437-</a></span>
+into the tent, a smell of fried bacon and Trafford's
+voice telling her to get up. "They've gone on
+with the first loads," he said. "Get up, wrap yourself
+in a blanket, and come and bathe in the river.
+It's as cold as ice."</p>
+
+<p>She blinked at him. "Aren't you stiff?" she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I was stiffer before I bathed," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She took the tin he offered her. (They weren't to
+see china cups again for a year.) "It's woman's
+work getting tea," she said as she drank.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't be a squaw all at once," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 3</p>
+
+<p>After Marjorie had taken her dip, dried roughly
+behind a bush, twisted her hair into a pigtail and
+coiled it under her hat, she amused herself and Trafford
+as they clambered up through rocks and willows
+to the tent again by cataloguing her apparatus of
+bath and toilette at Sussex Square and tracing just
+when and how she had parted from each item on the
+way to this place.</p>
+
+<p>"But I <i>say!</i>" she cried, with a sudden, sharp note
+of dismay, "we haven't soap! This is our last cake
+almost. I never thought of soap."</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke again presently. "We don't turn back
+for soap," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"We don't turn back for anything," said Marjorie.
+"Still&mdash;I didn't count on a soapless winter."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll manage something," said Trafford, a little
+doubtfully. "Trust a chemist...."</p>
+
+<p>That day they finished the portage and came out
+upon a wide lake with sloping shores and a distant
+view of snow-topped mountains, a lake so shallow that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_438" id="Page_438">-438-</a></span>
+at times their loaded canoes scraped on the glaciated
+rock below and they had to alter their course. They
+camped in a lurid sunset; the night was warm and
+mosquitoes were troublesome, and towards morning
+came a thunderstorm and wind and rain.</p>
+
+<p>The dawn broke upon a tearing race of waves
+and a wild drift of slanting rain sweeping across the
+lake before a gale. Marjorie peered out at this as
+one peers out under the edge of an umbrella. It was
+manifestly impossible to go on, and they did nothing
+that day but run up a canvas shelter for the men and
+shift the tent behind a thicket of trees out of the full
+force of the wind. The men squatted stoically, and
+smoked and yarned. Everything got coldly wet, and
+for the most part the Traffords sat under the tent
+and stared blankly at this summer day in Labrador.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said Trafford, "we ought to begin talking."</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing much to do else," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Only one can't begin," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>He was silent for a time. "We're getting out of
+things," he said....</p>
+
+<p>The next day began with a fine drizzle through
+which the sun broke suddenly about ten o'clock. They
+made a start at once, and got a good dozen miles up
+the lake before it was necessary to camp again. Both
+Marjorie and Trafford felt stiff and weary and uncomfortable
+all day, and secretly a little doubtful
+now of their own endurance. They camped on an
+island on turf amidst slippery rocks, and the next
+day were in a foaming difficult river again, with
+glittering shallows that obliged every one to get out
+at times to wade and push. All through the afternoon
+they were greatly beset by flies. And so they
+worked their way on through a third days' journey<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_439" id="Page_439">-439-</a></span>
+towards the silent inland of Labrador.</p>
+
+<p>Day followed day of toilsome and often tedious
+travel; they fought rapids, they waited while the men
+stumbled up long portages under vast loads, going
+and returning, they camped and discussed difficulties
+and alternatives. The flies sustained an unrelenting
+persecution, until faces were scarred in spite of veils
+and smoke fires, until wrists and necks were swollen
+and the blood in a fever. As they got higher and
+higher towards the central plateau, the mid-day heat
+increased and the nights grew colder, until they would
+find themselves toiling, wet with perspiration, over
+rocks that sheltered a fringe of ice beneath their
+shadows. The first fatigues and lassitudes, the shrinking
+from cold water, the ache of muscular effort, gave
+place to a tougher and tougher endurance; skin
+seemed to have lost half its capacity for pain without
+losing a tithe of its discrimination, muscles attained
+a steely resilience; they were getting seasoned. "I
+don't feel philosophical," said Trafford, "but I feel
+well."</p>
+
+<p>"We're getting out of things."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose we are getting out of our problems!..."</p>
+
+<p>One day as they paddled across a mile-long pool,
+they saw three bears prowling in single file high up on
+the hillside. "Look," said the man, and pointed with
+his paddle at the big, soft, furry black shapes, magnified
+and startling in the clear air. All the canoes
+rippled to a stop, the men, at first still, whispered
+softly. One passed a gun to Trafford, who hesitated
+and looked at Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>The air of tranquil assurance about these three
+huge loafing monsters had a queer effect on Marjorie's
+mind. They made her feel that they were at
+home and that she was an intruder. She had never<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_440" id="Page_440">-440-</a></span>
+in her life seen any big wild animals except in a
+menagerie. She had developed a sort of unconscious
+belief that all big wild animals were in menageries
+nowadays, and this spectacle of beasts entirely at
+large startled her. There was never a bar between
+these creatures, she felt, and her sleeping self. They
+might, she thought, do any desperate thing to feeble
+men and women who came their way.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I take a shot?" asked Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Marjorie, pervaded by the desire for
+mutual toleration. "Let them be."</p>
+
+<p>The big brutes disappeared in a gully, reappeared,
+came out against the skyline one by one and vanished.</p>
+
+<p>"Too long a shot," said Trafford, handing back
+the gun....</p>
+
+<p>Their journey lasted altogether a month. Never
+once did they come upon any human being save themselves,
+though in one place they passed the poles&mdash;for
+the most part overthrown&mdash;of an old Indian encampment.
+But this desolation was by no means
+lifeless. They saw great quantities of waterbirds,
+geese, divers, Arctic partridge and the like, they became
+familiar with the banshee cry of the loon. They
+lived very largely on geese and partridge. Then for
+a time about a string of lakes, the country was alive
+with migrating deer going south, and the men found
+traces of a wolf. They killed six caribou, and stayed
+to skin and cut them up and dry the meat to replace
+the bacon they had consumed, caught, fried and ate
+great quantities of trout, and became accustomed to
+the mysterious dance of the northern lights as the
+sunset afterglow faded.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere, except in the river gorges, the
+country displayed the low hummocky lines and tarn-like
+pools of intensely glaciated land; everywhere it
+was carpeted with reindeer moss growing upon peat<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_441" id="Page_441">-441-</a></span>
+and variegated by bushes of flowering, sweet-smelling
+Labrador tea. In places this was starred with little
+harebells and diversified by tussocks of heather and
+rough grass, and over the rocks trailed delicate dwarf
+shrubs and a very pretty and fragrant pink-flowered
+plant of which neither she nor Trafford knew the
+name. There was an astonishing amount of wild
+fruit, raspberries, cranberries, and a white kind of
+strawberry that was very delightful. The weather,
+after its first outbreak, remained brightly serene....</p>
+
+<p>And at last it seemed fit to Trafford to halt and
+choose his winter quarters. He chose a place on the
+side of a low, razor-hacked rocky mountain ridge,
+about fifty feet above the river&mdash;which had now
+dwindled to a thirty-foot stream. His site was near
+a tributary rivulet that gave convenient water, in a
+kind of lap that sheltered between two rocky knees,
+each bearing thickets of willow and balsam. Not a
+dozen miles away from them now they reckoned was
+the Height of Land, the low watershed between the
+waters that go to the Atlantic and those that go to
+Hudson's Bay. Close beside the site he had chosen
+a shelf of rock ran out and gave a glimpse up the
+narrow rocky valley of the Green River's upper
+waters and a broad prospect of hill and tarn towards
+the south-east. North and north-east of them the
+country rose to a line of low crests, with here and
+there a yellowing patch of last year's snow, and
+across the valley were slopes covered in places by
+woods of stunted pine. It had an empty spaciousness
+of effect; the one continually living thing seemed
+to be the Green River, hurrying headlong, noisily,
+perpetually, in an eternal flight from this high desolation.
+Birds were rare here, and the insects that
+buzzed and shrilled and tormented among the rocks
+and willows in the gorge came but sparingly up the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_442" id="Page_442">-442-</a></span>
+slopes to them.</p>
+
+<p>"Here presently," said Trafford, "we shall be in
+peace."</p>
+
+<p>"It is very lonely," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"The nearer to God."</p>
+
+<p>"Think! Not one of these hills has ever had a
+name."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"It might be in some other planet."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!&mdash;we'll christen them. That shall be Marjorie
+Ridge, and that Rag Valley. This space shall
+be&mdash;oh! Bayswater! Before we've done with it, this
+place and every feature of it will be as familiar as
+Sussex Square. More so,&mdash;for half the houses there
+would be stranger to us, if we could see inside them,
+than anything in this wilderness.... As familiar,
+say&mdash;as your drawing-room. That's better."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie made no answer, but her eyes went
+from the reindeer moss and scrub and thickets of the
+foreground to the low rocky ridges that bounded the
+view north and east of them. The scattered boulders,
+the tangles of wood, the barren upper slopes, the
+dust-soiled survivals of the winter's snowfall, all contributed
+to an effect at once carelessly desert and
+hopelessly untidy. She looked westward, and her
+memory was full of interminable streaming rapids,
+wastes of ice-striated rocks, tiresome struggles
+through woods and wild, wide stretches of tundra
+and tarn, trackless and treeless, infinitely desolate.
+It seemed to her that the sea coast was but a step
+from London and ten thousand miles away from her.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 4</p>
+
+<p>The men had engaged to build the framework of
+hut and store shed before returning, and to this under
+Trafford's direction they now set themselves. They<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_443" id="Page_443">-443-</a></span>
+were all half-breeds, mingling with Indian with Scottish
+or French blood, sober and experienced men.
+Three were named Mackenzie, two brothers and a
+cousin, and another, Raymond Noyes, was a relation
+and acquaintance of that George Elson who was
+with Wallace and Leonidas Hubbard, and afterwards
+guided Mrs. Hubbard in her crossing of Labrador.
+The fifth was a boy of eighteen named Lean. They
+were all familiar with the idea of summer travel in
+this country; quite a number, a score or so that is to
+say, of adventurous people, including three or four
+women, had ventured far in the wake of the Hubbards
+into these great wildernesses during the decade that
+followed that first tragic experiment in which Hubbard
+died. But that any one not of Indian or Esquimaux
+blood should propose to face out the Labrador
+winter was a new thing to them. They were really
+very sceptical at the outset whether these two highly
+civilized-looking people would ever get up to the
+Height of Land at all, and it was still with manifest
+incredulity that they set about the building of
+the hut and the construction of the sleeping bunks
+for which they had brought up planking. A stream
+of speculative talk had flowed along beside Marjorie
+and Trafford ever since they had entered the Green
+River; and it didn't so much come to an end as get
+cut off at last by the necessity of their departure.</p>
+
+<p>Noyes would stand, holding a hammer and staring
+at the narrow little berth he was fixing together.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll not sleep in this," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I will," replied Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll come back with us."</p>
+
+<p>"Not me."</p>
+
+<p>"There'll be wolves come and howl."</p>
+
+<p>"Let 'em."</p>
+
+<p>"They'll come right up to the door here. Winter<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_444" id="Page_444">-444-</a></span>
+makes 'em hidjus bold."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"It's that cold I've known a man have his nose
+froze while he lay in bed," said Noyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Up here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Down the coast. But they say it's 'most as cold
+up here. Many's the man it's starved and froze."...</p>
+
+<p>He and his companions told stories,&mdash;very circumstantial
+and pitiful stories, of Indian disasters.
+They were all tales of weariness and starvation, of the
+cessation of food, because the fishing gave out, because
+the caribou did not migrate by the customary
+route, because the man of a family group broke his
+wrist, and then of the start of all or some of the party
+to the coast to get help and provisions, of the straining,
+starving fugitives caught by blizzards, losing
+the track, devouring small vermin raw, gnawing their
+own skin garments until they toiled half-naked in the
+snow,&mdash;becoming cannibals, becoming delirious, lying
+down to die. Once there was an epidemic of influenza,
+and three families of seven and twenty people just
+gave up and starved and died in their lodges, and
+were found, still partly frozen, a patient, pitiful company,
+by trappers in the spring....</p>
+
+<p>Such they said, were the common things that
+happened in a Labrador winter. Did the Traffords
+wish to run such risks?</p>
+
+<p>A sort of propagandist enthusiasm grew up in
+the men. They felt it incumbent upon them to persuade
+the Traffords to return. They reasoned with
+them rather as one does with wilful children. They
+tried to remind them of the delights and securities of
+the world they were deserting. Noyes drew fancy
+pictures of the pleasures of London by way of contrast
+to the bitter days before them. "You've got
+everything there, everything. Suppose you feel a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_445" id="Page_445">-445-</a></span>
+bit ill, you go out, and every block there's a drug
+store got everything&mdash;all the new rem'dies&mdash;p'raps
+twenty, thirty sorts of rem'dy. Lit up, nice. And
+chaps in collars&mdash;like gentlemen. Or you feel a bit
+dully and you go into the streets and there's people.
+Why! when I was in New York I used to spend hours
+looking at the people. Hours! And everything lit up,
+too. Sky signs! Readin' everywhere. You can spend
+hours and hours in New York&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"London," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, London&mdash;just going about and reading
+the things they stick up. Every blamed sort of thing.
+Or you say, let's go somewhere. Let's go out and be
+a bit lively. See? Up you get on a car and there you
+are! Great big restaurants, blazing with lights, and
+you can't think of a thing to eat they haven't got.
+Waiters all round you, dressed tremendous, fair asking
+you to have more. Or you say, let's go to a
+theatre. Very likely," said Noyes, letting his imagination
+soar, "you order up one of these automobillies."</p>
+
+<p>"By telephone," helped Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"By telephone," confirmed Noyes. "When I
+was in New York there was a telephone in each room
+in the hotel. Each room. I didn't use it ever, except
+once when they didn't answer&mdash;but there it was. I
+know about telephones all right...."</p>
+
+<p>Why had they come here? None of the men were
+clear about that. Marjorie and Trafford would overhear
+them discussing this question at their fire night
+after night; they seemed to talk of nothing else.
+They indulged in the boldest hypotheses, even in the
+theory that Trafford knew of deposits of diamonds
+and gold, and would trust no one but his wife with
+the secret. They seemed also attracted by the idea
+that our two young people had "done something."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_446" id="Page_446">-446-</a></span>
+Lean, with memories of some tattered sixpenny novel
+that had drifted into his hands from England, had
+even some notion of an elopement, of a pursuing husband
+or a vindictive wife. He was young and romantic,
+but it seemed incredible he should suggest that
+Marjorie was a royal princess. Yet there were moments
+when his manner betrayed a more than personal
+respect....</p>
+
+<p>One night after a hard day's portage Mackenzie
+was inspired by a brilliant idea. "They got no
+children," he said, in a hoarse, exceptionally audible
+whisper. "It worries them. Them as is Catholics
+goes pilgrimages, but these ain't Catholics. See?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't stand that," said Marjorie. "It touches
+my pride. I've stood a good deal. Mr. Mackenzie!...
+Mr.... Mackenzie."</p>
+
+<p>The voice at the men's fire stopped and a black
+head turned around. "What is it, Mrs. Trafford?"
+asked Mackenzie.</p>
+
+<p>She held up four fingers. "Four!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Three sons and a daughter," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>Mackenzie did not take it in until his younger
+brother had repeated her words.</p>
+
+<p>"And you've come from them to <i>this</i>.... Sir,
+what <i>have</i> you come for?"</p>
+
+<p>"We want to be here," shouted Trafford to their
+listening pause. Their silence was incredulous.</p>
+
+<p>"We wanted to be alone together. There was too
+much&mdash;over there&mdash;too much everything."</p>
+
+<p>Mackenzie, in silhouette against the fire, shook his
+head, entirely dissatisfied. He could not understand
+how there could be too much of anything. It was
+beyond a trapper's philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>"Come back with us sir," said Noyes. "You'll<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_447" id="Page_447">-447-</a></span>
+weary of it...."</p>
+
+<p>Noyes clung to the idea of dissuasion to the end.
+"I don't care to leave ye," he said, and made a sort
+of byword of it that served when there was nothing
+else to say.</p>
+
+<p>He made it almost his last words. He turned back
+for another handclasp as the others under their light
+returning packs were filing down the hill.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care to leave ye," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Good luck!" said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll need it," said Noyes, and looked at Marjorie
+very gravely and intently before he turned
+about and marched off after his fellows....</p>
+
+<p>Both Marjorie and Trafford felt a queer emotion,
+a sense of loss and desertion, a swelling in the throat,
+as that file of men receded over the rocky slopes, went
+down into a dip, reappeared presently small and remote
+cresting another spur, going on towards the
+little wood that hid the head of the rapids. They
+halted for a moment on the edge of the wood and
+looked back, then turned again one by one and melted
+stride by stride into the trees. Noyes was the last to
+go. He stood, in an attitude that spoke as plainly
+as words, "I don't care to leave ye." Something
+white waved and flickered; he had whipped out the
+letters they had given him for England, and he was
+waving them. Then, as if by an effort, he set himself
+to follow the others, and the two still watchers on the
+height above saw him no more.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER THE FOURTH</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Lonely Hut</span></h3>
+
+<p class="title">§ 1</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie and Trafford walked slowly back to the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_448" id="Page_448">-448-</a></span>
+hut. "There is much to do before the weather breaks,"
+he said, ending a thoughtful silence. "Then we can
+sit inside there and talk about the things we need to
+talk about."</p>
+
+<p>He added awkwardly: "Since we started, there
+has been so much to hold the attention. I remember
+a mood&mdash;an immense despair. I feel it's still somewhere
+at the back of things, waiting to be dealt with.
+It's our essential fact. But meanwhile we've been
+busy, looking at fresh things."</p>
+
+<p>He paused. "Now it will be different perhaps...."</p>
+
+<p>For nearly four weeks indeed they were occupied
+very closely, and crept into their bunks at night as
+tired as wholesome animals who drop to sleep. At
+any time the weather might break; already there had
+been two overcast days and a frowning conference of
+clouds in the north. When at last storms began they
+knew there would be nothing for it but to keep in the
+hut until the world froze up.</p>
+
+<p>There was much to do to the hut. The absence of
+anything but stunted and impoverished timber and the
+limitation of time, had forbidden a log hut, and their
+home was really only a double framework, rammed
+tight between inner and outer frame with a mixture
+of earth and boughs and twigs of willow, pine and
+balsam. The floor was hammered earth carpeted with
+balsam twigs and a caribou skin. Outside and within
+wall and roof were faced with coarse canvas&mdash;that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_449" id="Page_449">-449-</a></span>
+was Trafford's idea&mdash;and their bunks occupied two
+sides of the hut. Heating was done by the sheet-iron
+stove they had brought with them, and the smoke was
+carried out to the roof by a thin sheet-iron pipe
+which had come up outside a roll of canvas. They
+had made the roof with about the pitch of a Swiss
+châlet, and it was covered with nailed waterproof canvas,
+held down by a large number of big lumps of
+stone. Much of the canvassing still remained to do
+when the men went down, and then the Traffords used
+every scrap of packing-paper and newspaper that
+had come up with them and was not needed for lining
+the bunks in covering any crack or join in the canvas
+wall.</p>
+
+<p>Two decadent luxuries, a rubber bath and two
+rubber hot-water bottles, hung behind the door. They
+were almost the only luxuries. Kettles and pans and
+some provisions stood on a shelf over the stove; there
+was also a sort of recess cupboard in the opposite
+corner, reserve clothes were in canvas trunks under
+the bunks, they kept their immediate supply of wood
+under the eaves just outside the door, and there was a
+big can of water between stove and door. When
+the winter came they would have to bring in ice from
+the stream.</p>
+
+<p>This was their home. The tent that had sheltered
+Marjorie on the way up was erected close to this hut
+to serve as a rude scullery and outhouse, and they
+also made a long, roughly thatched roof with a canvas
+cover, supported on stakes, to shelter the rest of
+the stores. The stuff in tins and cases and jars they
+left on the ground under this; the rest&mdash;the flour,
+candles, bacon, dried caribou beef, and so forth, they
+hung, as they hoped, out of the reach of any prowling
+beast. And finally and most important was the wood
+pile. This they accumulated to the north and east<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_450" id="Page_450">-450-</a></span>
+of the hut, and all day long with a sort of ant-like
+perseverance Trafford added to it from the thickets
+below. Once or twice, however, tempted by the appearance
+of birds, he went shooting, and one day he
+got five geese that they spent a day upon, plucking,
+cleaning, boiling and putting up in all their store
+of empty cans, letting the fat float and solidify on
+the top to preserve this addition to their provision
+until the advent of the frost rendered all other preservatives
+unnecessary. They also tried to catch
+trout down in the river below, but though they saw
+many fish the catch was less than a dozen.</p>
+
+<p>It was a discovery to both of them to find how
+companionable these occupations were, how much
+more side by side they could be amateurishly cleaning
+out a goose and disputing about its cooking, than
+they had ever contrived to be in Sussex Square.</p>
+
+<p>"These things are so infernally interesting," said
+Trafford, surveying the row of miscellaneous cans
+upon the stove he had packed with disarticulated
+goose. "But we didn't come here to picnic. All this
+is eating us up. I have a memory of some immense
+tragic purpose&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That tin's <i>boiling!</i>" screamed Marjorie sharply.</p>
+
+<p>He resumed his thread after an active interlude.</p>
+
+<p>"We'll keep the wolf from the door," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk of wolves!" said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"It is only when men have driven away the wolf
+from the door&mdash;oh! altogether away, that they find
+despair in the sky? I wonder&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"What?" asked Marjorie in his pause.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder if there is nothing really in life but
+this, the food hunt and the love hunt. Is life just all
+hunger and need, and are we left with nothing&mdash;nothing
+at all&mdash;when these things are done?...
+We're infernally uncomfortable here."<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_451" id="Page_451">-451-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, nonsense!" cried Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Think of your carpets at home! Think of the
+great, warm, beautiful house that wasn't big enough!&mdash;And
+yet here, we're happy."</p>
+
+<p>"We <i>are</i> happy," said Marjorie, struck by the
+thought. "Only&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid. And I long for the children. And
+the wind <i>nips</i>."</p>
+
+<p>"It may be those are good things for us. No!
+This is just a lark as yet, Marjorie. It's still fresh
+and full of distractions. The discomforts are amusing.
+Presently we'll get used to it. Then we'll
+talk out&mdash;what we have to talk out.... I say,
+wouldn't it keep and improve this goose of ours if
+we put in a little brandy?"</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 2</p>
+
+<p>The weather broke at last. One might say it
+smashed itself over their heads. There came an afternoon
+darkness swift and sudden, a wild gale and an
+icy sleet that gave place in the night to snow, so that
+Trafford looked out next morning to see a maddening
+chaos of small white flakes, incredibly swift, against
+something that was neither darkness nor light. Even
+with the door but partly ajar a cruelty of cold put
+its claw within, set everything that was moveable
+swaying and clattering, and made Marjorie hasten
+shuddering to heap fresh logs upon the fire. Once or
+twice Trafford went out to inspect tent and roof and
+store-shed, several times wrapped to the nose he
+battled his way for fresh wood, and for the rest of
+the blizzard they kept to the hut. It was slumberously
+stuffy, but comfortingly full of flavours of tobacco
+and food. There were two days of intermission and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_452" id="Page_452">-452-</a></span>
+a day of gusts and icy sleet again, turning with one
+extraordinary clap of thunder to a wild downpour of
+dancing lumps of ice, and then a night when it seemed
+all Labrador, earth and sky together, was in hysterical
+protest against inconceivable wrongs.</p>
+
+<p>And then the break was over; the annual freezing-up
+was accomplished, winter had established itself,
+the snowfall moderated and ceased, and an ice-bound
+world shone white and sunlit under a cloudless
+sky.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 3</p>
+
+<p>Through all that time they got no further with the
+great discussion for which they had faced that solitude.
+They attempted beginnings.</p>
+
+<p>"Where had we got to when we left England?"
+cried Marjorie. "You couldn't work, you couldn't
+rest&mdash;you hated our life."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know. I had a violent hatred of the
+lives we were leading. I thought&mdash;we had to get
+away. To think.... But things don't leave us
+alone here."</p>
+
+<p>He covered his face with his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Why did we come here?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"You wanted&mdash;to get out of things."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. But with you.... Have we, after all,
+got out of things at all? I said coming up, perhaps
+we were leaving our own problem behind. In exchange
+for other problems&mdash;old problems men have
+had before. We've got nearer necessity; that's all.
+Things press on us just as much. There's nothing
+more fundamental in wild nature, nothing profounder&mdash;only
+something earlier. One doesn't get out of life
+by going here or there.... But I wanted to get
+you away&mdash;from all things that had such a hold on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_453" id="Page_453">-453-</a></span>
+you....</p>
+
+<p>"When one lies awake at nights, then one seems
+to get down into things...."</p>
+
+<p>He went to the door, opened it, and stood looking
+out. Against a wan daylight the snow was falling
+noiselessly and steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"Everything goes on," he said.... "Relentlessly...."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 4</p>
+
+<p>That was as far as they had got when the storms
+ceased and they came out again into an air inexpressibly
+fresh and sharp and sweet, and into a world
+blindingly clean and golden white under the rays of
+the morning sun.</p>
+
+<p>"We will build a fire out here," said Marjorie;
+"make a great pile. There is no reason at all why
+we shouldn't live outside all through the day in such
+weather as this."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 5</p>
+
+<p>One morning Trafford found the footmarks of
+some catlike creature in the snow near the bushes
+where he was accustomed to get firewood; they led
+away very plainly up the hill, and after breakfast he
+took his knife and rifle and snowshoes and went after
+the lynx&mdash;for that he decided the animal must
+be. There was no urgent reason why he should want
+to kill a lynx, unless perhaps that killing it made the
+store shed a trifle safer; but it was the first trail of
+any living thing for many days; it promised excitement;
+some primordial instinct perhaps urged him.</p>
+
+<p>The morning was a little overcast, and very cold
+between the gleams of wintry sunshine. "Good-bye,
+dear wife!" he said, and then as she remembered afterwards
+came back a dozen yards to kiss her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_454" id="Page_454">-454-</a></span> "I'll
+not be long," he said. "The beast's prowling, and
+if it doesn't get wind of me I ought to find it in an
+hour." He hesitated for a moment. "I'll not be
+long," he repeated, and she had an instant's wonder
+whether he hid from her the same dread of loneliness
+that she concealed. Or perhaps he only knew her
+secret. Up among the tumbled rocks he turned, and
+she was still watching him. "Good-bye!" he cried
+and waved, and the willow thickets closed about him.</p>
+
+<p>She forced herself to the petty duties of the day,
+made up the fire from the pile he had left for her,
+set water to boil, put the hut in order, brought out
+sheets and blankets to air and set herself to wash up.
+She wished she had been able to go with him. The
+sky cleared presently, and the low December sun lit
+all the world about her, but it left her spirit desolate.</p>
+
+<p>She did not expect him to return until mid-day,
+and she sat herself down on a log before the fire to
+darn a pair of socks as well as she could. For a time
+this unusual occupation held her attention and then
+her hands became slow and at last inactive, and she
+fell into reverie. She thought at first of her children
+and what they might be doing, in England
+across there to the east it would be about five hours
+later, four o'clock in the afternoon, and the children
+would be coming home through the warm muggy London
+sunshine with Fraulein Otto to tea. She wondered
+if they had the proper clothes, if they were well;
+were they perhaps quarrelling or being naughty or
+skylarking gaily across the Park. Of course Fraulein
+Otto was all right, quite to be trusted, absolutely
+trustworthy, and their grandmother would watch for
+a flushed face or an irrational petulance or any of
+the little signs that herald trouble with more than a
+mother's instinctive alertness. No need to worry<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_455" id="Page_455">-455-</a></span>
+about the children, no need whatever.... The
+world of London opened out behind these thoughts;
+it was so queer to think that she was in almost the
+same latitude as the busy bright traffic of the autumn
+season in Kensington Gore; that away there in ten
+thousand cleverly furnished drawing-rooms the ringing
+tea things were being set out for the rustling advent
+of smart callers and the quick leaping gossip.
+And there would be all sorts of cakes and little things;
+for a while her mind ran on cakes and little things,
+and she thought in particular whether it wasn't time
+to begin cooking.... Not yet. What was it she
+had been thinking about? Ah! the Solomonsons and
+the Capeses and the Bernards and the Carmels and
+the Lees. Would they talk of her and Trafford? It
+would be strange to go back to it all. Would they go
+back to it all? She found herself thinking intently
+of Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>What a fine human being he was! And how
+touchingly human! The thoughts of his moments of
+irritation, his baffled silences, filled her with a wild
+passion of tenderness. She had disappointed him;
+all that life failed to satisfy him. Dear master of her
+life! what was it he needed? She too wasn't satisfied
+with life, but while she had been able to assuage herself
+with a perpetual series of petty excitements, theatres,
+new books and new people, meetings, movements, dinners,
+shows, he had grown to an immense discontent.
+He had most of the things men sought, wealth, respect,
+love, children.... So many men might
+have blunted their heart-ache with&mdash;adventures.
+There were pretty women, clever women, unoccupied
+women. She felt she wouldn't have minded&mdash;<i>much</i>&mdash;if
+it made him happy.... It was so wonderful he
+loved her still.... It wasn't that he lacked occupation;
+on the whole he overworked. His business interests
+were big and wide. Ought he to go into politics?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_456" id="Page_456">-456-</a></span>
+Why was it that the researches that had held
+him once, could hold him now no more? That was
+the real pity of it. Was she to blame for that? She
+couldn't state a case against herself, and yet she felt
+she was to blame. She had taken him away from
+those things, forced him to make money....</p>
+
+<p>She sat chin on hand staring into the fire, the
+sock forgotten on her knee.</p>
+
+<p>She could not weigh justice between herself and
+him. If he was unhappy it was her fault. She knew
+if he was unhappy it was no excuse that she
+had not known, had been misled, had a right to her
+own instincts and purposes. She had got to make
+him happy. But what was she to do, what was there
+for her to do?...</p>
+
+<p>Only he could work out his own salvation, and
+until he had light, all she could do was to stand by
+him, help him, cease to irritate him, watch, wait.
+Anyhow she could at least mend his socks as well as
+possible, so that the threads would not chafe him....</p>
+
+<p>She flashed to her feet. What was that?</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to her she had heard the sound of a
+shot, and a quick brief wake of echoes. She looked
+across the icy waste of the river, and then up the
+tangled slopes of the mountain. Her heart was beating
+very fast. It must have been up there, and no
+doubt he had killed his beast. Some shadow of doubt
+she would not admit crossed that obvious suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>This wilderness was making her as nervously responsive
+as a creature of the wild.</p>
+
+<p>Came a second shot; this time there was no doubt
+of it. Then the desolate silence closed about her
+again.</p>
+
+<p>She stood for a long time staring at the shrubby<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_457" id="Page_457">-457-</a></span>
+slopes that rose to the barren rock wilderness of the
+purple mountain crest. She sighed deeply at last, and
+set herself to make up the fire and prepare for the
+mid-day meal. Once far away across the river she
+heard the howl of a wolf.</p>
+
+<p>Time seemed to pass very slowly that day. She
+found herself going repeatedly to the space between
+the day tent and the sleeping hut from which she
+could see the stunted wood that had swallowed him
+up, and after what seemed a long hour her watch
+told her it was still only half-past twelve. And the
+fourth or fifth time that she went to look out she was
+set atremble again by the sound of a third shot. And
+then at regular intervals out of that distant brown
+purple jumble of thickets against the snow came two
+more shots. "Something has happened," she said,
+"something has happened," and stood rigid. Then
+she became active, seized the rifle that was always at
+hand when she was alone, fired into the sky and stood
+listening.</p>
+
+<p>Prompt come an answering shot.</p>
+
+<p>"He wants me," said Marjorie. "Something&mdash;&mdash;Perhaps
+he has killed something too big to bring!"</p>
+
+<p>She was for starting at once, and then remembered
+this was not the way of the wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>She thought and moved very rapidly. Her mind
+catalogued possible requirements, rifle, hunting knife,
+the oilskin bag with matches, and some chunks of dry
+paper, the rucksack&mdash;and he would be hungry. She
+took a saucepan and a huge chunk of cheese and
+biscuit. Then a brandy flask is sometimes handy&mdash;one
+never knows. Though nothing was wrong, of
+course. Needles and stout thread, and some cord.
+Snowshoes. A waterproof cloak could be easily carried.
+Her light hatchet for wood. She cast about
+to see if there was anything else. She had almost<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_458" id="Page_458">-458-</a></span>
+forgotten cartridges&mdash;and a revolver. Nothing more.
+She kicked a stray brand or so into the fire, put on
+some more wood, damped the fire with an armful of
+snow to make it last longer, and set out towards the
+willows into which he had vanished.</p>
+
+<p>There was a rustling and snapping of branches
+as she pushed her way through the bushes, a little
+stir that died insensibly into quiet again; and then the
+camping place became very still....</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely a sound occurred, except for the little
+shuddering and stirring of the fire, and the reluctant,
+infrequent drip from the icicles along the sunny edge
+of the log hut roof. About one o'clock the amber
+sunshine faded out altogether, a veil of clouds thickened
+and became greyly ominous, and a little after
+two the first flakes of a snowstorm fell hissing into
+the fire. A wind rose and drove the multiplying snowflakes
+in whirls and eddies before it. The icicles
+ceased to drip, but one or two broke and fell with a
+weak tinkling. A deep soughing, a shuddering groaning
+of trees and shrubs, came ever and again out of
+the ravine, and the powdery snow blew like puffs of
+smoke from the branches.</p>
+
+<p>By four the fire was out, and the snow was piling
+high in the darkling twilight against tent and hut....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 6</p>
+
+<p>Trafford's trail led Marjorie through the thicket
+of dwarf willows and down to the gully of the rivulet
+which they had called Marjorie Trickle; it had long
+since become a trough of snow-covered rotten ice; the
+trail crossed this and, turning sharply uphill, went
+on until it was clear of shrubs and trees, and in the
+windy open of the upper slopes it crossed a ridge and
+came over the lip of a large desolate valley with slopes<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_459" id="Page_459">-459-</a></span>
+of ice and icy snow. Here she spent some time in
+following his loops back on the homeward trail before
+she saw what was manifestly the final trail running
+far away out across the snow, with the spoor of
+the lynx, a lightly-dotted line, to the right of it. She
+followed this suggestion of the trail, put on her snowshoes,
+and shuffled her way across this valley, which
+opened as she proceeded. She hoped that over the
+ridge she would find Trafford, and scanned the sky
+for the faintest discolouration of a fire, but there was
+none. That seemed odd to her, but the wind was in
+her face, and perhaps it beat the smoke down. Then
+as her eyes scanned the hummocky ridge ahead, she
+saw something, something very intent and still, that
+brought her heart into her mouth. It was a big, grey
+wolf, standing with back haunched and head down,
+watching and winding something beyond there, out
+of sight.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie had an instinctive fear of wild animals,
+and it still seemed dreadful to her that they should go
+at large, uncaged. She suddenly wanted Trafford
+violently, wanted him by her side. Also she thought
+of leaving the trail, going back to the bushes. She
+had to take herself in hand. In the wastes one did
+not fear wild beasts. One had no fear of them. But
+why not fire a shot to let him know she was near?</p>
+
+<p>The beast flashed round with an animal's
+instantaneous change of pose, and looked at her. For a
+couple of seconds, perhaps, woman and brute regarded
+one another across a quarter of a mile of
+snowy desolation.</p>
+
+<p>Suppose it came towards her!</p>
+
+<p>She would fire&mdash;and she would fire at it. She
+made a guess at the range and aimed very carefully.
+She saw the snow fly two yards ahead of the grisly
+shape, and then in an instant it had vanished over the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_460" id="Page_460">-460-</a></span>
+crest.</p>
+
+<p>She reloaded, and stood for a moment waiting for
+Trafford's answer. No answer came. "Queer!" she
+whispered, "queer!"&mdash;and suddenly such a horror of
+anticipation assailed her that she started running and
+floundering through the snow to escape it. Twice she
+called his name, and once she just stopped herself
+from firing a shot.</p>
+
+<p>Over the ridge she would find him. Surely she
+would find him over the ridge.</p>
+
+<p>She found herself among rocks, and there was a
+beaten and trampled place where Trafford must have
+waited and crouched. Then on and down a slope of
+tumbled boulders. There came a patch where he
+had either thrown himself down or fallen.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to her he must have been running....</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, a hundred feet or so away, she saw a
+patch of violently disturbed snow&mdash;snow stained a
+dreadful colour, a snow of scarlet crystals! Three
+strides and Trafford was in sight.</p>
+
+<p>She had a swift conviction he was dead. He was
+lying in a crumpled attitude on a patch of snow
+between convergent rocks, and the lynx, a mass of
+blood smeared silvery fur, was in some way mixed up
+with him. She saw as she came nearer that the snow
+was disturbed round about them, and discoloured
+copiously, yellow widely, and in places bright red,
+with congealed and frozen blood. She felt no fear
+now, and no emotion; all her mind was engaged with
+the clear, bleak perception of the fact before her.
+She did not care to call to him again. His head was
+hidden by the lynx's body, it was as if he was
+burrowing underneath the creature; his legs were twisted
+about each other in a queer, unnatural attitude.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as she dropped off a boulder, and came
+nearer, Trafford moved. A hand came out and
+gripped the rifle beside him; he suddenly lifted a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_461" id="Page_461">-461-</a></span>
+dreadful face, horribly scarred and torn, and crimson
+with frozen blood; he pushed the grey beast aside,
+rose on an elbow, wiped his sleeve across his eyes,
+stared at her, grunted, and flopped forward. He
+had fainted.</p>
+
+<p>She was now as clear-minded and as self-possessed
+as a woman in a shop. In another moment she was
+kneeling by his side. She saw, by the position of his
+knife and the huge rip in the beast's body, that he
+had stabbed the lynx to death as it clawed his head;
+he must have shot and wounded it and then fallen
+upon it. His knitted cap was torn to ribbons, and
+hung upon his neck. Also his leg was manifestly
+injured; how, she could not tell. It was chiefly
+evident he must freeze if he lay here. It seemed to her
+that perhaps he had pulled the dead brute over him
+to protect his torn skin from the extremity of cold.
+The lynx was already rigid, its clumsy paws asprawl&mdash;the
+torn skin and clot upon Trafford's face was
+stiff as she put her hands about his head to raise
+him. She turned him over on his back&mdash;how heavy
+he seemed!&mdash;and forced brandy between his teeth.
+Then, after a moment's hesitation, she poured a little
+brandy on his wounds.</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at his leg, which was surely broken,
+and back at his face. Then she gave him more brandy
+and his eyelids flickered. He moved his hand weakly.
+"The blood," he said, "kept getting in my eyes."</p>
+
+<p>She gave him brandy once again, wiped his face
+and glanced at his leg. Something ought to be done
+to that she thought. But things must be done in
+order.</p>
+
+<p>She stared up at the darkling sky with its grey
+promise of snow, and down the slopes of the mountain.
+Clearly they must stay the night here. They
+were too high for wood among these rocks, but three<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_462" id="Page_462">-462-</a></span>
+or four hundred yards below there were a number of
+dwarfed fir trees. She had brought an axe, so that
+a fire was possible. Should she go back to camp and
+get the tent?</p>
+
+<p>Trafford was trying to speak again. "I got&mdash;&mdash;"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Got my leg in that crack. Damn&mdash;damned
+nuisance."</p>
+
+<p>Was he able to advise her? She looked at him,
+and then perceived she must bind up his head and
+face. She knelt behind him and raised his head on
+her knee. She had a thick silk neck muffler, and this
+she supplemented by a band she cut and tore from
+her inner vest. She bound this, still warm from her
+body, about him, wrapped her cloak round him. The
+next thing was a fire. Five yards away, perhaps, a
+great mass of purple gabbro hung over a patch of
+nearly snowless moss. A hummock to the westward
+offered shelter from the weakly bitter wind, the icy
+draught, that was soughing down the valley. Always
+in Labrador, if you can, you camp against a
+rock surface; it shelters you from the wind, reflects
+your fire, guards your back.</p>
+
+<p>"Rag!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Rotten hole," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"What?" she cried sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"Got you in a rotten hole," he said. "Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Listen," she said, and shook his shoulder.
+"Look! I want to get you up against that rock."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't make much difference," said Trafford,
+and opened his eyes. "Where?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"There."</p>
+
+<p>He remained quite quiet for a second perhaps.
+"Listen to me," he said. "Go back to camp."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_463" id="Page_463">-463-</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Go back to camp. Make a pack of all the
+strongest food&mdash;strenthin'&mdash;strengthrin' food&mdash;you
+know?" He seemed troubled to express himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Down the river. Down&mdash;down. Till you meet
+help."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave you?"</p>
+
+<p>He nodded his head and winced.</p>
+
+<p>"You're always plucky," he said. "Look facts in
+the face. Kiddies. Thought it over while you were
+coming." A tear oozed from his eye. "Not be a
+fool, Madge. Kiss me good-bye. Not be a fool. I'm
+done. Kids."</p>
+
+<p>She stared at him and her spirit was a luminous
+mist of tears. "You old <i>coward</i>," she said in his ear,
+and kissed the little patch of rough and bloody cheek
+beneath his eye. Then she knelt up beside him.
+"<i>I'm</i> boss now, old man," she said. "I want to get
+you to that place there under the rock. If I drag,
+can you help?"</p>
+
+<p>He answered obstinately: "You'd better go."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll make you comfortable first," she answered,
+"anyhow."</p>
+
+<p>He made an enormous effort, and then with her
+quick help and with his back to her knee, had raised
+himself on his elbows.</p>
+
+<p>"And afterwards?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Build a fire."</p>
+
+<p>"Wood?"</p>
+
+<p>"Down there."</p>
+
+<p>"Two bits of wood tied on my leg&mdash;splints. Then
+I can drag myself. See? Like a blessed old walrus."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled, and she kissed his bandaged face again.</p>
+
+<p>"Else it hurts," he apologized, "more than I can
+stand."</p>
+
+<p>She stood up again, thought, put his rifle and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_464" id="Page_464">-464-</a></span>
+knife to his hand for fear of that lurking wolf, abandoning
+her own rifle with an effort, and went striding
+and leaping from rock to rock towards the trees below.
+She made the chips fly, and was presently towing
+three venerable pine dwarfs, bumping over rock and
+crevice, back to Trafford. She flung them down,
+stood for a moment bright and breathless, then set
+herself to hack off the splints he needed from the
+biggest stem. "Now," she said, coming to him.</p>
+
+<p>"A fool," he remarked, "would have made the
+splints down there. You're&mdash;<i>good</i>, Marjorie."</p>
+
+<p>She lugged his leg out straight, put it into the
+natural and least painful pose, padded it with moss
+and her torn handkerchief, and bound it up. As she
+did so a handful of snowflakes came whirling about
+them. She was now braced up to every possibility.
+"It never rains," she said grimly, "but it pours,"
+and went on with her bone-setting. He was badly
+weakened by pain and shock, and once he swore at
+her sharply. "Sorry," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She rolled him over on his chest, and left him to
+struggle to the shelter of the rock while she went for
+more wood.</p>
+
+<p>The sky alarmed her. The mountains up the
+valley were already hidden by driven rags of slaty
+snowstorms. This time she found a longer but easier
+path for dragging her boughs and trees; she determined
+she would not start the fire until nightfall, nor
+waste any time in preparing food until then. There
+were dead boughs for kindling&mdash;more than enough.
+It was snowing quite fast by the time she got up to
+him with her second load, and a premature twilight
+already obscured and exaggerated the rocks and
+mounds about her. She gave some of her cheese to
+Trafford, and gnawed some herself on her way down
+to the wood again. She regretted that she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_465" id="Page_465">-465-</a></span>
+brought neither candles nor lantern, because then she
+might have kept on until the cold of night stopped
+her, and she reproached herself bitterly because she
+had brought no tea. She could forgive herself the
+lantern, she had never expected to be out after dark,
+but the tea was inexcusable. She muttered self-reproaches
+while she worked like two men among the
+trees, panting puffs of mist that froze upon her lips
+and iced the knitted wool that covered her chin. Why
+don't they teach a girl to handle an axe?...</p>
+
+<p>When at last the wolfish cold of the Labrador
+night had come, it found Trafford and Marjorie
+seated almost warmly on a bed of pine boughs between
+the sheltering dark rock behind and a big but well
+husbanded fire in front, drinking a queer-tasting but
+not unsavory soup of lynx-flesh, that she had fortified
+with the remainder of the brandy. Then they
+tried roast lynx and ate a little, and finished with
+some scraps of cheese and deep draughts of hot water.
+Then&mdash;oh Tyburnia and Chelsea and all that is becoming!&mdash;they
+smoked Trafford's pipe for alternate
+minutes, and Marjorie found great comfort in it.</p>
+
+<p>The snowstorm poured incessantly out of the
+darkness to become flakes of burning fire in the light
+of the flames, flakes that vanished magically, but it
+only reached them and wetted them in occasional
+gusts. What did it matter for the moment if the dim
+snow-heaps rose and rose about them? A glorious
+fatigue, an immense self-satisfaction possessed Marjorie;
+she felt that they had both done well.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not afraid of to-morrow now," she said at
+last&mdash;a thought matured. "<i>No!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Trafford had the pipe and did not speak for a
+moment. "Nor I," he said at last. "Very likely
+we'll get through with it." He added after a pause:
+"I thought I was done for. A man&mdash;loses heart.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_466" id="Page_466">-466-</a></span>
+After a loss of blood."</p>
+
+<p>"The leg's better?"</p>
+
+<p>"Hot as fire." His humour hadn't left him. "It's
+a treat," he said. "The hottest thing in Labrador."</p>
+
+<p>"I've been a good squaw this time, old man?" she
+asked suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed not to hear her; then his lips twitched
+and he made a feeble movement for her hand. "I
+cursed you," he said....</p>
+
+<p>She slept, but on a spring as it were, lest the fire
+should fall. She replenished it with boughs, tucked in
+the half-burnt logs, and went to sleep again. Then it
+seemed to her that some invisible hand was pouring a
+thin spirit on the flames that made them leap and
+crackle and spread north and south until they filled
+the heavens. Her eyes were open and the snowstorm
+overpast, leaving the sky clear, and all the westward
+heaven alight with the trailing, crackling, leaping
+curtains of the Aurora, brighter than she had ever
+seen them before. Quite clearly visible beyond the
+smoulder of the fire, a wintry waste of rock and snow,
+boulder beyond boulder, passed into a dun obscurity.
+The mountain to the right of them lay long and white
+and stiff, a shrouded death. All earth was dead and
+waste and nothing, and the sky alive and coldly marvellous,
+signalling and astir. She watched the changing,
+shifting colours, and they made her think of the
+gathering banners of inhuman hosts, the stir and marshalling
+of icy giants for ends stupendous and indifferent
+to all the trivial impertinence of man's existence....</p>
+
+<p>That night the whole world of man seemed small
+and shallow and insecure to her, beyond comparison.
+One came, she thought, but just a little way out of its
+warm and sociable cities hither, and found this homeless
+wilderness; one pricked the thin appearances of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_467" id="Page_467">-467-</a></span>
+life with microscope or telescope and came to an equal
+strangeness. All the pride and hope of human life
+goes to and fro in a little shell of air between this
+ancient globe of rusty nickel-steel and the void of
+space; faint specks we are within a film; we quiver
+between the atom and the infinite, being hardly more
+substantial than the glow within an oily skin that
+drifts upon the water. The wonder and the riddle of
+it! Here she and Trafford were! Phantasmal shapes
+of unsubstantial fluid thinly skinned against evaporation
+and wrapped about with woven wool and the
+skins of beasts, that yet reflected and perceived, suffered
+and sought to understand; that held a million
+memories, framed thoughts that plumbed the deeps of
+space and time,&mdash;and another day of snow or icy
+wind might leave them just scattered bones and torn
+rags gnawed by a famishing wolf!...</p>
+
+<p>She felt a passionate desire to pray....</p>
+
+<p>She glanced at Trafford beside her, and found
+him awake and staring. His face was very pale and
+strange in that livid, flickering light. She would have
+spoken, and then she saw his lips were moving, and
+something, something she did not understand, held
+her back from doing so.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 7</p>
+
+<p>The bleak, slow dawn found Marjorie intently
+busy. She had made up the fire, boiled water and
+washed and dressed Trafford's wounds, and made
+another soup of lynx. But Trafford had weakened
+in the night, the stuff nauseated him, he refused it and
+tried to smoke and was sick, and then sat back rather
+despairfully after a second attempt to persuade her
+to leave him there to die. This failure of his spirit
+distressed her and a little astonished her, but it only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_468" id="Page_468">-468-</a></span>
+made her more resolute to go through with her work.
+She had awakened cold, stiff and weary, but her fatigue
+vanished with movement; she toiled for an hour
+replenishing her pile of fuel, made up the fire, put his
+gun ready to his hand, kissed him, abused him lovingly
+for the trouble he gave her until his poor torn face
+lit in response, and then parting on a note of cheerful
+confidence set out to return to the hut. She found the
+way not altogether easy to make out, wind and snow
+had left scarcely a trace of their tracks, and her mind
+was full of the stores she must bring and the possibility
+of moving him nearer to the hut. She was startled
+to see by the fresh, deep spoor along the ridge how
+near the wolf had dared approach them in the darkness....</p>
+
+<p>Ever and again Marjorie had to halt and look
+back to get her direction right. As it was she came
+through the willow scrub nearly half a mile above the
+hut, and had to follow the steep bank of the frozen
+river down. At one place she nearly slipped upon an
+icy slope of rock.</p>
+
+<p>One possibility she did not dare to think of during
+that time; a blizzard now would cut her off absolutely
+from any return to Trafford. Short of that she believed
+she could get through.</p>
+
+<p>Her quick mind was full of all she had to do. At
+first she had thought chiefly of his immediate necessities,
+of food and some sort of shelter. She had got
+a list of things in her head&mdash;meat extract, bandages,
+corrosive sublimate by way of antiseptic, brandy, a
+tin of beef, some bread and so forth; she went over
+that several times to be sure of it, and then for a time
+she puzzled about a tent. She thought she could
+manage a bale of blankets on her back, and that she
+could rig a sleeping tent for herself and Trafford with
+one and some bent sticks. The big tent would be too<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_469" id="Page_469">-469-</a></span>
+much to strike and shift. And then her mind went on
+to a bolder enterprise, which was to get him home.
+The nearer she could bring him to the log hut, the
+nearer they would be to supplies. She cast about for
+some sort of sledge. The snow was too soft and broken
+for runners, especially among the trees, but if she
+could get a flat of smooth wood she thought she might
+be able to drag him. She decided to try the side of
+her bunk. She could easily get that off. She would
+have, of course, to run it edgewise through the thickets
+and across the ravine, but after that she would
+have almost clear going until she reached the steep
+place of broken rocks within two hundred yards of
+him. The idea of a sledge grew upon her, and she
+planned to nail a rope along the edge and make a
+kind of harness for herself.</p>
+
+<p>She found the camping-place piled high with
+drifted snow, which had invaded tent and hut, and
+that some beast, a wolverine she guessed, had been into
+the hut, devoured every candle-end and the uppers
+of Trafford's well-greased second boots, and had then
+gone to the corner of the store shed and clambered up
+to the stores. She made no account of its depredations
+there, but set herself to make a sledge and get
+her supplies together. There was a gleam of sunshine,
+but she did not like the look of the sky, and she
+was horribly afraid of what might be happening to
+Trafford. She carried her stuff through the wood
+and across the ravine, and returned for her improvised
+sledge. She was still struggling with that among
+the trees when it began to snow again.</p>
+
+<p>It was hard then not to be frantic in her efforts.
+As it was, she packed her stuff so loosely on the planking
+that she had to repack it, and she started without
+putting on her snowshoes, and floundered fifty yards
+before she discovered that omission. The snow was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_470" id="Page_470">-470-</a></span>
+now falling fast, darkling the sky and hiding everything
+but objects close at hand, and she had to use all
+her wits to determine her direction; she knew she must
+go down a long slope and then up to the ridge, and it
+came to her as a happy inspiration that if she bore to
+the left she might strike some recognizable vestige of
+her morning's trail. She had read of people walking
+in circles when they have no light or guidance, and
+that troubled her until she bethought herself of the
+little compass on her watch chain. By that she kept
+her direction. She wished very much she had timed
+herself across the waste, so that she could tell when
+she approached the ridge.</p>
+
+<p>Soon her back and shoulders were aching violently,
+and the rope across her chest was tugging like
+some evil-tempered thing. But she did not dare to
+rest. The snow was now falling thick and fast, the
+flakes traced white spirals and made her head spin, so
+that she was constantly falling away to the south-westward
+and then correcting herself by the compass.
+She tried to think how this zig-zagging might affect
+her course, but the snow whirls confused her mind and
+a growing anxiety would not let her pause to think.
+She felt blinded; it seemed to be snowing inside her
+eyes so that she wanted to rub them. Soon the
+ground must rise to the ridge, she told herself; it
+must surely rise. Then the sledge came bumping at
+her heels and she perceived she was going down hill.
+She consulted the compass, and she found she was
+facing south. She turned sharply to the right again.
+The snowfall became a noiseless, pitiless torture to
+sight and mind.</p>
+
+<p>The sledge behind her struggled to hold her back,
+and the snow balled under her snowshoes. She wanted
+to stop and rest, take thought, sit for a moment. She
+struggled with herself and kept on. She tried walking<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_471" id="Page_471">-471-</a></span>
+with shut eyes, and tripped and came near sprawling.
+"Oh God!" she cried, "oh God!" too stupefied
+for more articulate prayers.</p>
+
+<p>Would the rise of the ground to the ribs of rock
+never come?</p>
+
+<p>A figure, black and erect, stood in front of her
+suddenly, and beyond appeared a group of black,
+straight antagonists. She staggered on towards them,
+gripping her rifle with some muddled idea of defence,
+and in another moment she was brushing against the
+branches of a stunted fir, which shed thick lumps of
+snow upon her feet. What trees were these? Had
+she ever passed any trees? No! There were no trees
+on her way to Trafford....</p>
+
+<p>She began whimpering like a tormented child.
+But even as she wept she turned her sledge about to
+follow the edge of the wood. She was too much
+downhill, she thought and she must bear up again.</p>
+
+<p>She left the trees behind, made an angle uphill to
+the right, and was presently among trees again. Again
+she left them and again came back to them. She
+screamed with anger at them and twitched her sledge
+away. She wiped at the snowstorm with her arm as
+though she would wipe it away. She wanted to stamp
+on the universe....</p>
+
+<p>And she ached, she ached....</p>
+
+<p>Something caught her eye ahead, something that
+gleamed; it was exactly like a long, bare rather pinkish
+bone standing erect on the ground. Just because
+it was strange and queer she ran forward to it. Then
+as she came nearer she perceived it was a streak of
+barked trunk; a branch had been torn off a pine tree
+and the bark stripped down to the root. And then
+her foot hit against a freshly hewn stump, and then
+came another, poking its pinkish wounds above the
+snow. And there were chips! This filled her with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_472" id="Page_472">-472-</a></span>
+wonder. Some one had been cutting wood! There
+must be Indians or trappers near, she thought, and
+then realized the wood-cutter could be none other
+than herself.</p>
+
+<p>She turned to the right and saw the rocks rising
+steeply close at hand. "Oh Rag!" she cried, and
+fired her rifle in the air.</p>
+
+<p>Ten seconds, twenty seconds, and then so loud and
+near it amazed her, came his answering shot. It
+sounded like the hillside bursting.</p>
+
+<p>In another moment she had discovered the trail
+she had made overnight and that morning by dragging
+firewood. It was now a shallow soft white trench.
+Instantly her despair and fatigue had gone from her.
+Should she take a load of wood with her? she asked
+herself, in addition to the weight behind her, and had
+a better idea. She would unload and pile her stuff
+here, and bring him down on the sledge closer to the
+wood. She looked about and saw two rocks that
+diverged with a space between. She flashed schemes.
+She would trample the snow hard and flat, put her
+sledge on it, pile boughs and make a canopy of blanket
+overhead and behind. Then a fire in front.</p>
+
+<p>She saw her camp admirable. She tossed her provisions
+down and ran up the broad windings of her
+pine-tree trail to Trafford, with the unloaded sledge
+bumping behind her. She ran as lightly as though
+she had done nothing that day.</p>
+
+<p>She found him markedly recovered, weak and
+quiet, with snow drifting over his feet, his rifle across
+his knees, and his pipe alight. "Back already," he
+said, "but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated. "No grub?"</p>
+
+<p>She knelt over him, gave his rough unshaven cheek
+a swift kiss, and very rapidly explained her plan.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 8</p>
+
+<p>In three days' time they were back at the hut, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_473" id="Page_473">-473-</a></span>
+the last two days they wore blue spectacles because of
+the mid-day glare of the sunlit snow.</p>
+
+<p>It amazed Marjorie to discover as she lay awake
+in the camp on the edge of the ravine close to the hut
+to which she had lugged Trafford during the second
+day, that she was deeply happy. It was preposterous
+that she should be so, but those days of almost despairful
+stress were irradiated now by a new courage.
+She was doing this thing, against all Labrador and
+the snow-driving wind that blew from the polar wilderness,
+she was winning. It was a great discovery to
+her that hardship and effort almost to the breaking-point
+could ensue in so deep a satisfaction. She lay
+and thought how deep and rich life had become for
+her, as though in all this effort and struggle some unsuspected
+veil had been torn away. She perceived
+again, but now with no sense of desolation, that same
+infinite fragility of life which she had first perceived
+when she had watched the Aurora Borealis flickering
+up the sky. Beneath that realization and carrying
+it, as a river flood may carry scum, was a sense of
+herself as something deeper, greater, more enduring
+than mountain or wilderness or sky, or any of those
+monstrous forms of nature that had dwarfed her
+physical self to nothingness.</p>
+
+<p>She had a persuasion of self detachment and illumination,
+and withal of self-discovery. She saw her
+life of time and space for what it was. Away in
+London the children, with the coldest of noses and the
+gayest of spirits, would be scampering about their
+bedrooms in the mild morning sunlight of a London
+winter; Elsie, the parlourmaid, would be whisking
+dexterous about the dining-room, the bacon would be
+cooking and the coffee-mill at work, the letters of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_474" id="Page_474">-474-</a></span>
+morning delivery perhaps just pattering into the letter-box,
+and all the bright little household she had
+made, with all the furniture she had arranged, all the
+characteristic decoration she had given it, all the
+clever convenient arrangements, would be getting itself
+into action for another day&mdash;and <i>it wasn't herself!</i>
+It was the extremest of her superficiality.</p>
+
+<p>She had come out of all that, and even so it seemed
+she had come out of herself; this weary woman
+lying awake on the balsam boughs with a brain cleared
+by underfeeding and this continuous arduous bath
+of toil in snow-washed, frost cleansed, starry air, this,
+too, was no more than a momentarily clarified window
+for her unknown and indefinable reality. What was
+that reality? what was she herself? She became interested
+in framing an answer to that, and slipped
+down from the peace of soul she had attained. Her
+serenity gave way to a reiteration of this question,
+reiterations increasing and at last oppressing like the
+snowflakes of a storm, perpetual whirling repetitions
+that at last confused her and hid the sky....</p>
+
+<p>She fell asleep....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 9</p>
+
+<p>With their return to the hut, Marjorie had found
+herself encountering a new set of urgencies. In their
+absence that wretched little wolverine had found great
+plenty and happiness in the tent and store-shed; its
+traces were manifest nearly everywhere, and it had
+particularly assailed the candles, after a destructive
+time among the frozen caribou beef. It had clambered
+up on the packages of sardines and jumped thence
+on to a sloping pole that it could claw along into the
+frame of the roof. She rearranged the packages,
+but that was no good. She could not leave Trafford<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_475" id="Page_475">-475-</a></span>
+in order to track the brute down, and for a night or
+so she could not think of any way of checking its depredations.
+It came each night.... Trafford kept
+her close at home. She had expected that when he
+was back in his bunk, secure and warm, he would heal
+rapidly, but instead he suddenly developed all the
+symptoms of a severe feverish cold, and his scars,
+which had seemed healing, became flushed and ugly-looking.
+Moreover, there was something wrong with
+his leg, an ominous ache that troubled her mind.
+Every woman, she decided, ought to know how to set
+a bone. He was unable to sleep by reason of these
+miseries, though very desirous of doing so. He became
+distressingly weak and inert, he ceased to care
+for food, and presently he began ta talk to himself
+with a complete disregard of her presence. Hourly
+she regretted her ignorance of medicine that left her
+with no conceivable remedy for all the aching and
+gnawing that worried and weakened him, except bathing
+with antiseptics and a liberal use of quinine.</p>
+
+<p>And his face became strange to her, for over his
+flushed and sunken cheeks, under the raw spaces of
+the scar a blond beard bristled and grew. Presently,
+Trafford was a bearded man.</p>
+
+<p>Incidentally, however, she killed the wolverine by
+means of a trap of her own contrivance, a loaded rifle
+with a bait of what was nearly her last candles, rigged
+to the trigger.</p>
+
+<p>But this loss of the candles brought home to them
+the steady lengthening of the nights. Scarcely seven
+hours of day remained now in the black, cold grip of
+the darkness. And through those seventeen hours of
+chill aggression they had no light but the red glow
+of the stove. She had to close the door of the hut and
+bar every chink and cranny against the icy air, that
+became at last a murderous, freezing wind. Not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_476" id="Page_476">-476-</a></span>
+only did she line the hut with every scrap of skin
+and paper she could obtain, but she went out with the
+spade toiling for three laborious afternoons in piling
+and beating snow against the outer frame. And now
+it was that Trafford talked at last, talked with something
+of the persistence of delirium, and she sat and
+listened hour by hour, silently, for he gave no heed to
+her or to anything she might say. He talked, it
+seemed, to God....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 10</p>
+
+<p>Darkness about a sullen glow of red, and a voice
+speaking.</p>
+
+<p>The voice of a man, fevered and in pain, wounded
+and amidst hardship and danger, struggling with the
+unrelenting riddle of his being. Ever and again when
+a flame leapt she would see his face, haggard, bearded,
+changed, and yet infinitely familiar.</p>
+
+<p>His voice varied, now high and clear, now mumbling,
+now vexed and expostulating, now rich with deep
+feeling, now fagged and slow; his matter varied, too;
+now he talked like one who is inspired, and now like
+one lost and confused, stupidly repeating phrases,
+going back upon a misleading argument, painfully,
+laboriously beginning over and over again. Marjorie
+sat before the stove watching it burn and sink, replenishing
+it, preparing food, and outside the bitter
+wind moaned and blew the powdery snow before it, and
+the shortening interludes of pallid, diffused daylight
+which pass for days in such weather, came and went.
+Intense cold had come now with leaden snowy days
+and starless nights.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes his speech filled her mind, seemed to
+fill all her world; sometimes she ceased to listen, following
+thoughts of her own. Sometimes she dozed;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_477" id="Page_477">-477-</a></span>
+sometimes she awakened from sleep to find him talking.
+But slowly she realized a thread in his discourse,
+a progress and development.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes he talked of his early researches, and
+then he would trace computations with his hands as if
+he were using a blackboard, and became distressed to
+remember what he had written. Sometimes he would
+be under the claws of the lynx again, and fighting for
+his eyes. "Ugh!" he said, "keep those hind legs
+still. Keep your hind legs still! Knife? Knife?
+Ah! got it. Gu&mdash;u&mdash;u, you <i>Beast!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>But the gist of his speech was determined by the
+purpose of his journey to Labrador. At last he was
+reviewing his life and hers, and all that their life might
+signify, even as he determined to do. She began to
+perceive that whatever else drifted into his mind and
+talk, this recurred and grew, that he returned to the
+conclusion he had reached, and not to the beginning
+of the matter, and went on from that....</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he said, "our lives are nothing&mdash;nothing
+in themselves. I know that; I've never had
+any doubts of that. We individuals just pick up a
+mixed lot of things out of the powers that begat us,
+and lay them down again presently a little altered,
+that's all&mdash;heredities, traditions, the finger nails of
+my grandfather, a great-aunt's lips, the faith of a
+sect, the ideas of one's time. We live and then we die,
+and the threads run, dispersing this way and that. To
+make other people again. Whatever's immortal isn't
+that, our looks or our habits, our thoughts or our
+memories&mdash;just the shapes, these are, of one immortal
+stuff.... One immortal stuff."...</p>
+
+<p>The voice died away as if he was baffled. Then
+it resumed.</p>
+
+<p>"But we ought to <i>partake</i> of immortality; that's
+my point. We ought to partake of immortality.</p>
+
+<p>"I mean we're like the little elements in a magnet;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_478" id="Page_478">-478-</a></span>
+ought not to lie higgledy-piggledy, ought to
+point the same way, be polarized&mdash;&mdash;Something microcosmic,
+you know, ought to be found in a man.</p>
+
+<p>"Analogies run away with one. Suppose the bar
+isn't magnetized yet! Suppose purpose has to come;
+suppose the immortal stuff isn't yet, isn't being but
+struggling to be. Struggling to be.... Gods! that
+morning! When the child was born! And afterwards
+she was there&mdash;with a smile on her lips, and a
+little flushed and proud&mdash;as if nothing had happened
+so very much out of the way. Nothing so wonderful.
+And we had another life besides our own!..."</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards he came back to that. "That was a
+good image," he said, "something trying to exist,
+which isn't substance, doesn't belong to space or time,
+something stifled and enclosed, struggling to get
+through. Just confused birth cries, eyes that hardly
+see, deaf ears, poor little thrusting hands. A thing
+altogether blind at first, a twitching and thrusting of
+protoplasm under the waters, and then the plants
+creeping up the beaches, the insects and reptiles on
+the margins of the rivers, beasts with a flicker of
+light in their eyes answering the sun. And at last,
+out of the long interplay of desire and fear, an ape,
+an ape that stared and wondered, and scratched queer
+pictures on a bone...."</p>
+
+<p>He lapsed into silent thought for a time, and
+Marjorie glanced at his dim face in the shadows.</p>
+
+<p>"I say nothing of ultimates," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>He repeated that twice before his thoughts would
+flow again.</p>
+
+<p>"This is as much as I see, in time as I know it and
+space as I know it&mdash;<i>something struggling to exist</i>.
+It's true to the end of my limits. What can I say
+beyond that? It struggles to exist, becomes conscious,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_479" id="Page_479">-479-</a></span>
+becomes now conscious of itself. That is where I come
+in, as a part of it. Above the beast in me is that&mdash;the
+desire to know better, to know&mdash;beautifully, and
+to transmit my knowledge. That's all there is in life
+for me beyond food and shelter and tidying up. This
+Being&mdash;opening its eyes, listening, trying to comprehend.
+Every good thing in man is that;&mdash;looking
+and making pictures, listening and making songs,
+making philosophies and sciences, trying new powers,
+bridge and engine, spark and gun. At the bottom of
+my soul, <i>that</i>. We began with bone-scratching. We're
+still&mdash;near it. I am just a part of this beginning&mdash;mixed
+with other things. Every book, every art,
+every religion is that, the attempt to understand and
+express&mdash;mixed with other things. Nothing else matters,
+nothing whatever. I tell you&mdash;&mdash;Nothing
+whatever!</p>
+
+<p>"I've always believed that. All my life I've believed
+that.</p>
+
+<p>"Only I've forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>"Every man with any brains believes that at the
+bottom of his heart. Only he gets busy and forgets.
+He goes shooting lynxes and breaks his leg. Odd,
+instinctive, brutal thing to do&mdash;to go tracking down
+a lynx to kill it! I grant you that, Marjorie. I grant
+you that."</p>
+
+<p>"Grant me what?" she cried, startled beyond
+measure to hear herself addressed.</p>
+
+<p>"Grant you that it is rather absurd to go hunting
+a lynx. And what big paws it has&mdash;disproportionately
+big! I wonder if that's an adaptation to
+snow. Tremendous paws they are.... But the
+real thing, I was saying, the real thing is to get
+knowledge, and express it. All things lead up to that.
+Civilization, social order, just for that. Except for
+that, all the life of man, all his affairs, his laws and
+police, his morals and manners&mdash;nonsense, nonsense,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_480" id="Page_480">-480-</a></span>
+nonsense. Lynx hunts! Just ways of getting themselves
+mauled and clawed perhaps&mdash;into a state of
+understanding. Who knows?..."</p>
+
+<p>His voice became low and clear.</p>
+
+<p>"Understanding spreading like a dawn....</p>
+
+<p>"Logic and language, clumsy implements, but
+rising to our needs, rising to our needs, thought
+clarified, enriched, reaching out to every man alive&mdash;some
+day&mdash;presently&mdash;touching every man alive, harmonizing
+acts and plans, drawing men into gigantic
+co-operations, tremendous co-operations....</p>
+
+<p>"Until man shall stand upon this earth as upon
+a footstool and reach out his hand among the stars....</p>
+
+<p>"And then I went into the rubber market, and
+spent seven years of my life driving shares up and
+down and into a net!... Queer game indeed!
+Stupid ass Behrens was&mdash;at bottom....</p>
+
+<p>"There's a flaw in it somewhere...."</p>
+
+<p>He came back to that several times before he
+seemed able to go on from it.</p>
+
+<p>"There <i>is</i> a collective mind," he said, "a growing
+general consciousness&mdash;growing clearer. Something
+put me away from that, but I know it. My
+work, my thinking, was a part of it. That's why
+I was so mad about Behrens."</p>
+
+<p>"Behrens?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. He'd got a twist, a wrong twist. It
+makes me angry now. It will take years, it will eat
+up some brilliant man to clean up after Behrens&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but the point is"&mdash;his voice became acute&mdash;"why
+did I go making money and let Behrens in?
+Why generally and in all sorts of things does Behrens
+come in?..."</p>
+
+<p>He was silent for a long time, and then he began
+to answer himself. "Of course," he said, "I said it&mdash;or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_481" id="Page_481">-481-</a></span>
+somebody said it&mdash;about this collective mind being
+mixed with other things. It's something arising out
+of life&mdash;not the common stuff of life. An exhalation....
+It's like the little tongues of fire that came
+at Pentecost.... Queer how one comes drifting
+back to these images. Perhaps I shall die a Christian
+yet.... The other Christians won't like me if I do.
+What was I saying?... It's what I reach up to,
+what I desire shall pervade me, not what I am. Just
+as far as I give myself purely to knowledge, to making
+feeling and thought clear in my mind and words,
+to the understanding and expression of the realities
+and relations of life, just so far do I achieve Salvation....
+Salvation!...</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder, is Salvation the same for every one?
+Perhaps for one man Salvation is research and
+thought, and for another expression in art, and for
+another nursing lepers. Provided he does it in the
+spirit. He has to do it in the spirit...."</p>
+
+<p>There came a silence as though some difficulty
+baffled him, and he was feeling back to get his argument
+again.</p>
+
+<p>"This flame that arises out of life, that redeems
+life from purposeless triviality, <i>isn't</i> life. Let me get
+hold of that. That's a point. That's a very important
+point."</p>
+
+<p>Something had come to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I've never talked of this to Marjorie. I've lived
+with her nine years and more, and never talked of
+religion. Not once. That's so queer of us. Any
+other couple in any other time would have talked
+religion no end.... People ought to."</p>
+
+<p>Then he stuck out an argumentative hand. "You
+see, Marjorie <i>is</i> life," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"She took me."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke slowly, as though he traced things carefully.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_482" id="Page_482">-482-</a></span>
+"Before I met her I suppose I wasn't half
+alive. No! Yet I don't remember I felt particularly
+incomplete. Women were interesting, of course; they
+excited me at times, that girl at Yonkers!&mdash;H'm. I
+stuck to my work. It was fine work, I forget half of
+it now, the half-concealed intimations I mean&mdash;queer
+how one forgets!&mdash;but I know I felt my way to wide,
+deep things. It was like exploring caves&mdash;monstrous,
+limitless caves. Such caves!... Very still&mdash;underground.
+Wonderful and beautiful.... They're
+lying there now for other men to seek. Other men
+will find them.... Then <i>she</i> came, as though she
+was taking possession. The beauty of her, oh! the
+life and bright eagerness, and the incompatibility!
+That's the riddle! I've loved her always. When she
+came to my arms it seemed to me the crown of life.
+Caves indeed! Old caves! Nothing else seemed to
+matter. But something did. All sorts of things did.
+I found that out soon enough. And when that first
+child was born. That for a time was supreme....
+Yes&mdash;she's the quintessence of life, the dear greed of
+her, the appetite, the clever appetite for things. She
+grabs. She's so damned clever! The light in her eyes!
+Her quick sure hands!... Only my work was
+crowded out of my life and ended, and she didn't
+seem to feel it, she didn't seem to mind it. There was
+a sort of disregard. Disregard. As though all that
+didn't really matter...."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>My dear!</i>" whispered Marjorie unheeded. She
+wanted to tell him it mattered now, mattered supremely,
+but she knew he had no ears for her.</p>
+
+<p>His voice flattened. "It's perplexing," he said.
+"The two different things."</p>
+
+<p>Then suddenly he cried out harshly: "I ought
+never to have married her&mdash;never, never! I had my
+task. I gave myself to her. Oh! the high immensities,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_483" id="Page_483">-483-</a></span>
+the great and terrible things open to the mind of
+man! And we breed children and live in littered houses
+and play with our food and chatter, chatter, chatter.
+Oh, the chatter of my life! The folly! The women
+with their clothes. I can hear them rustle now, whiff
+the scent of it! The scandals&mdash;as though the things
+they did with themselves and each other mattered a
+rap; the little sham impromptu clever things, the
+trying to keep young&mdash;and underneath it all that
+continual cheating, cheating, cheating, damning
+struggle for money!...</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie, Marjorie, Marjorie! Why is she so
+good and no better! Why wasn't she worth it altogether?...</p>
+
+<p>"No! I don't want to go on with it any more&mdash;ever.
+I want to go back.</p>
+
+<p>"I want my life over again, and to go back.</p>
+
+<p>"I want research, and the spirit of research that
+has died in me, and that still, silent room of mine
+again, that room, as quiet as a cell, and the toil that
+led to light. Oh! the coming of that light, the
+uprush of discovery, the solemn joy as the generalization
+rises like a sun upon the facts&mdash;floods them
+with a common meaning. That is what I want. That
+is what I have always wanted....</p>
+
+<p>"Give me my time oh God! again; I am sick of
+this life I have chosen. I am sick of it! This&mdash;busy
+death! Give me my time again.... Why did you
+make me, and then waste me like this? Why are we
+made for folly upon folly? Folly! and brains made to
+scale high heaven, smeared into the dust! Into the
+dust, into the dust. Dust!..."</p>
+
+<p>He passed into weak, wandering repetitions of
+disconnected sentences, that died into whispers and
+silence, and Marjorie watched him and listened to
+him, and waited with a noiseless dexterity upon his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_484" id="Page_484">-484-</a></span>
+every need.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 11</p>
+
+<p>One day, she did not know what day, for she had
+lost count of the days, Marjorie set the kettle to boil
+and opened the door of the hut to look out, and the
+snow was ablaze with diamonds, and the air was sweet
+and still. It occurred to her that it would be well to
+take Trafford out into that brief brightness. She
+looked at him and found his eyes upon the sunlight
+quiet and rather wondering eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like to get out into that?" she asked
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, and seemed disposed to get up.</p>
+
+<p>"You've got a broken leg," she cried, to arrest
+his movement, and he looked at her and answered:
+"Of course&mdash;I forgot."</p>
+
+<p>She was all atremble that he should recognize her
+and speak to her. She pulled her rude old sledge
+alongside his bunk, and kissed him, and showed him
+how to shift and drop himself upon the plank. She
+took him in her arms and lowered him. He helped
+weakly but understandingly, and she wrapped him up
+warmly on the planks and lugged him out and built
+up a big fire at his feet, wondering, but as yet too
+fearful to rejoice, at the change that had come to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He said no more, but his eyes watched her move
+about with a kind of tired curiosity. He smiled for a
+time at the sun, and shut his eyes, and still faintly
+smiling, lay still. She had a curious fear that if she
+tried to talk to him this new lucidity would vanish
+again. She went about the business of the morning,
+glancing at him ever and again, until suddenly the
+calm of his upturned face smote her, and she ran to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_485" id="Page_485">-485-</a></span>
+him and crouched down to him between hope and a
+terrible fear, and found that he was sleeping, and
+breathing very lightly, sleeping with the deep unconsciousness
+of a child....</p>
+
+<p>When he awakened the sun was red in the west.
+His eyes met hers, and he seemed a little puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been sleeping, Madge?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>"And dreaming? I've a vague sort of memory of
+preaching and preaching in a kind of black, empty
+place, where there wasn't anything.... A fury of
+exposition... a kind of argument.... I say!&mdash;Is
+there such a thing in the world as a new-laid egg&mdash;and
+some bread-and-butter?"</p>
+
+<p>He seemed to reflect. "Of course," he said, "I
+broke my leg. Gollys! I thought that beast was
+going to claw my eyes out. Lucky, Madge, it didn't
+get my eyes. It was just a chance it didn't."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her.</p>
+
+<p>"I say," he said, "you've had a pretty rough
+time! How long has this been going on?"</p>
+
+<p>He amazed her by rising himself on his elbow and
+sitting up.</p>
+
+<p>"Your leg!" she cried.</p>
+
+<p>He put his hand down and felt it. "Pretty stiff,"
+he said. "You get me some food&mdash;there <i>were</i> some
+eggs, Madge, frozen new-laid, anyhow&mdash;and then we'll
+take these splints off and feel about a bit. Eh! why
+not? How did you get me out of that scrape, Madge?
+I thought I'd got to be froze as safe as eggs. (Those
+eggs ought to be all right, you know. If you put
+them on in a saucepan and wait until they boil.) I've
+a sort of muddled impression.... By Jove, Madge,
+you've had a time! I say you <i>have</i> had a time!"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes, full of a warmth of kindliness she had<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_486" id="Page_486">-486-</a></span>
+not seen for long weeks, scrutinized her face. "I
+say!" he repeated, very softly.</p>
+
+<p>All her strength went from her at his tenderness.
+"Oh, my dear," she wailed, kneeling at his side, "my
+dear, dear!" and still regardful of his leg, she yet
+contrived to get herself weeping into his coveted arms.</p>
+
+<p>He regarded her, he held her, he patted her back!
+The infinite luxury to her! He'd come back. He'd
+come back to her.</p>
+
+<p>"How long has it been?" he asked. "Poor dear!
+Poor dear! How long can it have been?"</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 12</p>
+
+<p>From that hour Trafford mended. He remained
+clear-minded, helpful, sustaining. His face healed
+daily. Marjorie had had to cut away great fragments
+of gangrenous frozen flesh, and he was clearly destined
+to have a huge scar over forehead and cheek,
+but in that pure, clear air, once the healing had begun
+it progressed swiftly. His leg had set, a little
+shorter than its fellow and with a lump in the middle
+of the shin, but it promised to be a good serviceable
+leg none the less. They examined it by the light of
+the stove with their heads together, and discussed
+when it would be wise to try it. How do doctors tell
+when a man may stand on his broken leg? She had a
+vague impression you must wait six weeks, but she
+could not remember why she fixed upon that time.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems a decent interval," said Trafford.
+"We'll try it."</p>
+
+<p>She had contrived a crutch for him against that
+momentous experiment, and he sat up in his bunk,
+pillowed up by a sack and her rugs, and whittled it
+smooth, and padded the fork with the skin of that
+slaughtered wolverine, poor victim of hunger!&mdash;while<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_487" id="Page_487">-487-</a></span>
+she knelt by the stove feeding it with logs, and gave
+him an account of their position.</p>
+
+<p>"We're somewhere in the middle of December,"
+she said, "somewhere between the twelfth and the
+fourteenth,&mdash;yes! I'm as out as that!&mdash;and I've
+handled the stores pretty freely. So did that little
+beast until I got him." She nodded at the skin in
+his hand. "I don't see myself shooting much now,
+and so far I've not been able to break the ice to fish.
+It's too much for me. Even if it isn't too late to
+fish. This book we've got describes barks and mosses,
+and that will help, but if we stick here until the birds
+and things come, we're going to be precious short.
+We may have to last right into July. I've plans&mdash;but
+it may come to that. We ought to ration all the
+regular stuff, and trust to luck for a feast. The
+rations!&mdash;I don't know what they'll come to."</p>
+
+<p>"Right O," said Trafford admiring her capable
+gravity. "Let's ration."</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie," he asked abruptly, "are you sorry
+we came?"</p>
+
+<p>Her answer came unhesitatingly. "<i>No!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>"Nor I."</p>
+
+<p>He paused. "I've found you out," he said.
+"Dear dirty living thing!... You <i>are</i> dirty, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"I've found myself," she answered, thinking. "I
+feel as if I've never loved you until this hut. I suppose
+I have in my way&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Lugano," he suggested. "Don't let's forget
+good things, Marjorie. Oh! And endless times!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course! As for <i>that</i>&mdash;&mdash;! But now&mdash;now
+you're in my bones. We were just two shallow,
+pretty, young things&mdash;loving. It was sweet, dear&mdash;sweet
+as youth&mdash;but not this. Unkempt and weary&mdash;then
+one understands love. I suppose I <i>am</i> dirty.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_488" id="Page_488">-488-</a></span>
+Think of it! I've lugged you through the snow till
+my shoulders chafed and bled. I cried with pain, and
+kept on lugging&mdash;&mdash;Oh, my dear! my dear!" He
+kissed her hair. "I've held you in my arms to keep
+you from freezing. (I'd have frozen myself first.)
+We've got to starve together perhaps before the end....
+Dear, if I could make you, you should eat me....
+I'm&mdash;I'm beginning to understand. I've had a
+light. I've begun to understand. I've begun to see
+what life has been for you, and how I've wasted&mdash;wasted."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>We've</i> wasted!"</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said, "it was I."</p>
+
+<p>She sat back on the floor and regarded him. "You
+don't remember things you said&mdash;when you were
+delirious?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," he answered. "What did I say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing clearly. What did I say?"</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't matter. No, indeed. Only you made
+me understand. You'd never have told me. You've
+always been a little weak with me there. But it's
+plain to me why we didn't keep our happiness, why
+we were estranged. If we go back alive, we go back&mdash;all
+that settled for good and all."</p>
+
+<p>"What?"</p>
+
+<p>"That discord. My dear, I've been a fool, selfish,
+ill-trained and greedy. We've both been floundering
+about, but I've been the mischief of it. Yes,
+I've been the trouble. Oh, it's had to be so. What
+are we women&mdash;half savages, half pets, unemployed
+things of greed and desire&mdash;and suddenly we want all
+the rights and respect of souls! I've had your life in
+my hands from the moment we met together. If I
+had known.... It isn't that we can make you or
+guide you&mdash;I'm not pretending to be an inspiration&mdash;but&mdash;but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_489" id="Page_489">-489-</a></span>
+we can release you. We needn't press upon
+you; we can save you from the instincts and passions
+that try to waste you altogether on us.... Yes, I'm
+beginning to understand. Oh, my child, my husband,
+my man! You talked of your wasted life!... I've
+been thinking&mdash;since first we left the Mersey. I've
+begun to see what it is to be a woman. For the first
+time in my life. We're the responsible sex. And
+we've forgotten it. We think we've done a wonder if
+we've borne men into the world and smiled a little,
+but indeed we've got to bear them all our lives....
+A woman has to be steadier than a man and more self-sacrificing
+than a man, because when she plunges she
+does more harm than a man.... And what does she
+achieve if she does plunge? Nothing&mdash;nothing worth
+counting. Dresses and carpets and hangings and
+pretty arrangements, excitements and satisfactions
+and competition and more excitements. We can't
+<i>do</i> things. We don't bring things off! And you,
+you Monster! you Dream! you want to stick your
+hand out of all that is and make something that isn't,
+begin to be! That's the man&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear old Madge!" he said, "there's all sorts of
+women and all sorts of men."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, our sort of women, then, and our sort of
+men."</p>
+
+<p>"I doubt even that."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't. I've found my place. I've been making
+my master my servant. We women&mdash;we've been looting
+all the good things in the world, and helping
+nothing. You've carried me on your back until you
+are loathing life. I've been making you fetch and
+carry for me, love me, dress me, keep me and my children,
+minister to my vanities and greeds.... No;
+let me go on. I'm so penitent, my dear, so penitent I
+want to kneel down here and marry you all over again,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_490" id="Page_490">-490-</a></span>
+heal up your broken life and begin again."...</p>
+
+<p>She paused.</p>
+
+<p>"One doesn't begin again," she said. "But I
+want to take a new turn. Dear, you're still only a
+young man; we've thirty or forty years before us&mdash;forty
+years perhaps or more.... What shall we do
+with our years? We've loved, we've got children.
+What remains? Here we can plan it out, work it out,
+day after day. What shall we do with our lives and
+life? Tell me, make me your partner; it's you who
+know, what are we doing with life?"</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 13</p>
+
+<p>What are we doing with life?</p>
+
+<p>That question overtakes a reluctant and fugitive
+humanity. The Traffords were but two of a great
+scattered host of people, who, obeying all the urgencies
+of need and desire, struggling, loving, begetting,
+enjoying, do nevertheless find themselves at last unsatisfied.
+They have lived the round of experience,
+achieved all that living creatures have sought since
+the beginning of the world&mdash;security and gratification
+and offspring&mdash;and they find themselves still strong,
+unsatiated, with power in their hands and years before
+them, empty of purpose. What are they to do?</p>
+
+<p>The world presents such a spectacle of evasion as
+it has never seen before. Never was there such a
+boiling over and waste of vital energy. The Sphinx
+of our opportunity calls for the uttermost powers of
+heart and brain to read its riddle&mdash;the new, astonishing
+riddle of excessive power. A few give themselves
+to those honourable adventures that extend the range
+of man, they explore untravelled countries, climb remote
+mountains, conduct researches, risk life and limb<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_491" id="Page_491">-491-</a></span>
+in the fantastic experiments of flight, and a monstrous
+outpouring of labour and material goes on in
+the strenuous preparation for needless and improbable
+wars. The rest divert themselves with the dwarfish
+satisfactions of recognized vice, the meagre routine
+of pleasure, or still more timidly with sport and
+games&mdash;those new unscheduled perversions of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>We are afraid of our new selves. The dawn of
+human opportunity appals us. Few of us dare look
+upon this strange light of freedom and limitless resources
+that breaks upon our world.</p>
+
+<p>"Think," said Trafford, "while we sit here in
+this dark hut&mdash;think of the surplus life that wastes
+itself in the world for sheer lack of direction. Away
+there in England&mdash;I suppose that is westward"&mdash;he
+pointed&mdash;"there are thousands of men going out to-day
+to shoot. Think of the beautifully made guns,
+the perfected ammunition, the excellent clothes, the
+army of beaters, the carefully preserved woodland,
+the admirable science of it&mdash;all for that idiot massacre
+of half-tame birds! Just because man once had
+need to be a hunter! Think of the others again&mdash;golfing.
+Think of the big, elaborate houses from
+which they come, the furnishings, the service. And
+the women&mdash;dressing! Perpetually dressing. <i>You</i>,
+Marjorie&mdash;you've done nothing but dress since we
+married. No, let me abuse you, dear! It's insane,
+you know! You dress your minds a little to talk
+amusingly, you spread your minds out to backgrounds,
+to households, picturesque and delightful
+gardens, nurseries. Those nurseries! Think of our
+tremendously cherished and educated children! And
+when they grow up, what have we got for them? A
+feast of futility...."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 14</p>
+
+<p>On the evening of the day when Trafford first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_492" id="Page_492">-492-</a></span>
+tried to stand upon his leg, they talked far into the
+night. It had been a great and eventful day for them,
+full of laughter and exultation. He had been at first
+ridiculously afraid; he had clung to her almost childishly,
+and she had held him about the body with
+his weight on her strong right arm and his right arm
+in her left hand, concealing her own dread of a collapse
+under a mask of taunting courage. The crutch
+had proved admirable. "It's my silly knees!" Trafford
+kept on saying. "The leg's all right, but I get
+put out by my silly knees."</p>
+
+<p>They made the day a feast, a dinner of two whole
+day's rations and a special soup instead of supper.
+"The birds will come," they explained to each other,
+"ducks and geese, long before May. May, you know,
+is the latest."</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie confessed the habit of sharing his pipe
+was growing on her. "What shall we do in Tyburnia!"
+she said, and left it to the imagination.</p>
+
+<p>"If ever we get back there," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't much fancy kicking a skirt before my
+shins again&mdash;and I'll be a black, coarse woman down
+to my neck at dinner for years to come!..."</p>
+
+<p>Then, as he lay back in his bunk and she crammed
+the stove with fresh boughs and twigs of balsam that
+filled the little space about them with warmth and
+with a faint, sweet smell of burning and with flitting
+red reflections, he took up a talk about religion they
+had begun some days before.</p>
+
+<p>"You see," he said, "I've always believed in
+Salvation. I suppose a man's shy of saying so&mdash;even
+to his wife. But I've always believed more or less
+distinctly that there was something up to which a life
+worked&mdash;always. It's been rather vague, I'll admit.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_493" id="Page_493">-493-</a></span>
+I don't think I've ever believed in individual salvation.
+You see, I feel these are deep things, and the deeper
+one gets the less individual one becomes. That's why
+one thinks of those things in darkness and loneliness&mdash;and
+finds them hard to tell. One has an individual
+voice, or an individual birthmark, or an individualized
+old hat, but the soul&mdash;the soul's different.... It
+isn't me talking to you when it comes to that....
+This question of what we are doing with life isn't a
+question to begin with for you and me as ourselves,
+but for you and me as mankind. Am I spinning it
+too fine, Madge?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," she said, intent; "go on."</p>
+
+<p>"You see, when we talk rations here, Marjorie,
+it's ourselves, but when we talk religion&mdash;it's mankind.
+You've either got to be Everyman in religion
+or leave it alone. That's my idea. It's no more presumptuous
+to think for the race than it is for a beggar
+to pray&mdash;though that means going right up to
+God and talking to Him. Salvation's a collective
+thing and a mystical thing&mdash;or there isn't any. Fancy
+the Almighty and me sitting up and keeping Eternity
+together! God and R. A. G. Trafford, F.R.S.&mdash;that's
+silly. Fancy a man in number seven boots, and a
+tailor-made suit in the nineteen-fourteen fashion, sitting
+before God! That's caricature. But God and
+Man! That's sense, Marjorie."...</p>
+
+<p>He stopped and stared at her.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie sat red-lit, regarding him. "Queer
+things you say!" she said. "So much of this I've
+never thought out. I wonder why I've never done so....
+Too busy with many things, I suppose. But
+go on and tell me more of these secrets you've kept
+from me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we've got to talk of these things as
+mankind&mdash;or just leave them alone, and shoot<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_494" id="Page_494">-494-</a></span>
+pheasants."...</p>
+
+<p>"If I could shoot a pheasant now!" whispered
+Marjorie, involuntarily.</p>
+
+<p>"And where do we stand? What do we need&mdash;I
+mean the whole race of us&mdash;kings and beggars
+together? You know, Marjorie, it's this,&mdash;it's Understanding.
+That's what mankind has got to, the
+realization that it doesn't understand, that it can't
+express, that it's purblind. We haven't got eyes for
+those greater things, but we've got the promise&mdash;the
+intimation of eyes. We've come out of an unsuspecting
+darkness, brute animal darkness, not into sight,
+that's been the mistake, but into a feeling of illumination,
+into a feeling of light shining through our
+opacity....</p>
+
+<p>"I feel that man has now before all things to
+know. That's his supreme duty, to feel, realize, see,
+understand, express himself to the utmost limits of
+his power."</p>
+
+<p>He sat up, speaking very earnestly to her, and in
+that flickering light she realized for the first time how
+thin he had become, how bright and hollow his eyes,
+his hair was long over his eyes, and a rough beard
+flowed down to his chest. "All the religions," he
+said, "all the philosophies, have pretended to achieve
+too much. We've no language yet for religious truth
+or metaphysical truth; we've no basis yet broad
+enough and strong enough on which to build. Religion
+and philosophy have been impudent and quackish&mdash;quackish!
+They've been like the doctors, who
+have always pretended they could cure since the beginning
+of things, cure everything, and to this day
+even they haven't got more than the beginnings of
+knowledge on which to base a cure. They've lacked
+humility, they've lacked the honour to say they didn't
+know; the priests took things of wood and stone, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_495" id="Page_495">-495-</a></span>
+philosophers took little odd arrangements of poor
+battered words, metaphors, analogies, abstractions,
+and said: "That's it! Think of their silly old Absolute,&mdash;ab-solutus,
+an untied parcel. I heard Haldane
+at the Aristotelian once, go on for an hour&mdash;no!
+it was longer than an hour&mdash;as glib and slick as
+a well-oiled sausage-machine, about the different sorts
+of Absolute, and not a soul of us laughed out at him!
+The vanity of such profundities! They've no faith,
+faith in patience, faith to wait for the coming of
+God. And since we don't know God, since we don't
+know His will with us, isn't it plain that all our lives
+should be a search for Him and it? Can anything
+else matter,&mdash;after we are free from necessity? That
+is the work now that is before all mankind, to attempt
+understanding&mdash;by the perpetual finding of thought
+and the means of expression, by perpetual extension
+and refinement of science, by the research that every
+artist makes for beauty and significance in his art,
+by the perpetual testing and destruction and rebirth
+under criticism of all these things, and by a perpetual
+extension of this intensifying wisdom to more minds
+and more minds and more, till all men share in it, and
+share in the making of it.... There you have my
+creed, Marjorie; there you have the very marrow of
+me."...</p>
+
+<p>He became silent.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you go back to your work?" she said,
+abruptly. "Go back to your laboratory?"</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her for a moment without speaking.
+"Never," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"But," she said, and the word dropped from her
+like a stone that falls down a well....</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," he said, at last, "I've thought of
+that. But since I left that dear, dusty little laboratory,
+and all those exquisite subtle things&mdash;I've lived.
+I've left that man seven long years behind me. Some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_496" id="Page_496">-496-</a></span>
+other man must go on&mdash;I think some younger man&mdash;with
+the riddles I found to work on then. I've grown&mdash;into
+something different. It isn't how atoms swing
+with one another, or why they build themselves up so
+and not so, that matters any more to me. I've got
+you and all the world in which we live, and a new set
+of riddles filling my mind, how thought swings about
+thought, how one man attracts his fellows, how the
+waves of motive and conviction sweep through a
+crowd and all the little drifting crystallizations of
+spirit with spirit and all the repulsions and eddies
+and difficulties, that one can catch in that turbulent
+confusion. I want to do a new sort of work now altogether....
+Life has swamped me once, but I
+don't think it will get me under again;&mdash;I want to
+study men."</p>
+
+<p>He paused and she waited, with a face aglow.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to go back to watch and think&mdash;and I
+suppose write. I believe I shall write criticism. But
+everything that matters is criticism!... I want to
+get into contact with the men who are thinking. I
+don't mean to meet them necessarily, but to get into
+the souls of their books. Every writer who has anything
+to say, every artist who matters, is the stronger
+for every man or woman who responds to him. That's
+the great work&mdash;the Reality. I want to become a part
+of this stuttering attempt to express, I want at least
+to resonate, even if I do not help.... And you with
+me, Marjorie&mdash;you with me! Everything I write I
+want you to see and think about. I want you to read
+as I read.... Now after so long, now that, now
+that we've begun to talk, you know, talk again&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Something stopped his voice. Something choked
+them both into silence. He held out a lean hand, and
+she shuffled on her knees to take it....</p>
+
+<p>"Don't please make me," she stumbled through<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_497" id="Page_497">-497-</a></span>
+her thoughts, "one of those little parasitic, parroting
+wives&mdash;don't pretend too much about me&mdash;because
+you want me with you&mdash;&mdash;. Don't forget a
+woman isn't a man."</p>
+
+<p>"Old Madge," he said, "you and I have got to
+march together. Didn't I love you from the first,
+from that time when I was a boy examiner and you
+were a candidate girl&mdash;because your mind was clear?"</p>
+
+<p>"And we will go back," she whispered, "with a
+work&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"With a purpose," he said.</p>
+
+<p>She disengaged herself from his arm, and sat close
+to him upon the floor. "I think I can see what you
+will do," she said. She mused. "For the first time
+I begin to see things as they may be for us. I begin
+to see a life ahead. For the very first time."</p>
+
+<p>Queer ideas came drifting into her head. Suddenly
+she cried out sharply in that high note he
+loved. "Good heavens!" she said. "The absurdity!
+The infinite absurdity!"</p>
+
+<p>"But what?"</p>
+
+<p>"I might have married Will Magnet&mdash;&mdash;. That's
+all."</p>
+
+<p>She sprang to her feet. There came a sound of
+wind outside, a shifting of snow on the roof, and the
+door creaked. "Half-past eleven," she exclaimed
+looking at the watch that hung in the light of the
+stove door. "I don't want to sleep yet; do you?
+I'm going to brew some tea&mdash;make a convivial drink.
+And then we will go on talking. It's so good talking
+to you. So good!... I've an idea! Don't you think
+on this special day, it might run to a biscuit?" Her
+face was keenly anxious. He nodded. "One biscuit
+each," she said, trying to rob her voice of any note of
+criminality. "Just one, you know, won't matter."</p>
+
+<p>She hovered for some moments close to the stove<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_498" id="Page_498">-498-</a></span>
+before she went into the arctic corner that contained
+the tin of tea. "If we can really live like that!" she
+said. "When we are home again."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" he answered.</p>
+
+<p>She made no answer, but went across for the
+tea....</p>
+
+<p>He turned his head at the sound of the biscuit
+tin and watched her put out the precious discs.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have another pipe," he proclaimed, with
+an agreeable note of excess. "Thank heaven for
+unstinted tobacco...."</p>
+
+<p>And now Marjorie's mind was teaming with
+thoughts of this new conception of a life lived for
+understanding. As she went about the preparation of
+the tea, her vividly concrete imagination was active
+with the realization of the life they would lead on
+their return. She could not see it otherwise than
+framed in a tall, fine room, a study, a study in sombre
+tones, with high, narrow, tall, dignified bookshelves
+and rich deep green curtains veiling its windows.
+There should be a fireplace of white marble, very
+plain and well proportioned, with furnishings of old
+brass, and a big desk towards the window beautifully
+lit by electric light, with abundant space for papers
+to lie. And she wanted some touch of the wilderness
+about it; a skin perhaps....</p>
+
+<p>The tea was still infusing when she had determined
+upon an enormous paper-weight of that iridescent
+Labradorite that had been so astonishing a
+feature of the Green River Valley. She would have
+it polished on one side only&mdash;the other should be
+rough to show the felspar in its natural state....</p>
+
+<p>It wasn't that she didn't feel and understand
+quite fully the intention and significance of all he had
+said, but that in these symbols of texture and equipment
+her mind quite naturally clothed itself. And<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_499" id="Page_499">-499-</a></span>
+while this room was coming into anticipatory being
+in her mind, she was making the tea very deftly and
+listening to Trafford's every word.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 15</p>
+
+<p>That talk marked an epoch to Marjorie. From
+that day forth her imagination began to shape a
+new, ordered and purposeful life for Trafford and
+herself in London, a life not altogether divorced from
+their former life, but with a faith sustaining it and
+aims controlling it. She had always known of the
+breadth and power of his mind, but now as he talked
+of what he might do, what interests might converge
+and give results through him, it seemed she really
+knew him for the first time. In his former researches,
+so technical and withdrawn, she had seen little of his
+mind in action: now he was dealing in his own fashion
+with things she could clearly understand. There
+were times when his talk affected her like that joy of
+light one has in emerging into sunshine from a long
+and tedious cave. He swept things together, flashed
+unsuspected correlations upon her intelligence,
+smashed and scattered absurd yet venerated conventions
+of thought, made undreamt-of courses of action
+visible in a flare of luminous necessity. And she
+could follow him and help him. Just as she had
+hampered him and crippled him, so now she could
+release him&mdash;she fondled that word. She found a
+preposterous image in her mind that she hid like a
+disgraceful secret, that she tried to forget, and yet
+its stupendous, its dreamlike absurdity had something
+in it that shaped her delight as nothing else could do;
+she was, she told herself&mdash;hawking with an archangel!...</p>
+
+<p>These were her moods of exaltation. And she<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_500" id="Page_500">-500-</a></span>
+was sure she had never loved her man before, that
+this was indeed her beginning. It was as if she had
+just found him....</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, she thought, true lovers keep on finding
+each other all through their lives.</p>
+
+<p>And he too had discovered her. All the host of
+Marjories he had known, the shining, delightful,
+seductive, wilful, perplexing aspects that had so
+filled her life, gave place altogether for a time to
+this steady-eyed woman, lean and warm-wrapped with
+the valiant heart and the frost-roughened skin. What
+a fine, strong, ruddy thing she was! How glad he was
+for this wild adventure in the wilderness, if only because
+it had made him lie among the rocks and think
+of her and wait for her and despair of her life and
+God, and at last see her coming back to him, flushed
+with effort and calling his name to him out of that
+whirlwind of snow.... And there was at least one
+old memory mixed up with all these new and overmastering
+impressions, the memory of her clear unhesitating
+voice as it had stabbed into his life again
+long years ago, minute and bright in the telephone:
+"<i>It's me, you know. It's Marjorie!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps after all she had not wasted a moment of
+his life, perhaps every issue between them had been
+necessary, and it was good altogether to be turned
+from the study of crystals to the study of men and
+women....</p>
+
+<p>And now both their minds were Londonward,
+where all the tides and driftage and currents of human
+thought still meet and swirl together. They
+were full of what they would do when they got back.
+Marjorie sketched that study to him&mdash;in general
+terms and without the paper-weight&mdash;and began to
+shape the world she would have about it. She meant
+to be his squaw and body-servant first of all, and then&mdash;a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_501" id="Page_501">-501-</a></span>
+mother. Children, she said, are none the worse
+for being kept a little out of focus. And he was
+rapidly planning out his approach to the new questions
+to which he was now to devote his life. "One
+wants something to hold the work together," he said,
+and projected a book. "One cannot struggle at
+large for plain statement and copious and free and
+courageous statement, one needs a positive attack."</p>
+
+<p>He designed a book, which he might write if only
+for the definition it would give him and with no
+ultimate publication, which was to be called: "The
+Limits of Language as a Means of Expression." ...
+It was to be a pragmatist essay, a sustained attempt
+to undermine the confidence of all that scholasticism
+and logic chopping which still lingers like the <i>sequelć</i>
+of a disease in our University philosophy. "Those
+duffers sit in their studies and make a sort of tea of
+dry old words&mdash;and think they're distilling the spirit
+of wisdom," he said.</p>
+
+<p>He proliferated titles for a time, and settled at
+last on "From Realism to Reality." He wanted to get
+at that at once; it fretted him to have to hang in the
+air, day by day, for want of books to quote and opponents
+to lance and confute. And he wanted to see
+pictures, too and plays, read novels he had heard
+of and never read, in order to verify or correct
+the ideas that were seething in his mind about
+the qualities of artistic expression. His thought had
+come out to a conviction that the line to wider human
+understandings lies through a huge criticism and
+cleaning up of the existing methods of formulation,
+as a preliminary to the wider and freer discussion of
+those religious and social issues our generation still
+shrinks from. "It's grotesque," he said, "and utterly
+true that the sanity and happiness of all the world
+lies in its habits of generalization." There was not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_502" id="Page_502">-502-</a></span>
+even paper for him to make notes or provisional drafts
+of the new work. He hobbled about the camp fretting
+at these deprivations.</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie," he said, "we've done our job. Why
+should we wait here on this frosty shelf outside the
+world? My leg's getting sounder&mdash;if it wasn't for
+that feeling of ice in it. Why shouldn't we make
+another sledge from the other bunk and start down&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To Hammond?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"But the way?"</p>
+
+<p>"The valley would guide us. We could do four
+hours a day before we had to camp. I'm not sure we
+couldn't try the river. We could drag and carry all
+our food...."</p>
+
+<p>She looked down the wide stretches of the valley.
+There was the hill they had christened Marjorie
+Ridge. At least it was familiar. Every night before
+nightfall if they started there would be a fresh camping
+place to seek among the snow-drifts, a great heap
+of wood to cut to last the night. Suppose his leg
+gave out&mdash;when they were already some days away,
+so that he could no longer go on or she drag him
+back to the stores. Plainly there would be nothing
+for it then but to lie down and die together....</p>
+
+<p>And a sort of weariness had come to her as a
+consequence of two months of half-starved days, not
+perhaps a failure so much as a reluctance of spirit.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," she said, with a new aspect drifting
+before her mind, "then&mdash;we <i>could</i> eat. We <i>could</i>
+feed up before we started. We could feast almost!"</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 16</p>
+
+<p>"While you were asleep the other night," Trafford
+began one day as they sat spinning out their
+mid-day meal, "I was thinking how badly I had expressed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_503" id="Page_503">-503-</a></span>
+myself when I talked to you the other day,
+and what a queer, thin affair I made of the plans I
+wanted to carry out. As a matter of fact, they're
+neither queer nor thin, but they are unreal in comparison
+with the common things of everyday life,
+hunger, anger, all the immediate desires. They must be.
+They only begin when those others are at peace. It's
+hard to set out these things; they're complicated and
+subtle, and one cannot simplify without falsehood. I
+don't want to simplify. The world has gone out of
+its way time after time through simplifications and
+short cuts. Save us from epigrams! And when one
+thinks over what one has said, at a little distance,&mdash;one
+wants to go back to it, and say it all again. I
+seem to be not so much thinking things out as reviving
+and developing things I've had growing in my
+mind ever since we met. It's as though an immense
+reservoir of thought had filled up in my mind at last
+and was beginning to trickle over and break down
+the embankment between us. This conflict that has
+been going on between our life together and my&mdash;my
+intellectual life; it's only just growing clear in my
+own mind. Yet it's just as if one turned up a light
+on something that had always been there....</p>
+
+<p>"It's a most extraordinary thing to think out,
+Marjorie, that antagonism. Our love has kept us so
+close together and always our purposes have been&mdash;like
+that." He spread divergent hands. "I've speculated
+again and again whether there isn't something
+incurably antagonistic between women (that's <i>you</i>
+generalized, Marjorie) and men (that's me) directly
+we pass beyond the conditions of the individualistic
+struggle. I believe every couple of lovers who've ever
+married have felt that strain. Yet it's not a difference
+in kind between us but degree. The big conflict
+between us has a parallel in a little internal conflict<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_504" id="Page_504">-504-</a></span>
+that goes on; there's something of man in every
+woman and a touch of the feminine in every man.
+But you're nearer as woman to the immediate personal
+life of sense and reality than I am as man. It's
+been so ever since the men went hunting and fighting
+and the women kept hut, tended the children and
+gathered roots in the little cultivation close at hand.
+It's been so perhaps since the female carried and
+suckled her child and distinguished one male from
+another. It may be it will always be so. Men were
+released from that close, continuous touch with physical
+necessities long before women were. It's only
+now that women begin to be released. For ages now
+men have been wandering from field and home and
+city, over the hills and far away, in search of adventures
+and fresh ideas and the wells of mystery
+beyond the edge of the world, but it's only now that
+the woman comes with them too. Our difference isn't
+a difference in kind, old Marjorie; it's the difference
+between the old adventurer and the new feet upon the
+trail."</p>
+
+<p>"We've got to come," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you've got to come. No good to be pioneers
+if the race does not follow. The women are the
+backbone of the race; the men are just the individuals.
+Into this Labrador and into all the wild and
+desolate places of thought and desire, if men come
+you women have to come too&mdash;and bring the race
+with you. Some day."</p>
+
+<p>"A long day, mate of my heart."</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows how long or how far? Aren't you
+at any rate here, dear woman of mine.... (<i>Surely
+you are here</i>)."</p>
+
+<p>He went off at a tangent. "There's all those
+words that seem to mean something and then don't
+seem to mean anything, that keep shifting to and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_505" id="Page_505">-505-</a></span>
+fro from the deepest significance to the shallowest of
+claptrap, Socialism, Christianity.... You know,&mdash;they
+aren't anything really, as yet; they are something
+trying to be.... Haven't I said that before,
+Marjorie?"</p>
+
+<p>She looked round at him. "You said something
+like that when you were delirious," she answered,
+after a little pause. "It's one of the ideas that you're
+struggling with. You go on, old man, and <i>talk</i>.
+We've months&mdash;for repetitions."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I mean that all these things are seeking
+after a sort of co-operation that's greater than our
+power even of imaginative realization; that's what I
+mean. The kingdom of Heaven, the communion of
+saints, the fellowship of men; these are things like
+high peaks far out of the common life of every day,
+shining things that madden certain sorts of men to
+climb. Certain sorts of us! I'm a religious man, I'm
+a socialistic man. These calls are more to me than my
+daily bread. I've got something in me more generalizing
+than most men. I'm more so than many other
+men and most other women, I'm more socialistic than
+you...."</p>
+
+<p>"You know, Marjorie, I've always felt you're a
+finer individual than me, I've never had a doubt of it.
+You're more beautiful by far than I, woman for my
+man. You've a keener appetite for things, a firmer
+grip on the substance of life. I love to see you do
+things, love to see you move, love to watch your
+hands; you've cleverer hands than mine by far....
+And yet&mdash;I'm a deeper and bigger thing than you.
+I reach up to something you don't reach up to....
+You're in life&mdash;and I'm a little out of it, I'm like
+one of those fish that began to be amphibian, I go out
+into something where you don't follow&mdash;where you
+hardly begin to follow.</p>
+
+<p>"That's the real perplexity between thousands of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_506" id="Page_506">-506-</a></span>
+men and women....</p>
+
+<p>"It seems to me that the primitive socialism of
+Christianity and all the stuff of modern socialism
+that matters is really aiming&mdash;almost unconsciously,
+I admit at times&mdash;at one simple end, at the release
+of the human spirit from the individualistic struggle&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You used 'release' the other day, Marjorie? Of
+course, I remember. It's queer how I go on talking
+after you have understood."</p>
+
+<p>"It was just a flash," said Marjorie. "We
+have intimations. Neither of us really understands.
+We're like people climbing a mountain in a mist,
+that thins out for a moment and shows valleys and
+cities, and then closes in again, before we can recognize
+them or make out where we are."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford thought. "When I talk to you, I've
+always felt I mustn't be too vague. And the very
+essence of all this is a vague thing, something we
+shall never come nearer to it in all our lives than to see
+it as a shadow and a glittering that escapes again into
+a mist.... And yet it's everything that matters,
+everything, the only thing that matters truly and for
+ever through the whole range of life. And we have
+to serve it with the keenest thought, the utmost patience,
+inordinate veracity....</p>
+
+<p>"The practical trouble between your sort and
+my sort, Marjorie, is the trouble between faith and
+realization. You demand the outcome. Oh! and I
+hate to turn aside and realize. I've had to do it for
+seven years. Damnable years! Men of my sort want
+to understand. We want to understand, and you ask
+us to make. We want to understand atoms, ions,
+molecules, refractions. You ask us to make rubber
+and diamonds. I suppose it's right that incidentally
+we should make rubber and diamonds. Finally,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_507" id="Page_507">-507-</a></span>
+I warn you, we will make rubber unnecessary and
+diamonds valueless. And again we want to understand
+how people react upon one another to produce
+social consequences, and you ask us to put it at once
+into a draft bill for the reform of something or
+other. I suppose life lies between us somewhere,
+we're the two poles of truth seeking and truth getting;
+with me alone it would be nothing but a luminous dream,
+with you nothing but a scramble in which
+sooner or later all the lamps would be upset....
+But it's ever too much of a scramble yet, and ever
+too little of a dream. All our world over there is
+full of the confusion and wreckage of premature
+realizations. There's no real faith in thought and
+knowledge yet. Old necessity has driven men so hard
+that they still rush with a wild urgency&mdash;though she
+goads no more. Greed and haste, and if, indeed, we
+seem to have a moment's breathing space, then the
+Gawdsaker tramples us under."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear!" cried Marjorie, with a sharp note
+of amusement. "What <i>is</i> a Gawdsaker?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh," said Trafford, "haven't you heard that
+before? He's the person who gets excited by any
+deliberate discussion and gets up wringing his hands
+and screaming, 'For Gawd's sake, let's <i>do</i> something
+<i>now!</i>' I think they used it first for Pethick Lawrence,
+that man who did so much to run the old militant
+suffragettes and burke the proper discussion of
+woman's future. You know. You used to have 'em
+in Chelsea&mdash;with their hats. Oh! 'Gawdsaking' is
+the curse of all progress, the hectic consumption that
+kills a thousand good beginnings. You see it in
+small things and in great. You see it in my life;
+Gawdsaking turned my life-work to cash and promotions,
+Gawdsaking&mdash;&mdash;Look at the way the aviators
+took to flying for prizes and gate-money, the way<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_508" id="Page_508">-508-</a></span>
+pure research is swamped by endowments for technical
+applications! Then that poor ghost-giant of
+an idea the socialists have;&mdash;it's been treated like
+one of those unborn lambs they kill for the fine skin
+of it, made into results before ever it was alive.
+Was there anything more pitiful? The first great
+dream and then the last phase! when your Aunt
+Plessington and the district visitors took and used
+it as a synonym for Payment in Kind.... It's natural,
+I suppose, for people to be eager for results,
+personal and immediate results&mdash;the last lesson of
+life is patience. Naturally they want reality, naturally!
+They want the individual life, something
+to handle and feel and use and live by, something of
+their very own before they die, and they want it
+now. But the thing that matters for the race, Marjorie,
+is a very different thing; it is to get the emerging
+thought process clear and to keep it clear&mdash;and
+to let those other hungers go. We've got to go back
+to England on the side of that delay, that arrest of
+interruption, that detached, observant, synthesizing
+process of the mind, that solvent of difficulties
+and obsolescent institutions, which is the reality of
+collective human life. We've got to go back on the
+side of pure science&mdash;literature untrammeled by the
+preconceptions of the social schemers&mdash;art free from
+the urgency of immediate utility&mdash;and a new, a regal,
+a god-like sincerity in philosophy. And, above all,
+we've got to stop this Jackdaw buying of yours, my
+dear, which is the essence of all that is wrong with the
+world, this snatching at everything, which loses everything
+worth having in life, this greedy confused
+realization of our accumulated resources! You're
+going to be a non-shopping woman now. You're to
+come out of Bond Street, you and your kind, like
+Israel leaving the Egyptian flesh-pots. You're going<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_509" id="Page_509">-509-</a></span>
+to be my wife and my mate.... Less of this service
+of things. Investments in comfort, in security, in
+experience, yes; but not just spending any more...."</p>
+
+<p>He broke off abruptly with: "I want to go back
+and begin."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Marjorie, "we will go back," and
+saw minutely and distantly, and yet as clearly and
+brightly as if she looked into a concave mirror, that
+tall and dignified study, a very high room indeed,
+with a man writing before a fine, long-curtained
+window and a great lump of rich-glowing Labradorite
+upon his desk before him holding together an accumulation
+of written sheets....</p>
+
+<p>She knew exactly the shop in Oxford Street where
+the stuff for the curtains might be best obtained.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 17</p>
+
+<p>One night Marjorie had been sitting musing before
+the stove for a long time, and suddenly she said:
+"I wonder if we shall fail. I wonder if we shall get
+into a mess again when we are back in London....
+As big a mess and as utter a discontent as sent us
+here...."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford was scraping out his pipe, and did not
+answer for some moments. Then he remarked: "What
+nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>"But we shall," she said. "Everybody fails. To
+some extent, we are bound to fail. Because indeed
+nothing is clear; nothing is a clear issue.... You
+know&mdash;I'm just the old Marjorie really in spite of
+all these resolutions&mdash;the spendthrift, the restless,
+the eager. I'm a born snatcher and shopper. We're
+just the same people really."</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, after thought. "You're all
+Labrador older."</p>
+
+<p>"I always <i>have</i> failed," she considered, "when it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_510" id="Page_510">-510-</a></span>
+came to any special temptations, Rag. I can't <i>stand</i>
+not having a thing!"</p>
+
+<p>He made no answer.</p>
+
+<p>"And you're still the same old Rag, you know,"
+she went on. "Who weakens into kindness if I cry.
+Who likes me well-dressed. Who couldn't endure to
+see me poor."</p>
+
+<p>"Not a bit of it. No! I'm a very different Rag
+with a very different Marjorie. Yes indeed! Things&mdash;are
+graver. Why!&mdash;I'm lame for life&mdash;and I've a
+scar. The very <i>look</i> of things is changed...." He
+stared at her face and said: "You've hidden the
+looking-glass and you think I haven't noted it&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It keeps on healing," she interrupted. "And if
+it comes to that&mdash;where's my complexion?" She
+laughed. "These are just the superficial aspects of
+the case."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing ever heals completely," he said, answering
+her first sentence, "and nothing ever goes
+back to the exact place it held before. We <i>are</i> different,
+you sun-bitten, frost-bitten wife of mine."...</p>
+
+<p>"Character is character," said Marjorie, coming
+back to her point. "Don't exaggerate conversion,
+dear. It's not a bit of good pretending we shan't
+fall away, both of us. Each in our own manner. We
+shall. We shall, old man. London is still a tempting
+and confusing place, and you can't alter people fundamentally,
+not even by half-freezing and half-starving
+them. You only alter people fundamentally
+by killing them and replacing them. I shall be extravagant
+again and forget again, try as I may,
+and you will work again and fall away again and forgive
+me again. You know&mdash;&mdash;It's just as though
+we were each of us not one person, but a lot of persons,
+who sometimes meet and shout all together, and
+then disperse and forget and plot against each<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_511" id="Page_511">-511-</a></span>
+other...."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, things will happen again," said Trafford,
+in her pause. "But they will happen again with a
+difference&mdash;after this. With a difference. That's
+the good of it all.... We've found something here&mdash;that
+makes everything different.... We've found
+each other, too, dear wife."</p>
+
+<p>She thought intently.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid," she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"But what is there to be afraid of?"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Myself</i>."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke after a little pause that seemed to hesitate.
+"At times I wish&mdash;oh, passionately!&mdash;that I
+could pray."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe enough&mdash;in that. I wish I did."</p>
+
+<p>Trafford thought. "People are always so exacting
+about prayer," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Exacting."</p>
+
+<p>"You want to pray&mdash;and you can't make terms
+for a thing you want. I used to think I could. I
+wanted God to come and demonstrate a bit.... It's
+no good, Madge.... If God chooses to be silent&mdash;you
+must pray to the silence. If he chooses to live in
+darkness, you must pray to the night...."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Marjorie, "I suppose one must."</p>
+
+<p>She thought. "I suppose in the end one does,"
+she said....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 18</p>
+
+<p>Mixed up with this entirely characteristic theology
+of theirs and their elaborate planning-out of a
+new life in London were other strands of thought.
+Queer memories of London and old times together
+would flash with a peculiar brightness across their<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_512" id="Page_512">-512-</a></span>
+contemplation of the infinities and the needs of mankind.
+Out of nowhere, quite disconnectedly, would
+come the human, finite: "Do you remember&mdash;&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>Two things particularly pressed into their minds.
+One was the thought of their children, and I do not
+care to tell how often in the day now they calculated
+the time in England, and tried to guess to a half mile
+or so where those young people might be and what
+they might be doing. "The shops are bright for
+Christmas now," said Marjorie. "This year Dick
+was to have had his first fireworks. I wonder if he
+did. I wonder if he burnt his dear little funny stumps
+of fingers. I hope not."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, just a little," said Trafford. "I remember
+how a squib made my glove smoulder and singed
+me, and how my mother kissed me for taking it like a
+man. It was the best part of the adventure."</p>
+
+<p>"Dick shall burn his fingers when his mother's
+home to kiss him. But spare his fingers now,
+Dadda...."</p>
+
+<p>The other topic was food.</p>
+
+<p>It was only after they had been doing it for a
+week or so that they remarked how steadily they
+gravitated to reminiscences, suggestions, descriptions
+and long discussions of eatables&mdash;sound, solid eatables.
+They told over the particulars of dinners
+they had imagined altogether forgotten; neither hosts
+nor conversations seemed to matter now in the slightest
+degree, but every item in the menu had its place.
+They nearly quarrelled one day about <i>hors-d'&#339;uvre</i>.
+Trafford wanted to dwell on them when Marjorie
+was eager for the soup.</p>
+
+<p>"It's niggling with food," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but there's no reason," said Trafford, "why
+you shouldn't take a lot of <i>hors-d'&#339;uvre</i>. Three or
+four sardines, and potato salad and a big piece of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_513" id="Page_513">-513-</a></span>
+smoked salmon, and some of that Norwegian herring,
+and so on, and keep the olives by you to pick at. It's
+a beginning."</p>
+
+<p>"It's&mdash;it's immoral," said Marjorie, "that's
+what I feel. If one needs a whet to eat, one shouldn't
+eat. The proper beginning of a dinner is soup&mdash;good,
+hot, <i>rich</i> soup. Thick soup&mdash;with things in it,
+vegetables and meat and things. Bits of oxtail."</p>
+
+<p>"Not peas."</p>
+
+<p>"No, not peas. Pea-soup is tiresome. I never
+knew anything one tired of so soon. I wish we hadn't
+relied on it so much."</p>
+
+<p>"Thick soup's all very well," said Trafford, "but
+how about that clear stuff they give you in the little
+pavement restaurants in Paris. You know&mdash;<i>Croűte-au-pot</i>,
+with lovely great crusts and big leeks and
+lettuce leaves and so on! Tremendous aroma of
+onions, and beautiful little beads of fat! And being
+a clear soup, you see what there is. That's&mdash;interesting.
+Twenty-five centimes, Marjorie. Lord! I'd
+give a guinea a plate for it. I'd give five pounds for
+one of those jolly white-metal tureens full&mdash;you
+know, <i>full</i>, with little drops all over the outside of it,
+and the ladle sticking out under the lid."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever tasted turtle soup?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rather. They give it you in the City. The
+fat's&mdash;ripping. But they're rather precious with it,
+you know. For my own part, I don't think soup
+should be <i>doled</i> out. I always liked the soup we used
+to get at the Harts'; but then they never give you
+enough, you know&mdash;not nearly enough."</p>
+
+<p>"About a tablespoonful," said Marjorie. "It's
+mocking an appetite."</p>
+
+<p>"Still there's things to follow," said Trafford....</p>
+
+<p>They discussed the proper order of a dinner very
+carefully. They decided that sorbets and ices were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_514" id="Page_514">-514-</a></span>
+not only unwholesome, but nasty. "In London,"
+said Trafford, "one's taste gets&mdash;vitiated."...</p>
+
+<p>They weighed the merits of French cookery, modern
+international cookery, and produced alternatives.
+Trafford became very eloquent about old English
+food. "Dinners," said Trafford, "should be feasting,
+not the mere satisfaction of a necessity. There
+should be&mdash;<i>amplitude</i>. I remember a recipe for a
+pie; I think it was in one of those books that man
+Lucas used to compile. If I remember rightly, it
+began with: 'Take a swine and hew it into gobbets.'
+Gobbets! That's something like a beginning. It was
+a big pie with tiers and tiers of things, and it kept it
+up all the way in that key.... And then what could
+be better than prime British-fed roast beef, reddish,
+just a shade on the side of underdone, and not too
+finely cut. Mutton can't touch it."</p>
+
+<p>"Beef is the best," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Then our English cold meat again. What can
+equal it? Such stuff as they give in a good country
+inn, a huge joint of beef&mdash;you cut from it yourself,
+you know as much as you like&mdash;with mustard, pickles,
+celery, a tankard of stout, let us say. Pressed beef,
+such as they'll give you at the Reform, too, that's
+good eating for a man. With chutney, and then old
+cheese to follow. And boiled beef, with little carrots
+and turnips and a dumpling or so. Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," said Marjorie, "one must do justice
+to a well-chosen turkey, a <i>fat</i> turkey."</p>
+
+<p>"Or a good goose, for the matter of that&mdash;with
+honest, well-thought-out stuffing. I like the little
+sausages round the dish of a turkey, too; like cherubs
+they are, round the feet of a Madonna.... There's
+much to be said for sausage, Marjorie. It concentrates."</p>
+
+<p>Sausage led to Germany. "I'm not one of those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_515" id="Page_515">-515-</a></span>
+patriots," he was saying presently, "who run down
+other countries by way of glorifying their own. While
+I was in Germany I tasted many good things. There's
+their Leberwurst; it's never bad, and, at its best, it's
+splendid. It's only a fool would reproach Germany
+with sausage. Devonshire black-pudding, of course,
+is the master of any Blutwurst, but there's all those
+others on the German side, Frankfurter, big reddish
+sausage stuff again with great crystalline lumps of
+white fat. And how well they cook their rich hashes,
+and the thick gravies they make. Curious, how much
+better the cooking of Teutonic peoples is than the
+cooking of the South Europeans! It's as if one needed
+a colder climate to brace a cook to his business.
+The Frenchman and the Italian trifle and stimulate.
+It's as if they'd never met a hungry man. No German
+would have thought of <i>soufflé</i>. Ugh! it's vicious
+eating. There's much that's fine, though, in Austria
+and Hungary. I wish I had travelled in Hungary.
+Do you remember how once or twice we've lunched at
+that Viennese place in Regent Street, and how they've
+given us stuffed Paprika, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>"That was a good place. I remember there was
+stewed beef once with a lot of barley&mdash;such <i>good</i>
+barley!"</p>
+
+<p>"Every country has its glories. One talks of the
+cookery of northern countries and then suddenly one
+thinks of curry, with lots of rice."</p>
+
+<p>"And lots of chicken!"</p>
+
+<p>"And lots of hot curry powder, <i>very</i> hot. And
+look at America! Here's a people who haven't any of
+them been out of Europe for centuries, and yet they
+have as different a table as you could well imagine.
+There's a kind of fish, planked shad, that they cook
+on resinous wood&mdash;roast it, I suppose. It's substantial,
+like nothing else in the world. And how good,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_516" id="Page_516">-516-</a></span>
+too, with turkey are sweet potatoes. Then they have
+such a multitude of cereal things; stuff like their
+buckwheat cakes, all swimming in golden syrup. And
+Indian corn, again!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, corn is being anglicized. I've often
+given you corn&mdash;latterly, before we came away."</p>
+
+<p>"That sort of separated grain&mdash;out of tins.
+Like chicken's food! It's not the real thing. You
+should eat corn on the cob&mdash;American fashion! It's
+fine. I had it when I was in the States. You know,
+you take it up in your hands by both ends&mdash;you've
+seen the cobs?&mdash;and gnaw."</p>
+
+<p>The craving air of Labrador at a temperature
+of -20° Fahrenheit, and methodically stinted rations,
+make great changes in the outward qualities of
+the mind. "<i>I'd</i> like to do that," said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p>Her face flushed a little at a guilty thought, her
+eyes sparkled. She leant forward and spoke in a
+confidential undertone.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I'd&mdash;I'd like to eat a mutton chop like that</i>,"
+said Marjorie.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 20</p>
+
+<p>One morning Marjorie broached something she
+had had on her mind for several days.</p>
+
+<p>"Old man," she said, "I can't stand it any longer.
+I'm going to thaw my scissors and cut your
+hair.... And then you'll have to trim that beard of
+yours."</p>
+
+<p>"You'll have to dig out that looking-glass."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," said Marjorie. She looked at him.
+"You'll never be a pretty man again," she said.
+"But there's a sort of wild splendour.... And I
+love every inch and scrap of you...."</p>
+
+<p>Their eyes met. "We're a thousand deeps now<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_517" id="Page_517">-517-</a></span>
+below the look of things," said Trafford. "We'd
+love each other minced."</p>
+
+<p>She broke into that smiling laugh of hers. "Oh!
+it won't come to <i>that</i>," she said. "Trust my housekeeping!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER THE FIFTH</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">The Trail to the Sea</span></h3>
+
+<p class="title">§ 1</p>
+
+<p>One astonishing afternoon in January a man<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_518" id="Page_518">-518-</a></span>
+came out of the wilderness to Lonely Hut. He was
+a French-Indian half-breed, a trapper up and down
+the Green River and across the Height of Land to
+Sea Lake. He arrived in a sort of shy silence, and
+squatted amiably on a log to thaw. "Much snow,"
+he said, "and little fur."</p>
+
+<p>After he had sat at their fire for an hour and eaten
+and drunk, his purpose in coming thawed out. He
+explained he had just come on to them to see how
+they were. He was, he said, a planter furring; he
+had a line of traps, about a hundred and twenty miles
+in length. The nearest trap in his path before he
+turned northward over the divide was a good forty
+miles down the river. He had come on from there.
+Just to have a look. His name, he said, was Louis
+Napoleon Partington. He had carried a big pack,
+a rifle and a dead marten,&mdash;they lay beside him&mdash;and
+out of his shapeless mass of caribou skins and
+woolen clothing and wrappings, peeped a genial, oily,
+brown face, very dirty, with a strand of blue-black
+hair across one eye, irregular teeth in its friendly
+smile, and little, squeezed-up eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Conversation developed. There had been doubts
+of his linguistic range at first, but he had an understanding
+expression, and his English seemed guttural
+rather than really bad.</p>
+
+<p>He was told the tremendous story of Trafford's
+leg; was shown it, and felt it; he interpolated thick
+and whistling noises to show how completely he followed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_519" id="Page_519">-519-</a></span>
+their explanations, and then suddenly he began
+a speech that made all his earlier taciturnity seem
+but the dam of a great reservoir of mixed and partly
+incomprehensible English. He complimented Marjorie
+so effusively and relentlessly and shamelessly as
+to produce a pause when he had done. "Yes," he
+said, and nodded to button up the whole. He sucked
+his pipe, well satisfied with his eloquence. Trafford
+spoke in his silence. "We are coming down," he said.</p>
+
+<p>("I thought, perhaps&mdash;&mdash;" whispered Louis Napoleon.)</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Trafford, "we are coming down with
+you. Why not? We can get a sledge over the snow
+now? It's hard? I mean a flat sledge&mdash;like <i>this</i>.
+See? Like this." He got up and dragged Marjorie's
+old arrangement into view. "We shall bring all the
+stuff we can down with us, grub, blankets&mdash;not the
+tent, it's too bulky; we'll leave a lot of the heavy
+gear."</p>
+
+<p>"You'd have to leave the tent," said Louis Napoleon.</p>
+
+<p>"I <i>said</i> leave the tent."</p>
+
+<p>"And you'd have to leave ... some of those
+tins."</p>
+
+<p>"Nearly all of them."</p>
+
+<p>"And the ammunition, there;&mdash;except just a
+little."</p>
+
+<p>"Just enough for the journey down."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps a gun?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not a gun. Though, after all,&mdash;well, we'd
+return one of the guns. Give it you to bring back
+here."</p>
+
+<p>"Bring back here?"</p>
+
+<p>"If you liked."</p>
+
+<p>For some moments Louis Napoleon was intently
+silent. When he spoke his voice was guttural with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_520" id="Page_520">-520-</a></span>
+emotion. "After," he said thoughtfully and paused,
+and then resolved to have it over forthwith, "all you
+leave will be mine? Eh?"</p>
+
+<p>Trafford said that was the idea.</p>
+
+<p>Louis Napoleon's eye brightened, but his face
+preserved its Indian calm.</p>
+
+<p>"I will take you right to Hammond's," he said,
+"Where they have dogs. And then I can come back
+here...."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 2</p>
+
+<p>They had talked out nearly every particular of
+their return before they slept that night; they yarned
+away three hours over the first generous meal that
+any one of them had eaten for many weeks. Louis
+Napoleon stayed in the hut as a matter of course, and
+reposed with snores and choking upon Marjorie's
+sledge and within a yard of her. It struck her as she
+lay awake and listened that the housemaids in Sussex
+Square would have thought things a little congested
+for a lady's bedroom, and then she reflected that after
+all it wasn't much worse than a crowded carriage in
+an all-night train from Switzerland. She tried to
+count how many people there had been in that compartment,
+and failed. How stuffy that had been&mdash;the
+smell of cheese and all! And with that, after a
+dream that she was whaling and had harpooned a
+particularly short-winded whale she fell very peacefully
+into oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>Next day was spent in the careful preparation of
+the two sledges. They intended to take a full provision
+for six weeks, although they reckoned that
+with good weather they ought to be down at Hammond's
+in four.</p>
+
+<p>The day after was Sunday, and Louis Napoleon<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_521" id="Page_521">-521-</a></span>
+would not look at the sledges or packing. Instead he
+held a kind of religious service which consisted partly
+in making Trafford read aloud out of a very oily old
+New Testament he produced, a selected passage from
+the book of Corinthians, and partly in moaning
+rather than singing several hymns. He was rather
+disappointed that they did not join in with him. In
+the afternoon he heated some water, went into the
+tent with it and it would appear partially washed his
+face. In the evening, after they had supped, he discussed
+religion, being curious by this time about their
+beliefs and procedure.</p>
+
+<p>He spread his mental and spiritual equipment
+before them very artlessly. Their isolation and their
+immense concentration on each other had made them
+sensitive to personal quality, and they listened to the
+broken English and the queer tangential starts into
+new topics of this dirty mongrel creature with the
+keenest appreciation of its quality. It was inconsistent,
+miscellaneous, simple, honest, and human. It
+was as touching as the medley in the pocket of a dead
+schoolboy. He was superstitious and sceptical and
+sensual and spiritual, and very, very earnest. The
+things he believed, even if they were just beliefs
+about the weather or drying venison or filling pipes,
+he believed with emotion. He flushed as he told them.
+For all his intellectual muddle they felt he knew how
+to live honestly and die if need be very finely.</p>
+
+<p>He was more than a little distressed at their apparent
+ignorance of the truths of revealed religion
+as it is taught in the Moravian schools upon the coast,
+and indeed it was manifest that he had had far more
+careful and infinitely more sincere religious teaching
+than either Trafford or Marjorie. For a time the
+missionary spirit inspired him, and then he quite forgot
+his solicitude for their conversion in a number<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_522" id="Page_522">-522-</a></span>
+of increasingly tall anecdotes about hunters and fishermen,
+illustrating at first the extreme dangers of any
+departure from a rigid Sabbatarianism, but presently
+becoming just stories illustrating the uncertainty of
+life. Thence he branched off to the general topic of
+life upon the coast and the relative advantages of
+"planter" and fisherman.</p>
+
+<p>And then with a kindling eye he spoke of women,
+and how that some day he would marry. His voice
+softened, and he addressed himself more particularly
+to Marjorie. He didn't so much introduce the topic
+of the lady as allow the destined young woman suddenly
+to pervade his discourse. She was, it seemed,
+a servant, an Esquimaux girl at the Moravian Mission
+station at Manivikovik. He had been plighted to her
+for nine years. He described a gramophone he had
+purchased down at Port Dupré and brought back to
+her three hundred miles up the coast&mdash;it seemed to
+Marjorie an odd gift for an Esquimaux maiden&mdash;and
+he gave his views upon its mechanism. He said
+God was with the man who invented the gramophone
+"truly." They would have found one a very great
+relief to the tediums of their sojourn at Lonely Hut.
+The gramophone he had given his betrothed possessed
+records of the Rev. Capel Gumm's preaching
+and of Madame Melba's singing, a revival hymn called
+"Sowing the Seed," and a comic song&mdash;they could
+not make out his pronunciation of the title&mdash;that
+made you die with laughter. "It goes gobble, gobble,
+gobble," he said, with a solemn appreciative reflection
+of those distant joys.</p>
+
+<p>"It's good to be jolly at times," he said with his
+bright eyes scanning Marjorie's face a little doubtfully,
+as if such ideas were better left for week-day
+expression.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 3</p>
+
+<p>Their return was a very different journey from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_523" id="Page_523">-523-</a></span>
+toilsome ascent of the summer. An immense abundance
+of snow masked the world, snow that made them
+regret acutely they had not equipped themselves with
+ski. With ski and a good circulation, a man may go
+about Labrador in winter, six times more easily than
+by the canoes and slow trudging of summer travel.
+As it was they were glad of their Canadian snow
+shoes. One needs only shelters after the Alpine Club
+hut fashion, and all that vast solitary country would
+be open in the wintertime. Its shortest day is no
+shorter than the shortest day in Cumberland or Dublin.</p>
+
+<p>This is no place to tell of the beauty and wonder
+of snow and ice, the soft contours of gentle slopes,
+the rippling of fine snow under a steady wind, the
+long shadow ridges of shining powder on the lee of
+trees and stones and rocks, the delicate wind streaks
+over broad surfaces like the marks of a chisel in marble,
+the crests and cornices, the vivid brightness of
+edges in the sun, the glowing yellowish light on sunlit
+surfaces, the long blue shadows, the flush of sunset
+and sunrise and the pallid unearthly desolation of
+snow beneath the moon. Nor need the broken snow in
+woods and amidst tumbled stony slopes be described,
+nor the vast soft overhanging crests on every outstanding
+rock beside the icebound river, nor the huge
+stalactites and stalagmites of green-blue ice below the
+cliffs, nor trees burdened and broken by frost and
+snow, nor snow upon ice, nor the blue pools at mid-day
+upon the surface of the ice-stream. Across the smooth
+wind-swept ice of the open tarns they would find a
+growth of ice flowers, six-rayed and complicated,
+more abundant and more beautiful than the Alpine<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_524" id="Page_524">-524-</a></span>
+summer flowers.</p>
+
+<p>But the wind was very bitter, and the sun had
+scarcely passed its zenith before the thought of fuel
+and shelter came back into their minds.</p>
+
+<p>As they approached Partington's tilt, at the point
+where his trapping ground turned out of the Green
+River gorge, he became greatly obsessed by the
+thought of his traps. He began to talk of all that he
+might find in them, all he hoped to find, and the
+"dallars" that might ensue. They slept the third
+night, Marjorie within and the two men under the
+lee of the little cabin, and Partington was up and
+away before dawn to a trap towards the ridge. He
+had infected Marjorie and Trafford with a sympathetic
+keenness, but when they saw his killing of a
+marten that was still alive in its trap, they suddenly
+conceived a distaste for trapping.</p>
+
+<p>They insisted they must witness no more. They
+would wait while he went to a trap....</p>
+
+<p>"Think what he's doing!" said Trafford, as they
+sat together under the lee of a rock waiting for him.
+"We imagined this was a free, simple-souled man
+leading an unsophisticated life on the very edge of
+humanity, and really he is as much a dependant of
+your woman's world, Marjorie, as any sweated seamstress
+in a Marylebone slum. Lord! how far those
+pretty wasteful hands of women reach! All these
+poor broken and starving beasts he finds and slaughters
+are, from the point of view of our world, just furs.
+Furs! Poor little snarling unfortunates! Their pelts
+will be dressed and prepared because women who have
+never dreamt of this bleak wilderness desire them.
+They will get at last into Regent Street shops, and
+Bond Street shops, and shops in Fifth Avenue and in
+Paris and Berlin, they will make delightful deep muffs,
+with scent and little bags and powder puffs and all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_525" id="Page_525">-525-</a></span>
+sorts of things tucked away inside, and long wraps for
+tall women, and jolly little frames of soft fur for
+pretty faces, and dainty coats and rugs for expensive
+little babies in Kensington Gardens."...</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," reflected Marjorie, "if I could buy
+one perhaps. As a memento."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with eyes of quiet amusement.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she cried, "I didn't mean to! The old
+Eve!"</p>
+
+<p>"The old Adam is with her," said Trafford.
+"He's wanting to give it her.... We don't cease
+to be human, Madge, you know, because we've got an
+idea now of just where we are. I wonder, which
+would you like? I dare say we could arrange it."</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Marjorie, and thought. "It would
+be jolly," she said. "All the same, you know&mdash;and
+just to show you&mdash;I'm not going to let you buy me
+that fur."</p>
+
+<p>"I'd like to," said Trafford.</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Marjorie, with a decision that was
+almost fierce. "I mean it. I've got more to do than
+you in the way of reforming. It's just because always
+I've let my life be made up of such little things
+that I mustn't. Indeed I mustn't. Don't make things
+hard for me."</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her for a moment. "Very well," he
+said. "But I'd have liked to."...</p>
+
+<p>"You're right," he added, five seconds later.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I'm right."</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 4</p>
+
+<p>One day Louis Napoleon sent them on along the
+trail while he went up the mountain to a trap among
+the trees. He rejoined them&mdash;not as his custom was,
+shouting inaudible conversation for the last hundred<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_526" id="Page_526">-526-</a></span>
+yards or so, but in silence. They wondered at that,
+and at the one clumsy gesture that flourished something
+darkly grey at them. What had happened to
+the man? Whatever he had caught he was hugging
+it as one hugs a cat, and stroking it. "Ugh!" he
+said deeply, drawing near. "Oh!" A solemn joy
+irradiated his face, and almost religious ecstasy found
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>He had got a silver fox, a beautifully marked silver
+fox, the best luck of Labrador! One goes for years
+without one, in hope, and when it comes, it pays the
+trapper's debts, it clears his life&mdash;for years!</p>
+
+<p>They tried poor inadequate congratulation....</p>
+
+<p>As they sat about the fire that night a silence
+came upon Louis Napoleon. It was manifest that his
+mind was preoccupied. He got up, walked about,
+inspected the miracle of fur that had happened to
+him, returned, regarded them. "'M'm," he said, and
+stroked his chin with his forefinger. A certain diffidence
+and yet a certain dignity of assurance mingled
+in his manner. It wasn't so much a doubt of his own
+correctness as of some possible ignorance of the finer
+shades on their part that might embarrass him. He
+coughed a curt preface, and intimated he had a request
+to make. Behind the Indian calm of his face
+glowed tremendous feeling, like the light of a foundry
+furnace shining through chinks in the door. He spoke
+in a small flat voice, exercising great self-control.
+His wish, he said, in view of all that had happened,
+was a little thing.... This was nearly a perfect day
+for him, and one thing only remained.... "Well,"
+he said, and hung. "Well," said Trafford. He
+plunged. Just simply this. Would they give him
+the brandy bottle and let him get drunk? Mr. Grenfell
+was a good man, a very good man, but he had
+made brandy dear&mdash;dear beyond the reach of common<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_527" id="Page_527">-527-</a></span>
+men altogether&mdash;along the coast....</p>
+
+<p>He explained, dear bundle of clothes and dirt!
+that he was always perfectly respectable when he was
+drunk.</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 5</p>
+
+<p>It seemed strange to Trafford that now that Marjorie
+was going home, a wild impatience to see her
+children should possess her. So long as it had been
+probable that they would stay out their year in Labrador,
+that separation had seemed mainly a sentimental
+trouble; now at times it was like an animal
+craving. She would talk of them for hours at a
+stretch, and when she was not talking he could see
+her eyes fixed ahead, and knew that she was anticipating
+a meeting. And for the first time it seemed
+the idea of possible misadventure troubled her....</p>
+
+<p>They reached Hammond's in one and twenty days
+from Lonely Hut, three days they had been forced to
+camp because of a blizzard, and three because Louis
+Napoleon was rigidly Sabbatarian. They parted
+from him reluctantly, and the next day Hammond's
+produced its dogs, twelve stout but extremely hungry
+dogs, and sent the Traffords on to the Green River
+pulp-mills, where there were good beds and a copious
+supply of hot water. Thence they went to Manivikovik,
+and thence the new Marconi station sent their
+inquiries home, inquiries that were answered next day
+with matter-of-fact brevity: "Everyone well, love
+from all."</p>
+
+<p>When the operator hurried with that to Marjorie
+she received it off-handedly, glanced at it carelessly,
+asked him to smoke, remarked that wireless telegraphy
+was a wonderful thing, and then, in the midst
+of some unfinished commonplace about the temperature,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_528" id="Page_528">-528-</a></span>
+broke down and wept wildly and uncontrollably....</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 6</p>
+
+<p>Then came the long, wonderful ride southward
+day after day along the coast to Port Dupré, a ride
+from headland to headland across the frozen bays behind
+long teams of straining, furry dogs, that leapt
+and yelped as they ran. Sometimes over the land the
+brutes shirked and loitered and called for the whip;
+they were a quarrelsome crew to keep waiting; but
+across the sea-ice they went like the wind, and downhill
+the komatic chased their waving tails. The
+sledges swayed and leapt depressions, and shot athwart
+icy stretches. The Traffords, spectacled and
+wrapped to their noses, had all the sensations then of
+hunting an unknown quarry behind a pack of wolves.
+The snow blazed under the sun, out to sea beyond the
+ice the water glittered, and it wasn't so much air they
+breathed as a sort of joyous hunger.</p>
+
+<p>One day their teams insisted upon racing.</p>
+
+<p>Marjorie's team was the heavier, her driver more
+skillful, and her sledge the lighter, and she led in
+that wild chase from start to finish, but ever and
+again Trafford made wild spurts that brought him almost
+level. Once, as he came alongside, she heard
+him laughing joyously.</p>
+
+<p>"Marjorie," he shouted, "d'you remember? Old
+donkey cart?"</p>
+
+<p>Her team yawed away, and as he swept near
+again, behind his pack of whimpering, straining, furious
+dogs, she heard him shouting, "You know, that
+old cart! Under the overhanging trees! So thick and
+green they met overhead! You know! When you and
+I had our first talk together! In the lane. It wasn't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_529" id="Page_529">-529-</a></span>
+so fast as this, eh?"...</p>
+
+<p class="title">§ 7</p>
+
+<p>At Port Dupré they stayed ten days&mdash;days that
+Marjorie could only make tolerable by knitting absurd
+garments for the children (her knitting was
+atrocious), and then one afternoon they heard the
+gun of the <i>Grenfell</i>, the new winter steamer from St.
+John's, signalling as it came in through the fog, very
+slowly, from that great wasteful world of men and
+women beyond the seaward grey.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">THE END</span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class='tnote'><h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3>
+<p>Obvious punctuation and hyphenation inconsistencies have been silently repaired. Words with variable spelling have been retained.
+The following spelling and typographical emendations have been made:</p>
+
+<ul><li>p. 22: broken text "were they living and moving realities" was completed to "were they living and moving realities when those others were at home again?"</li>
+<li>p. 34: protruberant replaced with protuberant ("large protuberant")</li>
+<li>p. 38: pay replaced with play ("what the play was")</li>
+<li>p. 40: Majorie replaced with Marjorie ("Marjorie loved singing")</li>
+<li>p. 40: feut replaced with felt ("that he felt")</li>
+<li>p. 60: téte-ŕ-tęte replaced with tęte-ŕ-tęte ("silent tęte-ŕ-tęte")</li>
+<li>p. 70: foundamental replaced with fundamental ("three fundamental
+things")</li>
+<li>p. 76: fina replaced with final ("working for her final")</li>
+<li>p. 88: challenege replaced with challenge ("challenge inattentive
+auditors")</li>
+<li>p. 92: presumbly replaced with presumably ("presumably Billy's")</li>
+<li>p. 115: ino replaced with into ("into the air")</li>
+<li>p. 141: himse_f replaced with himself ("ask himself")</li>
+<li>p. 147: contradication replaced with contradiction ("any sort of
+contradiction")</li>
+<li>p. 167: calcalculated replaced with calculated ("indeed calculated")</li>
+<li>p. 223: hestitated replaced with hesitated ("She hesitated")</li>
+<li>p. 230: intriques replaced with intrigues ("culminations and intrigues")</li>
+<li>p. 242: America replaced with American ("American minor poet")</li>
+<li>p. 265: acquiscent replaced with acquiescent ("by no means acquiescent")</li>
+<li>p. 313: "It's end" replaced with "Its end" ("Its end was the Agenda Club")</li>
+<li>p. 316: regime replaced with régime ("the new régime")</li>
+<li>p. 341: number of section 15 replaced with 16</li>
+<li>p. 342: gestulated replaced with gesticulated ("Solomonson
+gesticulated")</li>
+<li> p. 342: The paragraphs starting with: "It was all" and "You said
+good-bye" were merged</li>
+<li>p. 346: The paragraphs starting with: "They aren't arranged" and "They'd
+get everything" were merged</li>
+<li>p. 349: devine replaced with divine ("by right divine of genius")</li>
+<li>p. 368: presumptious replaced with presumptuous ("extremely
+presumptuous")</li>
+<li>p. 376: mispelling replaced with misspelling ("as much misspelling as")</li>
+<li>p. 376: The replaced with They ("They gave dinners")</li>
+<li>p. 378: The replaced with They ("They could play")</li>
+<li>p. 395: Docter replaced with Doctor ("Doctor Codger")</li>
+<li>p. 396: authoritive replaced with authoritative ("authoritative imagine")</li>
+<li>p. 399: shuldered replaced with shouldered ("As he shouldered")</li>
+<li>p. 403: wet replaced with went ("Trafford's eyes went from")</li>
+<li>p. 405: subthe replaced with subtle ("skilful, subtle appreciation")</li>
+<li>p. 426: fine replaced with find ("find God")</li>
+<li>p. 427: chidren replaced with children ("of having children at all")</li>
+<li>p. 441: serere replaced with serene ("brightly serene")</li>
+<li>p. 442: tundura replaced with tundra ("wide stretches of tundra")</li>
+<li>p. 457: rucksac replaced with rucksack ("chunks of dry paper, the rucksack")</li>
+<li>p. 481: realties replaced with realities ("expression of the realities")</li>
+<li>p. 485: the duplicate phrase "He stared at her" was removed</li>
+<li>p. 493: think replaced with thing ("salvation is a collective thing")</li>
+<li>p. 504: realty replaced with reality ("of sense and reality")</li>
+<li>p. 509: greal replaced with great ("a great lump")</li>
+<li>p. 512: caluclated replaced with calculated ("now they calculated")</li>
+<li>p. 515: travellel replaced with travelled ("I had travelled")</li>
+<li>p. 518: gutteral replaced with guttural ("seemed guttural")</li>
+<li>p. 520: gutteral replaced with guttural ("his voice was guttural")</li>
+<li>p. 524: slaughers replaced with slaughters ("he finds and slaughters")</li></ul></div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage, by H. G. Wells
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage, by H. G. Wells
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Marriage
+
+Author: H. G. Wells
+
+Release Date: February 20, 2011 [EBook #35338]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARRIAGE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Eleni Christofaki, Juliet Sutherland and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  |=================================================|
+  | MR. WELLS HAS ALSO WRITTEN                      |
+  | The following Novels:                           |
+  |                                                 |
+  | TONO BUNGAY                                     |
+  | LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM                           |
+  | KIPPS     ANN VERONICA                          |
+  | THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY                        |
+  | and THE NEW MACHIAVELLI                         |
+  |                                                 |
+  | Numerous short stories now published            |
+  | in a single volume under the title.             |
+  |     THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND                    |
+  |                                                 |
+  | The following fantastic Romances:               |
+  |                                                 |
+  | THE TIME MACHINE                                |
+  | THE WONDERFUL VISIT                             |
+  | THE INVISIBLE MAN                               |
+  | THE WAR OF THE WORLDS                           |
+  | THE SEA LADY                                    |
+  | IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET                        |
+  | THE SLEEPER AWAKES                              |
+  | THE FOOD OF THE GODS                            |
+  | THE WAR IN THE AIR                              |
+  | THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON                       |
+  | and THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU                 |
+  |                                                 |
+  | And a series of books upon social and political |
+  | questions of which                              |
+  |                                                 |
+  | A MODERN UTOPIA                                 |
+  | FIRST AND LAST THINGS (RELIGION)                |
+  | NEW WORLDS FOR OLD                              |
+  | THE FUTURE IN AMERICA                           |
+  | and ANTICIPATIONS                               |
+  | are the chief.                                  |
+  |=================================================|
+
+
+
+
+  MARRIAGE
+
+  BY
+
+  H. G. WELLS
+
+  "And the Poor Dears haven't the shadow of a doubt they will live
+  happily ever afterwards."--_From a Private Letter_.
+
+  [Illustration]
+
+  NEW YORK
+  DUFFIELD & COMPANY
+  1912
+
+
+
+
+  COPYRIGHT, 1912
+  DUFFIELD & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+  _FRATERNALLY
+       TO
+  ARNOLD BENNETT_
+
+
+
+
+    BOOK THE FIRST
+    MARJORIE MARRIES
+
+
+
+
+MARRIAGE
+
+CHAPTER THE FIRST
+
+A DAY WITH THE POPES
+
+
+Sec. 1
+
+An extremely pretty girl occupied a second-class compartment in one of
+those trains which percolate through the rural tranquillities of middle
+England from Ganford in Oxfordshire to Rumbold Junction in Kent. She was
+going to join her family at Buryhamstreet after a visit to some
+Gloucestershire friends. Her father, Mr. Pope, once a leader in the
+coach-building world and now by retirement a gentleman, had taken the
+Buryhamstreet vicarage furnished for two months (beginning on the
+fifteenth of July) at his maximum summer rental of seven guineas a week.
+His daughter was on her way to this retreat.
+
+At first she had been an animated traveller, erect and keenly regardful
+of every detail upon the platforms of the stations at which her
+conveyance lingered, but the tedium of the journey and the warmth of the
+sunny afternoon had relaxed her pose by imperceptible degrees, and she
+sat now comfortably in the corner, with her neat toes upon the seat
+before her, ready to drop them primly at the first sign of a
+fellow-traveller. Her expression lapsed more and more towards an almost
+somnolent reverie. She wished she had not taken a second-class ticket,
+because then she might have afforded a cup of tea at Reading, and so
+fortified herself against this insinuating indolence.
+
+She was travelling second class, instead of third as she ought to have
+done, through one of those lapses so inevitable to young people in her
+position. The two Carmel boys and a cousin, two greyhounds and a chow
+had come to see her off; they had made a brilliant and prosperous group
+on the platform and extorted the manifest admiration of two youthful
+porters, and it had been altogether too much for Marjorie Pope to admit
+it was the family custom--except when her father's nerves had to be
+considered--to go third class. So she had made a hasty calculation--she
+knew her balance to a penny because of the recent tipping--and found it
+would just run to it. Fourpence remained,--and there would be a porter
+at Buryhamstreet!
+
+Her mother had said: "You will have Ample." Well, opinions of amplitude
+vary. With numerous details fresh in her mind, Marjorie decided it would
+be wiser to avoid financial discussion during her first few days at
+Buryhamstreet.
+
+There was much in Marjorie's equipment in the key of travelling second
+class at the sacrifice of afternoon tea. There was, for example, a
+certain quiet goodness of style about her clothes, though the skirt
+betrayed age, and an entire absence of style about her luggage, which
+was all in the compartment with her, and which consisted of a distended
+hold-all, a very good tennis racquet in a stretcher, a portmanteau of
+cheap white basketwork held together by straps, and a very new,
+expensive-looking and meretricious dressing-bag of imitation morocco,
+which had been one of her chief financial errors at Oxbridge. The
+collection was eloquent indeed of incompatible standards....
+
+Marjorie had a chin that was small in size if resolute in form, and a
+mouth that was not noticeably soft and weak because it was conspicuously
+soft and pretty. Her nose was delicately aquiline and very subtly and
+finely modelled, and she looked out upon the world with steady,
+grey-blue eyes beneath broad, level brows that contradicted in a large
+measure the hint of weakness below. She had an abundance of copper-red
+hair, which flowed back very prettily from her broad, low forehead and
+over her delicate ears, and she had that warm-tinted clear skin that
+goes so well with reddish hair. She had a very dainty neck, and the long
+slender lines of her body were full of the promise of a riper beauty.
+She had the good open shoulders of a tennis-player and a swimmer. Some
+day she was to be a tall, ruddy, beautiful woman. She wore simple
+clothes of silvery grey and soft green, and about her waist was a belt
+of grey leather in which there now wilted two creamy-petalled roses.
+
+That was the visible Marjorie. Somewhere out of time and space was an
+invisible Marjorie who looked out on the world with those steady eyes,
+and smiled or drooped with the soft red lips, and dreamt, and wondered,
+and desired.
+
+
+Sec. 2
+
+What a queer thing the invisible human being would appear if, by some
+discovery as yet inconceivable, some spiritual X-ray photography, we
+could flash it into sight! Long ago I read a book called "Soul Shapes"
+that was full of ingenious ideas, but I doubt very much if the thing so
+revealed would have any shape, any abiding solid outline at all. It is
+something more fluctuating and discursive than that--at any rate, for
+every one young enough not to have set and hardened. Things come into
+it and become it, things drift out of it and cease to be it, things turn
+upside down in it and change and colour and dissolve, and grow and eddy
+about and blend into each other. One might figure it, I suppose, as a
+preposterous jumble animated by a will; a floundering disconnectedness
+through which an old hump of impulse rises and thrusts unaccountably; a
+river beast of purpose wallowing in a back eddy of mud and weeds and
+floating objects and creatures drowned. Now the sunshine of gladness
+makes it all vivid, now it is sombre and grimly insistent under the sky
+of some darkling mood, now an emotional gale sweeps across it and it is
+one confused agitation....
+
+And surely these invisible selves of men were never so jumbled, so
+crowded, complicated, and stirred about as they are at the present time.
+Once I am told they had a sort of order, were sphered in religious
+beliefs, crystal clear, were arranged in a cosmogony that fitted them as
+hand fits glove, were separated by definite standards of right and wrong
+which presented life as planned in all its essential aspects from the
+cradle to the grave. Things are so no longer. That sphere is broken for
+most of us; even if it is tied about and mended again, it is burst like
+a seed case; things have fallen out and things have fallen in....
+
+Can I convey in any measure how it was with Marjorie?
+
+What was her religion?
+
+In college forms and returns, and suchlike documents, she would describe
+herself as "Church of England." She had been baptized according to the
+usages of that body, but she had hitherto evaded confirmation into it,
+and although it is a large, wealthy, and powerful organization with
+many minds to serve it, it had never succeeded in getting into her quick
+and apprehensive intelligence any lucid and persuasive conception of
+what it considered God and the universe were up to with her. It had
+failed to catch her attention and state itself to her. A number of
+humorous and other writers and the general trend of talk around her, and
+perhaps her own shrewd little observation of superficial things, had, on
+the other hand, created a fairly definite belief in her that it wasn't
+as a matter of fact up to very much at all, that what it said wasn't
+said with that absolute honesty which is a logical necessity in every
+religious authority, and that its hierarchy had all sorts of political
+and social considerations confusing its treatment of her immortal
+soul....
+
+Marjorie followed her father in abstaining from church. He too professed
+himself "Church of England," but he was, if we are to set aside merely
+superficial classifications, an irascible atheist with a respect for
+usage and Good Taste, and an abject fear of the disapproval of other
+gentlemen of his class. For the rest he secretly disliked clergymen on
+account of the peculiarity of their collars, and a certain influence
+they had with women. When Marjorie at the age of fourteen had displayed
+a hankering after ecclesiastical ceremony and emotional religion, he had
+declared: "We don't want any of _that_ nonsense," and sent her into the
+country to a farm where there were young calves and a bottle-fed lamb
+and kittens. At times her mother went to church and displayed
+considerable orthodoxy and punctilio, at times the good lady didn't, and
+at times she thought in a broad-minded way that there was a Lot in
+Christian Science, and subjected herself to the ministrations of an
+American named Silas Root. But his ministrations were too expensive for
+continuous use, and so the old faith did not lose its hold upon the
+family altogether.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At school Marjorie had been taught what I may best describe as Muffled
+Christianity--a temperate and discreet system designed primarily not to
+irritate parents, in which the painful symbol of the crucifixion and the
+riddle of what Salvation was to save her from, and, indeed, the coarser
+aspects of religion generally, were entirely subordinate to images of
+amiable perambulations, and a rich mist of finer feelings. She had been
+shielded, not only from arguments against her religion, but from
+arguments for it--the two things go together--and I do not think it was
+particularly her fault if she was now growing up like the great majority
+of respectable English people, with her religious faculty as it were,
+artificially faded, and an acquired disposition to regard any
+speculation of why she was, and whence and whither, as rather foolish,
+not very important, and in the very worst possible taste.
+
+And so, the crystal globe being broken which once held souls together,
+you may expect to find her a little dispersed and inconsistent in her
+motives, and with none of that assurance a simpler age possessed of the
+exact specification of goodness or badness, the exact delimitation of
+right and wrong. Indeed, she did not live in a world of right and wrong,
+or anything so stern; "horrid" and "jolly" had replaced these archaic
+orientations. In a world where a mercantile gentility has conquered
+passion and God is neither blasphemed nor adored, there necessarily
+arises this generation of young people, a little perplexed, indeed, and
+with a sense of something missing, but feeling their way inevitably at
+last to the great releasing question, "Then why shouldn't we have a
+good time?"
+
+Yet there was something in Marjorie, as in most human beings, that
+demanded some general idea, some aim, to hold her life together. A girl
+upon the borders of her set at college was fond of the phrase "living
+for the moment," and Marjorie associated with it the speaker's lax
+mouth, sloe-like eyes, soft, quick-flushing, boneless face, and a habit
+of squawking and bouncing in a forced and graceless manner. Marjorie's
+natural disposition was to deal with life in a steadier spirit than
+that. Yet all sorts of powers and forces were at work in her, some
+exalted, some elvish, some vulgar, some subtle. She felt keenly and
+desired strongly, and in effect she came perhaps nearer the realization
+of that offending phrase than its original exponent. She had a clean
+intensity of feeling that made her delight in a thousand various things,
+in sunlight and textures, and the vividly quick acts of animals, in
+landscape, and the beauty of other girls, in wit, and people's voices,
+and good strong reasoning, and the desire and skill of art. She had a
+clear, rapid memory that made her excel perhaps a little too easily at
+school and college, an eagerness of sympathetic interest that won people
+very quickly and led to disappointments, and a very strong sense of the
+primary importance of Miss Marjorie Pope in the world. And when any very
+definite dream of what she would like to be and what she would like to
+do, such as being the principal of a ladies' college, or the first woman
+member of Parliament, or the wife of a barbaric chief in Borneo, or a
+great explorer, or the wife of a millionaire and a great social leader,
+or George Sand, or Saint Teresa, had had possession of her imagination
+for a few weeks, an entirely contrasted and equally attractive dream
+would presently arise beside it and compete with it and replace it. It
+wasn't so much that she turned against the old one as that she was
+attracted by the new, and she forgot the old dream rather than abandoned
+it, simply because she was only one person, and hadn't therefore the
+possibility of realizing both.
+
+In certain types Marjorie's impressionability aroused a passion of
+proselytism. People of the most diverse kinds sought to influence her,
+and they invariably did so. Quite a number of people, including her
+mother and the principal of her college, believed themselves to be the
+leading influence in her life. And this was particularly the case with
+her aunt Plessington. Her aunt Plessington was devoted to social and
+political work of an austere and aggressive sort (in which Mr.
+Plessington participated); she was childless, and had a Movement of her
+own, the Good Habits Movement, a progressive movement of the utmost
+scope and benevolence which aimed at extensive interferences with the
+food and domestic intimacies of the more defenceless lower classes by
+means ultimately of legislation, and she had Marjorie up to see her,
+took her for long walks while she influenced with earnestness and
+vigour, and at times had an air of bequeathing her mantle, movement and
+everything, quite definitely to her "little Madge." She spoke of
+training her niece to succeed her, and bought all the novels of Mrs.
+Humphry Ward for her as they appeared, in the hope of quickening in her
+that flame of politico-social ambition, that insatiable craving for
+dinner-parties with important guests, which is so distinctive of the
+more influential variety of English womanhood. It was due rather to her
+own habit of monologue than to any reserve on the part of Marjorie that
+she entertained the belief that her niece was entirely acquiescent in
+these projects. They went into Marjorie's mind and passed. For nearly a
+week, it is true, she had dramatized herself as the angel and
+inspiration of some great modern statesman, but this had been ousted by
+a far more insistent dream, begotten by a picture she had seen in some
+exhibition, of a life of careless savagery, whose central and constantly
+recurrent incident was the riding of barebacked horses out of
+deep-shadowed forest into a foamy sunlit sea--in a costume that would
+certainly have struck Aunt Plessington as a mistake.
+
+If you could have seen Marjorie in her railway compartment, with the
+sunshine, sunshine mottled by the dirty window, tangled in her hair and
+creeping to and fro over her face as the train followed the curves of
+the line, you would certainly have agreed with me that she was pretty,
+and you might even have thought her beautiful. But it was necessary to
+fall in love with Marjorie before you could find her absolutely
+beautiful. You might have speculated just what business was going on
+behind those drowsily thoughtful eyes. If you are--as people
+say--"Victorian," you might even have whispered "Day Dreams," at the
+sight of her....
+
+She _was_ dreaming, and in a sense she was thinking of beautiful things.
+But only mediately. She was thinking how very much she would enjoy
+spending freely and vigorously, quite a considerable amount of
+money,--heaps of money.
+
+You see, the Carmels, with whom she had just been staying, were
+shockingly well off. They had two motor cars with them in the country,
+and the boys had the use of the second one as though it was just an old
+bicycle. Marjorie had had a cheap white dinner-dress, made the year
+before by a Chelsea French girl, a happy find of her mother's, and it
+was shapely and simple and not at all bad, and she had worn her green
+beads and her Egyptian necklace of jade; but Kitty Carmel and her sister
+had had a new costume nearly every night, and pretty bracelets, and
+rubies, big pearls, and woven gold, and half a score of delightful and
+precious things for neck and hair. Everything in the place was bright
+and good and abundant, the servants were easy and well-mannered, without
+a trace of hurry or resentment, and one didn't have to be sharp about
+the eggs and things at breakfast in the morning, or go without. All
+through the day, and even when they had gone to bathe from the smart
+little white and green shed on the upper lake, Marjorie had been made to
+feel the insufficiency of her equipment. Kitty Carmel, being twenty-one,
+possessed her own cheque-book and had accounts running at half a dozen
+West-end shops; and both sisters had furnished their own rooms according
+to their taste, with a sense of obvious effect that had set Marjorie
+speculating just how a room might be done by a girl with a real eye for
+colour and a real brain behind it....
+
+The train slowed down for the seventeenth time. Marjorie looked up and
+read "Buryhamstreet."
+
+
+Sec. 3
+
+Her reverie vanished, and by a complex but almost instantaneous movement
+she had her basket off the rack and the carriage door open. She became
+teeming anticipations. There, advancing in a string, were Daffy, her
+elder sister, Theodore, her younger brother, and the dog Toupee. Sydney
+and Rom hadn't come. Daffy was not copper red like her sister, but
+really quite coarsely red-haired; she was bigger than Marjorie, and with
+irregular teeth instead of Marjorie's neat row; she confessed them in a
+broad simple smile of welcome. Theodore was hatless, rustily
+fuzzy-headed, and now a wealth of quasi-humorous gesture. The dog Toupee
+was straining at a leash, and doing its best in a yapping, confused
+manner, to welcome the wrong people by getting its lead round their
+legs.
+
+"Toupee!" cried Marjorie, waving the basket. "Toupee!"
+
+They all called it Toupee because it was like one, but the name was
+forbidden in her father's hearing. Her father had decided that the
+proper name for a family dog in England is Towser, and did his utmost to
+suppress a sobriquet that was at once unprecedented and not in the best
+possible taste. Which was why the whole family, with the exception of
+Mrs. Pope, of course, stuck to Toupee....
+
+Marjorie flashed a second's contrast with the Carmel splendours.
+
+"Hullo, old Daffy. What's it like?" she asked, handing out the basket as
+her sister came up.
+
+"It's a lark," said Daffy. "Where's the dressing-bag?"
+
+"Thoddy," said Marjorie, following up the dressing-bag with the
+hold-all. "Lend a hand."
+
+"Stow it, Toupee," said Theodore, and caught the hold-all in time.
+
+In another moment Marjorie was out of the train, had done the swift
+kissing proper to the occasion, and rolled a hand over Toupee's
+head--Toupee, who, after a passionate lunge at a particularly savoury
+drover from the next compartment, was now frantically trying to indicate
+that Marjorie was the one human being he had ever cared for. Brother and
+sister were both sketching out the state of affairs at Buryhamstreet
+Vicarage in rapid competitive jerks, each eager to tell things
+first--and the whole party moved confusedly towards the station exit.
+Things pelted into Marjorie's mind.
+
+"We've got an old donkey-cart. I thought we shouldn't get here--ever....
+Madge, we can go up the church tower whenever we like, only old Daffy
+won't let me shin up the flagstaff. It's _perfectly_ safe--you couldn't
+fall off if you tried.... Had positively to get out at the level
+crossing and _pull_ him over.... There's a sort of moat in the
+garden.... You never saw such furniture, Madge! And the study! It's hung
+with texts, and stuffed with books about the Scarlet Woman.... Piano's
+rather good, it's a Broadwood.... The Dad's got a war on about the
+tennis net. Oh, frightful! You'll see. It won't keep up. He's had a
+letter kept waiting by the _Times_ for a fortnight, and it's a terror at
+breakfast. Says the motor people have used influence to silence him.
+Says that's a game two can play at.... Old Sid got herself upset
+stuffing windfalls. Rather a sell for old Sid, considering how refined
+she's getting...."
+
+There was a brief lull as the party got into the waiting governess cart.
+Toupee, after a preliminary refusal to enter, made a determined attempt
+on the best seat, from which he would be able to bark in a persistent,
+official manner at anything that passed. That suppressed, and Theodore's
+proposal to drive refused, they were able to start, and attention was
+concentrated upon Daffy's negotiation of the station approach. Marjorie
+turned on her brother with a smile of warm affection.
+
+"How are you, old Theodore?"
+
+"I'm all right, old Madge."
+
+"Mummy?"
+
+"Every one's all right," said Theodore; "if it wasn't for that damned
+infernal net----"
+
+"Ssssh!" cried both sisters together.
+
+"_He_ says it," said Theodore.
+
+Both sisters conveyed a grave and relentless disapproval.
+
+"Pretty bit of road," said Marjorie. "I like that little house at the
+corner."
+
+A pause and the eyes of the sisters met.
+
+"_He's_ here," said Daffy.
+
+Marjorie affected ignorance.
+
+"Who's here?"
+
+"_Il vostro senior Miraculoso_."
+
+"Just as though a fellow couldn't understand your kiddy little Italian,"
+said Theodore, pulling Toupee's ear.
+
+"Oh well, I thought he might be," said Marjorie, regardless of her
+brother.
+
+"Oh!" said Daffy. "I didn't know----"
+
+Both sisters looked at each other, and then both glanced at Theodore. He
+met Marjorie's eyes with a grimace of profound solemnity.
+
+"Little brothers," he said, "shouldn't know. Just as though they didn't!
+Rot! But let's change the subject, my dears, all the same. Lemme see.
+There are a new sort of flea on Toupee, Madge, that he gets from the
+hens."
+
+"_Is_ a new sort," corrected Daffy. "He's horrider than ever, Madge. He
+leaves his soap in soak now to make us think he has used it. This is the
+village High Street. Isn't it jolly?"
+
+"Corners don't _bite_ people," said Theodore, with a critical eye to the
+driving.
+
+Marjorie surveyed the High Street, while Daffy devoted a few moments to
+Theodore.
+
+The particular success of the village was its brace of chestnut trees
+which, with that noble disregard of triteness which is one of the charms
+of villages the whole world over, shadowed the village smithy. On either
+side of the roadway between it and the paths was a careless width of
+vivid grass protected by white posts, which gave way to admit a generous
+access on either hand to a jolly public house, leering over red blinds,
+and swinging a painted sign against its competitor. Several of the
+cottages had real thatch and most had porches; they had creepers nailed
+to their faces, and their gardens, crowded now with flowers, marigolds,
+begonias, snapdragon, delphiniums, white foxgloves, and monkshood,
+seemed almost too good to be true. The doctor's house was pleasantly
+Georgian, and the village shop, which was also a post and telegraph
+office, lay back with a slight air of repletion, keeping its bulging
+double shop-windows wide open in a manifest attempt not to fall asleep.
+Two score of shock-headed boys and pinafored girls were drilling upon a
+bald space of ground before the village school, and near by, the
+national emotion at the ever-memorable Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria
+had evoked an artistic drinking-fountain of grey stone. Beyond the
+subsequent green--there were the correctest geese thereon--the village
+narrowed almost to a normal road again, and then, recalling itself with
+a start, lifted a little to the churchyard wall about the grey and ample
+church. "It's just like all the villages that ever were," said Marjorie,
+and gave a cry of delight when Daffy, pointing to the white gate between
+two elm trees that led to the vicarage, remarked: "That's us."
+
+In confirmation of which statement, Sydney and Rom, the two sisters next
+in succession to Marjorie, and with a strong tendency to be twins in
+spite of the year between them, appeared in a state of vociferous
+incivility opening the way for the donkey-carriage. Sydney was Sydney,
+and Rom was just short for Romola--one of her mother's favourite
+heroines in fiction.
+
+"Old Madge," they said; and then throwing respect to the winds, "Old
+Gargoo!" which was Marjorie's forbidden nickname, and short for gargoyle
+(though surely only Victorian Gothic, ever produced a gargoyle that had
+the remotest right to be associated with the neat brightness of
+Marjorie's face).
+
+She overlooked the offence, and the pseudo-twins boarded the cart from
+behind, whereupon the already overburthened donkey, being old and in a
+manner wise, quickened his pace for the house to get the whole thing
+over.
+
+"It's really an avenue," said Daffy; but Marjorie, with her mind strung
+up to the Carmel standards, couldn't agree. It was like calling a row of
+boy-scouts Potsdam grenadiers. The trees were at irregular distances, of
+various ages, and mostly on one side. Still it was a shady, pleasant
+approach.
+
+And the vicarage was truly very interesting and amusing. To these
+Londoners accustomed to live in a state of compression, elbows
+practically touching, in a tall, narrow fore-and-aft stucco house, all
+window and staircase, in a despondent Brompton square, there was an
+effect of maundering freedom about the place, of enlargement almost to
+the pitch of adventure and sunlight to the pitch of intoxication. The
+house itself was long and low, as if a London house holidaying in the
+country had flung itself asprawl; it had two disconnected and roomy
+staircases, and when it had exhausted itself completely as a house, it
+turned to the right and began again as rambling, empty stables, coach
+house, cart sheds, men's bedrooms up ladders, and outhouses of the most
+various kinds. On one hand was a neglected orchard, in the front of the
+house was a bald, worried-looking lawn area capable of simultaneous
+tennis and croquet, and at the other side a copious and confused
+vegetable and flower garden full of roses, honesty, hollyhocks, and
+suchlike herbaceous biennials and perennials, lapsed at last into
+shrubbery, where a sickle-shaped, weedy lagoon of uncertain aims, which
+had evidently, as a rustic bridge and a weeping willow confessed,
+aspired to be an "ornamental water," declined at last to ducks. And
+there was access to the church, and the key of the church tower, and one
+went across the corner of the lawn, and by a little iron gate into the
+churchyard to decipher inscriptions, as if the tombs of all
+Buryhamstreet were no more than a part of the accommodation relinquished
+by the vicar's household.
+
+Marjorie was hurried over the chief points of all this at a breakneck
+pace by Sydney and Rom, and when Sydney was called away to the horrors
+of practice--for Sydney in spite of considerable reluctance was destined
+by her father to be "the musical one"--Rom developed a copious
+affection, due apparently to some occult aesthetic influence in
+Marjorie's silvery-grey and green, and led her into the unlocked vestry,
+and there prayed in a whisper that she might be given "one good hug,
+just _one_"--and so they came out with their arms about each other very
+affectionately to visit the lagoon again. And then Rom remembered that
+Marjorie hadn't seen either the walnut-tree in the orchard, or the hen
+with nine chicks....
+
+Somewhere among all these interests came tea and Mrs. Pope.
+
+Mrs. Pope kissed her daughter with an air of having really wanted to
+kiss her half an hour ago, but of having been distracted since. She was
+a fine-featured, anxious-looking little woman, with a close resemblance
+to all her children, in spite of the fact that they were markedly
+dissimilar one to the other, except only that they took their ruddy
+colourings from their father. She was dressed in a neat blue dress that
+had perhaps been hurriedly chosen, and her method of doing her hair was
+a manifest compromise between duty and pleasure. She embarked at once
+upon an exposition of the bedroom arrangements, which evidently involved
+difficult issues. Marjorie was to share a room with Daffy--that was the
+gist of it--as the only other available apartment, originally promised
+to Marjorie, had been secured by Mr. Pope for what he called his
+"matutinal ablutions, _videlicet_ tub."
+
+"Then, when your Aunt Plessington comes, you won't have to move," said
+Mrs. Pope with an air of a special concession. "Your father's looking
+forward to seeing you, but he mustn't be disturbed just yet. He's in the
+vicar's study. He's had his tea in there. He's writing a letter to the
+_Times_ answering something they said in a leader, and also a private
+note calling attention to their delay in printing his previous
+communication, and he wants to be delicately ironical without being in
+any way offensive. He wants to hint without actually threatening that
+very probably he will go over to the _Spectator_ altogether if they do
+not become more attentive. The _Times_ used to print his letters
+punctually, but latterly these automobile people seem to have got hold
+of it.... He has the window on the lawn open, so that I think, perhaps,
+we'd better not stay out here--for fear our voices might disturb him."
+
+"Better get right round the other side of the church," said Daffy.
+
+"He'd hear far less of us if we went indoors," said Mrs. Pope.
+
+
+Sec. 4
+
+The vicarage seemed tight packed with human interest for Marjorie and
+her mother and sisters. Going over houses is one of the amusements
+proper to her sex, and she and all three sisters and her mother, as soon
+as they had finished an inaudible tea, went to see the bedroom she was
+to share with Daffy, and then examined, carefully and in order, the
+furniture and decoration of the other bedrooms, went through the rooms
+downstairs, always excepting and avoiding very carefully and closing as
+many doors as possible on, and hushing their voices whenever they
+approached the study in which her father was being delicately ironical
+without being offensive to the _Times_. None of them had seen any of the
+vicarage people at all--Mr. Pope had come on a bicycle and managed all
+the negotiations--and it was curious to speculate about the individuals
+whose personalities pervaded the worn and faded furnishings of the
+place.
+
+The Popes' keen-eyed inspection came at times, I think, dangerously near
+prying. The ideals of decoration and interests of the vanished family
+were so absolutely dissimilar to the London standards as to arouse a
+sort of astonished wonder in their minds. Some of the things they
+decided were perfectly hideous, some quaint, some were simply and weakly
+silly. Everything was different from Hartstone Square. Daffy was perhaps
+more inclined to contempt, and Mrs. Pope to refined amusement and witty
+appreciation than Marjorie. Marjorie felt there was something in these
+people that she didn't begin to understand, she needed some missing
+clue that would unlock the secret of their confused peculiarity. She was
+one of those people who have an almost instinctive turn for decoration
+in costume and furniture; she had already had a taste of how to do
+things in arranging her rooms at Bennett College, Oxbridge, where also
+she was in great demand among the richer girls as an adviser. She knew
+what it was to try and fail as well as to try and succeed, and these
+people, she felt, hadn't tried for anything she comprehended. She
+couldn't quite see why it was that there was at the same time an attempt
+at ornament and a disregard of beauty, she couldn't quite do as her
+mother did and dismiss it as an absurdity and have done with it. She
+couldn't understand, too, why everything should be as if it were faded
+and weakened from something originally bright and clear.
+
+All the rooms were thick with queer little objects that indicated a
+quite beaver-like industry in the production of "work." There were
+embroidered covers for nearly every article on the wash-hand-stand, and
+mats of wool and crochet wherever anything stood on anything; there were
+"tidies" everywhere, and odd little brackets covered with gilded and
+varnished fir cones and bearing framed photographs and little jars and
+all sorts of colourless, dusty little objects, and everywhere on the
+walls tacks sustained crossed fans with badly painted flowers or
+transfer pictures. There was a jar on the bedroom mantel covered with
+varnished postage stamps and containing grey-haired dried grasses. There
+seemed to be a moral element in all this, for in the room Sydney shared
+with Rom there was a decorative piece of lettering which declared that--
+
+    "Something attempted, something done,
+    Has earned a night's repose."
+
+There were a great number of texts that set Marjorie's mind stirring
+dimly with intimations of a missed significance. Over her own bed,
+within the lattice of an Oxford frame, was the photograph of a picture
+of an extremely composed young woman in a trailing robe, clinging to the
+Rock of Ages in the midst of histrionically aggressive waves, and she
+had a feeling, rather than a thought, that perhaps for all the oddity of
+the presentation it did convey something acutely desirable, that she
+herself had had moods when she would have found something very
+comforting in just such an impassioned grip. And on a framed,
+floriferous card, these incomprehensible words:
+
+    |================================|
+    |THY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT FOR ME. |
+    |================================|
+
+seemed to be saying something to her tantalizingly just outside her
+range of apprehension.
+
+Did all these things light up somehow to those dispossessed people--from
+some angle she didn't attain? Were they living and moving realities when
+those others were at home again?
+
+The drawing-room had no texts; it was altogether more pretentious and
+less haunted by the faint and faded flavour of religion that pervaded
+the bedrooms. It had, however, evidences of travel in Switzerland and
+the Mediterranean. There was a piano in black and gold, a little out of
+tune, and surmounted by a Benares brass jar, enveloping a scarlet
+geranium in a pot. There was a Japanese screen of gold wrought upon
+black, that screened nothing. There was a framed chromo-lithograph of
+Jerusalem hot in the sunset, and another of Jerusalem cold under a
+sub-tropical moon, and there were gourds, roses of Jericho, sandalwood
+rosaries and kindred trash from the Holy Land in no little profusion
+upon a what-not. Such books as the room had contained had been arranged
+as symmetrically as possible about a large, pink-shaded lamp upon the
+claret-coloured cloth of a round table, and were to be replaced, Mrs.
+Pope said, at their departure. At present they were piled on a
+side-table. The girls had been through them all, and were ready with the
+choicer morsels for Marjorie's amusement. There was "Black Beauty," the
+sympathetic story of a soundly Anglican horse, and a large Bible
+extra-illustrated with photographs of every well-known scriptural
+picture from Michael Angelo to Dore, and a book of injunctions to young
+ladies upon their behaviour and deportment that Rom and Sydney found
+particularly entertaining. Marjorie discovered that Sydney had picked up
+a new favourite phrase. "I'm afraid we're all dreadfully cynical," said
+Sydney, several times.
+
+A more advanced note was struck by a copy of "Aurora Leigh," richly
+underlined in pencil, but with exclamation marks at some of the bolder
+passages....
+
+And presently, still avoiding the open study window very elaborately,
+this little group of twentieth century people went again into the
+church--the church whose foundations were laid in A.D. 912--foundations
+of rubble and cement that included flat Roman bricks from a still
+remoter basilica. Their voices dropped instinctively, as they came into
+its shaded quiet from the exterior sunshine. Marjorie went a little
+apart and sat in a pew that gave her a glimpse of the one good
+stained-glass window. Rom followed her, and perceiving her mood to be
+restful, sat a yard away. Syd began a whispered dispute with her mother
+whether it wasn't possible to try the organ, and whether Theodore might
+not be bribed to blow. Daffy discovered relics of a lepers' squint and a
+holy-water stoup, and then went to scrutinize the lettering of the ten
+commandments of the Mosaic law that shone black and red on gold on
+either side of the I.H.S. monogram behind the white-clothed communion
+table that had once been the altar. Upon a notice board hung about the
+waist of the portly pulpit were the numbers of hymns that had been sung
+three days ago. The sound Protestantism of the vicar had banished
+superfluous crosses from the building; the Bible reposed upon the wings
+of a great brass eagle; shining blue and crimson in the window, Saint
+Christopher carried his Lord. What a harmonized synthesis of conflicts a
+country church presents! What invisible mysteries of filiation spread
+between these ancient ornaments and symbols and the new young minds from
+the whirlpool of the town that looked upon them now with such bright,
+keen eyes, wondering a little, feeling a little, missing so much?
+
+It was all so very cool and quiet now--with something of the immobile
+serenity of death.
+
+
+Sec. 5
+
+When Mr. Pope had finished his letter to the _Times_, he got out of the
+window of the study, treading on a flower-bed as he did so--he was the
+sort of man who treads on flower-beds--partly with the purpose of
+reading his composition aloud to as many members of his family as he
+could assemble for the purpose, and so giving them a chance of
+appreciating the nuances of his irony more fully than if they saw it
+just in cold print without the advantage of his intonation, and partly
+with the belated idea of welcoming Marjorie. The law presented a rather
+discouraging desolation. Then he became aware that the church tower
+frothed with his daughters. In view of his need of an audience, he
+decided after a brief doubt that their presence there was
+unobjectionable, and waved his MS. amiably. Marjorie flapped a
+handkerchief in reply....
+
+The subsequent hour was just the sort of hour that gave Mr. Pope an
+almost meteorological importance to his family. He began with an
+amiability that had no fault, except, perhaps, that it was a little
+forced after the epistolary strain in the study, and his welcome to
+Marjorie was more than cordial. "Well, little Madge-cat!" he said,
+giving her an affectionate but sound and heavy thump on the left
+shoulder-blade, "got a kiss for the old daddy?"
+
+Marjorie submitted a cheek.
+
+"That's right," said Mr. Pope; "and now I just want you all to advise
+me----"
+
+He led the way to a group of wicker garden chairs. "You're coming,
+mummy?" he said, and seated himself comfortably and drew out a spectacle
+case, while his family grouped itself dutifully. It made a charming
+little picture of a Man and his Womankind. "I don't often flatter
+myself," he said, "but this time I think I've been neat--neat's the word
+for it."
+
+He cleared his throat, put on his spectacles, and emitted a long, flat
+preliminary note, rather like the sound of a child's trumpet. "Er--'Dear
+Sir!'"
+
+"Rom," said Mrs. Pope, "don't creak your chair."
+
+"It's Daffy, mother," said Rom.
+
+"Oh, _Rom!_" said Daffy.
+
+Mr. Pope paused, and looked with a warning eye over his left
+spectacle-glass at Rom.
+
+"Don't creak your chair, Rom," he said, "when your mother tells you."
+
+"I was _not_ creaking my chair," said Rom.
+
+"I heard it," said Mr. Pope, suavely.
+
+"It was Daffy."
+
+"Your mother does not think so," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Oh, all right! I'll sit on the ground," said Rom, crimson to the roots
+of her hair.
+
+"Me too," said Daffy. "I'd rather."
+
+Mr. Pope watched the transfer gravely. Then he readjusted his glasses,
+cleared his throat again, trumpeted, and began. "Er--'Dear Sir,'"
+
+"Oughtn't it to be simply 'Sir,' father, for an editor?" said Marjorie.
+
+"Perhaps I didn't explain, Marjorie," said her father, with the calm of
+great self-restraint, and dabbing his left hand on the manuscript in his
+right, "that this is a _private_ letter--a private letter."
+
+"I didn't understand," said Marjorie.
+
+"It would have been evident as I went on," said Mr. Pope, and prepared
+to read again.
+
+This time he was allowed to proceed, but the interruptions had ruffled
+him, and the gentle stresses that should have lifted the subtleties of
+his irony into prominence missed the words, and he had to go back and do
+his sentences again. Then Rom suddenly, horribly, uncontrollably, was
+seized with hiccups. At the second hiccup Mr. Pope paused, and looked
+very hard at his daughter with magnified eyes; as he was about to
+resume, the third burst its way through the unhappy child's utmost
+effort.
+
+Mr. Pope rose with an awful resignation. "That's enough," he said. He
+regarded the pseudo-twin vindictively. "You haven't the self-control of
+a child of six," he said. Then very touchingly to Mrs. Pope: "Mummy,
+shall we try a game of tennis with the New Generation?"
+
+"Can't you read it after supper?" asked Mrs. Pope.
+
+"It must go by the eight o'clock post," said Mr. Pope, putting the
+masterpiece into his breast pocket, the little masterpiece that would
+now perhaps never be read aloud to any human being. "Daffy, dear, do you
+mind going in for the racquets and balls?"
+
+The social atmosphere was now sultry, and overcast, and Mr. Pope's
+decision to spend the interval before Daffy returned in seeing whether
+he couldn't do something to the net, which was certainly very
+unsatisfactory, did not improve matters. Then, unhappily, Marjorie, who
+had got rather keen upon tennis at the Carmels', claimed her father's
+first two services as faults, contrary to the etiquette of the family.
+It happened that Mr. Pope had a really very good, hard, difficult,
+smart-looking serve, whose only defect was that it always went either
+too far or else into the net, and so a feeling had been fostered and
+established by his wife that, on the whole, it was advisable to regard
+the former variety as a legitimate extension of a father's authority.
+Naturally, therefore, Mr. Pope was nettled at Marjorie's ruling, and his
+irritation increased when his next two services to Daffy perished in the
+net. ("Damn that net! Puts one's eye out.") Then Marjorie gave him an
+unexpected soft return which he somehow muffed, and then Daffy just
+dropped a return over the top of the net. (Love-game.) It was then
+Marjorie's turn to serve, which she did with a new twist acquired from
+the eldest Carmel boy that struck Mr. Pope as un-English. "Go on," he
+said concisely. "Fifteen love."
+
+She was gentle with her mother and they got their first rally, and when
+it was over Mr. Pope had to explain to Marjorie that if she returned
+right up into his corner of the court he would have to run backwards
+very fast and might fall over down the silly slope at that end. She
+would have to consider him and the court. One didn't get everything out
+of a game by playing merely to win. She said "All right, Daddy," rather
+off-handedly, and immediately served to him again, and he, taken a
+little unawares, hit the ball with the edge of his racquet and sent it
+out, and then he changed racquets with Daffy--it seemed he had known all
+along she had taken his, but he had preferred to say nothing--uttered a
+word of advice to his wife just on her stroke, and she, failing to grasp
+his intention as quickly as she ought to have done, left the score
+forty-fifteen. He felt better when he returned Marjorie's serve, and
+then before she could control herself she repeated her new unpleasant
+trick of playing into the corner again, whereupon, leaping back with an
+agility that would have shamed many a younger man, Mr. Pope came upon
+disaster. He went spinning down the treacherous slope behind, twisted
+his ankle painfully and collapsed against the iron railings of the
+shrubbery. It was too much, and he lost control of himself. His
+daughters had one instant's glimpse of the linguistic possibilities of a
+strong man's agony. "I told her," he went on as if he had said nothing.
+"_Tennis!_"
+
+For a second perhaps he seemed to hesitate upon a course of action. Then
+as if by a great effort he took his coat from the net post and addressed
+himself houseward, incarnate Grand Dudgeon--limping.
+
+"Had enough of it, Mummy," he said, and added some happily inaudible
+comment on Marjorie's new style of play.
+
+The evening's exercise was at an end.
+
+The three ladies regarded one another in silence for some moments.
+
+"I will take in the racquets, dear," said Mrs. Pope.
+
+"I think the other ball is at your end," said Daffy....
+
+The apparatus put away, Marjorie and her sister strolled thoughtfully
+away from the house.
+
+"There's croquet here too," said Daffy. "We've not had the things out
+yet!"....
+
+"He'll play, I suppose."
+
+"He wants to play."...
+
+"Of course," said Marjorie after a long pause, "there's no _reasoning_
+with Dad!"
+
+
+Sec. 6
+
+Character is one of England's noblest and most deliberate products, but
+some Englishmen have it to excess. Mr. Pope had.
+
+He was one of that large and representative class which imparts a
+dignity to national commerce by inheriting big businesses from its
+ancestors. He was a coach-builder by birth, and a gentleman by education
+and training. He had been to City Merchant's and Cambridge.
+
+Throughout the earlier half of the nineteenth century the Popes had been
+the princes of the coach-building world. Mr. Pope's great-grandfather
+had been a North London wheelwright of conspicuous dexterity and
+integrity, who had founded the family business; his son, Mr. Pope's
+grandfather, had made that business the occupation of his life and
+brought it to the pinnacle of pre-eminence; his son, who was Marjorie's
+grandfather, had displayed a lesser enthusiasm, left the house at the
+works for a home ten miles away and sent a second son into the Church.
+It was in the days of the third Pope that the business ceased to expand,
+and began to suffer severely from the competition of an enterprising
+person who had originally supplied the firm with varnish, gradually
+picked up the trade in most other materials and accessories needed in
+coach-building, and passed on by almost imperceptible stages to
+delivering the article complete--dispensing at last altogether with the
+intervention of Pope and Son--to the customer. Marjorie's father had
+succeeded in the fulness of time to the inheritance this insurgent had
+damaged.
+
+Mr. Pope was a man of firm and resentful temper, with an admiration for
+Cato, Brutus, Cincinnatus, Cromwell, Washington, and the sterner heroes
+generally, and by nature a little ill-used and offended at things. He
+suffered from indigestion and extreme irritability. He found himself in
+control of a business where more flexible virtues were needed. The Popes
+based their fame on a heavy, proud type of vehicle, which the increasing
+luxury and triviality of the age tended to replace by lighter forms of
+carriage, carriages with diminutive and apologetic names. As these
+lighter forms were not only lighter but less expensive, Mr. Pope with a
+pathetic confidence in the loyalty of the better class of West End
+customer, determined to "make a stand" against them. He was the sort of
+man to whom making a stand is in itself a sombre joy. If he had had to
+choose his pose for a portrait, he would certainly have decided to have
+one foot advanced, the other planted like a British oak behind, the arms
+folded and the brows corrugated,--making a stand.
+
+Unhappily the stars in their courses and the general improvement of
+roads throughout the country fought against him. The lighter carriages,
+and especially the lighter carriages of that varnish-selling firm, which
+was now absorbing businesses right and left, prevailed over Mr. Pope's
+resistance. For crossing a mountain pass or fording a river, for driving
+over the scene of a recent earthquake or following a retreating army,
+for being run away with by frantic horses or crushing a personal enemy,
+there can be no doubt the Pope carriages remained to the very last the
+best possible ones and fully worth the inflexible price demanded.
+Unhappily all carriages in a civilization essentially decadent are not
+subjected to these tests, and the manufactures of his rivals were not
+only much cheaper, but had a sort of meretricious smartness, a
+disingenuous elasticity, above all a levity, hateful indeed to the
+spirit of Mr. Pope yet attractive to the wanton customer. Business
+dwindled. Nevertheless the habitual element in the good class customer
+did keep things going, albeit on a shrinking scale, until Mr. Pope came
+to the unfortunate decision that he would make a stand against
+automobiles. He regarded them as an intrusive nuisance which had to be
+seen only to be disowned by the landed gentry of England. Rather than
+build a car he said he would go out of business. He went out of
+business. Within five years of this determination he sold out the name,
+good will, and other vestiges of his concern to a mysterious buyer who
+turned out to be no more than an agent for these persistently expanding
+varnish makers, and he retired with a genuine grievance upon the family
+accumulations--chiefly in Consols and Home Railways.
+
+He refused however to regard his defeat as final, put great faith in the
+approaching exhaustion of the petrol supply, and talked in a manner that
+should have made the Automobile Association uneasy, of devoting the
+rest of his days to the purification of England from these aggressive
+mechanisms. "It was a mistake," he said, "to let them in." He became
+more frequent at his excellent West End club, and directed a certain
+portion of his capital to largely indecisive but on the whole
+unprofitable speculations in South African and South American
+enterprises. He mingled a little in affairs. He was a tough conventional
+speaker, rich in established phrases and never abashed by hearing
+himself say commonplace things, and in addition to his campaign against
+automobiles he found time to engage also in quasi-political activities,
+taking chairs, saying a few words and so on, cherishing a fluctuating
+hope that his eloquence might ultimately win him an invitation to
+contest a constituency in the interests of reaction and the sounder
+elements in the Liberal party.
+
+He had a public-spirited side, and he was particularly attracted by that
+mass of modern legislative proposals which aims at a more systematic
+control of the lives of lower class persons for their own good by their
+betters. Indeed, in the first enthusiasm of his proprietorship of the
+Pope works at East Purblow, he had organized one of those benevolent
+industrial experiments that are now so common. He felt strongly against
+the drink evil, that is to say, the unrestricted liberty of common
+people to drink what they prefer, and he was acutely impressed by the
+fact that working-class families do not spend their money in the way
+that seems most desirable to upper middle-class critics. Accordingly he
+did his best to replace the dangerous freedoms of money by that ideal of
+the social reformer, Payment in Kind. To use his invariable phrase, the
+East Purblow experiment did "no mean service" to the cause of social
+reform. Unhappily it came to an end through a prosecution under the
+Truck Act, that blot upon the Statute Book, designed, it would appear,
+even deliberately to vitiate man's benevolent control of his fellow man.
+The lessons to be drawn from that experience, however, grew if anything
+with the years. He rarely spoke without an allusion to it, and it was
+quite remarkable how readily it could be adapted to illuminate a hundred
+different issues in the hospitable columns of the _Spectator_....
+
+
+Sec. 7
+
+At seven o'clock Marjorie found herself upstairs changing into her
+apple-green frock. She had had a good refreshing wash in cold soft
+water, and it was pleasant to change into thinner silk stockings and
+dainty satin slippers and let down and at last brush her hair and dress
+loiteringly after the fatigues of her journey and the activities of her
+arrival. She looked out on the big church and the big trees behind it
+against the golden quiet of a summer evening with extreme approval.
+
+"I suppose those birds are rooks," she said.
+
+But Daffy had gone to see that the pseudo-twins had done themselves
+justice in their muslin frocks and pink sashes; they were apt to be a
+little sketchy with their less accessible buttons.
+
+Marjorie became aware of two gentlemen with her mother on the lawn
+below.
+
+One was her almost affianced lover, Will Magnet, the humorous writer.
+She had been doing her best not to think about him all day, but now he
+became an unavoidable central fact. She regarded him with an almost
+perplexed scrutiny, and wondered vividly why she had been so excited and
+pleased by his attentions during the previous summer.
+
+Mr. Magnet was one of those quiet, deliberately unassuming people who do
+not even attempt to be beautiful. Not for him was it to pretend, but to
+prick the bladder of pretence. He was a fairish man of forty, pale, with
+a large protuberant, observant grey eye--I speak particularly of the
+left--and a face of quiet animation warily alert for the wit's
+opportunity. His nose and chin were pointed, and his lips thin and
+quaintly pressed together. He was dressed in grey, with a low-collared
+silken shirt showing a thin neck, and a flowing black tie, and he
+carried a grey felt hat in his joined hands behind his back. She could
+hear the insinuating cadences of his voice as he talked in her mother's
+ear. The other gentleman, silent on her mother's right, must, she knew,
+be Mr. Wintersloan, whom Mr. Magnet had proposed to bring over. His
+dress betrayed that modest gaiety of disposition becoming in an artist,
+and indeed he was one of Mr. Magnet's favourite illustrators. He was in
+a dark bluish-grey suit; a black tie that was quite unusually broad went
+twice around his neck before succumbing to the bow, and his waistcoat
+appeared to be of some gaily-patterned orange silk. Marjorie's eyes
+returned to Mr. Magnet. Hitherto she had never had an opportunity of
+remarking that his hair was more than a little attenuated towards the
+crown. It was funny how his tie came out under his chin to the right.
+
+What an odd thing men's dress had become, she thought. Why did they wear
+those ridiculous collars and ties? Why didn't they always dress in
+flannels and look as fine and slender and active as the elder Carmel boy
+for example? Mr. Magnet couldn't be such an ill-shaped man. Why didn't
+every one dress to be just as beautiful and splendid as
+possible?--instead of wearing queer things!
+
+"Coming down?" said Daffy, a vision of sulphur-yellow, appearing in the
+doorway.
+
+"Let _them_ go first," said Marjorie, with a finer sense of effect. "And
+Theodore. We don't want to make part of a comic entry with Theodore,
+Daffy."
+
+Accordingly, the two sisters watched discreetly--they had to be wary on
+account of Mr. Magnet's increasingly frequent glances at the
+windows--and when at last all the rest of the family had appeared below,
+they decided their cue had come. Mr. Pope strolled into the group, with
+no trace of his recent debacle except a slight limp. He was wearing a
+jacket of damson-coloured velvet, which he affected in the country, and
+all traces of his Grand Dudgeon were gone. But then he rarely had Grand
+Dudgeon except in the sanctities of family life, and hardly ever when
+any other man was about.
+
+"Well," his daughters heard him say, with a witty allusiveness that was
+difficult to follow, "so the Magnet has come to the Mountain again--eh?"
+
+"Come on, Madge," said Daffy, and the two sisters emerged harmoniously
+together from the house.
+
+It would have been manifest to a meaner capacity than any present that
+evening that Mr. Magnet regarded Marjorie with a distinguished
+significance. He had two eyes, but he had that mysterious quality so
+frequently associated with a bluish-grey iris which gives the effect of
+looking hard with one large orb, a sort of grey searchlight effect, and
+he used this eye ray now to convey a respectful but firm admiration in
+the most unequivocal manner. He saluted Daffy courteously, and then
+allowed himself to retain Marjorie's hand for just a second longer than
+was necessary as he said--very simply--"I am very pleased indeed to meet
+you again--very."
+
+A slight embarrassment fell between them.
+
+"You are staying near here, Mr. Magnet?"
+
+"At the inn," said Mr. Magnet, and then, "I chose it because it would be
+near you."
+
+His eye pressed upon her again for a moment.
+
+"Is it comfortable?" said Marjorie.
+
+"So charmingly simple," said Mr. Magnet. "I love it."
+
+A tinkling bell announced the preparedness of supper, and roused the
+others to the consciousness that they were silently watching Mr. Magnet
+and Marjorie.
+
+"It's quite a simple farmhouse supper," said Mrs. Pope.
+
+
+Sec. 8
+
+There were ducks, green peas, and adolescent new potatoes for supper,
+and afterwards stewed fruit and cream and junket and cheese, bottled
+beer, Gilbey's Burgundy, and home-made lemonade. Mrs. Pope carved,
+because Mr. Pope splashed too much, and bones upset him and made him
+want to show up chicken in the _Times_. So he sat at the other end and
+rallied his guests while Mrs. Pope distributed the viands. He showed not
+a trace of his recent umbrage. Theodore sat between Daffy and his mother
+because of his table manners, and Marjorie was on her father's right
+hand and next to Mr. Wintersloan, while Mr. Magnet was in the middle of
+the table on the opposite side in a position convenient for looking at
+her. Both maids waited.
+
+The presence of Magnet invariably stirred the latent humorist in Mr.
+Pope. He felt that he who talks to humorists should himself be humorous,
+and it was his private persuasion that with more attention he might have
+been, to use a favourite form of expression, "no mean jester." Quite a
+lot of little things of his were cherished as "Good" both by himself
+and, with occasional inaccuracies, by Mrs. Pope. He opened out now in a
+strain of rich allusiveness.
+
+"What will you drink, Mr. Wintersloan?" he said. "Wine of the country,
+yclept beer, red wine from France, or my wife's potent brew from the
+golden lemon?"
+
+Mr. Wintersloan thought he would take Burgundy. Mr. Magnet preferred
+beer.
+
+    "I've heard there's iron in the Beer,
+    And I believe it,"
+
+misquoted Mr. Pope, and nodded as it were to the marker to score. "Daffy
+and Marjorie are still in the lemonade stage. Will you take a little
+Burgundy to-night, Mummy?"
+
+Mrs. Pope decided she would, and was inspired to ask Mr. Wintersloan if
+he had been in that part of the country before. Topography ensued. Mr.
+Wintersloan had a style of his own, and spoke of the Buryhamstreet
+district as a "pooty little country--pooty little hills, with a swirl in
+them."
+
+This pleased Daffy and Marjorie, and their eyes met for a moment.
+
+Then Mr. Magnet, with a ray full on Marjorie, said he had always been
+fond of Surrey. "I think if ever I made a home in the country I should
+like it to be here."
+
+Mr. Wintersloan said Surrey would tire him, it was too bossy and curly,
+too flocculent; he would prefer to look on broader, simpler lines, with
+just a sudden catch in the breath in them--if you understand me?
+
+Marjorie did, and said so.
+
+"A sob--such as you get at the break of a pinewood on a hill."
+
+This baffled Mr. Pope, but Marjorie took it. "Or the short dry cough of
+a cliff," she said.
+
+"Exactly," said Mr. Wintersloan, and having turned a little deliberate
+close-lipped smile on her for a moment, resumed his wing.
+
+"So long as a landscape doesn't _sneeze_" said Mr. Magnet, in that
+irresistible dry way of his, and Rom and Sydney, at any rate, choked.
+
+"Now is the hour when Landscapes yawn," mused Mr. Pope, coming in all
+right at the end.
+
+Then Mrs. Pope asked Mr. Wintersloan, about his route to Buryhamstreet,
+and then Mr. Pope asked Mr. Magnet whether he was playing at a new work
+or working at a new play.
+
+Mr. Magnet said he was dreaming over a play. He wanted to bring out the
+more serious side of his humour, go a little deeper into things than he
+had hitherto done.
+
+"Mingling smiles and tears," said Mr. Pope approvingly.
+
+Mr. Magnet said very quietly that all true humour did that.
+
+Then Mrs. Pope asked what the play was to be about, and Mr. Magnet, who
+seemed disinclined to give an answer, turned the subject by saying he
+had to prepare an address on humour for the next dinner of the
+_Literati_. "It's to be a humourist's dinner, and they've made me the
+guest of the evening--by way of a joke to begin with," he said with that
+dry smile again.
+
+Mrs. Pope said he shouldn't say things like that. She then said "Syd!"
+quietly but sharply to Sydney, who was making a disdainful, squinting
+face at Theodore, and told the parlourmaid to clear the plates for
+sweets. Mr. Magnet professed great horror of public speaking. He said
+that whenever he rose to make an after-dinner speech all the ices he had
+ever eaten seemed to come out of the past, and sit on his backbone.
+
+The talk centered for awhile on Mr. Magnet's address, and apropos of
+Tests of Humour Mr. Pope, who in his way was "no mean raconteur,"
+related the story of the man who took the salad dressing with his hand,
+and when his host asked why he did that, replied: "Oh! I thought it was
+spinach!"
+
+"Many people," added Mr. Pope, "wouldn't see the point of that. And if
+they don't see the point they can't--and the more they try the less they
+do."
+
+All four girls hoped secretly and not too confidently that their
+laughter had not sounded hollow.
+
+And then for a time the men told stories as they came into their heads
+in an easy, irresponsible way. Mr. Magnet spoke of the humour of the
+omnibus-driver who always dangled and twiddled his badge "by way of a
+joke" when he passed the conductor whose father had been hanged, and Mr.
+Pope, perhaps, a little irrelevantly, told the story of the little boy
+who was asked his father's last words, and said "mother was with him to
+the end," which particularly amused Mrs. Pope. Mr. Wintersloan gave the
+story of the woman who was taking her son to the hospital with his head
+jammed into a saucepan, and explained to the other people in the
+omnibus: "You see, what makes it so annoying, it's me only saucepan!"
+Then they came back to the Sense of Humour with the dentist who shouted
+with laughter, and when asked the reason by his patient, choked out:
+"Wrong tooth!" and then Mr. Pope reminded them of the heartless husband
+who, suddenly informed that his mother-in-law was dead, exclaimed "Oh,
+don't make me laugh, please, I've got a split lip...."
+
+
+Sec. 9
+
+The conversation assumed a less anecdotal quality with the removal to
+the drawing-room. On Mr. Magnet's initiative the gentlemen followed the
+ladies almost immediately, and it was Mr. Magnet who remembered that
+Marjorie could sing.
+
+Both the elder sisters indeed had sweet clear voices, and they had
+learnt a number of those jolly songs the English made before the dull
+Hanoverians came. Syd accompanied, and Rom sat back in the low chair in
+the corner and fell deeply in love with Mr. Wintersloan. The three
+musicians in their green and sulphur-yellow and white made a pretty
+group in the light of the shaded lamp against the black and gold
+Broadwood, the tawdry screen, its pattern thin glittering upon darkness,
+and the deep shadows behind. Marjorie loved singing, and forgot herself
+as she sang.
+
+    "I love, and he loves me again,
+      Yet dare I not tell who;
+    For if the nymphs should know my swain,
+      I fear they'd love him too,"
+
+she sang, and Mr. Magnet could not conceal the intensity of his
+admiration.
+
+Mr. Pope had fallen into a pleasant musing; several other ripe old
+yarns, dear delicious old things, had come into his mind that he felt he
+might presently recall when this unavoidable display of accomplishments
+was overpast, and it was with one of them almost on his lips that he
+glanced across at his guest. He was surprised to see Mr. Magnet's face
+transfigured. He was sitting forward, looking up at Marjorie, and he had
+caught something of the expression of those blessed boys who froth at
+the feet of an Assumption. For an instant Mr. Pope did not understand.
+
+Then he understood. It was Marjorie! He had a twinge of surprise, and
+glanced at his own daughter as though he had never seen her before. He
+perceived in a flash for the first time that this troublesome, clever,
+disrespectful child was tall and shapely and sweet, and indeed quite a
+beautiful young woman. He forgot his anecdotes. His being was suffused
+with pride and responsibility and the sense of virtue rewarded. He did
+not reflect for a moment that Marjorie embodied in almost equal
+proportions the very best points in his mother and his mother-in-law,
+and avoided his own more salient characteristics with so neat a
+dexterity that from top to toe, except for the one matter of colour, not
+only did she not resemble him but she scarcely even alluded to him. He
+thought simply that she was his daughter, that she derived from him,
+that her beauty was his. She was the outcome of his meritorious
+preparations. He recalled all the moments when he had been kind and
+indulgent to her, all the bills he had paid for her; all the stresses
+and trials of the coach-building collapse, all the fluctuations of his
+speculative adventures, became things he had faced patiently and
+valiantly for her sake. He forgot the endless times when he had been
+viciously cross with her, all the times when he had pished and tushed
+and sworn in her hearing. He had on provocation and in spite of her
+mother's protests slapped her pretty vigorously, but such things are
+better forgotten; nor did he recall how bitterly he had opposed the
+college education which had made her now so clear in eye and thought,
+nor the frightful shindy, only three months since, about that identical
+green dress in which she now stood delightful. He forgot these petty
+details, as an idealist should. There she was, his daughter. An immense
+benevolence irradiated his soul--for Marjorie--for Magnet. His eyes were
+suffused with a not ignoble tenderness. The man, he knew, was worth at
+least thirty-five thousand pounds, a discussion of investments had made
+that clear, and he must be making at least five thousand a year! A
+beautiful girl, a worthy man! A good fellow, a sound good fellow, a
+careful fellow too--as these fellows went!
+
+Old Daddy would lose his treasure of course.
+
+Well, a father must learn resignation, and he for one would not stand in
+the way of his girl's happiness. A day would come when, very beautifully
+and tenderly, he would hand her over to Magnet, his favourite daughter
+to his trusted friend. "Well, my boy, there's no one in all the
+world----" he would begin.
+
+It would be a touching parting. "Don't forget your old father, Maggots,"
+he would say. At such a moment that quaint nickname would surely not be
+resented....
+
+He reflected how much he had always preferred Marjorie to Daffy. She was
+brighter--more like him. Daffy was unresponsive, with a touch of
+bitterness under her tongue....
+
+He was already dreaming he was a widower, rather infirm, the object of
+Magnet's and Marjorie's devoted care, when the song ceased, and the wife
+he had for the purpose of reveries just consigned so carelessly to the
+cemetery proposed that they should have a little game that every one
+could play at. A number of pencils and slips of paper appeared in her
+hands. She did not want the girls to exhaust their repertory on this
+first occasion--and besides, Mr. Pope liked games in which one did
+things with pencils and strips of paper. Mr. Magnet wished the singing
+to go on, he said, but he was overruled.
+
+So for a time every one played a little game in which Mr. Pope was
+particularly proficient. Indeed, it was rare that any one won but Mr.
+Pope. It was called "The Great Departed," and it had such considerable
+educational value that all the children had to play at it whenever he
+wished.
+
+It was played in this manner; one of the pseudo twins opened a book and
+dabbed a finger on the page, and read out the letter immediately at the
+tip of her finger, then all of them began to write as hard as they
+could, writing down the names of every great person they could think of,
+whose name began with that letter. At the end of five minutes Mr. Pope
+said Stop! and then began to read his list out, beginning with the first
+name. Everybody who had that name crossed it out and scored one, and
+after his list was exhausted all the surviving names on the next list
+were read over in the same way, and so on. The names had to be the names
+of dead celebrated people, only one monarch of the same name of the same
+dynasty was allowed, and Mr. Pope adjudicated on all doubtful cases. It
+was great fun.
+
+The first two games were won as usual by Mr. Pope, and then Mr.
+Wintersloan, who had been a little distraught in his manner, brightened
+up and scribbled furiously.
+
+The letter was _D_, and after Mr. Pope had rehearsed a tale of nine and
+twenty names, Mr. Wintersloan read out his list in that curious voice of
+his which suggested nothing so much as some mobile drink glucking out of
+the neck of a bottle held upside down.
+
+"Dahl," he began.
+
+"Who was Dahl?" asked Mr. Pope.
+
+"'Vented dahlias," said Mr. Wintersloan, with a sigh. "Danton."
+
+"Forgot him," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Davis."
+
+"Davis?"
+
+"Davis Straits. Doe."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"John Doe, Richard Roe."
+
+"Legal fiction, I'm afraid," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Dam," said Mr. Wintersloan, and added after a slight pause: "Anthony
+van."
+
+Mr. Pope made an interrogative noise.
+
+"Painter--eighteenth century--Dutch. Dam, Jan van, his son. Dam,
+Frederich van. Dam, Wilhelm van. Dam, Diedrich van. Dam, Wilhelmina,
+wood engraver, gifted woman. Diehl."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Painter--dead--famous. See Duesseldorf. It's all painters now--all
+guaranteed dead, all good men. Deeds of Norfolk, the aquarellist,
+Denton, Dibbs."
+
+"Er?" said Mr. Pope.
+
+"The Warwick Claude, _you_ know. Died 1823."
+
+"Dickson, Dunting, John Dickery. Peter Dickery, William Dock--I beg your
+pardon?"
+
+Mr. Pope was making a protesting gesture, but Mr. Wintersloan's bearing
+was invincible, and he proceeded.
+
+In the end he emerged triumphant with forty-nine names, mostly painters
+for whose fame he answered, but whose reputations were certainly new to
+every one else present. "I can go on like that," said Mr. Wintersloan,
+"with any letter," and turned that hard little smile full on Marjorie.
+"I didn't see how to do it at first. I just cast about. But I know a
+frightful lot of painters. No end. Shall we try again?"
+
+Marjorie glanced at her father. Mr. Wintersloan's methods were all too
+evident to her. A curious feeling pervaded the room that Mr. Pope didn't
+think Mr. Wintersloan's conduct honourable, and that he might even go
+some way towards saying so.
+
+So Mrs. Pope became very brisk and stirring, and said she thought that
+now perhaps a charade would be more amusing. It didn't do to keep on at
+a game too long. She asked Rom and Daphne and Theodore and Mr.
+Wintersloan to go out, and they all agreed readily, particularly Rom.
+"Come on!" said Rom to Mr. Wintersloan. Everybody else shifted into an
+audience-like group between the piano and the what-not. Mr. Magnet sat
+at Marjorie's feet, while Syd played a kind of voluntary, and Mr. Pope
+leant back in his chair, with his brows knit and lips moving, trying to
+remember something.
+
+The charade _was_ very amusing. The word was Catarrh, and Mr.
+Wintersloan, as the patient in the last act being given gruel, surpassed
+even the children's very high expectations. Rom, as his nurse, couldn't
+keep her hands off him. Then the younger people kissed round and were
+packed off to bed, and the rest of the party went to the door upon the
+lawn and admired the night. It was a glorious summer night, deep blue,
+and rimmed warmly by the afterglow, moonless, and with a few big
+lamp-like stars above the black still shapes of trees.
+
+Mrs. Pope said they would all accompany their guests to the gate at the
+end of the avenue--in spite of the cockchafers.
+
+Mr. Pope's ankle, however, excused him; the cordiality of his parting
+from Mr. Wintersloan seemed a trifle forced, and he limped thoughtfully
+and a little sombrely towards the study to see if he could find an
+Encyclopaedia or some such book of reference that would give the names of
+the lesser lights of Dutch, Italian, and English painting during the
+last two centuries.
+
+He felt that Mr. Wintersloan had established an extraordinarily bad
+precedent.
+
+
+Sec. 10
+
+Marjorie discovered that she and Mr. Magnet had fallen a little behind
+the others. She would have quickened her pace, but Mr. Magnet stopped
+short and said: "Marjorie!"
+
+"When I saw you standing there and singing," said Mr. Magnet, and was
+short of breath for a moment.
+
+Marjorie's natural gift for interruption failed her altogether.
+
+"I felt I would rather be able to call you mine--than win an empire."
+
+The pause seemed to lengthen, between them, and Marjorie's remark when
+she made it at last struck her even as she made it as being but poorly
+conceived. She had some weak idea of being self-depreciatory.
+
+"I think you had better win an empire, Mr. Magnet," she said meekly.
+
+Then, before anything more was possible, they had come up to Daffy and
+Mr. Wintersloan and her mother at the gate....
+
+As they returned Mrs. Pope was loud in the praises of Will Magnet. She
+had a little clear-cut voice, very carefully and very skilfully
+controlled, and she dilated on his modesty, his quiet helpfulness at
+table, his ready presence of mind. She pointed out instances of those
+admirable traits, incidents small in themselves but charming in their
+implications. When somebody wanted junket, he had made no fuss, he had
+just helped them to junket. "So modest and unassuming," sang Mrs. Pope.
+"You'd never dream he was quite rich and famous. Yet every book he
+writes is translated into Russian and German and all sorts of languages.
+I suppose he's almost the greatest humorist we have. That play of his;
+what is it called?--_Our Owd Woman_--has been performed nearly twelve
+hundred times! I think that is the most wonderful of gifts. Think of the
+people it has made happy."
+
+The conversation was mainly monologue. Both Marjorie and Daffy were
+unusually thoughtful.
+
+
+Sec. 11
+
+Marjorie ended the long day in a worldly mood.
+
+"Penny for your thoughts," said Daffy abruptly, brushing the long
+firelit rapids of her hair.
+
+"Not for sale," said Marjorie, and roused herself. "I've had a long
+day."
+
+"It's always just the time I particularly wish I was a man," she
+remarked after a brief return to meditation. "Fancy, no hair-pins, no
+brushing, no tie-up to get lost about, no strings. I suppose they
+haven't strings?"
+
+"They haven't," said Daffy with conviction.
+
+She met Marjorie's interrogative eye. "Father would swear at them," she
+explained. "He'd naturally tie himself up--and we should hear of it."
+
+"I didn't think of that," said Marjorie, and stuck out her chin upon her
+fists. "Sound induction."
+
+She forgot this transitory curiosity.
+
+"Suppose one had a maid, Daffy--a real maid ... a maid who mended your
+things ... did your hair while you read...."
+
+"Oh! here goes," and she stood up and grappled with the task of
+undressing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SECOND
+
+THE TWO PROPOSALS OF MR. MAGNET
+
+
+Sec. 1
+
+It was presently quite evident to Marjorie that Mr. Magnet intended to
+propose marriage to her, and she did not even know whether she wanted
+him to do so.
+
+She had met him first the previous summer while she had been staying
+with the Petley-Cresthams at High Windower, and it had been evident that
+he found her extremely attractive. She had never had a real grown man at
+her feet before, and she had found it amazingly entertaining. She had
+gone for a walk with him the morning before she came away--a frank and
+ingenuous proceeding that made Mrs. Petley-Crestham say the girl knew
+what she was about, and she had certainly coquetted with him in an
+extraordinary manner at golf-croquet. After that Oxbridge had swallowed
+her up, and though he had called once on her mother while Marjorie was
+in London during the Christmas vacation, he hadn't seen her again. He
+had written--which was exciting--a long friendly humorous letter about
+nothing in particular, with an air of its being quite the correct thing
+for him to do, and she had answered, and there had been other exchanges.
+But all sorts of things had happened in the interval, and Marjorie had
+let him get into quite a back place in her thoughts--the fact that he
+was a member of her father's club had seemed somehow to remove him from
+a great range of possibilities--until a drift in her mother's talk
+towards him and a letter from him with an indefinable change in tone
+towards intimacy, had restored him to importance. Now here he was in the
+foreground of her world again, evidently more ardent than ever, and with
+a portentous air of being about to do something decisive at the very
+first opportunity. What was he going to do? What had her mother been
+hinting at? And what, in fact, did the whole thing amount to?
+
+Marjorie was beginning to realize that this was going to be a very
+serious affair indeed for her--and that she was totally unprepared to
+meet it.
+
+It had been very amusing, very amusing indeed, at the Petley-Cresthams',
+but there were moments now when she felt towards Mr. Magnet exactly as
+she would have felt if he had been one of the Oxbridge tradesmen
+hovering about her with a "little account," full of apparently
+exaggerated items....
+
+Her thoughts and feelings were all in confusion about this business. Her
+mind was full of scraps, every sort of idea, every sort of attitude
+contributed something to that Twentieth Century jumble. For example, and
+so far as its value went among motives, it was by no means a trivial
+consideration; she wanted a proposal for its own sake. Daffy had had a
+proposal last year, and although it wasn't any sort of eligible
+proposal, still there it was, and she had given herself tremendous airs.
+But Marjorie would certainly have preferred some lighter kind of
+proposal than that which now threatened her. She felt that behind Mr.
+Magnet were sanctions; that she wasn't free to deal with this proposal
+as she liked. He was at Buryhamstreet almost with the air of being her
+parents' guest.
+
+Less clear and more instinctive than her desire for a proposal was her
+inclination to see just all that Mr. Magnet was disposed to do, and hear
+all that he was disposed to say. She was curious. He didn't behave in
+the least as she had expected a lover to behave. But then none of the
+boys, the "others" with whom she had at times stretched a hand towards
+the hem of emotion, had ever done that. She had an obscure feeling that
+perhaps presently Mr. Magnet must light up, be stirred and stirring.
+Even now his voice changed very interestingly when he was alone with
+her. His breath seemed to go--as though something had pricked his lung.
+If it hadn't been for that new, disconcerting realization of an official
+pressure behind him, I think she would have been quite ready to
+experiment extensively with his emotions....
+
+But she perceived as she lay awake next morning that she wasn't free for
+experiments any longer. What she might say or do now would be taken up
+very conclusively. And she had no idea what she wanted to say or do.
+
+Marriage regarded in the abstract--that is to say, with Mr. Magnet out
+of focus--was by no means an unattractive proposal to her. It was very
+much at the back of Marjorie's mind that after Oxbridge, unless she was
+prepared to face a very serious row indeed and go to teach in a
+school--and she didn't feel any call whatever to teach in a school--she
+would probably have to return to Hartstone Square and share Daffy's room
+again, and assist in the old collective, wearisome task of propitiating
+her father. The freedoms of Oxbridge had enlarged her imagination until
+that seemed an almost unendurably irksome prospect. She had tasted life
+as it could be in her father's absence, and she was beginning to realize
+just what an impossible person he was. Marriage was escape from all
+that; it meant not only respectful parents but a house of her very own,
+furniture of her choice, great freedom of movement, an authority, an
+importance. She had seen what it meant to be a prosperously married
+young woman in the person of one or two resplendent old girls revisiting
+Bennett College, scattering invitations, offering protections and
+opportunities....
+
+Of course there is love.
+
+Marjorie told herself, as she had been trained to tell herself, to be
+sensible, but something within her repeated: _there is love_.
+
+Of course she liked Mr. Magnet. She really did like Mr. Magnet very
+much. She had had her girlish dreams, had fallen in love with pictures
+of men and actors and a music master and a man who used to ride by as
+she went to school; but wasn't this desolating desire for
+self-abandonment rather silly?--something that one left behind with much
+else when it came to putting up one's hair and sensible living,
+something to blush secretly about and hide from every eye?
+
+Among other discrepant views that lived together in her mind as cats and
+rats and parrots and squirrels and so forth used to live together in
+those Happy Family cages unseemly men in less well-regulated days were
+wont to steer about our streets, was one instilled by quite a large
+proportion of the novels she had read, that a girl was a sort of
+self-giving prize for high moral worth. Mr. Magnet she knew was good,
+was kind, was brave with that truer courage, moral courage, which goes
+with his type of physique; he was modest, unassuming, well off and
+famous, and very much in love with her. His True Self, as Mrs. Pope had
+pointed out several times, must be really very beautiful, and in some
+odd way a line of Shakespeare had washed up in her consciousness as
+being somehow effectual on his behalf:
+
+    "Love looks not with the eye but with the mind."
+
+She felt she ought to look with the mind. Nice people surely never
+looked in any other way. It seemed from this angle almost her duty to
+love him....
+
+Perhaps she did love him, and mistook the symptoms. She did her best to
+mistake the symptoms. But if she did truly love him, would it seem so
+queer and important and antagonistic as it did that his hair was rather
+thin upon the crown of his head?
+
+She wished she hadn't looked down on him....
+
+Poor Marjorie! She was doing her best to be sensible, and she felt
+herself adrift above a clamorous abyss of feared and forbidden thoughts.
+Down there she knew well enough it wasn't thus that love must come. Deep
+in her soul, the richest thing in her life indeed and the best thing she
+had to give humanity, was a craving for beauty that at times became
+almost intolerable, a craving for something other than beauty and yet
+inseparably allied with it, a craving for deep excitement, for a sort of
+glory in adventure, for passion--for things akin to great music and
+heroic poems and bannered traditions of romance. She had hidden away in
+her an immense tumultuous appetite for life, an immense tumultuous
+capacity for living. To be loved beautifully was surely the crown and
+climax of her being.
+
+She did not dare to listen to these deeps, yet these insurgent voices
+filled her. Even while she drove her little crocodile of primly sensible
+thoughts to their sane appointed conclusion, her blood and nerves and
+all her being were protesting that Mr. Magnet would not do, that
+whatever other worthiness was in him, regarded as a lover he was
+preposterous and flat and foolish and middle-aged, and that it were
+better never to have lived than to put the treasure of her life to his
+meagre lips and into his hungry, unattractive arms. "The ugliness of
+it! The spiritless horror of it!" so dumbly and formlessly the rebel
+voices urged.
+
+"One has to be sensible," said Marjorie to herself, suddenly putting
+down Shaw's book on Municipal Trading, which she imagined she had been
+reading....
+
+(Perhaps all marriage was horrid, and one had to get over it.)
+
+That was rather what her mother had conveyed to her.
+
+
+Sec. 2
+
+Mr. Magnet made his first proposal in form three days later, after
+coming twice to tea and staying on to supper. He had played croquet with
+Mr. Pope, he had been beaten twelve times in spite of twinges in the
+sprained ankle--heroically borne--had had three victories lucidly
+explained away, and heard all the particulars of the East Purblow
+experiment three times over, first in relation to the new Labour
+Exchanges, then regarded at rather a different angle in relation to
+female betting, tally-men, and the sanctities of the home generally, and
+finally in a more exhaustive style, to show its full importance from
+every side and more particularly as demonstrating the gross injustice
+done to Mr. Pope by the neglect of its lessons, a neglect too systematic
+to be accidental, in the social reform literature of the time. Moreover,
+Mr. Magnet had been made to understand thoroughly how several later
+quasi-charitable attempts of a similar character had already become, or
+must inevitably become, unsatisfactory through their failure to follow
+exactly in the lines laid down by Mr. Pope.
+
+Mr. Pope was really very anxious to be pleasant and agreeable to Mr.
+Magnet, and he could think of no surer way of doing so than by giving
+him an unrestrained intimacy of conversation that prevented anything
+more than momentary intercourse between his daughter and her admirer.
+And not only did Mr. Magnet find it difficult to get away from Mr. Pope
+without offence, but whenever by any chance Mr. Pope was detached for a
+moment Mr. Magnet discovered that Marjorie either wasn't to be seen, or
+if she was she wasn't to be isolated by any device he could contrive,
+before the unappeasable return of Mr. Pope.
+
+Mr. Magnet did not get his chance therefore until Lady Petchworth's
+little gathering at Summerhay Park.
+
+Lady Petchworth was Mrs. Pope's oldest friend, and one of those brighter
+influences which save our English country-side from lassitude. She had
+been more fortunate than Mrs. Pope, for while Mr. Pope with that
+aptitude for disadvantage natural to his temperament had, he said, been
+tied to a business that never gave him a chance, Lady Petchworth's
+husband had been a reckless investor of exceptional good-luck. In
+particular, led by a dream, he had put most of his money into a series
+of nitrate deposits in caves in Saghalien haunted by benevolent
+penguins, and had been rewarded beyond the dreams of avarice. His
+foresight had received the fitting reward of a knighthood, and Sir
+Thomas, after restoring the Parish Church at Summerhay in a costly and
+destructive manner, spent his declining years in an enviable contentment
+with Lady Petchworth and the world at large, and died long before
+infirmity made him really troublesome.
+
+Good fortune had brought out Lady Petchworth's social aptitudes.
+Summerhay Park was everything that a clever woman, inspired by that
+gardening literature which has been so abundant in the opening years of
+the twentieth century, could make it. It had rosaries and rock gardens,
+sundials and yew hedges, pools and ponds, lead figures and stone urns,
+box borderings and wilderness corners and hundreds and hundreds of feet
+of prematurely-aged red-brick wall with broad herbaceous borders; the
+walks had primroses, primulas and cowslips in a quite disingenuous
+abundance, and in spring the whole extent of the park was gay, here with
+thousands of this sort of daffodil just bursting out and here with
+thousands of that sort of narcissus just past its prime, and every patch
+ready to pass itself off in its naturalized way as the accidental native
+flower of the field, if only it hadn't been for all the other different
+varieties coming on or wilting-off in adjacent patches....
+
+Her garden was only the beginning of Lady Petchworth's activities. She
+had a model dairy, and all her poultry was white, and so far as she was
+able to manage it she made Summerhay a model village. She overflowed
+with activities, it was astonishing in one so plump and blonde, and
+meeting followed meeting in the artistic little red-brick and
+green-stained timber village hall she had erected. Now it was the
+National Theatre and now it was the National Mourning; now it was the
+Break Up of the Poor Law, and now the Majority Report, now the Mothers'
+Union, and now Socialism, and now Individualism, but always something
+progressive and beneficial. She did her best to revive the old village
+life, and brought her very considerable powers of compulsion to make the
+men dance in simple old Morris dances, dressed up in costumes they
+secretly abominated, and to induce the mothers to dress their children
+in art-coloured smocks instead of the prints and blue serge frocks they
+preferred. She did not despair, she said, of creating a spontaneous
+peasant art movement in the district, springing from the people and
+expressing the people, but so far it had been necessary to import not
+only instructors and material, but workers to keep the thing going, so
+sluggish had the spontaneity of our English countryside become.
+
+Her little gatherings were quite distinctive of her. They were a sort of
+garden party extending from mid-day to six or seven; there would be a
+nucleus of house guests, and the highways and byeways on every hand
+would be raided to supply persons and interests. She had told her friend
+to "bring the girls over for the day," and flung an invitation to Mr.
+Pope, who had at once excused himself on the score of his ankle. Mr.
+Pope was one of those men who shun social gatherings--ostensibly because
+of a sterling simplicity of taste, but really because his intolerable
+egotism made him feel slighted and neglected on these occasions. He told
+his wife he would be far happier with a book at home, exhorted her not
+to be late, and was seen composing himself to read the "Vicar of
+Wakefield"--whenever they published a new book Mr. Pope pretended to
+read an old one--as the hired waggonette took the rest of his
+family--Theodore very unhappy in buff silk and a wide Stuart
+collar--down the avenue.
+
+They found a long lunch table laid on the lawn beneath the chestnuts,
+and in full view of the poppies and forget-me-nots around the stone
+obelisk, a butler and three men servants with brass buttons and red and
+white striped waistcoats gave dignity to the scene, and beyond, on the
+terrace amidst abundance of deckchairs, cane chairs, rugs, and cushions,
+a miscellaneous and increasing company seethed under Lady Petchworth's
+plump but entertaining hand. There were, of course, Mr. Magnet, and his
+friend Mr. Wintersloan--Lady Petchworth had been given to understand
+how the land lay; and there was Mr. Bunford Paradise the musician, who
+was doing his best to teach a sullen holiday class in the village
+schoolroom to sing the artless old folk songs of Surrey again, in spite
+of the invincible persuasion of everybody in the class that the songs
+were rather indelicate and extremely silly; there were the Rev. Jopling
+Baynes, and two Cambridge undergraduates in flannels, and a Doctor
+something or other from London. There was also the Hon. Charles Muskett,
+Lord Pottinger's cousin and estate agent, in tweeds and very helpful.
+The ladies included Mrs. Raff, the well-known fashion writer, in a
+wonderful costume, the anonymous doctor's wife, three or four
+neighbouring mothers with an undistinguished daughter or so, and two
+quiet-mannered middle-aged ladies, whose names Marjorie could not catch,
+and whom Lady Petchworth, in that well-controlled voice of hers,
+addressed as Kate and Julia, and seemed on the whole disposed to treat
+as humorous. There was also Fraulein Schmidt in charge of Lady
+Petchworth's three tall and already abundant children, Prunella,
+Prudence, and Mary, and a young, newly-married couple of cousins, who
+addressed each other in soft undertones and sat apart. These were the
+chief items that became distinctive in Marjorie's survey; but there were
+a number of other people who seemed to come and go, split up, fuse,
+change their appearance slightly, and behave in the way inadequately
+apprehended people do behave on these occasions.
+
+Marjorie very speedily found her disposition to take a detached and
+amused view of the entertainment in conflict with more urgent demands.
+From the outset Mr. Magnet loomed upon her--he loomed nearer and nearer.
+He turned his eye upon her as she came up to the wealthy expanse of
+Lady Petchworth's presence, like some sort of obsolescent iron-clad
+turning a dull-grey, respectful, loving searchlight upon a fugitive
+torpedo boat, and thereafter he seemed to her to be looking at her
+without intermission, relentlessly, and urging himself towards her. She
+wished he wouldn't. She hadn't at all thought he would on this occasion.
+
+At first she relied upon her natural powers of evasion, and the presence
+of a large company. Then gradually it became apparent that Lady
+Petchworth and her mother, yes--and the party generally, and the gardens
+and the weather and the stars in their courses were of a mind to
+co-operate in giving opportunity for Mr. Magnet's unmistakable
+intentions.
+
+And Marjorie with that instability of her sex which has been a theme for
+masculine humour in all ages, suddenly and with an extraordinary
+violence didn't want to make up her mind about Mr. Magnet. She didn't
+want to accept him; and as distinctly she didn't want to refuse him. She
+didn't even want to be thought about as making up her mind about
+him--which was, so to speak, an enlargement of her previous
+indisposition. She didn't even want to seem to avoid him, or to be
+thinking about him, or aware of his existence.
+
+After the greeting of Lady Petchworth she had succeeded very clumsily in
+not seeing Mr. Magnet, and had addressed herself to Mr. Wintersloan, who
+was standing a little apart, looking under his hand, with one eye shut,
+at the view between the tree stems towards Buryhamstreet. He told her
+that he thought he had found something "pooty" that hadn't been done,
+and she did her best to share his artistic interests with a vivid sense
+of Mr. Magnet's tentative incessant approach behind her.
+
+He joined them, and she made a desperate attempt to entangle Mr.
+Wintersloan in a three-cornered talk in vain. He turned away at the
+first possible opportunity, and left her to an embarrassed and
+eloquently silent _tete-a-tete_. Mr. Magnet's professional wit had
+deserted him. "It's nice to see you again," he said after an immense
+interval. "Shall we go and look at the aviary?"
+
+"I hate to see birds in cages," said Marjorie, "and it's frightfully
+jolly just here. Do you think Mr. Wintersloan will paint this? He does
+paint, doesn't he?"
+
+"I know him best in black and white," said Mr. Magnet.
+
+Marjorie embarked on entirely insincere praises of Mr. Wintersloan's
+manner and personal effect; Magnet replied tepidly, with an air of
+reserving himself to grapple with the first conversational opportunity.
+
+"It's a splendid day for tennis," said Marjorie. "I think I shall play
+tennis all the afternoon."
+
+"I don't play well enough for this publicity."
+
+"It's glorious exercise," said Marjorie. "Almost as good as dancing,"
+and she decided to stick to that resolution. "I never lose a chance of
+tennis if I can help it."
+
+She glanced round and detected a widening space between themselves and
+the next adjacent group.
+
+"They're looking at the goldfish," she said. "Let us join them."
+
+Everyone moved away as they came up to the little round pond, but then
+Marjorie had luck, and captured Prunella, and got her to hold hands and
+talk, until Fraulein Schmidt called the child away. And then Marjorie
+forced Mr. Magnet to introduce her to Mr. Bunford Paradise. She had a
+bright idea of sitting between Prunella and Mary at the lunch table,
+but a higher providence had assigned her to a seat at the end between
+Julia--or was it Kate?--and Mr. Magnet. However, one of the
+undergraduates was opposite, and she saved herself from undertones by
+talking across to him boldly about Newnham, though she hadn't an idea of
+his name or college. From that she came to tennis. To her inflamed
+imagination he behaved as if she was under a Taboo, but she was
+desperate, and had pledged him and his friend to a foursome before the
+meal was over.
+
+"Don't _you_ play?" said the undergraduate to Mr. Magnet.
+
+"Very little," said Mr. Magnet. "Very little--"
+
+At the end of an hour she was conspicuously and publicly shepherded from
+the tennis court by Mrs. Pope.
+
+"Other people want to play," said her mother in a clear little
+undertone.
+
+Mr. Magnet fielded her neatly as she came off the court.
+
+"You play tennis like--a wild bird," he said, taking possession of her.
+
+Only Marjorie's entire freedom from Irish blood saved him from a
+vindictive repartee.
+
+
+Sec. 3
+
+"Shall we go and look at the aviary?" said Mr. Magnet, reverting to a
+favourite idea of his, and then remembered she did not like to see caged
+birds.
+
+"Perhaps we might see the Water Garden?" he said. "The Water Garden is
+really very delightful indeed--anyhow. You ought to see that."
+
+On the spur of the moment, Marjorie could think of no objection to the
+Water Garden, and he led her off.
+
+"I often think of that jolly walk we had last summer," said Mr. Magnet,
+"and how you talked about your work at Oxbridge."
+
+Marjorie fell into a sudden rapture of admiration for a butterfly.
+
+Twice more was Mr. Magnet baffled, and then they came to the little pool
+of water lilies with its miniature cascade of escape at the head and
+source of the Water Garden. "One of Lady Petchworth's great successes,"
+said Mr. Magnet.
+
+"I suppose the lotus is like the water-lily," said Marjorie, with no
+hope of staving off the inevitable----
+
+She stood very still by the little pool, and in spite of her pensive
+regard of the floating blossoms, stiffly and intensely aware of his
+relentless regard.
+
+"Marjorie," came his voice at last, strangely softened. "There is
+something I want to say to you."
+
+She made no reply.
+
+"Ever since we met last summer----"
+
+A clear cold little resolution not to stand this, had established itself
+in Marjorie's mind. If she must decide, she _would_ decide. He had
+brought it upon himself.
+
+"Marjorie," said Mr. Magnet, "I love you."
+
+She lifted a clear unhesitating eye to his face. "I'm sorry, Mr.
+Magnet," she said.
+
+"I wanted to ask you to marry me," he said.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mr. Magnet," she repeated.
+
+They looked at one another. She felt a sort of scared exultation at
+having done it; her mother might say what she liked.
+
+"I love you very much," he said, at a loss.
+
+"I'm sorry," she repeated obstinately.
+
+"I thought you cared for me a little."
+
+She left that unanswered. She had a curious feeling that there was no
+getting away from this splashing, babbling pool, that she was fixed
+there until Mr. Magnet chose to release her, and that he didn't mean to
+release her yet. In which case she would go on refusing.
+
+"I'm disappointed," he said.
+
+Marjorie could only think that she was sorry again, but as she had
+already said that three times, she remained awkwardly silent.
+
+"Is it because----" he began and stopped.
+
+"It isn't because of anything. Please let's go back to the others, Mr.
+Magnet. I'm sorry if I'm disappointing."
+
+And by a great effort she turned about.
+
+Mr. Magnet remained regarding her--I can only compare it to the
+searching preliminary gaze of an artistic photographer. For a crucial
+minute in his life Marjorie hated him. "I don't understand," he said at
+last.
+
+Then with a sort of naturalness that ought to have touched her he said:
+"Is it possible, Marjorie--that I might hope?--that I have been
+inopportune?"
+
+She answered at once with absolute conviction.
+
+"I don't think so, Mr. Magnet."
+
+"I'm sorry," he said, "to have bothered you."
+
+"_I'm_ sorry," said Marjorie.
+
+A long silence followed.
+
+"I'm sorry too," he said.
+
+They said no more, but began to retrace their steps. It was over.
+Abruptly, Mr. Magnet's bearing had become despondent--conspicuously
+despondent. "I had hoped," he said, and sighed.
+
+With a thrill of horror Marjorie perceived he meant to _look_ rejected,
+let every one see he had been rejected--after encouragement.
+
+What would they think? How would they look? What conceivably might they
+not say? Something of the importance of the thing she had done, became
+manifest to her. She felt first intimations of regret. They would all be
+watching, Mother, Daffy, Lady Petchworth. She would reappear with this
+victim visibly suffering beside her. What could she say to straighten
+his back and lift his chin? She could think of nothing. Ahead at the end
+of the shaded path she could see the copious white form, the agitated
+fair wig and red sunshade of Lady Petchworth----
+
+
+Sec. 4
+
+Mrs. Pope's eye was relentless; nothing seemed hidden from it; nothing
+indeed was hidden from it; Mr. Magnet's back was diagrammatic. Marjorie
+was a little flushed and bright-eyed, and professed herself eager, with
+an unnatural enthusiasm, to play golf-croquet. It was eloquently
+significant that Mr. Magnet did not share her eagerness, declined to
+play, and yet when she had started with the Rev. Jopling Baynes as
+partner, stood regarding the game with a sort of tender melancholy from
+the shade of the big chestnut-tree.
+
+Mrs. Pope joined him unobtrusively.
+
+"You're not playing, Mr. Magnet," she remarked.
+
+"I'm a looker-on, this time," he said with a sigh.
+
+"Marjorie's winning, I think," said Mrs. Pope.
+
+He made no answer for some seconds.
+
+"She looks so charming in that blue dress," he remarked at last, and
+sighed from the lowest deeps.
+
+"That bird's-egg blue suits her," said Mrs. Pope, ignoring the sigh.
+"She's clever in her girlish way, she chooses all her own
+dresses,--colours, material, everything."
+
+(And also, though Mrs. Pope had not remarked it, she concealed her
+bills.)
+
+There came a still longer interval, which Mrs. Pope ended with the
+slightest of shivers. She perceived Mr. Magnet was heavy for sympathy
+and ripe to confide. "I think," she said, "it's a little cool here.
+Shall we walk to the Water Garden, and see if there are any white
+lilies?"
+
+"There are," said Mr. Magnet sorrowfully, "and they are very
+beautiful--_quite_ beautiful."
+
+He turned to the path along which he had so recently led Marjorie.
+
+He glanced back as they went along between Lady Petchworth's herbaceous
+border and the poppy beds. "She's so full of life," he said, with a sigh
+in his voice.
+
+Mrs. Pope knew she must keep silent.
+
+"I asked her to marry me this afternoon," Mr. Magnet blurted out. "I
+couldn't help it."
+
+Mrs. Pope made her silence very impressive.
+
+"I know I ought not to have done so without consulting you"--he went on
+lamely; "I'm very much in love with her. It's----It's done no harm."
+
+Mrs. Pope's voice was soft and low. "I had no idea, Mr. Magnet.... You
+know she is very young. Twenty. A mother----"
+
+"I know," said Magnet. "I can quite understand. But I've done no harm.
+She refused me. I shall go away to-morrow. Go right away for ever....
+I'm sorry."
+
+Another long silence.
+
+"To me, of course, she's just a child," Mrs. Pope said at last. "She
+_is_ only a child, Mr. Magnet. She could have had no idea that anything
+of the sort was in your mind----"
+
+Her words floated away into the stillness.
+
+For a time they said no more. The lilies came into sight, dreaming under
+a rich green shade on a limpid pool of brown water, water that slept and
+brimmed over as it were, unconsciously into a cool splash and ripple of
+escape. "How beautiful!" cried Mrs. Pope, for a moment genuine.
+
+"I spoke to her here," said Mr. Magnet.
+
+The fountains of his confidence were unloosed.
+
+"Now I've spoken to you about it, Mrs. Pope," he said, "I can tell you
+just how I--oh, it's the only word--adore her. She seems so sweet and
+easy--so graceful----"
+
+Mrs. Pope turned on him abruptly, and grasped his hands; she was deeply
+moved. "I can't tell you," she said, "what it means to a mother to hear
+such things----"
+
+Words failed her, and for some moments they engaged in a mutual
+pressure.
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Magnet, and had a queer wish it was the mother he had to
+deal with.
+
+"Are you sure, Mr. Magnet," Mrs. Pope went on as their emotions
+subsided, "that she really meant what she said? Girls are very strange
+creatures----"
+
+"She seems so clear and positive."
+
+"Her manner is always clear and positive."
+
+"Yes. I know."
+
+"I know she _has_ cared for you."
+
+"No!"
+
+"A mother sees. When your name used to be mentioned----. But these are
+not things to talk about. There is something--something sacred----"
+
+"Yes," he said. "Yes. Only----Of course, one thing----"
+
+Mrs. Pope seemed lost in the contemplation of water-lilies.
+
+"I wondered," said Mr. Magnet, and paused again.
+
+Then, almost breathlessly, "I wondered if there should be perhaps--some
+one else?"
+
+She shook her head slowly. "I should know," she said.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"I know I should know."
+
+"Perhaps recently?"
+
+"I am sure I should know. A mother's intuition----"
+
+Memories possessed her for awhile. "A girl of twenty is a mass of
+contradictions. I can remember myself as if it was yesterday. Often one
+says no, or yes--out of sheer nervousness.... I am sure there is no
+other attachment----"
+
+It occurred to her that she had said enough. "What a dignity that old
+gold-fish has!" she remarked. "He waves his tail--as if he were a beadle
+waving little boys out of church."
+
+
+Sec. 5
+
+Mrs. Pope astonished Marjorie by saying nothing about the all too
+obvious event of the day for some time, but her manner to her second
+daughter on their way home was strangely gentle. It was as if she had
+realized for the first time that regret and unhappiness might come into
+that young life. After supper, however, she spoke. They had all gone out
+just before the children went to bed to look for the new moon; Daffy was
+showing the pseudo-twins the old moon in the new moon's arms, and
+Marjorie found herself standing by her mother's side. "I hope dear,"
+said Mrs. Pope, "that it's all for the best--and that you've done
+wisely, dear."
+
+Marjorie was astonished and moved by her mother's tone.
+
+"It's so difficult to know what _is_ for the best," Mrs. Pope went on.
+
+"I had to do--as I did," said Marjorie.
+
+"I only hope you may never find you have made a Great Mistake, dear. He
+cares for you very, very much."
+
+"Oh! we see it now!" cried Rom, "we see it now! Mummy, have you seen it?
+Like a little old round ghost being nursed!"
+
+When Marjorie said "Good-night," Mrs. Pope kissed her with an
+unaccustomed effusion.
+
+It occurred to Marjorie that after all her mother had no selfish end to
+serve in this affair.
+
+
+Sec. 6
+
+The idea that perhaps after all she had made a Great Mistake, the
+Mistake of her Life it might be, was quite firmly established in its
+place among all the other ideas in Marjorie's mind by the time she had
+dressed next morning. Subsequent events greatly intensified this
+persuasion. A pair of new stockings she had trusted sprang a bad hole as
+she put them on. She found two unmistakable bills from Oxbridge beside
+her plate, and her father was "horrid" at breakfast.
+
+Her father, it appeared, had bought the ordinary shares of a Cuban
+railway very extensively, on the distinct understanding that they would
+improve. In a decent universe, with a proper respect for meritorious
+gentlemen, these shares would have improved accordingly, but the weather
+had seen fit to shatter the wisdom of Mr. Pope altogether. The sugar
+crop had collapsed, the bears were at work, and every morning now saw
+his nominal capital diminished by a dozen pounds or so. I do not know
+what Mr. Pope would have done if he had not had his family to help him
+bear his trouble. As it was he relieved his tension by sending Theodore
+from the table for dropping a knife, telling Rom when she turned the
+plate round to pick the largest banana that she hadn't the self-respect
+of a child of five, and remarking sharply from behind the _Times_ when
+Daffy asked Marjorie if she was going to sketch: "Oh, for God's sake
+don't _whisper!_" Then when Mrs. Pope came round the table and tried to
+take his coffee cup softly to refill it without troubling him, he
+snatched at it, wrenched it roughly out of her hand, and said with his
+mouth full, and strangely in the manner of a snarling beast: "No' ready
+yet. Half foo'."
+
+Marjorie wanted to know why every one didn't get up and leave the room.
+She glanced at her mother and came near to speaking.
+
+And very soon she would have to come home and live in the midst of this
+again--indefinitely!
+
+After breakfast she went to the tumbledown summer-house by the duckpond,
+and contemplated the bills she had not dared to open at table. One was
+boots, nearly three pounds, the other books, over seven. "I _know_
+that's wrong," said Marjorie, and rested her chin on her hand, knitted
+her brows and tried to remember the details of orders and deliveries....
+
+Marjorie had fallen into the net prepared for our sons and daughters by
+the delicate modesty of the Oxbridge authorities in money matters, and
+she was, for her circumstances, rather heavily in debt. But I must admit
+that in Marjorie's nature the Oxbridge conditions had found an eager and
+adventurous streak that rendered her particularly apt to these
+temptations.
+
+I doubt if reticence is really a virtue in a teacher. But this is a
+fearful world, and the majority of those who instruct our youth have the
+painful sensitiveness of the cloistered soul to this spirit of terror in
+things. The young need particularly to be told truthfully and fully all
+we know of three fundamental things: the first of which is God, the
+next their duty towards their neighbours in the matter of work and
+money, and the third Sex. These things, and the adequate why of them,
+and some sort of adequate how, make all that matters in education. But
+all three are obscure and deeply moving topics, topics for which the
+donnish mind has a kind of special ineptitude, and which it evades with
+the utmost skill and delicacy. The middle part of this evaded triad was
+now being taken up in Marjorie's case by the Oxbridge tradespeople.
+
+The Oxbridge shopkeeper is peculiar among shopkeepers in the fact that
+he has to do very largely with shy and immature customers with an
+extreme and distinctive ignorance of most commercial things. They are
+for the most part short of cash, but with vague and often large
+probabilities of credit behind them, for most people, even quite
+straitened people, will pull their sons and daughters out of altogether
+unreasonable debts at the end of their university career; and so the
+Oxbridge shopkeeper becomes a sort of propagandist of the charms and
+advantages of insolvency. Alone among retailers he dislikes the sight of
+cash, declines it, affects to regard it as a coarse ignorant truncation
+of a budding relationship, begs to be permitted to wait. So the
+youngster just up from home discovers that money may stay in the pocket,
+be used for cab and train fares and light refreshments; all the rest may
+be had for the asking. Marjorie, with her innate hunger for good fine
+things, with her quite insufficient pocket-money, and the irregular
+habits of expenditure a spasmodically financed, hard-up home is apt to
+engender, fell very readily into this new, delightful custom of having
+it put down (whatever it happened to be). She had all sorts of things
+put down. She and the elder Carmel girl used to go shopping together,
+having things put down. She brightened her rooms with colour-prints and
+engravings, got herself pretty and becoming clothes, acquired a fitted
+dressing-bag already noted in this story, and one or two other trifles
+of the sort, revised her foot-wear, created a very nice little
+bookshelf, and although at times she felt a little astonished and scared
+at herself, resolutely refused to estimate the total of accumulated debt
+she had attained. Indeed until the bills came in it was impossible to do
+that, because, following the splendid example of the Carmel girl, she
+hadn't even inquired the price of quite a number of things....
+
+She didn't dare think now of the total. She lied even to herself about
+that. She had fixed on fifty pounds as the unendurable maximum. "It is
+less than fifty pounds," she said, and added: "_must_ be." But something
+in her below the threshold of consciousness knew that it was more.
+
+And now she was in her third year, and the Oxbridge tradesman, generally
+satisfied with the dimensions of her account, and no longer anxious to
+see it grow, was displaying the less obsequious side of his character.
+He wrote remarks at the bottom of his account, remarks about settlement,
+about having a bill to meet, about having something to go on with. He
+asked her to give the matter her "early attention." She had a
+disagreeable persuasion that if she wanted many more things anywhere she
+would have to pay ready money for them. She was particularly short of
+stockings. She had overlooked stockings recently.
+
+Daffy, unfortunately, was also short of stockings.
+
+And now, back with her family again, everything conspired to remind
+Marjorie of the old stringent habits from which she had had so
+delightful an interlude. She saw Daffy eye her possessions, reflect.
+This morning something of the awfulness of her position came to her....
+
+At Oxbridge she had made rather a joke of her debts.
+
+"I'd _swear_ I haven't had three pairs of house shoes," said Marjorie.
+"But what can one do?"
+
+And about the whole position the question was, "what can one do?"
+
+She proceeded with tense nervous movements to tear these two distasteful
+demands into very minute pieces. Then she collected them all together in
+the hollow of her hand, and buried them in the loose mould in a corner
+of the summer-house.
+
+"Madge," said Theodore, appearing in the sunshine of the doorway. "Aunt
+Plessington's coming! She's sent a wire. Someone's got to meet her by
+the twelve-forty train."
+
+
+Sec. 7
+
+Aunt Plessington's descent was due to her sudden discovery that
+Buryhamstreet was in close proximity to Summerhay Park, indeed only
+three miles away. She had promised a lecture on her movement for Lady
+Petchworth's village room in Summerhay, and she found that with a slight
+readjustment of dates she could combine this engagement with her
+promised visit to her husband's sister, and an evening or so of
+influence for her little Madge. So she had sent Hubert to telegraph at
+once, and "here," she said triumphantly on the platform, after a hard
+kiss at Marjorie's cheek, "we are again."
+
+There, at any rate, she was, and Uncle Hubert was up the platform seeing
+after the luggage, in his small anxious way.
+
+Aunt Plessington was a tall lean woman, with firm features, a high
+colour and a bright eye, who wore hats to show she despised them, and
+carefully dishevelled hair. Her dress was always good, but extremely old
+and grubby, and she commanded respect chiefly by her voice. Her voice
+was the true governing-class voice, a strangulated contralto, abundant
+and authoritative; it made everything she said clear and important, so
+that if she said it was a fine morning it was like leaded print in the
+_Times_, and she had over her large front teeth lips that closed quietly
+and with a slight effort after her speeches, as if the words she spoke
+tasted well and left a peaceful, secure sensation in the mouth.
+
+Uncle Hubert was a less distinguished figure, and just a little
+reminiscent of the small attached husbands one finds among the lower
+crustacea: he was much shorter and rounder than his wife, and if he had
+been left to himself, he would probably have been comfortably fat in his
+quiet little way. But Aunt Plessington had made him a Haigite, which is
+one of the fiercer kinds of hygienist, just in the nick of time. He had
+round shoulders, a large nose, and glasses that made him look
+astonished--and she said he had a great gift for practical things, and
+made him see after everything in that line while she did the lecturing.
+His directions to the porter finished, he came up to his niece. "Hello,
+Marjorie!" he said, in a peculiar voice that sounded as though his mouth
+was full (though of course, poor dear, it wasn't), "how's the First
+Class?"
+
+"A second's good enough for me, Uncle Hubert," said Marjorie, and asked
+if they would rather walk or go in the donkey cart, which was waiting
+outside with Daffy. Aunt Plessington, with an air of great _bonhomie_
+said she'd ride in the donkey cart, and they did. But no pseudo-twins or
+Theodore came to meet this arrival, as both uncle and aunt had a way of
+asking how the lessons were getting on that they found extremely
+disagreeable. Also, their aunt measured them, and incited them with loud
+encouraging noises to grow one against the other in an urgent,
+disturbing fashion.
+
+Aunt Plessington's being was consumed by thoughts of getting on. She was
+like Bernard Shaw's life force, and she really did not seem to think
+there was anything in existence but shoving. She had no idea what a lark
+life can be, and occasionally how beautiful it can be when you do not
+shove, if only, which becomes increasingly hard each year, you can get
+away from the shovers. She was one of an energetic family of eight
+sisters who had maintained themselves against a mutual pressure by the
+use of their elbows from the cradle. They had all married against each
+other, all sorts of people; two had driven their husbands into
+bishoprics and made quite typical bishop's wives, one got a leading
+barrister, one a high war-office official, and one a rich Jew, and Aunt
+Plessington, after spending some years in just missing a rich and only
+slightly demented baronet, had pounced--it's the only word for it--on
+Uncle Hubert. "A woman is nothing without a husband," she said, and took
+him. He was a fairly comfortable Oxford don in his furtive way, and
+bringing him out and using him as a basis, she specialized in
+intellectual philanthropy and evolved her Movement. It was quite
+remarkable how rapidly she overhauled her sisters again.
+
+What the Movement was, varied considerably from time to time, but it was
+always aggressively beneficial towards the lower strata of the
+community. Among its central ideas was her belief that these lower
+strata can no more be trusted to eat than they can to drink, and that
+the licensing monopoly which has made the poor man's beer thick,
+lukewarm and discreditable, and so greatly minimized its consumption,
+should be extended to the solid side of his dietary. She wanted to place
+considerable restrictions upon the sale of all sorts of meat, upon
+groceries and the less hygienic and more palatable forms of bread (which
+do not sufficiently stimulate the coatings of the stomach), to increase
+the present difficulties in the way of tobacco purchasers, and to put an
+end to that wanton and deleterious consumption of sweets which has so
+bad an effect upon the enamel of the teeth of the younger generation.
+Closely interwoven with these proposals was an adoption of the principle
+of the East Purblow Experiment, the principle of Payment in Kind. She
+was quite in agreement with Mr. Pope that poor people, when they had
+money, frittered it away, and so she proposed very extensive changes in
+the Truck Act, which could enable employers, under suitable safeguards,
+and with the advice of a small body of spinster inspectors, to supply
+hygienic housing, approved clothing of moral and wholesome sort, various
+forms of insurance, edifying rations, cuisine, medical aid and
+educational facilities as circumstances seemed to justify, in lieu of
+the wages the employees handled so ill....
+
+As no people in England will ever admit they belong to the lower strata
+of society, Aunt Plessington's Movement attracted adherents from every
+class in the community.
+
+She now, as they drove slowly to the vicarage, recounted to
+Marjorie--she had the utmost contempt for Daffy because of her irregular
+teeth and a general lack of progressive activity--the steady growth of
+the Movement, and the increasing respect shown for her and Hubert in the
+world of politico-social reform. Some of the meetings she had addressed
+had been quite full, various people had made various remarks about her,
+hostile for the most part and yet insidiously flattering, and everybody
+seemed quite glad to come to the little dinners she gave in order, she
+said, to gather social support for her reforms. She had been staying
+with the Mastersteins, who were keenly interested, and after she had
+polished off Lady Petchworth she was to visit Lady Rosenbaum. It was all
+going on swimmingly, these newer English gentry were eager to learn all
+she had to teach in the art of breaking in the Anglo-Saxon villagers,
+and now, how was Marjorie going on, and what was _she_ going to do in
+the world?
+
+Marjorie said she was working for her final.
+
+"And what then?" asked Aunt Plessington.
+
+"Not very clear, Aunt, yet."
+
+"Looking around for something to take up?"
+
+"Yes, Aunt."
+
+"Well, you've time yet. And it's just as well to see how the land lies
+before you begin. It saves going back. You'll have to come up to London
+with me for a little while, and see things, and be seen a little."
+
+"I should love to."
+
+"I'll give you a good time," said Aunt Plessington, nodding promisingly.
+"Theodore getting on in school?"
+
+"He's had his remove."
+
+"And how's Sydney getting on with the music?"
+
+"Excellently."
+
+"And Rom. Rom getting on?"
+
+Marjorie indicated a more restrained success.
+
+"And what's Daffy doing?"
+
+"Oh! _get_ on!" said Daffy and suddenly whacked the donkey rather hard.
+"I beg your pardon, Aunt?"
+
+"I asked what _you_ were up to, Daffy?"
+
+"Dusting, Aunt--and the virtues," said Daffy.
+
+"You ought to find something better than that."
+
+"Father tells me a lot about the East Purblow Experiment," said Daffy
+after a perceptible interval.
+
+"Ah!" cried Aunt Plessington with a loud encouraging note, but evidently
+making the best of it, "_that's_ better. Sociological observation."
+
+"Yes, Aunt," said Daffy, and negotiated a corner with exceptional care.
+
+
+Sec. 8
+
+Mrs. Pope, who had an instinctive disposition to pad when Aunt
+Plessington was about, had secured the presence at lunch of Mr. Magnet
+(who was after all staying on in Buryhamstreet) and the Rev. Jopling
+Baynes. Aunt Plessington liked to meet the clergy, and would always if
+she could win them over to an interest in the Movement. She opened the
+meal with a brisk attack upon him. "Come, Mr. Baynes," she said, "what
+do your people eat here? Hubert and I are making a study of the
+gluttonous side of village life, and we find that no one knows so much
+of that as the vicar--not even the doctor."
+
+The Reverend Jopling Baynes was a clergyman of the evasive type with a
+quite distinguished voice. He pursed his lips and made his eyes round.
+"Well, Mrs. Plessington," he said and fingered his glass, "it's the
+usual dietary. The usual dietary."
+
+"Too much and too rich, badly cooked and eaten too fast," said Aunt
+Plessington. "And what do you think is the remedy?"
+
+"We make an Effort," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes, "we make an Effort. A
+Hint here, a Word there."
+
+"Nothing organized?"
+
+"No," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes, and shook his head with a kind of
+resignation.
+
+"We are going to alter all that," said Aunt Plessington briskly, and
+went on to expound the Movement and the diverse way in which it might be
+possible to control and improve the domestic expenditure of the working
+classes.
+
+The Rev. Jopling Baynes listened sympathetically across the table and
+tried to satisfy a healthy appetite with as abstemious an air as
+possible while he did so. Aunt Plessington passed rapidly from general
+principles, to a sketch of the success of the movement, and Hubert, who
+had hitherto been busy with his lunch, became audible from behind the
+exceptionally large floral trophy that concealed him from his wife,
+bubbling confirmatory details. She was very bright and convincing as she
+told of this prominent man met and subdued, that leading antagonist
+confuted, and how the Bishops were coming in. She made it clear in her
+swift way that an intelligent cleric resolved to get on in this world
+_en route_ for a better one hereafter, might do worse than take up her
+Movement. And this touched in, she turned her mind to Mr. Magnet.
+
+(That floral trophy, I should explain, by the by, was exceptionally
+large because of Mrs. Pope's firm conviction that Aunt Plessington
+starved her husband. Accordingly, she masked him, and so was able to
+heap second and third helpings upon his plate without Aunt Plessington
+discovering his lapse. The avidity with which Hubert ate confirmed her
+worst suspicions and evinced, so far as anything ever did evince, his
+gratitude.)
+
+"Well, Mr. Magnet," she said, "I wish I had your sense of humour."
+
+"I wish you had," said Mr. Magnet.
+
+"I should write tracts," said Aunt Plessington.
+
+"I knew it was good for something," said Mr. Magnet, and Daffy laughed
+in a tentative way.
+
+"I mean it," said Aunt Plessington brightly. "Think if we had a
+Dickens--and you are the nearest man alive to Dickens--on the side of
+social reform to-day!"
+
+Mr. Magnet's light manner deserted him. "We do what we can, Mrs.
+Plessington," he said.
+
+"How much more might be done," said Aunt Plessington, "if humour could
+be organized."
+
+"Hear, hear!" said Mr. Pope.
+
+"If all the humorists of England could be induced to laugh at something
+together."
+
+"They do--at times," said Mr. Magnet, but the atmosphere was too serious
+for his light touch.
+
+"They could laugh it out of existence," said Aunt Plessington.
+
+It was evident Mr. Magnet was struck by the idea.
+
+"Of course," he said, "in _Punch_, to which I happen to be an obscure
+occasional contributor----"
+
+Mrs. Pope was understood to protest that he should not say such things.
+
+"We _do_ remember just what we can do either in the way of advertising
+or injury. I don't think you'll find us up against any really _solid_
+institutions."
+
+"But do you think, Mr. Magnet, you are sufficiently kind to the New?"
+Aunt Plessington persisted.
+
+"I think we are all grateful to _Punch_," said the Rev. Jopling Baynes
+suddenly and sonorously, "for its steady determination to direct our
+mirth into the proper channels. I do not think that any one can accuse
+its editor of being unmindful of his great responsibilities----"
+
+Marjorie found it a very interesting conversation.
+
+She always met her aunt again with a renewal of a kind of admiration.
+That loud authoritative rudeness, that bold thrusting forward of the
+Movement until it became the sole criterion of worth or success, this
+annihilation by disregard of all that Aunt Plessington wasn't and didn't
+and couldn't, always in the intervals seemed too good to be true. Of
+course this really was the way people got on and made a mark, but she
+felt it must be almost as trying to the nerves as aeronautics. Suppose,
+somewhere up there your engine stopped! How Aunt Plessington dominated
+the table! Marjorie tried not to catch Daffy's eye. Daffy was
+unostentatiously keeping things going, watching the mustard, rescuing
+the butter, restraining Theodore, and I am afraid not listening very
+carefully to Aunt Plessington. The children were marvellously silent and
+jumpily well-behaved, and Mr. Pope, in a very unusual state of subdued
+amiability, sat at the end of the table with the East Purblow experiment
+on the tip of his tongue. He liked Aunt Plessington, and she was good
+for him. They had the same inherent distrust of the intelligence and
+good intentions of their fellow creatures, and she had the knack of
+making him feel that he too was getting on, that she was saying things
+on his behalf in influential quarters, and in spite of the almost
+universal conspiracy (based on jealousy) to ignore his stern old-world
+virtues, he might still be able to battle his way to the floor of the
+House of Commons and there deliver himself before he died of a few
+sorely needed home-truths about motor cars, decadence and frivolity
+generally....
+
+
+Sec. 9
+
+After lunch Aunt Plessington took her little Madge for an energetic
+walk, and showed herself far more observant than the egotism of her
+conversation at that meal might have led one to suppose. Or perhaps she
+was only better informed. Aunt Plessington loved a good hard walk in the
+afternoon; and if she could get any one else to accompany her, then
+Hubert stayed at home, and curled up into a ball on a sofa somewhere,
+and took a little siesta that made him all the brighter for the
+intellectual activities of the evening. The thought of a young life,
+new, untarnished, just at the outset, just addressing itself to the task
+of getting on, always stimulated her mind extremely, and she talked to
+Marjorie with a very real and effectual desire to help her to the utmost
+of her ability.
+
+She talked of a start in life, and the sort of start she had had. She
+showed how many people who began with great advantages did not shove
+sufficiently, and so dropped out of things and weren't seen and
+mentioned. She defended herself for marrying Hubert, and showed what a
+clever shoving thing it had been to do. It startled people a little, and
+made them realize that here was a woman who wanted something more in a
+man than a handsome organ-grinder. She made it clear that she thought a
+clever marriage, if not a startlingly brilliant one, the first duty of a
+girl. It was a girl's normal gambit. She branched off to the things
+single women might do, in order to justify this view. She did not think
+single women could do very much. They might perhaps shove as
+suffragettes, but even there a husband helped tremendously--if only by
+refusing to bail you out. She ran over the cases of a number of
+prominent single women.
+
+"And what," said Aunt Plessington, "do they all amount to? A girl is so
+hampered and an old maid is so neglected," said Aunt Plessington.
+
+She paused.
+
+"Why don't you up and marry Mr. Magnet, Marjorie?" she said, with her
+most brilliant flash.
+
+"It takes two to make a marriage, aunt," said Marjorie after a slight
+hesitation.
+
+"My dear child! he worships the ground you tread on!" said Aunt
+Plessington.
+
+"He's rather--grown up," said Marjorie.
+
+"Not a bit of it. He's not forty. He's just the age."
+
+"I'm afraid it's a little impossible."
+
+"Impossible?"
+
+"You see I've refused him, aunt."
+
+"Naturally--the first time! But I wouldn't send him packing the second."
+
+There was an interval.
+
+Marjorie decided on a blunt question. "Do you really think, aunt, I
+should do well to marry Mr. Magnet?"
+
+"He'd give you everything a clever woman needs," said Aunt Plessington.
+"Everything."
+
+With swift capable touches she indicated the sort of life the future
+Mrs. Magnet might enjoy. "He's evidently a man who wants helping to a
+position," she said. "Of course his farces and things, I'm told, make no
+end of money, but he's just a crude gift by himself. Money like that is
+nothing. With a clever wife he might be all sorts of things. Without one
+he'll just subside--you know the sort of thing this sort of man does. A
+rather eccentric humorous house in the country, golf, croquet,
+horse-riding, rose-growing, queer hats."
+
+"Isn't that rather what he would like to do, aunt?" said Marjorie.
+
+"That's not _our_ business, Madge," said Aunt Plessington with humorous
+emphasis.
+
+She began to sketch out a different and altogether smarter future for
+the fortunate humorist. There would be a house in a good central
+position in London where Marjorie would have bright successful lunches
+and dinners, very unpretending and very good, and tempt the clever smart
+with the lure of the interestingly clever; there would be a bright
+little country cottage in some pretty accessible place to which Aunt and
+Uncle Plessington and able and influential people generally could be
+invited for gaily recreative and yet extremely talkative and helpful
+week-ends. Both places could be made centres of intrigue; conspiracies
+for getting on and helping and exchanging help could be organized,
+people could be warned against people whose getting-on was undesirable.
+In the midst of it all, dressed with all the natural wit she had and an
+enlarging experience, would be Marjorie, shining like a rising planet.
+It wouldn't be long, if she did things well, before she had permanent
+officials and young cabinet ministers mingling with her salad of writers
+and humorists and the Plessington connexion.
+
+"Then," said Aunt Plessington with a joyous lift in her voice, "you'll
+begin to _weed_ a little."
+
+For a time the girl's mind resisted her.
+
+But Marjorie was of the impressionable sex at an impressionable age, and
+there was something overwhelming in the undeviating conviction of her
+aunt, in the clear assurance of her voice, that this life which
+interested her was the real life, the only possible successful life. The
+world reformed itself in Marjorie's fluent mind, until it was all a
+scheme of influence and effort and ambition and triumphs. Dinner-parties
+and receptions, men wearing orders, cabinet ministers more than a little
+in love asking her advice, beautiful robes, a great blaze of lights;
+why! she might be, said Aunt Plessington rising to enthusiasm, "another
+Marcella." The life was not without its adventurous side; it wasn't in
+any way dull. Aunt Plessington to illustrate that point told amusing
+anecdotes of how two almost impudent invitations on her part had
+succeeded, and how she had once scored off her elder sister by getting a
+coveted celebrity through their close family resemblance. "After
+accepting he couldn't very well refuse because I wasn't somebody else,"
+she ended gleefully. "So he came--and stayed as long as anybody."
+
+What else was there for Marjorie to contemplate? If she didn't take this
+by no means unattractive line, what was the alternative? Some sort of
+employment after a battle with her father, a parsimonious life, and even
+then the Oxbridge tradesmen and their immortal bills....
+
+Aunt Plessington was so intent upon her theme that she heeded nothing of
+the delightful little flowers she trampled under foot across the down,
+nor the jolly squirrel with an artistic temperament who saw fit to give
+an uninvited opinion upon her personal appearance from the security of a
+beech-tree in the wood. But Marjorie, noting quite a number of such
+things with the corner of her mind, and being now well under the
+Plessington sway, wished she had more concentration....
+
+In the evening after supper the customary games were suspended, and Mr.
+and Mrs. Plessington talked about getting on, and work and efficiency
+generally, and explained how so-and-so had spoilt his chances in life,
+and why so-and-so was sure to achieve nothing, and how this man ate too
+much and that man drank too much, and on the contrary what promising and
+capable people the latest adherents of and subscribers to the Movement
+were, until two glasses of hot water came--Aunt Plessington had been
+told it was good for her digestion and she thought it just as well that
+Hubert should have some too--and it was time for every one to go to bed.
+
+
+Sec. 10
+
+Next morning an atmosphere of getting on and strenuosity generally
+prevailed throughout the vicarage. The Plessingtons were preparing a
+memorandum on their movement for the "Reformer's Year Book," every word
+was of importance and might win or lose adherents and subscribers, and
+they secured the undisturbed possession of the drawing-room, from which
+the higher notes of Aunt Plessington's voice explaining the whole thing
+to Hubert, who had to write it out, reached, a spur to effort, into
+every part of the house.
+
+Their influence touched every one.
+
+Marjorie, struck by the idea that she was not perhaps getting on at
+Oxbridge so fast as she ought to do, went into the summer-house with
+Marshall's "Principles of Economics," read for two hours, and did not
+think about her bills for more than a quarter of the time. Rom, who had
+already got up early and read through about a third of "Aurora Leigh,"
+now set herself with dogged determination to finish that great poem. Syd
+practised an extra ten minutes--for Aunt Plessington didn't mind
+practice so long as there wasn't a tune. Mrs. Pope went into the kitchen
+and made a long-needed fuss about the waste of rice. Mr. Pope began the
+pamphlet he had had in contemplation for some time upon the advantages
+to public order of Payment in Kind. Theodore, who had washed behind his
+ears and laced his boots in all the holes, went into the yard before
+breakfast and hit a tennis ball against the wall and back, five hundred
+and twenty-two times--a record. He would have resumed this after
+breakfast, but his father came round the corner of the house with a pen
+in his mouth, and asked him indistinctly, but fiercely, what the _devil_
+he was doing. So he went away, and after a fretful interval set himself
+to revise his Latin irregular verbs. By twelve he had done wonders.
+
+Later in the day the widening circle of aggressive urgency reached the
+kitchen, and at two the cook gave notice in order, she said, to better
+herself.
+
+Lunch, unconscious of this impending shadow, was characterized by a
+virtuous cheerfulness, and Aunt Plessington told in detail how her seven
+and twenty nephews and nieces, the children of her various sisters, were
+all getting on. On the whole, they were not getting on so brilliantly as
+they might have done (which indeed is apt to be the case with the
+children of people who have loved not well but too wisely), and it was
+borne in upon the mind of the respectfully listening Marjorie that, to
+borrow an easy colloquialism of her aunt's, she might "take the shine
+out of the lot of them" with a very little zeal and effort--and of
+course Mr. Magnet.
+
+The lecture in the evening at Summerhay was a great success.
+
+The chair was taken by the Rev. Jopling Baynes, Lady Petchworth was
+enthroned behind the table, Hubert was in charge of his wife's notes--if
+notes should be needed--and Mr. Pope, expectant of an invitation at the
+end to say a few words about the East Purblow experiment, also occupied
+a chair on the platform. Lady Petchworth, with her abundant soft blond
+hair, brightly blond still in spite of her fifty-five years, her
+delicate features, her plump hands, her numerous chins and her entirely
+inaudible voice, made a pleasing contrast with Aunt Plessington's
+resolute personality. She had perhaps an even greater assurance of
+authority, but it was a quiet assurance; you felt that she knew that if
+she spoke in her sleep she would be obeyed, that it was quite
+unnecessary to make herself heard. The two women, indeed, the one so
+assertive, the other so established, were at the opposite poles of
+authoritative British womanhood, and harmonized charmingly. The little
+room struck the note of a well-regulated brightness at every point, it
+had been decorated in a Keltic but entirely respectful style by one of
+Lady Petchworth's artistic discoveries, it was lit by paraffin lamps
+that smelt hardly at all, and it was gay with colour prints illustrating
+the growth of the British Empire from the battle of Ethandune to the
+surrender of Cronje. The hall was fairly full. Few could afford to
+absent themselves from these brightening occasions, but there was a
+tendency on the part of the younger and the less thoughtful section of
+the village manhood to accumulate at the extreme back and rumble in what
+appeared to be a slightly ironical spirit, so far as it had any spirit,
+with its feet.
+
+The Rev. Jopling Baynes opened proceedings with a few well-chosen
+remarks, in which he complimented every one present either singly or
+collectively according to their rank and importance, and then Aunt
+Plessington came forward to the centre of the platform amidst a hectic
+flush of applause, and said "Haw!" in a loud clear ringing tone.
+
+She spoke without resorting to the notes in Hubert's little fist, very
+freely and easily. Her strangulated contralto went into every corner of
+the room and positively seemed to look for and challenge inattentive
+auditors. She had come over, she said, and she had been very glad to
+come over and talk to them that night, because it meant not only seeing
+them but meeting her very dear delightful friend Lady Petchworth (loud
+applause) and staying for a day or so with her brother-in-law Mr. Pope
+(unsupported outburst of applause from Mr. Magnet), to whom she and
+social reform generally owed so much. She had come to talk to them that
+night about the National Good Habits Movement, which was attracting so
+much attention and which bore so closely on our National Life and
+Character; she happened to be--here Aunt Plessington smiled as she
+spoke--a humble person connected with that movement, just a mere woman
+connected with it; she was going to explain to them as well as she could
+in her womanly way and in the time at her disposal just what it was and
+just what it was for, and just what means it adopted and just what ends
+it had in view. Well, they all knew what Habits were, and that there
+were Good Habits and Bad Habits, and she supposed that the difference
+between a good man and a bad man was just that the good man had good
+habits and the bad one had bad habits. Everybody she supposed wanted to
+get on. If a man had good habits he got on, and if he had bad habits he
+didn't get on, and she supposed it was the same with a country, if its
+people had good habits they got on, and if its people had bad habits
+they didn't get on. For her own part she and her husband (Hubert gave a
+little self-conscious jump) had always cultivated good habits, and she
+had to thank him with all her heart for his help in doing so. (Applause
+from the front seats.) Now, the whole idea of her movement was to ask,
+how can we raise the standard of the national habits? how can we get rid
+of bad habits and cultivate good ones?... (Here there was a slight
+interruption due to some one being suddenly pushed off the end of a form
+at the back, and coming to the floor with audible violence, after which
+a choked and obstructed tittering continued intermittently for some
+time.)
+
+Some of her audience, she remarked, had not yet acquired the habit of
+sitting still.
+
+(Laughter, and a coarse vulgar voice: "Good old Billy Punt!")
+
+Well, to resume, she and her husband had made a special and careful
+study of habits; they had consulted all sorts of people and collected
+all sorts of statistics, in fact they had devoted themselves to this
+question, and the conclusion to which they came was this, that Good
+Habits were acquired by Training and Bad Habits came from neglect and
+carelessness and leaving people, who weren't fit for such freedom, to
+run about and do just whatever they liked. And so, she went on with a
+note of complete demonstration, the problem resolved itself into the
+question of how far they could get more Training into the national life,
+and how they could check extravagant and unruly and wasteful and unwise
+ways of living. (Hear, hear! from Mr. Pope.) And this was the problem
+she and her husband had set themselves to solve.
+
+(Scuffle, and a boy's voice at the back, saying: "Oh, _shut_ it, Nuts!
+SHUT it!")
+
+Well, she and her husband had worked the thing out, and they had come to
+the conclusion that what was the matter with the great mass of English
+people was first that they had rather too much loose money, and secondly
+that they had rather too much loose time. (A voice: "What O!" and the
+Rev. Jopling Baynes suddenly extended his neck, knitted his brows, and
+became observant of the interrupter.) She did not say they had too much
+money (a second voice: "Not Arf!"), but too much _loose_ money. She did
+not say they had too much time but too much loose time, that is to say,
+they had money and time they did not know how to spend properly. And so
+they got into mischief. A great number of people in this country, she
+maintained, and this was especially true of the lower classes, did not
+know how to spend either money or time; they bought themselves wasteful
+things and injurious things, and they frittered away their hours in all
+sorts of foolish, unprofitable ways. And, after the most careful and
+scientific study of this problem, she and her husband had come to the
+conclusion that two main principles must underlie any remedial measures
+that were attempted, the first of which was the Principle of Payment in
+Kind, which had already had so interesting a trial at the great carriage
+works of East Purblow, and the second, the Principle of Continuous
+Occupation, which had been recognized long ago in popular wisdom by that
+admirable proverb--or rather quotation--she believed it was a quotation,
+though she gave, she feared, very little time to poetry ("Better
+employed," from Mr. Pope)--
+
+    "Satan finds some mischief still
+    For idle hands to do."
+
+(Irrepressible outbreak of wild and sustained applause from the back
+seats, and in a sudden lull a female voice asking in a flattened,
+thwarted tone: "Ain't there to be no lantern then?")
+
+The lecturer went on to explain what was meant by either member of what
+perhaps they would permit her to call this double-barrelled social
+remedy.
+
+It was an admirable piece of lucid exposition. Slowly the picture of a
+better, happier, more disciplined England grew upon the minds of the
+meeting. First she showed the new sort of employer her movement would
+evoke, an employer paternal, philanthropic, vaguely responsible for the
+social order of all his dependants. (Lady Petchworth was seen to nod her
+head slowly at this.) Only in the last resort, and when he was satisfied
+that his worker and his worker's family were properly housed,
+hygienically clothed and fed, attending suitable courses of instruction
+and free from any vicious inclinations, would he pay wages in cash. In
+the discharge of the duties of payment he would have the assistance of
+expert advice, and the stimulus of voluntary inspectors of his own
+class. He would be the natural clan-master, the captain and leader,
+adviser and caretaker of his banded employees. Responsibility would
+stimulate him, and if responsibility did not stimulate him, inspectors
+(both men and women inspectors) would. The worker, on the other hand,
+would be enormously more healthy and efficient under the new regime. His
+home, designed by qualified and officially recognized architects, would
+be prettier as well as more convenient and elevating to his taste, his
+children admirably trained and dressed in the new and more beautiful
+clothing with which Lady Petchworth (applause) had done so much to make
+them familiar, his vital statistics compared with current results would
+be astonishingly good, his mind free from any anxiety but the proper
+anxiety of a man in his position, to get his work done properly and earn
+recognition from those competent and duly authorized to judge it. Of all
+this she spoke with the inspiring note of absolute conviction. All this
+would follow Payment in Kind and Continuous Occupation as days follow
+sunrise. And there would always,--and here Aunt Plessington's voice
+seemed to brighten--be something for the worker to get on with,
+something for him to do; lectures, classes, reading-rooms, improving
+entertainments. His time would be filled. The proper authorities would
+see that it was filled--and filled in the right way. Never for a moment
+need he be bored. He would never have an excuse for being bored. That
+was the second great idea, the complementary idea to the first. "And
+here it is," she said, turning a large encouraging smile on Lady
+Petchworth, "that the work of a National Theatre, instructive,
+stimulating, well regulated, and morally sustaining, would come in." He
+wouldn't, of course, be _compelled_ to go, but there would be his seat,
+part of his payment in kind, and the public-house would be shut, most
+other temptations would be removed....
+
+The lecture reached its end at last with only one other interruption.
+Some would-be humorist suddenly inquired, _a propos_ of nothing: "What's
+the fare to America, Billy?" and a voice, presumably Billy's, answered
+him: "Mor'n _you'll_ ev 'av in _you'_ pocket."
+
+The Rev. Jopling Baynes, before he called upon Mr. Pope for his promised
+utterance about East Purblow, could not refrain from pointing out how
+silly "in every sense of the word" these wanton interruptions were.
+What, he asked, had English social reform to do with the fare to
+America?--and having roused the meeting to an alert silence by the
+length of his pause, answered in a voice of ringing contempt:
+"Nothing--_whatsoever_." Then Mr. Pope made his few remarks about East
+Purblow with the ease and finish that comes from long practice; much, he
+said, had to be omitted "in view of" the restricted time at his
+disposal, but he did not grudge that, the time had been better filled.
+("No, no," from Aunt Plessington.) Yes, yes,--by the lucid and
+delightful lecture they had all enjoyed, and he not least among them.
+(Applause.)...
+
+
+Sec. 11
+
+They came out into a luminous blue night, with a crescent young moon
+high overhead. It was so fine that the Popes and the Plessingtons and
+Mr. Magnet declined Lady Petchworth's proffered car, and walked back to
+Buryhamstreet across the park through a sleeping pallid cornfield, and
+along by the edge of the pine woods. Mr. Pope would have liked to walk
+with Mr. Magnet and explain all that the pressure on his time had caused
+him to omit from his speech, and why it was he had seen fit to omit this
+part and include that. Some occult power, however, baffled this
+intention, and he found himself going home in the company of his
+brother-in-law and Daffy, with Aunt Plessington and his wife like a
+barrier between him and his desire. Marjorie, on the other hand, found
+Mr. Magnet's proximity inevitable. They fell a little behind and were
+together again for the first time since her refusal.
+
+He behaved, she thought, with very great restraint, and indeed he left
+her a little doubtful on that occasion whether he had not decided to
+take her decision as final. He talked chiefly about the lecture, which
+had impressed him very deeply. Mrs. Plessington, he said, was so
+splendid--made him feel trivial. He felt stirred up by her, wanted to
+help in this social work, this picking up of helpless people from the
+muddle in which they wallowed.
+
+He seemed not only extraordinarily modest but extraordinarily gentle
+that night, and the warm moonshine gave his face a shadowed earnestness
+it lacked in more emphatic lights. She felt the profound change in her
+feelings towards him that had followed her rejection of him. It had
+cleared away his effect of oppression upon her. She had no longer any
+sense of entanglement and pursuit, and all the virtues his courtship had
+obscured shone clear again. He was kindly, he was patient--and she felt
+something about him a woman is said always to respect, he gave her an
+impression of ability. After all, he could banish the trouble that
+crushed and overwhelmed her with a movement of his little finger. Of all
+her load of debt he could earn the payment in a day.
+
+"Your aunt goes to-morrow?" he said.
+
+Marjorie admitted it.
+
+"I wish I could talk to her more. She's so inspiring."
+
+"You know of our little excursion for Friday?" he asked after a pause.
+
+She had not heard. Friday was Theodore's birthday; she knew it only too
+well because she had had to part with her stamp collection--which very
+luckily had chanced to get packed and come to Buryhamstreet--to meet its
+demand. Mr. Magnet explained he had thought it might be fun to give a
+picnic in honour of the anniversary.
+
+"How jolly of you!" said Marjorie.
+
+"There's a pretty bit of river between Wamping and Friston Hanger--I've
+wanted you to see it for a long time, and Friston Hanger church has the
+prettiest view. The tower gets the bend of the river."
+
+He told her all he meant to do as if he submitted his plans for her
+approval. They would drive to Wamping and get a very comfortable little
+steam launch one could hire there. Wintersloan was coming down again; an
+idle day of this kind just suited his temperament. Theodore would like
+it, wouldn't he?
+
+"Theodore will think he is King of Surrey!"
+
+"I'll have a rod and line if he wants to fish. I don't want to forget
+anything. I want it to be _his_ day really and truly."
+
+The slightest touch upon the pathetic note? She could not tell.
+
+But that evening brought Marjorie nearer to loving Magnet than she had
+ever been. Before she went to sleep that night she had decided he was
+quite a tolerable person again; she had been too nervous and unjust with
+him. After all, his urgency and awkwardness had been just a part of his
+sincerity. Perhaps the faint doubt whether he would make his request
+again gave the zest of uncertainty to his devotion. Of course, she told
+herself, he would ask again. And then the blissful air of limitless
+means she might breathe. The blessed release....
+
+She was suddenly fast asleep.
+
+
+Sec. 12
+
+Friday was after all not so much Theodore's day as Mr. Magnet's.
+
+Until she found herself committed there was no shadow of doubt in
+Marjorie's mind of what she meant to do. "Before I see you again," said
+Aunt Plessington at the parting kiss, "I hope you'll have something to
+tell me." She might have been Hymen thinly disguised as an aunt, waving
+from the departing train. She continued by vigorous gestures and
+unstinted display of teeth and a fluttering handkerchief to encourage
+Marjorie to marry Mr. Magnet, until the curve of the cutting hid her
+from view....
+
+Fortune favoured Mr. Magnet with a beautiful day, and the excursion was
+bright and successful from the outset. It was done well, and what
+perhaps was more calculated to impress Marjorie, it was done with lavish
+generosity. From the outset she turned a smiling countenance upon her
+host. She did her utmost to suppress a reviving irrational qualm in her
+being, to maintain clearly and simply her overnight decision, that he
+should propose again and that she should accept him.
+
+Yet the festival was just a little dreamlike in its quality to her
+perceptions. She found she could not focus clearly on its details.
+
+Two waggonettes came from Wamping; there was room for everybody and to
+spare, and Wamping revealed itself a pleasant small country town with
+stocks under the market hall, and just that tint of green paint and that
+loafing touch the presence of a boating river gives.
+
+The launch was brilliantly smart with abundant crimson cushions and a
+tasselled awning, and away to the left was a fine old bridge that dated
+in its essentials from Plantagenet times.
+
+They started with much whistling and circling, and went away up river
+under overhanging trees that sometimes swished the funnel, splashing the
+meadow path and making the reeds and bulrushes dance with their wash.
+They went through a reluctant lock, steamed up a long reach, they passed
+the queerly painted Potwell Inn with its picturesque group of poplars
+and its absurd new notice-board of "Omlets." ... Theodore was five stone
+of active happiness; he and the pseudo-twins, strictly under his orders
+as the universal etiquette of birthdays prescribes, clambered round and
+round the boat, clutching the awning rail and hanging over the water in
+an entirely secure and perilous looking manner. No one, unless his
+father happened to be upset by something, would check him, he knew, on
+this auspicious day. Mr. Magnet sat with the grey eye on Marjorie and
+listened a little abstractedly to Mr. Pope, who was telling very fully
+what he would say if the Liberal party were to ask his advice at the
+present juncture. Mrs. Pope attended discreetly, and Daffy and Marjorie
+with a less restrained interest, to Mr. Wintersloan, who showed them how
+to make faces out of a fist tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, how to
+ventriloquize, how to conjure with halfpence--which he did very
+amusingly--and what the buttons on a man's sleeve were for; Theodore
+clambering at his back discovered what he was at, and by right of
+birthday made him do all the faces and tricks over again. Then Mr.
+Wintersloan told stories of all the rivers along which, he said, he had
+travelled in steamboats; the Rhine, the Danube, the Hoogly and the Fall
+River, and particularly how he had been bitten by a very young
+crocodile. "It's the smell of the oil brings it all back to me," he
+said. "And the kind of sway it gives you."
+
+He made sinuous movements of his hand, and looked at Marjorie with that
+wooden yet expressive smile.
+
+Friston Hanger proved to be even better than Wamping. It had a character
+of its own because it was built very largely of a warm buff coloured
+local rock instead of the usual brick, and the outhouses at least of the
+little inn at which they landed were thatched. Most of the cottages had
+casement windows with diamond panes, and the streets were cobbled and
+very up-and-down hill. The place ran to high walls richly suggestive of
+hidden gardens, overhung by big trees and pierced by secretive important
+looking doors. And over it all rose an unusually big church, with a tall
+buttressed tower surmounted by a lantern of pierced stone.
+
+"We'll go through the town and look at the ruins of the old castle
+beyond the church," said Mr. Magnet to Marjorie, "and then I want you to
+see the view from the church tower."
+
+And as they went through the street, he called her attention again to
+the church tower in a voice that seemed to her to be inexplicably
+charged with significance. "I want you to go up there," he said.
+
+"How about something to eat, Mr. Magnet?" remarked Theodore suddenly,
+and everybody felt a little surprised when Mr. Magnet answered: "Who
+wants things to eat on your birthday, Theodore?"
+
+But they saw the joke of that when they reached the castle ruins and
+found in the old tilting yard, with its ivy-covered arch framing a view
+of the town and stream, a table spread with a white cloth that shone in
+the sunshine, glittering with glass and silver and gay with a bowl of
+salad and flowers and cold pies and a jug of claret-cup and an ice
+pail--a silver pail! containing two promising looking bottles, in the
+charge of two real live waiters, in evening dress as waiters should be,
+but with straw hats to protect them from the sun and weather. "Oh!"
+cried Mrs. Pope, "what a _splendid_ idea, Mr. Magnet," when the
+destination of the feast was perfectly clear, and even Theodore seemed a
+little overawed--almost as if he felt his birthday was being carried too
+far and might provoke a judgment later. Manifestly Mr. Magnet must have
+ordered this in London, and have had it sent down, waiters and all!
+Theodore knew he was a very wonderful little boy in spite of the acute
+criticism of four devoted sisters, and Mr. Magnet had noticed him before
+at times, but this was, well, rather immense! "Look at the pie-crusts,
+old man!" And on the pie-crusts, and on the icing of the cake, their
+munificent host had caused to be done in little raised letters of dough
+and chocolate the word "Theodore."
+
+"Oh, _Mr._ Magnet!" said Marjorie--his eye so obviously invited her to
+say something. Mr. Pope tried a nebulous joke about "groaning boards of
+Frisky Hanger," and only Mr. Wintersloan restrained his astonishment and
+admiration. "You could have got those chaps in livery," he
+said--unheeded. The lunch was as a matter of fact his idea; he had
+refused to come unless it was provided, and he had somehow counted on
+blue coats, brass buttons, and yellow waistcoats--but everybody else of
+course ascribed the whole invention to Mr. Magnet.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Pope with a fine air of epigram, "the only thing I can
+say is--to eat it," and prepared to sit down.
+
+"Melon," cried Mr. Magnet to the waiters, "we'll begin with the melon.
+Have you ever tried melon with pepper and salt, Mrs. Pope?"
+
+"You put salt in everything," admired Mr. Pope. "Salt from those attics
+of yours--Attic salt."
+
+"Or there's ginger!" said Mr. Magnet, after a whisper from the waiter.
+
+Mr. Pope said something classical about "ginger hot in the mouth."
+
+"Some of these days," said Mr. Wintersloan, "when I have exhausted all
+other sensations, I mean to try melon and mustard."
+
+Rom made a wonderful face at him.
+
+"I can think of worse things than that," said Mr. Wintersloan with a
+hard brightness.
+
+"Not till after lunch, Mr. Wintersloan!" said Rom heartily.
+
+"The claret cup's all right for Theodore, Mrs. Pope," said Magnet. "It's
+a special twelve year old brand." (He thought of everything!)
+
+"Mummy," said Mr. Pope. "You'd better carve this pie, I think."
+
+"I want very much," said Mr. Magnet in Marjorie's ear and very
+confidentially, "to show you the view from the church tower. I think--it
+will appeal to you."
+
+"Rom!" said Theodore, uncontrollably, in a tremendous stage whisper.
+"There's peaches!... _There!_ on the hamper!"
+
+"Champagne, m'am?" said the waiter suddenly in Mrs. Pope's ear, wiping
+ice-water from the bottle.
+
+(But what could it have cost him?)
+
+
+Sec. 13
+
+Marjorie would have preferred that Mr. Magnet should not have decided
+with such relentless determination to make his second proposal on the
+church tower. His purpose was luminously clear to her from the
+beginning of lunch onward, and she could feel her nerves going under the
+strain of that long expectation. She tried to pull herself together,
+tried not to think about it, tried to be amused by the high spirits and
+nonsense of Mr. Wintersloan and Syd and Rom and Theodore; but Mr. Magnet
+was very pervasive, and her mother didn't ever look at her, looked past
+her and away from her and all round her, in a profoundly observant
+manner. Marjorie felt chiefly anxious to get to the top of that
+predestinate tower and have the whole thing over, and it was with a
+start that she was just able to prevent one of the assiduous waiters
+filling her glass with champagne for the third time.
+
+There was a little awkwardness in dispersing after lunch. Mr. Pope, his
+heart warmed by the champagne and mellowed by a subsequent excellent
+cigar, wanted very much to crack what he called a "postprandial jest" or
+so with the great humorist, while Theodore also, deeply impressed with
+the discovery that there was more in Mr. Magnet than he had supposed,
+displayed a strong disposition to attach himself more closely than he
+had hitherto done to this remarkable person, and study his quiet but
+enormous possibilities with greater attention. Mrs. Pope with a still
+alertness did her best to get people adjusted, but Syd and Rom had
+conceived a base and unnatural desire to subjugate the affections of the
+youngest waiter, and wouldn't listen to her proposal that they should
+take Theodore away into the town; Mr. Wintersloan displayed
+extraordinary cunning and resource in evading a _tete-a-tete_ with Mr.
+Pope that would have released Mr. Magnet. Now Mrs. Pope came to think of
+it, Mr. Wintersloan never had had the delights of a good talk with Mr.
+Pope, he knew practically nothing about the East Purblow experiment
+except for what Mr. Magnet might have retailed to him, and she was very
+greatly puzzled to account for his almost manifest reluctance to go into
+things thoroughly. Daffy remained on hand, available but useless, and
+Mrs. Pope, smiling at the landscape and a prey to Management within, was
+suddenly inspired to take her eldest daughter into her confidence.
+"Daffy," she said, with a guileful finger extended and pointing to the
+lower sky as though she was pointing out the less obvious and more
+atmospheric beauties of Surrey, "get Theodore away from Mr. Magnet if
+you can. He wants to talk to Marjorie."
+
+Daffy looked round. "Shall I call him?" she said.
+
+"No," said Mrs. Pope, "do it--just--quietly."
+
+"I'll try," said Daffy and stared at her task, and Mrs. Pope, feeling
+that this might or might not succeed but that anyhow she had done what
+she could, strolled across to her husband and laid a connubial touch
+upon his shoulder. "All the young people," she said, "are burning to
+climb the church tower. I never _can_ understand this activity after
+lunch."
+
+"Not me," said Mr. Pope. "Eh, Magnet?"
+
+"_I'm_ game," said Theodore. "Come along, Mr. Magnet."
+
+"I think," said Mr. Magnet looking at Marjorie, "I shall go up. I want
+to show Marjorie the view."
+
+"We'll stay here, Mummy, eh?" said Mr. Pope, with a quite unusual
+geniality, and suddenly put his arm round Mrs. Pope's waist. Her
+motherly eye sought Daffy's, and indicated her mission. "I'll come with
+you, Theodore," said Daffy. "There isn't room for everyone at once up
+that tower."
+
+"I'll go with Mr. Magnet," said Theodore, relying firmly on the
+privileges of the day....
+
+For a time they played for position, with the intentions of Mr. Magnet
+showing more and more starkly through the moves of the game. At last
+Theodore was lured down a side street by the sight of a huge dummy fish
+dangling outside a tackle and bait shop, and Mr. Magnet and Marjorie,
+already with a dreadful feeling of complicity, made a movement so rapid
+it seemed to her almost a bolt for the church tower. Whatever Mr. Magnet
+desired to say, and whatever elasticity his mind had once possessed with
+regard to it, there can be no doubt that it had now become so rigid as
+to be sayable only in that one precise position, and in the exact order
+he had determined upon. But when at last they got to that high serenity,
+Mr. Magnet was far too hot and far too much out of breath to say
+anything at all for a time except an almost explosive gust or so of
+approbation of the scenery. "Shor' breath!" he said, "win'ey stairs
+always--that 'fect on me--buful sceny--Suwy--like it always."
+
+Marjorie found herself violently disposed to laugh; indeed she had never
+before been so near the verge of hysterics.
+
+"It's a perfectly lovely view," she said. "No wonder you wanted me to
+see it."
+
+"Naturally," said Mr. Magnet, "wanted you to see it."
+
+Marjorie, with a skill her mother might have envied, wriggled into a
+half-sitting position in an embrasure and concentrated herself upon the
+broad wooded undulations that went about the horizon, and Mr. Magnet
+mopped his face with surreptitious gestures, and took deep restoring
+breaths.
+
+"I've always wanted to bring you here," he said, "ever since I found it
+in the spring."
+
+"It was very kind of you, Mr. Magnet," said Marjorie.
+
+"You see," he explained, "whenever I see anything fine or rich or
+splendid or beautiful now, I seem to want it for you." His voice
+quickened as though he were repeating something that had been long in
+his mind. "I wish I could give you all this country. I wish I could put
+all that is beautiful in the world at your feet."
+
+He watched the effect of this upon her for a moment.
+
+"Marjorie," he said, "did you really mean what you told me the other
+day, that there was indeed no hope for me? I have a sort of feeling I
+bothered you that day, that perhaps you didn't mean all----"
+
+He stopped short.
+
+"I don't think I knew what I meant," said Marjorie, and Magnet gave a
+queer sound of relief at her words. "I don't think I know what I mean
+now. I don't think I can say I love you, Mr. Magnet. I would if I could.
+I like you very much indeed, I think you are awfully kind, you're more
+kind and generous than anyone I have ever known...."
+
+Saying he was kind and generous made her through some obscure
+association of ideas feel that he must have understanding. She had an
+impulse to put her whole case before him frankly. "I wonder," she said,
+"if you can understand what it is to be a girl."
+
+Then she saw the absurdity of her idea, of any such miracle of sympathy.
+He was entirely concentrated upon the appeal he had come prepared to
+make.
+
+"Marjorie," he said, "I don't ask you to love me yet. All I ask is that
+you shouldn't decide _not_ to love me."
+
+Marjorie became aware of Theodore, hotly followed by Daffy, in the
+churchyard below. "I _know_ he's up there," Theodore was manifestly
+saying.
+
+Marjorie faced her lover gravely.
+
+"Mr. Magnet," she said, "I will certainly promise you that."
+
+"I would rather be your servant, rather live for your happiness, than do
+anything else in all the world," said Mr. Magnet. "If you would trust
+your life to me, if you would deign--." He paused to recover his thread.
+"If you would deign to let me make life what it should be for you, take
+every care from your shoulders, face every responsibility----"
+
+Marjorie felt she had to hurry. She could almost feel the feet of
+Theodore coming up that tower.
+
+"Mr. Magnet," she said, "you don't understand. You don't realize what I
+am. You don't know how unworthy I am--what a mere ignorant child----"
+
+"Let me be judge of that!" cried Mr. Magnet.
+
+They paused almost like two actors who listen for the prompter. It was
+only too obvious that both were aware of a little medley of imperfectly
+subdued noises below. Theodore had got to the ladder that made the last
+part of the ascent, and there Daffy had collared him. "_My_ birthday,"
+said Theodore. "Come down! You _shan't_ go up there!" said Daffy. "You
+_mustn't_, Theodore!" "Why not?" There was something like a scuffle, and
+whispers. Then it would seem Theodore went--reluctantly and with
+protests. But the conflict receded.
+
+"Marjorie!" said Mr. Magnet, as though there had been no pause, "if you
+would consent only to make an experiment, if you would try to love me.
+Suppose you _tried_ an engagement. I do not care how long I waited...."
+
+He paused. "Will you try?" he urged upon her distressed silence.
+
+She felt as though she forced the word. "_Yes!_" she said in a very low
+voice.
+
+Then it seemed to her that Mr. Magnet leapt upon her. She felt herself
+pulled almost roughly from the embrasure, and he had kissed her. She
+struggled in his embrace. "Mr. Magnet!" she said. He lifted her face and
+kissed her lips. "Marjorie!" he said, and she had partly released
+herself.
+
+"Oh _don't_ kiss me," she cried, "don't kiss me yet!"
+
+"But a kiss!"
+
+"I don't like it."
+
+"I beg your pardon!" he said. "I forgot----. But you.... You.... I
+couldn't help it."
+
+She was suddenly wildly sorry for what she had done. She felt she was
+going to cry, to behave absurdly.
+
+"I want to go down," she said.
+
+"Marjorie, you have made me the happiest of men! All my life, all my
+strength I will spend in showing you that you have made no mistake in
+trusting me----"
+
+"Yes," she said, "yes," and wondered what she could say or do. It seemed
+to him that her shrinking pose was the most tenderly modest thing he had
+ever seen.
+
+"Oh my dear!" he said, and restrained himself and took her passive hand
+and kissed it.
+
+"I want to go down to them!" she insisted.
+
+He paused on the topmost rungs of the ladder, looking unspeakable things
+at her. Then he turned to go down, and for the second time in her life
+she saw that incipient thinness....
+
+"I am sure you will never be sorry," he said....
+
+They found Mr. and Mrs. Pope in the churchyard. Mr. Pope was reading
+with amusement for the third time an epitaph that had caught his fancy--
+
+    "Lands ever bright, days ever fair,
+    And yet we weep that _he_ is there."
+
+he read. "You know that's really Good. That ought to be printed
+somewhere."
+
+Mrs. Pope glanced sharply at her daughter's white face, and found an
+enigma. Then she looked at Mr. Magnet.
+
+There was no mistake about Mr. Magnet. Marjorie had accepted him,
+whatever else she had felt or done.
+
+
+Sec. 14
+
+Marjorie's feelings for the rest of the day are only to be accounted for
+on the supposition that she was overwrought. She had a preposterous
+reaction. She had done this thing with her eyes open after days of
+deliberation, and now she felt as though she was caught in a trap. The
+clearest thing in her mind was that Mr. Magnet had taken hold of her and
+kissed her, kissed her on the lips, and that presently he would do it
+again. And also she was asking herself with futile reiteration why she
+had got into debt at Oxbridge? Why she had got into debt? For such silly
+little things too!
+
+Nothing definite was said in her hearing about the engagement, but
+everybody seemed to understand. Mr. Pope was the most demonstrative, he
+took occasion to rap her hard upon the back, his face crinkled with a
+resolute kindliness. "Ah!" he said, "Sly Maggots!"
+
+He also administered several resounding blows to Magnet's shoulder
+blades, and irradiated the party with a glow of benevolent waggery.
+Marjorie submitted without an answer to these paternal intimations. Mrs.
+Pope did no more than watch her daughter. Invisible but overwhelming
+forces were busy in bringing Marjorie and her glowing lover alone
+together again. It happened at last, as he was departing; she was almost
+to her inflamed imagination thrust out upon him, had to take him to the
+gate; and there in the shadows of the trees he kissed her "good night"
+with passionate effusion.
+
+"Madge," he said, "Madge!"
+
+She made no answer. She submitted passively to his embrace, and then
+suddenly and dexterously disengaged herself from him, ran in, and
+without saying good-night to anyone went to her room to bed.
+
+Mr. Pope was greatly amused by this departure from the customary routine
+of life, and noted it archly.
+
+When Daffy came up Marjorie was ostentatiously going to sleep....
+
+As she herself was dropping off Daffy became aware of an odd sound,
+somehow familiar, and yet surprising and disconcerting.
+
+Suddenly wide awake again, she started up. Yes there was no mistake
+about it! And yet it was very odd.
+
+"Madge, what's up?"
+
+No answer.
+
+"I say! you aren't crying, Madge, are you?"
+
+Then after a long interval: "_Madge!_"
+
+An answer came in a muffled voice, almost as if Marjorie had something
+in her mouth. "Oh shut it, old Daffy."
+
+"But Madge?" said Daffy after reflection.
+
+"Shut it. _Do_ shut it! Leave me alone, I say! Can't you leave me alone?
+Oh!"--and for a moment she let her sobs have way with her--"Daffy, don't
+worry me. Old Daffy! _Please!_"
+
+Daffy sat up for a long time in the stifled silence that ensued, and
+then like a sensible sister gave it up, and composed herself again to
+slumber....
+
+Outside watching the window in a state of nebulous ecstasy, was Mr.
+Magnet, moonlit and dewy. It was a high serene night with a growing moon
+and a scattered company of major stars, and if no choir of nightingales
+sang there was at least a very active nightjar. "More than I hoped,"
+whispered Mr. Magnet, "more than I dared to hope." He was very sleepy,
+but it seemed to him improper to go to bed on such a night--on such an
+occasion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRD
+
+THE MAN WHO FELL OUT OF THE SKY
+
+
+Sec. 1
+
+For the next week Marjorie became more nearly introspective than she had
+ever been in her life before. She began to doubt her hitherto unshaken
+conviction that she was a single, consistent human being. She found such
+discords and discrepancies between mood and mood, between the conviction
+of this hour and the feeling of that, that it seemed to her she was
+rather a collection of samples of emotion and attitude than anything so
+simple as an individual.
+
+For example, there can be no denying there was one Marjorie in the
+bundle who was immensely set up by the fact that she was engaged, and
+going to be at no very remote date mistress of a London house. She was
+profoundly Plessingtonian, and quite the vulgarest of the lot. The new
+status she had attained and the possibly beautiful house and the
+probably successful dinner-parties and the arrangements and the
+importance of such a life was the substance of this creature's thought.
+She designed some queenly dresses. This was the Marjorie most in
+evidence when it came to talking with her mother and Daphne. I am afraid
+she patronized Daphne, and ignored the fact that Daphne, who had begun
+with a resolute magnanimity, was becoming annoyed and resentful.
+
+And she thought of things she might buy, and the jolly feeling of
+putting them about and making fine effects with them. One thing she told
+Daphne, she had clearly resolved upon; the house should be always full
+and brimming over with beautiful flowers. "I've always wished mother
+would have more flowers--and not keep them so long when she has
+them...."
+
+Another Marjorie in the confusion of her mind was doing her sincerest,
+narrow best to appreciate and feel grateful for and return the devotion
+of Mr. Magnet. This Marjorie accepted and even elaborated his views,
+laid stress on his voluntary subjection, harped upon his goodness,
+brought her to kiss him.
+
+"I don't deserve all this love," this side of Marjorie told Magnet. "But
+I mean to learn to love you----"
+
+"My dear one!" cried Magnet, and pressed her hand....
+
+A third Marjorie among the many was an altogether acuter and less
+agreeable person. She was a sprite of pure criticism, and in spite of
+the utmost efforts to suppress her, she declared night and day in the
+inner confidences of Marjorie's soul that she did not believe in Mr.
+Magnet's old devotion at all. She was anti-Magnet, a persistent
+insurgent. She was dreadfully unsettling. It was surely this Marjorie
+that wouldn't let the fact of his baldness alone, and who discovered and
+insisted upon a curious unbeautiful flatness in his voice whenever he
+was doing his best to speak from the heart. And as for this devotion,
+what did it amount to? A persistent unimaginative besetting of Marjorie,
+a growing air of ownership, an expansive, indulgent, smiling disposition
+to thwart and control. And he was always touching her! Whenever he came
+near her she would wince at the freedoms a large, kind hand might take
+with her elbow or wrist, at a possible sudden, clumsy pat at some erring
+strand of hair.
+
+Then there was an appraising satisfaction in his eye.
+
+On the third day of their engagement he began, quite abruptly, to call
+her "Magsy." "We'll end this scandal of a Girl Pope," he said. "Magsy
+Magnet, you'll be--M.M. No women M.P.'s for _us_, Magsy...."
+
+She became acutely critical of his intellectual quality. She listened
+with a new alertness to the conversations at the dinner-table, the bouts
+of wit with her father. She carried off utterances and witticism for
+maturer reflection. She was amazed to find how little they could
+withstand the tests and acids of her mind. So many things, such wide and
+interesting fields, he did not so much think about as cover with a large
+enveloping shallowness....
+
+He came strolling around the vicarage into the garden one morning about
+eleven, though she had not expected him until lunch-time; and she was
+sitting with her feet tucked up on the aged but still practicable
+garden-seat reading Shaw's "Common Sense of Municipal Trading." He came
+and leant over the back of the seat, and she looked up, said "Good
+morning. Isn't it perfectly lovely?" and indicated by a book still open
+that her interest in it remained alive.
+
+"What's the book, Magsy?" he asked, took it out of her slightly
+resisting hand, closed it and read the title. "Um," he said; "Isn't this
+a bit stiff for little women's brains?"
+
+All the rebel Marjories were up in arms at that.
+
+"Dreadful word, 'Municipal.' I _don't_ like it." He shook his head with
+a grimace of humorous distaste.
+
+"I suppose women have as good brains as men," said Marjorie, "if it
+comes to that."
+
+"Better," said Magnet. "That's why they shouldn't trouble about horrid
+things like Municipal and Trading.... On a day like this!"
+
+"Don't you think this sort of thing is interesting?"
+
+"Oh!" he said, and flourished the book. "Come! And besides--_Shaw!_"
+
+"He makes a very good case."
+
+"But he's such a--mountebank."
+
+"Does that matter? He isn't a mountebank there."
+
+"He's not sincere. I doubt if you had a serious book on Municipal
+Trading, Magsy, whether you'd make head or tail of it. It's a stiff
+subject. Shaw just gets his chance for a smart thing or so.... I'd
+rather you read a good novel."
+
+He really had the air of taking her reading in hand.
+
+"You think I ought not to read an intelligent book."
+
+"I think we ought to leave those things to the people who understand."
+
+"But we ought to understand."
+
+He smiled wisely. "There's a lot of things _you_ have to understand," he
+said, "nearer home than this."
+
+Marjorie was ablaze now. "What a silly thing to say!" she cried, with an
+undergraduate's freedom. "Really, you are talking nonsense! I read that
+book because it interests me. If I didn't, I should read something else.
+Do you mean to suggest that I'm reading like a child, who holds a book
+upside down?"
+
+She was so plainly angry that he was taken aback. "I don't mean to
+suggest--" he began, and turned to greet the welcome presence, the
+interrogative eye of Mrs. Pope.
+
+"Here we are!" he said, "having a quarrel!"
+
+"Marjorie!" said Mrs. Pope.
+
+"Oh, it's serious!" said Mr. Magnet, and added with a gleam: "It's about
+Municipal Trading!"
+
+Mrs. Pope knew the wicked little flicker in Marjorie's eye better than
+Mr. Magnet. She had known it from the nursery, and yet she had never
+quite mastered its meaning. She had never yet realized it was Marjorie,
+she had always regarded it as something Marjorie, some other Marjorie,
+ought to keep under control. So now she adopted a pacificatory tone.
+
+"Oh! lovers' quarrels," she said, floating over the occasion. "Lovers'
+quarrels. You mustn't ask _me_ to interfere!"
+
+Marjorie, already a little ashamed of her heat, thought for an instant
+she ought to stand that, and then decided abruptly with a return to
+choler that she would not do so. She stood up, and held out her hand for
+her book.
+
+"Mr. Magnet," she said to her mother with remarkable force and freedom
+as she took it, "has been talking unutterable nonsense. I don't call
+that a lovers' quarrel--anyhow."
+
+Then, confronted with a double astonishment, and having no more to say,
+she picked up her skirt quite unnecessarily, and walked with a
+heavenward chin indoors.
+
+"I'm afraid," explained Mr. Magnet, "I was a little too free with one of
+Magsy's favourite authors."
+
+"Which is the favourite author now?" asked Mrs. Pope, after a reflective
+pause, with a mother's indulgent smile.
+
+"Shaw." He raised amused eyebrows. "It's just the age, I suppose."
+
+"She's frightfully loyal while it lasts," said Mrs. Pope. "No one dare
+say a word against them."
+
+"I think it's adorable of her," said Mr. Magnet--with an answering
+loyalty and gusto.
+
+
+Sec. 2
+
+The aviation accident occurred while Mrs. Pope, her two eldest
+daughters, and Mr. Magnet were playing golf-croquet upon the vicarage
+lawn. It was a serene, hot afternoon, a little too hot to take a game
+seriously, and the four little figures moved slowly over the green and
+grouped and dispersed as the game required. Mr. Magnet was very fond of
+golf-croquet, he displayed a whimsical humour and much invention at this
+game, it was not too exacting physically; and he could make his ball
+jump into the air in the absurdest manner. Occasionally he won a laugh
+from Marjorie or Daffy. No one else was in sight; the pseudo-twins and
+Theodore and Toupee were in the barn, and Mr. Pope was six miles away at
+Wamping, lying prone, nibbling grass blades and watching a county
+cricket match, as every good Englishman, who knows what is expected of
+him, loves to do.... Click went ball and mallet, and then after a long
+interval, click. It seemed incredible that anything could possibly
+happen before tea.
+
+But this is no longer the world it was. Suddenly this tranquil scene was
+slashed and rent by the sound and vision of a monoplane tearing across
+the heavens.
+
+A purring and popping arrested Mr. Magnet in mid jest, and the monster
+came sliding up the sky over the trees beside the church to the east,
+already near enough to look big, a great stiff shape, big buff sails
+stayed with glittering wire, and with two odd little wheels beneath its
+body. It drove up the sky, rising with a sort of upward heaving, until
+the croquet players could see the driver and a passenger perched behind
+him quite clearly. It passed a little to the right of the church tower
+and only a few yards above the level of the flagstaff, there wasn't
+fifty feet of clearance altogether, and as it did so Marjorie could see
+both driver and passenger making hasty movements. It became immense and
+over-shadowing, and every one stood rigid as it swept across the sun
+above the vicarage chimneys. Then it seemed to drop twenty feet or so
+abruptly, and then both the men cried out as it drove straight for the
+line of poplars between the shrubbery and the meadow. "Oh, oh, OH!"
+cried Mrs. Pope and Daffy. Evidently the aviator was trying to turn
+sharply; the huge thing banked, but not enough, and came about and
+slipped away until its wing was slashing into the tree tops with a
+thrilling swish of leaves and the snapping of branches and stays.
+
+"Run!" cried Magnet, and danced about the lawn, and the three ladies
+rushed sideways as the whole affair slouched down on them. It came on
+its edge, hesitated whether to turn over as a whole, then crumpled, and
+amidst a volley of smashing and snapping came to rest amidst ploughed-up
+turf, a clamorous stench of petrol, and a cloud of dust and blue smoke
+within twenty yards of them. The two men had jumped to clear the engine,
+had fallen headlong, and were now both covered by the fabric of the
+shattered wing.
+
+It was all too spectacular for word or speech until the thing lay still.
+Even then the croquet players stood passive for awhile waiting for
+something to happen. It took some seconds to reconcile their minds to
+this sudden loss of initiative in a monster that had been so recently
+and threateningly full of go. It seemed quite a long time before it came
+into Marjorie's head that she ought perhaps to act in some way. She saw
+a tall young man wriggling on all fours from underneath the wreckage of
+fabric. He stared at her rather blankly. She went forward with a vague
+idea of helping him. He stood up, swayed doubtfully on his legs, turned,
+and became energetic, struggling mysteriously with the edge of the left
+wing. He gasped and turned fierce blue eyes over his shoulder.
+
+"Help me to hold the confounded thing up!" he cried, with a touch of
+irritation in his voice at her attitude.
+
+Marjorie at once seized the edge of the plane and pushed. The second
+man, in a peculiar button-shaped head-dress, was lying crumpled up
+underneath, his ear and cheek were bright with blood, and there was a
+streak of blood on the ground near his head.
+
+"That's right. Can you hold it if I use only one hand?"
+
+Marjorie gasped "Yes," with a terrific weight as it seemed suddenly on
+her wrists.
+
+"Right O," and the tall young man had thrust himself backwards under the
+plane until it rested on his back, and collared the prostrate man. "Keep
+it up!" he said fiercely when Marjorie threatened to give way. He seemed
+to assume that she was there to obey orders, and with much grunting and
+effort he had dragged his companion clear of the wreckage.
+
+The man's face was a mass of blood, and he was sickeningly inert to his
+companion's lugging.
+
+"Let it go," said the tall young man, and Marjorie thanked heaven as the
+broken wing flapped down again.
+
+She came helpfully to his side, and became aware of Daffy and her mother
+a few paces off. Magnet--it astonished her--was retreating hastily. But
+he had to go away because the sight of blood upset him--so much that it
+was always wiser for him to go away.
+
+"Is he hurt?" cried Mrs. Pope.
+
+"We both are," said the tall young man, and then as though these other
+people didn't matter and he and Marjorie were old friends, he said: "Can
+we turn him over?"
+
+"I think so." Marjorie grasped the damaged man's shoulder and got him
+over skilfully.
+
+"Will you get some water?" said the tall young man to Daffy and Mrs.
+Pope, in a way that sent Daffy off at once for a pail.
+
+"He wants water," she said to the parlourmaid who was hurrying out of
+the house.
+
+The tall young man had gone down on his knees by his companion,
+releasing his neck, and making a hasty first examination of his
+condition. "The pneumatic cap must have saved his head," he said,
+throwing the thing aside. "Lucky he had it. He can't be badly hurt. Just
+rubbed his face along the ground. Silly thing to have come as we did."
+
+He felt the heart, and tried the flexibility of an arm.
+
+"_That's_ all right," he said.
+
+He became judicial and absorbed over the problems of his friend's side.
+"Um," he remarked. He knelt back and regarded Marjorie for the first
+time. "Thundering smash," he said. His face relaxed into an agreeable
+smile. "He only bought it last week."
+
+"Is he hurt?"
+
+"Rib, I think--or two ribs perhaps. Stunned rather. All _this_--just his
+nose."
+
+He regarded Marjorie and Marjorie him for a brief space. He became aware
+of Mrs. Pope on his right hand. Then at a clank behind, he turned round
+to see Daphne advancing with a pail of water. The two servants were now
+on the spot, and the odd-job man, and the old lady who did out the
+church, and Magnet hovered doubtfully in the distance. Suddenly with
+shouts and barks of sympathetic glee the pseudo-twins, Theodore and
+Toupee shot out of the house. New thoughts were stirring in the young
+aviator. He rose, wincing a little as he did so. "I'm afraid I'm a
+little rude," he said.
+
+"I do hope your friend isn't hurt," said Mrs. Pope, feeling the duty of
+a hostess.
+
+"He's not hurt _much_--so far as I can see. Haven't we made rather a
+mess of your lawn?"
+
+"Oh, not at all!" said Mrs. Pope.
+
+"We have. If that is your gardener over there, it would be nice if he
+kept back the people who seem to be hesitating beyond those trees. There
+will be more presently. I'm afraid I must throw myself on your hands."
+He broke into a chuckle for a moment. "I have, you know. Is it possible
+to get a doctor? My friend's not hurt so very much, but still he wants
+expert handling. He's Sir Rupert Solomonson, from"--he jerked his head
+back--"over beyond Tunbridge Wells. My name's Trafford."
+
+"I'm Mrs. Pope and these are my daughters."
+
+Trafford bowed. "We just took the thing out for a lark," he said.
+
+Marjorie had been regarding the prostrate man. His mouth was a little
+open, and he showed beautiful teeth. Apart from the dry blood upon him
+he was not an ill-looking man. He was manifestly a Jew, a square-rigged
+Jew (you have remarked of course that there are square-rigged Jews,
+whose noses are within bounds, and fore-and-aft Jews, whose noses
+aren't), with not so much a bullet-head as a round-shot, cropped like
+the head of a Capuchin monkey. Suddenly she was down and had his head on
+her knee, with a quick movement that caught Trafford's eye. "He's
+better," she said. "His eyelids flickered. Daffy, bring the water."
+
+She had felt a queer little repugnance at first with this helpless man,
+but now that professional nurse who lurks in the composition of so many
+women, was uppermost. "Give me your handkerchief," she said to Trafford,
+and with Daffy kneeling beside her and also interested, and Mrs. Pope a
+belated but more experienced and authoritative third, Sir Rupert was
+soon getting the best of attention.
+
+"Wathall ..." said Sir Rupert suddenly, and tried again: "Wathall." A
+third effort gave "Wathall about, eh?"
+
+"If we could get him into the shade," said Marjorie.
+
+"Woosh," cried Sir Rupert. "Weeeooo!"
+
+"That's all right," said Trafford. "It's only a rib or two."
+
+"Eeeeeyoooo!" said Sir Rupert.
+
+"Exactly. We're going to carry you out of the glare."
+
+"Don't touch me," said Sir Rupert. "Gooo."
+
+It took some little persuasion before Sir Rupert would consent to be
+moved, and even then he was for a time--oh! crusty. But presently
+Trafford and the two girls had got him into the shade of a large bush
+close to where in a circle of rugs and cushions the tea things lay
+prepared. There they camped. The helpful odd-job man was ordered to
+stave off intruders from the village; water, towels, pillows were
+forthcoming. Mr. Magnet reappeared as tentative assistance, and
+Solomonson became articulate and brave and said he'd nothing but a
+stitch in his side. In his present position he wasn't at all
+uncomfortable. Only he didn't want any one near him. He enforced that by
+an appealing smile. The twins, invited to fetch the doctor, declined,
+proffering Theodore. They had conceived juvenile passions for the tall
+young man, and did not want to leave him. He certainly had a very nice
+face. So Theodore after walking twice round the wreckage, tore himself
+away and departed on Rom's bicycle. Enquiry centred on Solomonson for a
+time. His face, hair and neck were wet but no longer bloody, and he
+professed perfect comfort so long as he wasn't moved, and no one came
+too near him. He was very clear about that though perfectly polite, and
+scrutinized their faces to see if they were equally clear. Satisfied
+upon this point he closed his eyes and spoke no more. He looked then
+like a Capuchin monkey lost in pride. There came a pause. Every one was
+conscious of having risen to an emergency and behaved well under unusual
+circumstances. The young man's eye rested on the adjacent tea-things,
+lacking nothing but the coronation of the teapot.
+
+"Why not," he remarked, "have tea?"
+
+"If you think your friend----" began Mrs. Pope.
+
+"Oh! _he's_ all right. Aren't you, Solomonson? There's nothing more now
+until the doctor."
+
+"Only want to be left alone," said Solomonson, and closed his heavy
+eyelids again.
+
+Mrs. Pope told the maids, with an air of dismissal, to get tea.
+
+"We can keep an eye on him," said Trafford.
+
+Marjorie surveyed her first patient with a pretty unconscious mixture of
+maternal gravity and girlish interest, and the twins to avoid too openly
+gloating upon the good looks of Trafford, chose places and secured
+cushions round the tea-things, calculating to the best of their ability
+how they might secure the closest proximity to him. Mr. Magnet and
+Toupee had gone to stare at the monoplane; they were presently joined by
+the odd-job man in an interrogative mood. "Pretty complete smash, sir!"
+said the odd-job man, and then perceiving heads over the hedge by the
+churchyard, turned back to his duty of sentinel. Daffy thought of the
+need of more cups and plates and went in to get them, and Mrs. Pope
+remarked that she did hope Sir Rupert was not badly hurt....
+
+"Extraordinary all this is," remarked Mr. Trafford. "Now, here we were
+after lunch, twenty miles away--smoking cigars and with no more idea of
+having tea with you than--I was going to say--flying. But that's out of
+date now. Then we just thought we'd try the thing.... Like a dream."
+
+He addressed himself to Marjorie: "I never feel that life is quite real
+until about three days after things have happened. Never. Two hours ago
+I had not the slightest intention of ever flying again."
+
+"But haven't you flown before?" asked Mrs. Pope.
+
+"Not much. I did a little at Sheppey, but it's so hard for a poor man to
+get his hands on a machine. And here was Solomonson, with this thing in
+his hangar, eating its head off. Let's take it out," I said, "and go
+once round the park. And here we are.... I thought it wasn't wise for
+him to come...."
+
+Sir Rupert, without opening his eyes, was understood to assent.
+
+"Do you know," said Trafford, "The sight of your tea makes me feel
+frightfully hungry."
+
+"I don't think the engine's damaged?" he said cheerfully, "do you?" as
+Magnet joined them. "The ailerons are in splinters, and the left wing's
+not much better. But that's about all except the wheels. One falls so
+much lighter than you might suppose--from the smash.... Lucky it didn't
+turn over. Then, you know, the engine comes on the top of you, and
+you're done."
+
+
+Sec. 3
+
+The doctor arrived after tea, with a bag and a stethoscope in a small
+coffin-like box, and the Popes and Mr. Magnet withdrew while Sir Rupert
+was carefully sounded, tested, scrutinized, questioned, watched and
+examined in every way known to medical science. The outcome of the
+conference was presently communicated to the Popes by Mr. Trafford and
+the doctor. Sir Rupert was not very seriously injured, but he was
+suffering from concussion and shock, two of his ribs were broken and his
+wrist sprained, unless perhaps one of the small bones was displaced. He
+ought to be bandaged up and put to bed....
+
+"Couldn't we--" said Mrs. Pope, but the doctor assured her his own house
+was quite the best place. There Sir Rupert could stay for some days. At
+present the cross-country journey over the Downs or by the South Eastern
+Railway would be needlessly trying and painful. He would with the Popes'
+permission lie quietly where he was for an hour or so, and then the
+doctor would come with a couple of men and a carrying bed he had, and
+take him off to his own house. There he would be, as Mr. Trafford said,
+"as right as ninepence," and Mr. Trafford could put up either at the Red
+Lion with Mr. Magnet or in the little cottage next door to the doctor.
+(Mr. Trafford elected for the latter as closer to his friend.) As for
+the smashed aeroplane, telegrams would be sent at once to Sir Rupert's
+engineers at Chesilbury, and they would have all that cleared away by
+mid-day to-morrow....
+
+The doctor departed; Sir Rupert, after stimulants, closed his eyes, and
+Mr. Trafford seated himself at the tea-things for some more cake, as
+though introduction by aeroplane was the most regular thing in the
+world.
+
+He had very pleasant and easy manners, an entire absence of
+self-consciousness, and a quick talkative disposition that made him very
+rapidly at home with everybody. He described all the sensations of
+flight, his early lessons and experiments, and in the utmost detail the
+events of the afternoon that had led to this disastrous adventure. He
+made his suggestion of "trying the thing" seem the most natural impulse
+in the world. The bulk of the conversation fell on him; Mr. Magnet, save
+for the intervention of one or two jests, was quietly observant; the
+rest were well disposed to listen. And as Mr. Trafford talked his eye
+rested ever and again on Marjorie with the faintest touch of scrutiny
+and perplexity, and she, too, found a curious little persuasion growing
+up in her mind that somewhere, somehow, she and he had met and had
+talked rather earnestly. But how and where eluded her altogether....
+
+They had sat for an hour--the men from the doctor's seemed never
+coming--when Mr. Pope returned unexpectedly from his cricket match,
+which had ended a little prematurely in a rot on an over-dry wicket. He
+was full of particulars of the day's play, and how Wiper had got a most
+amazing catch and held it, though he fell; how Jenks had deliberately
+bowled at a man's head, he believed, and little Gibbs thrown a man out
+from slip. He was burning to tell all this in the utmost detail to
+Magnet and his family, so that they might at least share the retrospect
+of his pleasure. He had thought out rather a good pun on Wiper, and he
+was naturally a little thwarted to find all this good, rich talk
+crowded out by a more engrossing topic.
+
+At the sight of a stranger grouped in a popular manner beside the
+tea-things, he displayed a slight acerbity, which was if anything
+increased by the discovery of a prostrate person with large brown eyes
+and an expression of Oriental patience and disdain, in the shade of a
+bush near by. At first he seemed scarcely to grasp Mrs. Pope's
+explanations, and regarded Sir Rupert with an expression that bordered
+on malevolence. Then, when his attention was directed to the smashed
+machine upon the lawn, he broke out into a loud indignant: "Good God!
+What next?"
+
+He walked towards the wreckage, disregarding Mr. Trafford beside him. "A
+man can't go away from his house for an hour!" he complained.
+
+"I can assure you we did all we could to prevent it," said Trafford.
+
+"Ought never to have had it to prevent," said Mr. Pope. "Is your friend
+hurt?"
+
+"A rib--and shock," said Trafford.
+
+"Well--he deserves it," said Mr. Pope. "Rather than launch myself into
+the air in one of those infernal things, I'd be stood against a wall and
+shot."
+
+"Tastes differ, of course," said Trafford, with unruffled urbanity.
+
+"You'll have all this cleared away," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Mechanics--oh! a complete break-down party--are speeding to us in fast
+motors," said Trafford. "Thanks to the kindness of your domestic in
+taking a telegram for me."
+
+"Hope they won't kill any one," said Mr. Pope, and just for a moment the
+conversation hung fire. "And your friend?" he asked.
+
+"He goes in the next ten minutes--well, whenever the litter comes from
+the doctor's. Poor old Solomonson!"
+
+"Solomonson?"
+
+"Sir Rupert."
+
+"Oh!" said Mr. Pope. "Is that the Pigmentation Solomonson?"
+
+"I believe he does do some beastly company of that sort," said Trafford.
+"Isn't it amazing we didn't smash our engine?"
+
+Sir Rupert Solomonson was indeed a familiar name to Mr. Pope. He had
+organized the exploitation of a number of pigment and bye-product
+patents, and the ordinary and deferred shares of his syndicate has risen
+to so high a price as to fill Mr. Pope with the utmost confidence in
+their future; indeed he had bought considerably, withdrawing capital to
+do so from an Argentine railway whose stock had awakened his distaste
+and a sort of moral aversion by slumping heavily after a bad wheat and
+linseed harvest. This discovery did much to mitigate his first asperity,
+his next remark to Trafford was almost neutral, and he was even asking
+Sir Rupert whether he could do anything to make him comfortable, when
+the doctor returned with a litter, borne by four hastily compiled
+bearers.
+
+
+Sec. 4
+
+Some brightness seemed to vanish when the buoyant Mr. Trafford, still
+undauntedly cheerful, limped off after his more injured friend, and
+disappeared through the gate. Marjorie found herself in a world whose
+remaining manhood declined to see anything but extreme annoyance in this
+gay, exciting rupture of the afternoon. "Good God!" said Mr. Pope. "What
+next? What next?"
+
+"Registration, I hope," said Mr. Magnet,--"and relegation to the desert
+of Sahara."
+
+"One good thing about it," said Mr. Pope--"it all wastes petrol. And
+when the petrol supply gives out--they're done."
+
+"Certainly we might all have been killed!" said Mrs. Pope, feeling she
+had to bear her witness against their visitors, and added: "If we hadn't
+moved out of the way, that is."
+
+There was a simultaneous movement towards the shattered apparatus, about
+which a small contingent of villagers, who had availed themselves of the
+withdrawal of the sentinel, had now assembled.
+
+"Look at it!" said Mr. Pope, with bitter hostility. "Look at it!"
+
+Everyone had anticipated his command.
+
+"They'll never come to anything," said Mr. Pope, after a pause of silent
+hatred.
+
+"But they _have_ to come to something," said Marjorie.
+
+"They've come to smash!" said Mr. Magnet, with the true humorist's air.
+
+"But consider the impudence of this invasion, the
+wild--objectionableness of it!"
+
+"They're nasty things," said Mr. Magnet. "Nasty things!"
+
+A curious spirit of opposition stirred in Marjorie. It seemed to her
+that men who play golf-croquet and watch cricket matches have no
+business to contemn men who risk their lives in the air. She sought for
+some controversial opening.
+
+"Isn't the engine rather wonderful?" she remarked.
+
+Mr. Magnet regarded the engine with his head a little on one side. "It's
+the usual sort," he said.
+
+"There weren't engines like that twenty years ago."
+
+"There weren't people like _you_ twenty years ago," said Mr. Magnet,
+smiling wisely and kindly, and turned his back on the thing.
+
+Mr. Pope followed suit. He was filled with the bitter thought that he
+would never now be able to tell the history of the remarkable match he
+had witnessed. It was all spoilt for him--spoilt for ever. Everything
+was disturbed and put out.
+
+"They've left us our tennis lawn," he said, with a not unnatural
+resentment passing to invitation. "What do you say, Magnet? Now you've
+begun the game you must keep it up?"
+
+"If Marjorie, or Mrs. Pope, or Daffy...?" said Magnet.
+
+Mrs. Pope declared the house required her. And so with the gravest
+apprehensions, and an insincere compliment to their father's energy,
+Daffy and Marjorie made up a foursome for that healthy and invigorating
+game. But that evening Mr. Pope got his serve well into the bay of the
+sagging net almost at once, and with Marjorie in the background taking
+anything he left her, he won quite easily, and everything became
+pleasant again. Magnet gloated upon Marjorie and served her like a
+missionary giving Bibles to heathen children, he seemed always looking
+at her instead of the ball, and except for a slight disposition on the
+part of Daffy to slash, nothing could have been more delightful. And at
+supper Mr. Pope, rather crushing his wife's attempt to recapitulate the
+more characteristic sayings and doings of Sir Rupert and his friend, did
+after all succeed in giving every one a very good idea indeed of the
+more remarkable incidents of the cricket match at Wamping, and made the
+pun he had been accustomed to use upon the name of Wiper in a new and
+improved form. A general talk about cricket and the Immense Good of
+cricket followed. Mr. Pope said he would make cricket-playing compulsory
+for every English boy.
+
+Everyone it seemed to Marjorie was forgetting that dark shape athwart
+the lawn, and all the immense implication of its presence, with a
+deliberate and irrational skill, and she noted that the usual move
+towards the garden at the end of the evening was not made.
+
+
+Sec. 5
+
+In the night time Marjorie had a dream that she was flying about in the
+world on a monoplane with Mr. Trafford as a passenger.
+
+Then Mr. Trafford disappeared, and she was flying about alone with a
+curious uneasy feeling that in a minute or so she would be unable any
+longer to manage the machine.
+
+Then her father and Mr. Magnet appeared very far below, walking about
+and disapproving of her. Mr. Magnet was shaking his head very, very
+sagely, and saying: "Rather a stiff job for little Marjorie," and her
+father was saying she would be steadier when she married. And then, she
+wasn't clear how, the engine refused to work until her bills were paid,
+and she began to fall, and fall, and fall towards Mr. Magnet. She tried
+frantically to pay her bills. She was falling down the fronts of
+skyscrapers and precipices--and Mr. Magnet was waiting for her below
+with a quiet kindly smile that grew wider and wider and wider....
+
+She woke up palpitating.
+
+
+Sec. 6
+
+Next morning a curious restlessness came upon Marjorie. Conceivably it
+was due to the absence of Magnet, who had gone to London to deliver his
+long promised address on The Characteristics of English Humour to the
+_Literati_ Club. Conceivably she missed his attentions. But it
+crystallized out in the early afternoon into the oddest form, a powerful
+craving to go to the little town of Pensting, five miles off, on the
+other side of Buryhamstreet, to buy silk shoelaces.
+
+She decided to go in the donkey cart. She communicated her intention to
+her mother, but she did not communicate an equally definite intention to
+be reminded suddenly of Sir Rupert Solomonson as she was passing the
+surgery, and make an inquiry on the spur of the moment--it wouldn't
+surely be anything but a kindly and justifiable impulse to do that. She
+might see Mr. Trafford perhaps, but there was no particular harm in
+that.
+
+It is also to be remarked that finding Theodore a little disposed to
+encumber her vehicle with his presence she expressed her delight at
+being released from the need of going, and abandoned the whole
+expedition to him--knowing as she did perfectly well that if Theodore
+hated anything more than navigating the donkey cart alone, it was going
+unprotected into a shop to buy articles of feminine apparel--until he
+chucked the whole project and went fishing--if one can call it fishing
+when there are no fish and the fisherman knows it--in the decadent
+ornamental water.
+
+And it is also to be remarked that as Marjorie approached the surgery
+she was seized with an absurd and powerful shyness, so that not only did
+she not call at the surgery, she did not even look at the surgery, she
+gazed almost rigidly straight ahead, telling herself, however, that she
+merely deferred that kindly impulse until she had bought her laces. And
+so it happened that about half a mile beyond the end of Buryhamstreet
+she came round a corner upon Trafford, and by a singular fatality he
+also was driving a donkey, or, rather, was tracing a fan-like pattern on
+the road with a donkey's hoofs. It was a very similar donkey to
+Marjorie's, but the vehicle was a governess cart, and much smarter than
+Marjorie's turn-out. His ingenuous face displayed great animation at the
+sight of her, and as she drew alongside he hailed her with an almost
+unnatural ease of manner.
+
+"Hullo!" he cried. "I'm taking the air. You seem to be able to drive
+donkeys forward. How do you do it? I can't. Never done anything so
+dangerous in my life before. I've just been missed by two motor cars,
+and hung for a terrible minute with my left wheel on the very verge of
+an unfathomable ditch. I could hear the little ducklings far, far below,
+and bits of mould dropping. I tried to count before the splash. Aren't
+you--_white?_"
+
+"But why are you doing it?"
+
+"One must do something. I'm bandaged up and can't walk. It hurt my leg
+more than I knew--your doctor says. Solomonson won't talk of anything
+but how he feels, and _I_ don't care a rap how he feels. So I got this
+thing and came out with it."
+
+Marjorie made her inquiries. There came a little pause.
+
+"Some day no one will believe that men were ever so foolish as to trust
+themselves to draught animals," he remarked. "Hullo! Look out! The
+horror of it!"
+
+A large oil van--a huge drum on wheels--motor-driven, had come round the
+corner, and after a preliminary and quite insufficient hoot, bore down
+upon them, and missing Trafford as it seemed by a miracle, swept past.
+Both drivers did wonderful things with whips and reins, and found
+themselves alone in the road again, with their wheels locked and an
+indefinite future.
+
+"I leave the situation to you," said Trafford. "Or shall we just sit and
+talk until the next motor car kills us?"
+
+"We ought to make an effort," said Marjorie, cheerfully, and descended
+to lead the two beasts.
+
+Assisted by an elderly hedger, who had been taking a disregarded
+interest in them for some time, she separated the wheels and got the two
+donkeys abreast. The old hedger's opinion of their safety on the king's
+highway was expressed by his action rather than his words; he directed
+the beasts towards a shady lane that opened at right angles to the road.
+He stood by their bridles while Marjorie resumed her seat.
+
+"It seems to me clearly a case for compromise," said Trafford. "You want
+to go that way, I want to go that way. Let us both go _this_ way. It is
+by such arrangements that civilization becomes possible."
+
+He dismissed the hedger generously and resumed his reins.
+
+"Shall we race?" he asked.
+
+"With your leg?" she inquired.
+
+"No; with the donkeys. I say, this _is_ rather a lark. At first I
+thought it was both dangerous and dull. But things have changed. I am in
+beastly high spirits. I feel there will be a cry before night; but
+still, I am----I wanted the companionship of an unbroken person. It's
+so jolly to meet you again."
+
+"Again?"
+
+"After the year before last."
+
+"After the year before last?"
+
+"You didn't know," said Trafford, "I had met you before? How aggressive
+I must have seemed! Well, _I_ wasn't quite clear. I spent the greater
+part of last night--my ankle being foolish in the small hours--in
+trying to remember how and where."
+
+"I don't remember," said Marjorie.
+
+"I remembered you very distinctly, and some things I thought about you,
+but not where it had happened. Then in the night I got it. It _is_ a
+puzzle, isn't it? You see, I was wearing a black gown, and I had been
+out of the sunlight for some months--and my eye, I remember it acutely,
+was bandaged. I'm usually bandaged somewhere.
+
+    'I was a King in Babylon
+    And you were a Christian slave'
+
+--I mean a candidate."
+
+Marjorie remembered suddenly. "You're Professor Trafford."
+
+"Not in this atmosphere. But I am at the Romeike College. And as soon as
+I recalled examining you I remembered it--minutely. You were
+intelligent, though unsound--about cryo-hydrates it was. Ah, you
+remember me now. As most young women are correct by rote and
+unintelligent in such questions, and as it doesn't matter a rap about
+anything of that sort, whether you are correct or not, as long as the
+mental gesture is right----" He paused for a moment, as though tired of
+his sentence. "I remembered you."
+
+He proceeded in his easy and detached manner, that seemed to make every
+topic possible, to tell her his first impressions of her, and show how
+very distinctly indeed he remembered her.
+
+"You set me philosophizing. I'd never examined a girls' school before,
+and I was suddenly struck by the spectacle of the fifty of you. What's
+going to become of them all?"
+
+"I thought," he went on, "how bright you were, and how keen and eager
+you were--_you_, I mean, in particular--and just how certain it was
+your brightness and eagerness would be swallowed up by some silly
+ordinariness or other--stuffy marriage or stuffy domestic duties. The
+old, old story--done over again with a sort of threadbare badness.
+(Nothing to say against it if it's done well.) I got quite sentimental
+and pathetic about life's breach of faith with women. Odd, isn't it, how
+one's mind runs on. But that's what I thought. It's all come back to
+me."
+
+Marjorie's bright, clear eye came round to him. "I don't see very much
+wrong with the lot of women," she reflected. "Things are different
+nowadays. Anyhow----"
+
+She paused.
+
+"You don't want to be a man?"
+
+"_No!_"
+
+She was emphatic.
+
+"Some of us cut more sharply at life than you think," he said, plumbing
+her unspoken sense.
+
+She had never met a man before who understood just how a girl can feel
+the slow obtuseness of his sex. It was almost as if he had found her out
+at something.
+
+"Oh," she said, "perhaps you do," and looked at him with an increased
+interest.
+
+"I'm half-feminine, I believe," he said. "For instance, I've got just a
+woman's joy in textures and little significant shapes. I know how you
+feel about that. I can spend hours, even now, in crystal gazing--I don't
+mean to see some silly revelation of some silly person's proceedings
+somewhere, but just for the things themselves. I wonder if you have ever
+been in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington, and looked at
+Ruskin's crystal collection? I saw it when I was a boy, and it became--I
+can't help the word--an obsession. The inclusions like moss and like
+trees, and all sorts of fantastic things, and the cleavages and
+enclosures with little bubbles, and the lights and shimmer--What were we
+talking about? Oh, about the keen way your feminine perceptions cut into
+things. And yet somehow I was throwing contempt on the feminine
+intelligence. I don't do justice to the order of my thoughts. Never
+mind. We've lost the thread. But I wish you knew my mother."
+
+He went on while Marjorie was still considering the proper response to
+this.
+
+"You see, I'm her only son and she brought me up, and we know each
+other--oh! very well. She helps with my work. She understands nearly all
+of it. She makes suggestions. And to this day I don't know if she's the
+most original or the most parasitic of creatures. And that's the way
+with all women and girls, it seems to me. You're as critical as light,
+and as undiscriminating.... I say, do I strike you as talking nonsense?"
+
+"Not a bit," said Marjorie. "But you do go rather fast."
+
+"I know," he admitted. "But somehow you excite me. I've been with
+Solomonson a week, and he's dull at all times. It was that made me take
+out that monoplane of his. But it did him no good."
+
+He paused.
+
+"They told me after the exam.," said Marjorie, "you knew more about
+crystallography--than anyone."
+
+"Does that strike you as a dull subject?"
+
+"No," said Marjorie, in a tone that invited justifications.
+
+"It isn't. I think--naturally, that the world one goes into when one
+studies molecular physics is quite the most beautiful of Wonderlands....
+I can assure you I work sometimes like a man who is exploring a magic
+palace.... Do you know anything of molecular physics?"
+
+"You examined me," said Marjorie.
+
+"The sense one has of exquisite and wonderful rhythms--just beyond sound
+and sight! And there's a taunting suggestion of its being all there,
+displayed and confessed, if only one were quick enough to see it. Why,
+for instance, when you change the composition of a felspar almost
+imperceptibly, do the angles change? What's the correspondence between
+the altered angle and the substituted atom? Why does this bit of clear
+stuff swing the ray of light so much out of its path, and that swing it
+more? Then what happens when crystals gutter down, and go into solution.
+The endless launching of innumerable little craft. Think what a clear
+solution must be if only one had ultra-microscopic eyes and could see
+into it, see the extraordinary patternings, the swimming circling
+constellations. And then the path of a ray of polarized light beating
+through it! It takes me like music. Do you know anything of the effects
+of polarized light, the sight of a slice of olivine-gabbro for instance
+between crossed Nicols?"
+
+"I've seen some rock sections," said Marjorie. "I forget the names of
+the rocks."
+
+"The colours?"
+
+"Oh yes, the colours."
+
+"Is there anything else so rich and beautiful in all the world? And
+every different mineral and every variety of that mineral has a
+different palette of colours, a different scheme of harmonies--and is
+telling you something."
+
+"If only you understood."
+
+"Exactly. All the ordinary stuff of life--you know--the carts and motor
+cars and dusty roads and--cinder sifting, seems so blank to me--with
+that persuasion of swing and subtlety beneath it all. As if the whole
+world was fire and crystal and aquiver--with some sort of cotton
+wrappers thrown over it...."
+
+"Dust sheets," said Marjorie. "I know."
+
+"Or like a diamond painted over!"
+
+"With that sort of grey paint, very full of body--that lasts."
+
+"Yes." He smiled at her. "I can't help apologetics. Most people think a
+professor of science is just----"
+
+"A professor of science."
+
+"Yes. Something all pedantries and phrases. I want to clear my
+character. As though it is foolish to follow a vortex ring into a
+vacuum, and wise to whack at a dirty golf ball on a suburban railway
+bank. Oh, their golf! Under high heaven!... You don't play golf, do you,
+by any chance?"
+
+"Only the woman's part," said Marjorie.
+
+"And they despise us," he said. "Solomonson can hardly hide how he
+despises us. Nothing is more wonderful than the way these people go on
+despising us who do research, who have this fever of curiosity, who
+won't be content with--what did you call those wrappers?"
+
+"Dust sheets."
+
+"Yes, dust sheets. What a life! Swaddling bands, dust sheets and a
+shroud! You know, research and discovery aren't nearly so difficult as
+people think--if only you have the courage to say a thing or try a thing
+now and then that it isn't usual to say or try. And after all----" he
+went off at a tangent, "these confounded ordinary people aren't
+justified in their contempt. We keep on throwing them things over our
+shoulders, electric bells, telephones, Marconigrams. Look at the
+beautiful electric trains that come towering down the London streets at
+nightfall, ships of light in full sail! Twenty years ago they were as
+impossible as immortality. We conquer the seas for these--golfers, puts
+arms in their hands that will certainly blow them all to bits if ever
+the idiots go to war with them, come sailing out of the air on them----"
+
+He caught Marjorie's eye and stopped.
+
+"_Falling_ out of the air on them," corrected Marjorie very softly.
+
+"That was only an accident," said Mr. Trafford....
+
+So they began a conversation in the lane where the trees met overhead
+that went on and went on like a devious path in a shady wood, and
+touched upon all manner of things....
+
+
+Sec. 7
+
+In the end quite a number of people were aggrieved by this dialogue, in
+the lane that led nowhither....
+
+Sir Rupert Solomonson was the first to complain. Trafford had been away
+"three mortal hours." No one had come near him, not a soul, and there
+hadn't been even a passing car to cheer his ear.
+
+Sir Rupert admitted he had to be quiet. "But not so _damned_ quiet."
+
+"I'd have been glad," said Sir Rupert, "if a hen had laid an egg and
+clucked a bit. You might have thought there had been a Resurrection or
+somethin', and cleared off everybody. Lord! it was deadly. I'd have sung
+out myself if it hadn't been for these infernal ribs...."
+
+Mrs. Pope came upon the affair quite by accident.
+
+"Well, Marjorie," she said as she poured tea for the family, "did you
+get your laces?"
+
+"Never got there, Mummy," said Marjorie, and paused fatally.
+
+"Didn't get there!" said Mrs. Pope. "That's worse than Theodore!
+Wouldn't the donkey go, poor dear?"
+
+There was nothing to colour about, and yet Marjorie felt the warm flow
+in neck and cheek and brow. She threw extraordinary quantities of
+candour into her manner. "I had a romantic adventure," she said rather
+quietly. "I was going to tell you."
+
+(Sensation.)
+
+"You see it was like this," said Marjorie. "I ran against Mr.
+Trafford...."
+
+She drank tea, and pulled herself together for a lively description of
+the wheel-locking and the subsequent conversation, a bright ridiculous
+account which made the affair happen by implication on the high road and
+not in a byeway, and was adorned with every facetious ornament that
+seemed likely to get a laugh from the children. But she talked rather
+fast, and she felt she forced the fun a little. However, it amused the
+children all right, and Theodore created a diversion by choking with his
+tea. From first to last Marjorie was extremely careful to avoid the
+affectionate scrutiny of her mother's eye. And had this lasted the
+_whole_ afternoon? asked Mrs. Pope. "Oh, they'd talked for
+half-an-hour," said Marjorie, or more, and had driven back very slowly
+together. "He did all the talking. You saw what he was yesterday. And
+the donkeys seemed too happy together to tear them away."
+
+"But what was it all about?" asked Daffy curious.
+
+"He asked after you, Daffy, most affectionately," said Marjorie, and
+added, "several times." (Though Trafford had as a matter of fact
+displayed a quite remarkable disregard of all her family.)
+
+"And," she went on, getting a plausible idea at last, "he explained all
+about aeroplanes. And all that sort of thing. Has Daddy gone to Wamping
+for some more cricket?..."
+
+(But none of this was lost on Mrs. Pope.)
+
+
+Sec. 8
+
+Mr. Magnet's return next day was heralded by nearly two-thirds of a
+column in the _Times_.
+
+The Lecture on the Characteristics of Humour had evidently been quite a
+serious affair, and a very imposing list of humorists and of prominent
+people associated with their industry had accepted the hospitality of
+the _Literati_.
+
+Marjorie ran her eyes over the Chairman's flattering introduction, then
+with a queer faint flavour of hostility she reached her destined
+husband's utterance. She seemed to hear the flat full tones of his voice
+as she read, and automatically the desiccated sentences of the reporter
+filled out again into those rich quietly deliberate unfoldings of sound
+that were already too familiar to her ear.
+
+Mr. Magnet had begun with modest disavowals. "There was a story, he
+said,"--so the report began--"whose hallowed antiquity ought to protect
+it from further exploitation, but he was tempted to repeat it because it
+offered certain analogies to the present situation. There were three
+characters in the story, a bluebottle and two Scotsmen. (Laughter.) The
+bluebottle buzzed on the pane, otherwise a profound silence reigned.
+This was broken by one of the Scotsmen trying to locate the bluebottle
+with zoological exactitude. Said this Scotsman: 'Sandy, I am thinking if
+yon fly is a birdie or a beastie.' The other replied: 'Man, don't spoil
+good whiskey with religious conversation.' (Laughter.) He was tempted,
+Mr. Magnet resumed, to ask himself and them why it was that they should
+spoil the aftereffects of a most excellent and admirably served dinner
+by an academic discussion on British humour. At first he was pained by
+the thought that they proposed to temper their hospitality with a demand
+for a speech. A closer inspection showed that he was to introduce a
+debate and that others were to speak, and that was a new element in
+their hospitality. Further, he was permitted to choose the subject so
+that he could bring their speeches within the range of his
+comprehension. (Laughter.) His was an easy task. He could make it
+easier; the best thing to do would be to say nothing at all.
+(Laughter.)"
+
+For a space the reporter seemed to have omitted largely--perhaps he was
+changing places with his relief--and the next sentence showed Mr. Magnet
+engaged as it were in revising a _hortus siccus_ of jokes. "There was
+the humour of facts and situations," he was saying, "or that humour of
+expression for which there was no human responsibility, as in the case
+of Irish humour; he spoke of the humour of the soil which found its
+noblest utterance in the bull. Humour depended largely on contrast.
+There was a humour of form and expression which had many local
+varieties. American humour had been characterized by exaggeration, the
+suppression of some link in the chain of argument or narrative, and a
+wealth of simile and metaphor which had been justly defined as the
+poetry of a pioneer race."...
+
+Marjorie's attention slipped its anchor, and caught lower down upon: "In
+England there was a near kinship between laughter and tears; their
+mental relations were as close as their physical. Abroad this did not
+appear to be the case. It was different in France. But perhaps on the
+whole it would be better to leave the humour of France and what some
+people still unhappily chose to regard as matters open to
+controversy--he referred to choice of subject--out of their discussion
+altogether. ('Hear, hear,' and cheers.)"...
+
+Attention wandered again. Then she remarked:--it reminded her in some
+mysterious way of a dropped hairpin--"It was noticeable that the pun to
+a great extent had become demode...."
+
+At this point the flight of Marjorie's eyes down the column was arrested
+by her father's hand gently but firmly taking possession of the _Times_.
+She yielded it without reluctance, turned to the breakfast table, and
+never resumed her study of the social relaxations of humorists....
+
+Indeed she forgot it. Her mind was in a state of extreme perplexity. She
+didn't know what to make of herself or anything or anybody. Her mind was
+full of Trafford and all that he had said and done and all that he might
+have said and done, and it was entirely characteristic that she could
+not think of Magnet in any way at all except as a bar-like shadow that
+lay across all her memories and all the bright possibilities of this
+engaging person.
+
+She thought particularly of the mobile animation of his face, the keen
+flash of enthusiasm in his thoughts and expressions....
+
+It was perhaps more characteristic of her time than of her that she did
+not think she was dealing so much with a moral problem as an
+embarrassment, and that she hadn't as yet felt the first stirrings of
+self-reproach for the series of disingenuous proceedings that had
+rendered the yesterday's encounter possible. But she was restless,
+wildly restless as a bird whose nest is taken. She could abide nowhere.
+She fretted through the morning, avoided Daffy in a marked manner, and
+inflicted a stinging and only partially merited rebuke upon Theodore for
+slouching, humping and--of all trite grievances!--not washing behind his
+ears. As if any chap washed behind his ears! She thought tennis with the
+pseudo-twins might assuage her, but she broke off after losing two sets;
+and then she went into the garden to get fresh flowers, and picked a
+large bunch and left them on the piano until her mother reminded her of
+them. She tried a little Shaw. She struggled with an insane wish to walk
+through the wood behind the village and have an accidental meeting with
+someone who couldn't possibly appear but whom it would be quite adorable
+to meet. Anyhow she conquered that.
+
+She had a curious and rather morbid indisposition to go after lunch to
+the station and meet Mr. Magnet as her mother wished her to do, in order
+to bring him straight to the vicarage to early tea, but here again
+reason prevailed and she went.
+
+Mr. Magnet arrived by the 2.27, and to Marjorie's eye his alighting
+presence had an effect of being not so much covered with laurels as
+distended by them. His face seemed whiter and larger than ever. He waved
+a great handful of newspapers.
+
+"Hullo, Magsy!" he said. "They've given me a thumping Press. I'm nearer
+swelled head than I've ever been, so mind how you touch me!"
+
+"We'll take it down at croquet," said Marjorie.
+
+"They've cleared that thing away?"
+
+"And made up the lawn like a billiard table," she said.
+
+"That makes for skill," he said waggishly. "I shall save my head after
+all."
+
+For a moment he seemed to loom towards kissing her, but she averted
+this danger by a business-like concern for his bag. He entrusted this to
+a porter, and reverted to the triumph of overnight so soon as they were
+clear of the station. He was overflowing with kindliness towards his
+fellow humorists, who had appeared in force and very generously at the
+banquet, and had said the most charming things--some of which were in
+one report and some in another, and some the reporters had missed
+altogether--some of the kindliest.
+
+"It's a pleasant feeling to think that a lot of good fellows think you
+are a good fellow," said Mr. Magnet.
+
+He became solicitous for her. How had she got on while he was away? She
+asked him how one was likely to get on at Buryhamstreet; monoplanes
+didn't fall every day, and as she said that it occurred to her she was
+behaving meanly. But he was going on to his next topic before she could
+qualify.
+
+"I've got something in my pocket," he remarked, and playfully: "Guess."
+
+She did, but she wouldn't. She had a curious sinking of the heart.
+
+"I want you to see it before anyone else," he said. "Then if you don't
+like it, it can go back. It's a sapphire."
+
+He was feeling nervously in his pockets and then the little box was in
+her hand.
+
+She hesitated to open it. It made everything so dreadfully concrete. And
+this time the sense of meanness was altogether acuter. He'd bought this
+in London; he'd brought it down, hoping for her approval. Yes, it
+was--horrid. But what was she to do?
+
+"It's--awfully pretty," she said with the glittering symbol in her hand,
+and indeed he had gone to one of those artistic women who are reviving
+and improving upon the rich old Roman designs. "It's so beautifully
+made."
+
+"I'm so glad you like it. You really _do_ like it?"
+
+"I don't deserve it."
+
+"Oh! But you _do_ like it?"
+
+"Enormously."
+
+"Ah! I spent an hour in choosing it."
+
+She could see him. She felt as though she had picked his pocket.
+
+"Only I don't deserve it, Mr. Magnet. Indeed I don't. I feel I am taking
+it on false pretences."
+
+"Nonsense, Magsy. Nonsense! Slip it on your finger, girl."
+
+"But I don't," she insisted.
+
+He took the box from her, pocketed it and seized her hand. She drew it
+away from him.
+
+"No!" she said. "I feel like a cheat. You know, I don't--I'm sure I
+don't love----"
+
+"I'll love enough for two," he said, and got her hand again. "No!" he
+said at her gesture, "you'll wear it. Why shouldn't you?"
+
+And so Marjorie came back along the vicarage avenue with his ring upon
+her hand. And Mr. Pope was evidently very glad to see him....
+
+The family was still seated at tea upon rugs and wraps, and still
+discussing humorists at play, when Professor Trafford appeared, leaning
+on a large stick and limping, but resolute, by the church gate. "Pish!"
+said Mr. Pope. Marjorie tried not to reveal a certain dismay, there was
+dumb, rich approval in Daphne's eyes, and the pleasure of Theodore and
+the pseudo-twins was only too scandalously evident. "Hoo-Ray!" said
+Theodore, with ill-concealed relief.
+
+Mrs. Pope was the incarnate invocation of tact as Trafford drew near.
+
+"I hope," he said, with obvious insincerity, "I don't invade you. But
+Solomonson is frightfully concerned and anxious about your lawn, and
+whether his men cleared it up properly and put things right." His eye
+went about the party and rested on Marjorie. "How are you?" he said, in
+a friendly voice.
+
+"Well, we seem to have got our croquet lawn back," said Mr. Pope. "And
+our nerves are recovering. How is Sir Rupert?"
+
+"A little fractious," said Trafford, with the ghost of a smile.
+
+"You'll take some tea?" said Mrs. Pope in the pause that followed.
+
+"Thank you," said Trafford and sat down instantly.
+
+"I saw your jolly address in the _Standard_," he said to Magnet. "I
+haven't read anything so amusing for some time."
+
+"Rom dear," said Mrs. Pope, "will you take the pot in and get some fresh
+tea?"
+
+Mr. Trafford addressed himself to the flattery of Magnet with
+considerable skill. He had detected a lurking hostility in the eyes of
+the two gentlemen that counselled him to propitiate them if he meant to
+maintain his footing in the vicarage, and now he talked to them almost
+exclusively and ignored the ladies modestly but politely in the way that
+seems natural and proper in a British middle-class house of the better
+sort. But as he talked chiefly of the improvement of motor machinery
+that had recently been shown at the Engineering Exhibition, he did not
+make that headway with Marjorie's father that he had perhaps
+anticipated. Mr. Pope fumed quietly for a time, and then suddenly spoke
+out.
+
+"I'm no lover of machines," he said abruptly, slashing across Mr.
+Trafford's description. "All our troubles began with villainous
+saltpetre. I'm an old-fashioned man with a nose--and a neck, and I don't
+want the one offended or the other broken. No, don't ask me to be
+interested in your valves and cylinders. What do you say, Magnet? It
+starts machinery in my head to hear about them...."
+
+On such occasions as this when Mr. Pope spoke out, his horror of an
+anti-climax or any sort of contradiction was apt to bring the utterance
+to a culmination not always to be distinguished from a flight. And now
+he rose to his feet as he delivered himself.
+
+"Who's for a game of tennis?" he said, "in this last uncontaminated
+patch of air? I and Marjorie will give you a match, Daffy--if Magnet
+isn't too tired to join you."
+
+Daffy looked at Marjorie for an instant.
+
+"We'll want you, Theodore, to look after the balls in the potatoes,"
+said Mr. Pope lest that ingenuous mind should be corrupted behind his
+back....
+
+Mrs. Pope found herself left to entertain a slightly disgruntled
+Trafford. Rom and Syd hovered on the off chance of notice, at the corner
+of the croquet lawn nearest the tea things. Mrs. Pope had already
+determined to make certain little matters clearer than they appeared to
+be to this agreeable but superfluous person, and she was greatly
+assisted by his opening upon the subject of her daughters. "Jolly tennis
+looks," he said.
+
+"Don't they?" said Mrs. Pope. "I think it is such a graceful game for a
+girl."
+
+Mr. Trafford glanced at Mrs. Pope's face, but her expression was
+impenetrable.
+
+"They both like it and play it so well," she said. "Their father is so
+skillful and interested in games. Marjorie tells me you were her
+examiner a year or so ago."
+
+"Yes. She struck my memory--her work stood out."
+
+"Of course she is clever," said Mrs. Pope. "Or we shouldn't have sent
+her to Oxbridge. There she's doing quite well--quite well. Everyone says
+so. I don't know, of course, if Mr. Magnet will let her finish there."
+
+"Mr. Magnet?"
+
+"She's just engaged to him. Of course she's frightfully excited about
+it, and naturally he wants her to come away and marry. There's very
+little excuse for a long engagement. No."
+
+Her voice died in a musical little note, and she seemed to be
+scrutinizing the tennis with an absorbed interest. "They've got new
+balls," she said, as if to herself.
+
+Trafford had rolled over, and she fancied she detected a change in his
+voice when it came. "Isn't it rather a waste not to finish a university
+career?" he said.
+
+"Oh, it wouldn't be wasted. Of course a girl like that will be hand and
+glove with her husband. She'll be able to help him with the scientific
+side of his jokes and all that. I sometimes wish it had been Daffy who
+had gone to college though. I sometimes think we've sacrificed Daffy a
+little. She's not the bright quickness of Marjorie, but there's
+something quietly solid about her mind--something _stable_. Perhaps I
+didn't want her to go away from me.... Mr. Magnet is doing wonders at
+the net. He's just begun to play--to please Marjorie. Don't you think
+he's a dreadfully amusing man, Mr. Trafford? He says such _quiet_
+things."
+
+
+Sec. 9
+
+The effect of this _eclaircissement_ upon Mr. Trafford was not what it
+should have been. Properly he ought to have realized at once that
+Marjorie was for ever beyond his aspirations, and if he found it too
+difficult to regard her with equanimity, then he ought to have shunned
+her presence. But instead, after his first shock of incredulous
+astonishment, his spirit rose in a rebellion against arranged facts that
+was as un-English as it was ungentlemanly. He went back to Solomonson
+with a mood of thoughtful depression giving place to a growing passion
+of indignation. He presented it to himself in a generalized and
+altruistic form. "What the deuce is the good of all this talk of
+Eugenics," he asked himself aloud, "if they are going to hand over that
+shining girl to that beastly little area sneak?"
+
+He called Mr. Magnet a "beastly little area sneak!"
+
+Nothing could show more clearly just how much he had contrived to fall
+in love with Marjorie during his brief sojourn in Buryhamstreet and the
+acuteness of his disappointment, and nothing could be more eloquent of
+his forcible and undisciplined temperament. And out of ten thousand
+possible abusive epithets with which his mind was no doubt stored, this
+one, I think, had come into his head because of the alert watchfulness
+with which Mr. Magnet followed a conversation, as he waited his chance
+for some neat but brilliant flash of comment....
+
+Trafford, like Marjorie, was another of those undisciplined young people
+our age has produced in such significant quantity. He was just
+six-and-twenty, but the facts that he was big of build, had as an only
+child associated much with grown-up people, and was already a
+conspicuous success in the world of micro-chemical research, had given
+him the self-reliance and assurance of a much older man. He had still to
+come his croppers and learn most of the important lessons in life, and,
+so far, he wasn't aware of it. He was naturally clean-minded, very busy
+and interested in his work, and on remarkably friendly and confidential
+terms with his mother who kept house for him, and though he had had
+several small love disturbances, this was the first occasion that
+anything of the kind had ploughed deep into his feelings and desires.
+
+Trafford's father had died early in life. He had been a brilliant
+pathologist, one of that splendid group of scientific investigators in
+the middle Victorian period which shines ever more brightly as our
+criticism dims their associated splendours, and he had died before he
+was thirty through a momentary slip of the scalpel. His wife--she had
+been his wife for five years--found his child and his memory and the
+quality of the life he had made about her too satisfying for the risks
+of a second marriage, and she had brought up her son with a passionate
+belief in the high mission of research and the supreme duty of seeking
+out and expressing truth finely. And here he was, calling Mr. Magnet a
+"beastly little area sneak."
+
+The situation perplexed him. Marjorie perplexed him. It was, had he
+known it, the beginning for him of a lifetime of problems and
+perplexities. He was absolutely certain she didn't love Magnet. Why,
+then, had she agreed to marry him? Such pressures and temptations as he
+could see about her seemed light to him in comparison with such an
+undertaking.
+
+Were they greater than he supposed?
+
+His method of coming to the issue of that problem was entirely original.
+He presented himself next afternoon with the air of an invited guest,
+drove Mr. Pope who was suffering from liver, to expostulatory sulking in
+the study, and expressed a passionate craving for golf-croquet, in spite
+of Mrs. Pope's extreme solicitude for his still bandaged ankle. He was
+partnered with Daffy, and for a long time he sought speech with Marjorie
+in vain. At last he was isolated in a corner of the lawn, and with the
+thinnest pretence of inadvertence, in spite of Daffy's despairing cry of
+"She plays next!" he laid up within two yards of her. He walked across
+to her as she addressed herself to her ball, and speaking in an
+incredulous tone and with the air of a comment on the game, he said: "I
+say, are you engaged to that chap Magnet?"
+
+Marjorie was amazed, but remarkably not offended. Something in his tone
+set her trembling. She forgot to play, and stood with her mallet hanging
+in her hand.
+
+"Punish him!" came the voice of Magnet from afar.
+
+"Yes," she said faintly.
+
+His remark came low and clear. It had a note of angry protest. "_Why?_"
+
+Marjorie, by the way of answer, hit her ball so that it jumped and
+missed his, ricochetted across the lawn and out of the ground on the
+further side.
+
+"I'm sorry if I've annoyed you," said Trafford, as Marjorie went after
+her ball, and Daffy thanked heaven aloud for the respite.
+
+They came together no more for a time, and Trafford, observant with
+every sense, found no clue to the riddle of her grave, intent bearing.
+She played very badly, and with unusual care and deliberation. He felt
+he had made a mess of things altogether, and suddenly found his leg was
+too painful to go on. "Partner," he asked, "will you play out my ball
+for me? I can't go on. I shall have to go."
+
+Marjorie surveyed him, while Daffy and Magnet expressed solicitude. He
+turned to go, mallet in hand, and found Marjorie following him.
+
+"Is that the heavier mallet?" she asked, and stood before him looking
+into his eyes and weighing a mallet in either hand.
+
+"Mr. Trafford, you're one of the worst examiners I've ever met," she
+said.
+
+He looked puzzled.
+
+"I don't know _why_," said Marjorie, "I wonder as much as you. But I
+am"; and seeing the light dawning in his eyes, she turned about, and
+went back to the debacle of her game.
+
+
+Sec. 10
+
+After that Mr. Trafford had one clear desire in his being which ruled
+all his other desires. He wanted a long, frank, unembarrassed and
+uninterrupted conversation with Marjorie. He had a very strong
+impression that Marjorie wanted exactly the same thing. For a week he
+besieged the situation in vain. After the fourth day Solomonson was only
+kept in Buryhamstreet by sheer will-power, exerted with a brutality that
+threatened to end that friendship abruptly. He went home on the sixth
+day in his largest car, but Trafford stayed on beyond the limits of
+decency to perform some incomprehensible service that he spoke of as
+"clearing up."
+
+"I want," he said, "to clear up."
+
+"But what _is_ there to clear up, my dear boy?"
+
+"Solomonson, you're a pampered plutocrat," said Trafford, as though
+everything was explained.
+
+"I don't see any sense in it at all," said Solomonson, and regarded his
+friend aslant with thick, black eyebrows raised.
+
+"I'm going to stay," said Trafford.
+
+And Solomonson said one of those unhappy and entirely disregarded things
+that ought never to be said.
+
+"There's some girl in this," said Solomonson.
+
+"Your bedroom's always waiting for you at Riplings," he said, when at
+last he was going off....
+
+Trafford's conviction that Marjorie also wanted, with an almost equal
+eagerness, the same opportunity for speech and explanations that he
+desired, sustained him in a series of unjustifiable intrusions upon the
+seclusion of the Popes. But although the manner of Mr. and Mrs. Pope did
+change considerably for the better after his next visit, it was
+extraordinary how impossible it seemed for him and Marjorie to achieve
+their common end of an encounter.
+
+Always something intervened.
+
+In the first place, Mrs. Pope's disposition to optimism had got the
+better of her earlier discretions, and a casual glance at Daphne's face
+when their visitor reappeared started quite a new thread of
+interpretations in her mind. She had taken the opportunity of hinting at
+this when Mr. Pope asked over his shirt-stud that night, "What the devil
+that--that chauffeur chap meant by always calling in the afternoon."
+
+"Now that Will Magnet monopolizes Marjorie," she said, after a little
+pause and a rustle or so, "I don't see why Daffy shouldn't have a little
+company of her own age."
+
+Mr. Pope turned round and stared at her. "I didn't think of that," he
+said. "But, anyhow, I don't like the fellow."
+
+"He seems to be rather clever," said Mrs. Pope, "though he certainly
+talks too much. And after all it was Sir Rupert's aeroplane. _He_ was
+only driving it to oblige."
+
+"He'll think twice before he drives another," said Mr. Pope, wrenching
+off his collar....
+
+Once Mrs. Pope had turned her imagination in this more and more
+agreeable direction, she was rather disposed, I am afraid, to let it
+bolt with her. And it was a deflection that certainly fell in very
+harmoniously with certain secret speculations of Daphne's. Trafford,
+too, being quite unused to any sort of social furtiveness, did perhaps,
+in order to divert attention from his preoccupation with Marjorie,
+attend more markedly to Daphne than he would otherwise have done. And so
+presently he found Daphne almost continuously on his hands. So far as
+she was concerned, he might have told her the entire history of his
+life, and every secret he had in the world, without let or hindrance.
+Mrs. Pope, too, showed a growing appreciation of his company, became
+sympathetic and confidential in a way that invited confidence, and threw
+a lot of light on her family history and Daffy's character. She had
+found Daffy a wonderful study, she said. Mr. Pope, too, seemed partly
+reconciled to him. The idea that, after all, both motor cars and
+monoplane were Sir Rupert's, and not Trafford's, had produced a reaction
+in the latter gentleman's favour. Moreover, it had occurred to him that
+Trafford's accident had perhaps disposed him towards a more thoughtful
+view of mechanical traction, and that this tendency would be greatly
+helped by a little genial chaff. So that he ceased to go indoors when
+Trafford was there, and hung about, meditating and delivering sly digs
+at this new victim of his ripe, old-fashioned humour.
+
+Nor did it help Trafford in his quest for Marjorie and a free, outspoken
+delivery that the pseudo-twins considered him a person of very
+considerable charm, and that Theodore, though indisposed to "suck up" to
+him publicly--I write here in Theodorese--did so desire intimate and
+solitary communion with him, more particularly in view of the chances of
+an adventitious aeroplane ride that seemed to hang about him--as to
+stalk him persistently--hovering on the verge of groups, playing a
+waiting game with a tennis ball and an old racquet, strolling artlessly
+towards the gate of the avenue when the time seemed ripening for his
+appearance or departure.
+
+On the other hand, Marjorie was greatly entangled by Magnet.
+
+Magnet was naturally an attentive lover; he was full of small
+encumbering services, and it made him none the less assiduous to
+perceive that Marjorie seemed to find no sort of pleasure in all the
+little things he did. He seemed to think that if picking the very best
+rose he could find for her did not cause a very perceptible brightening
+in her, then it was all the more necessary quietly to force her racquet
+from her hand and carry it for her, or help her ineffectually to cross a
+foot-wide ditch, or offer to read her in a rich, abundant, well
+modulated voice, some choice passage from "The Forest Lovers" of Mr.
+Maurice Hewlett. And behind these devotions there was a streak of
+jealousy. He knew as if by instinct that it was not wise to leave these
+two handsome young people together; he had a queer little disagreeable
+sensation whenever they spoke to one another or looked at one another.
+Whenever Trafford and Marjorie found themselves in a group, there was
+Magnet in the midst of them. He knew the value of his Marjorie, and did
+not mean to lose her....
+
+Being jointly baffled in this way was oddly stimulating to Marjorie's
+and Trafford's mutual predisposition. If you really want to throw people
+together, the thing to do--thank God for Ireland!--is to keep them
+apart. By the fourth day of this emotional incubation, Marjorie was
+thinking of Trafford to the exclusion of all her reading; and Trafford
+was lying awake at nights--oh, for half an hour and more--thinking of
+bold, decisive ways of getting at Marjorie, and bold, decisive things to
+say to her when he did.
+
+(But why she should be engaged to Magnet continued, nevertheless, to
+puzzle him extremely. It was a puzzle to which no complete solution was
+ever to be forthcoming....)
+
+
+Sec. 11
+
+At last that opportunity came. Marjorie had come with her mother into
+the village, and while Mrs. Pope made some purchases at the general shop
+she walked on to speak to Mrs. Blythe the washerwoman. Trafford suddenly
+emerged from the Red Lion with a soda syphon under each arm. She came
+forward smiling.
+
+"I say," he said forthwith, "I want to talk with you--badly."
+
+"And I," she said unhesitatingly, "with you."
+
+"How can we?"
+
+"There's always people about. It's absurd."
+
+"We'll have to meet."
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I have to go away to-morrow. I ought to have gone two days ago. Where
+_can_ we meet?"
+
+She had it all prepared.
+
+"Listen," she said. "There is a path runs from our shrubbery through a
+little wood to a stile on the main road." He nodded. "Either I will be
+there at three or about half-past five or--there's one more chance.
+While father and Mr. Magnet are smoking at nine.... I might get away."
+
+"Couldn't I write?"
+
+"No. Impossible."
+
+"I've no end of things to say...."
+
+Mrs. Pope appeared outside her shop, and Trafford gesticulated a
+greeting with the syphons. "All right," he said to Marjorie. "I'm
+shopping," he cried as Mrs. Pope approached.
+
+
+Sec. 12
+
+All through the day Marjorie desired to go to Trafford and could not do
+so. It was some minutes past nine when at last with a swift rustle of
+skirts that sounded louder than all the world to her, she crossed the
+dimly lit hall between dining-room and drawing-room and came into the
+dreamland of moonlight upon the lawn. She had told her mother she was
+going upstairs; at any moment she might be missed, but she would have
+fled now to Trafford if an army pursued her. Her heart seemed beating in
+her throat, and every fibre of her being was aquiver. She flitted past
+the dining-room window like a ghost, she did not dare to glance aside at
+the smokers within, and round the lawn to the shrubbery, and so under a
+blackness of trees to the gate where he stood waiting. And there he was,
+dim and mysterious and wonderful, holding the gate open for her, and she
+was breathless, and speechless, and near sobbing. She stood before him
+for a moment, her face moonlit and laced with the shadows of little
+twigs, and then his arms came out to her.
+
+"My darling," he said, "Oh, my darling!"
+
+They had no doubt of one another or of anything in the world. They clung
+together; their lips came together fresh and untainted as those first
+lovers' in the garden.
+
+"I will die for you," he said, "I will give all the world for you...."
+
+They had thought all through the day of a hundred statements and
+explanations they would make when this moment came, and never a word of
+it all was uttered. All their anticipations of a highly strung eventful
+conversation vanished, phrases of the most striking sort went like
+phantom leaves before a gale. He held her and she clung to him between
+laughing and sobbing, and both were swiftly and conclusively assured
+their lives must never separate again.
+
+
+Sec. 13
+
+Marjorie never knew whether it was a moment or an age before her father
+came upon them. He had decided to take a turn in the garden when Magnet
+could no longer restrain himself from joining the ladies, and he chanced
+to be stick in hand because that was his habit after twilight. So it was
+he found them. She heard his voice falling through love and moonlight
+like something that comes out of an immense distance.
+
+"Good God!" he cried, "what next!"
+
+But he still hadn't realized the worst.
+
+"Daffy," he said, "what in the name of goodness----?"
+
+Marjorie put her hands before her face too late.
+
+"Good Lord!" he cried with a rising inflection, "it's Madge!"
+
+Trafford found the situation difficult. "I should explain----"
+
+But Mr. Pope was giving himself up to a towering rage. "You damned
+scoundrel!" he said. "What the devil are you doing?" He seized Marjorie
+by the arm and drew her towards him. "My poor misguided girl!" he said,
+and suddenly she was tensely alive, a little cry of horror in her
+throat, for her father, at a loss for words and full of heroic rage, had
+suddenly swung his stick with passionate force, and struck at Trafford's
+face. She heard the thud, saw Trafford wince and stiffen. For a
+perfectly horrible moment it seemed to her these men, their faces
+queerly distorted by the shadows of the branches in the slanting
+moonlight, might fight. Then she heard Trafford's voice, sounding cool
+and hard, and she knew that he would do nothing of the kind. In that
+instant if there had remained anything to win in Marjorie it was
+altogether won. "I asked your daughter to meet me here," he said.
+
+"Be off with you, sir!" cried Mr. Pope. "Don't tempt me further, sir,"
+and swung his stick again. But now the force had gone out of him.
+Trafford stood with a hand out ready for him, and watched his face.
+
+"I asked your daughter to meet me here, and she came. I am prepared to
+give you any explanation----"
+
+"If you come near this place again----"
+
+For some moments Marjorie's heart had been held still, now it was
+beating violently. She felt this scene must end. "Mr. Trafford," she
+said, "will you go. Go now. Nothing shall keep us apart!"
+
+Mr. Pope turned on her. "Silence, girl!" he said.
+
+"I shall come to you to-morrow," said Trafford.
+
+"Yes," said Marjorie, "to-morrow."
+
+"Marjorie!" said Mr. Pope, "_will_ you go indoors."
+
+"I have done nothing----"
+
+"Be off, sir."
+
+"I have done nothing----"
+
+"Will you be off, sir? And you, Marjorie--will you go indoors?"
+
+He came round upon her, and after one still moment of regard for
+Trafford--and she looked very beautiful in the moonlight with her hair a
+little disordered and her face alight--she turned to precede her father
+through the shrubbery.
+
+Mr. Pope hesitated whether he should remain with Trafford.
+
+A perfectly motionless man is very disconcerting.
+
+"Be off, sir," he said over his shoulder, lowered through a threatening
+second, and followed her.
+
+But Trafford remained stiffly with a tingling temple down which a little
+thread of blood was running, until their retreating footsteps had died
+down into that confused stirring of little sounds which makes the
+stillness of an English wood at night.
+
+Then he roused himself with a profound sigh, and put a hand to his cut
+and bruised cheek.
+
+"_Well!_" he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FOURTH
+
+CRISIS
+
+
+Sec. 1
+
+Crisis prevailed in Buryhamstreet that night. On half a dozen sleepless
+pillows souls communed with the darkness, and two at least of those
+pillows were wet with tears.
+
+Not one of those wakeful heads was perfectly clear about the origins and
+bearings of the trouble; not even Mr. Pope felt absolutely sure of
+himself. It had come as things come to people nowadays, because they
+will not think things out, much less talk things out, and are therefore
+in a hopeless tangle of values that tightens sooner or later to a
+knot....
+
+What an uncharted perplexity, for example, was the mind of that
+excellent woman Mrs. Pope!
+
+Poor lady! she hadn't a stable thing in her head. It is remarkable that
+some queer streak in her composition sympathized with Marjorie's passion
+for Trafford. But she thought it such a pity! She fought that sympathy
+down as if it were a wicked thing. And she fought too against other
+ideas that rose out of the deeps and did not so much come into her mind
+as cluster at the threshold, the idea that Marjorie was in effect grown
+up, a dozen queer criticisms of Magnet, and a dozen subtle doubts
+whether after all Marjorie was going to be happy with him as she assured
+herself the girl would be. (So far as any one knew Trafford might be an
+excellent match!) And behind these would-be invaders of her guarded mind
+prowled even worse ones, doubts, horrible disloyal doubts, about the
+wisdom and kindness of Mr. Pope.
+
+Quite early in life Mrs. Pope had realized that it is necessary to be
+very careful with one's thoughts. They lead to trouble. She had clipped
+the wings of her own mind therefore so successfully that all her
+conclusions had become evasions, all her decisions compromises. Her
+profoundest working conviction was a belief that nothing in the world
+was of value but "tact," and that the art of living was to "tide things
+over." But here it seemed almost beyond her strength to achieve any sort
+of tiding over....
+
+(Why _couldn't_ Mr. Pope lie quiet?)
+
+Whatever she said or did had to be fitted to the exigencies of Mr. Pope.
+
+Availing himself of the privileges of matrimony, her husband so soon as
+Mr. Magnet had gone and they were upstairs together, had explained the
+situation with vivid simplicity, and had gone on at considerable length
+and with great vivacity to enlarge upon his daughter's behaviour. He
+ascribed this moral disaster,--he presented it as a moral disaster of
+absolutely calamitous dimensions--entirely to Mrs. Pope's faults and
+negligences. Warming with his theme he had employed a number of homely
+expressions rarely heard by decent women except in these sacred
+intimacies, to express the deep indignation of a strong man moved to
+unbridled speech by the wickedness of those near and dear to him. Still
+warming, he raised his voice and at last shouted out his more forcible
+meanings, until she feared the servants and children might hear, waved a
+clenched fist at imaginary Traffords and scoundrels generally, and
+giving way completely to his outraged virtue, smote and kicked blameless
+articles of furniture in a manner deeply impressive to the feminine
+intelligence.
+
+Finally he sat down in the little arm-chair between her and the cupboard
+where she was accustomed to hang up her clothes, stuck out his legs very
+stiffly across the room, and despaired of his family in an obtrusive and
+impregnable silence for an enormous time.
+
+All of which awakened a deep sense of guilt and unworthiness in Mrs.
+Pope's mind, and prevented her going to bed, but did not help her in the
+slightest degree to grasp the difficulties of the situation....
+
+She would have lain awake anyhow, but she was greatly helped in this by
+Mr. Pope's restlessness. He was now turning over from left to right or
+from right to left at intervals of from four to seven minutes, and such
+remarks as "Damned scoundrel! Get out of this!" or "_My_ daughter and
+degrade yourself in this way!" or "Never let me see your face again!"
+"Plight your troth to one man, and fling yourself shamelessly--I repeat
+it, Marjorie, shamelessly--into the arms of another!" kept Mrs. Pope
+closely in touch with the general trend of his thoughts.
+
+She tried to get together her plans and perceptions rather as though she
+swept up dead leaves on a gusty day. She knew that the management of the
+whole situation rested finally on her, and that whatever she did or did
+not do, or whatever arose to thwart her arrangements, its entire tale of
+responsibility would ultimately fall upon her shoulders. She wondered
+what was to be done with Marjorie, with Mr. Magnet? Need he know? Could
+that situation be saved? Everything at present was raw in her mind.
+Except for her husband's informal communications she did not even know
+what had appeared, what Daffy had seen, what Magnet thought of
+Marjorie's failure to bid him good-night. For example, had Mr. Magnet
+noticed Mr. Pope's profound disturbance? She had to be ready to put a
+face on things before morning, and it seemed impossible she could do so.
+In times of crisis, as every woman knows, it is always necessary to
+misrepresent everything to everybody, but how she was to dovetail her
+misrepresentations, get the best effect from them, extract a working
+system of rights and wrongs from them, she could not imagine....
+
+(Oh! she did so wish Mr. Pope would lie quiet.)
+
+But he had no doubts of what became _him_. He had to maintain a splendid
+and irrational rage--at any cost--to anybody.
+
+
+Sec. 2
+
+A few yards away, a wakeful Marjorie confronted a joyless universe. She
+had a baffling realization that her life was in a hopeless mess, that
+she really had behaved disgracefully, and that she couldn't for a moment
+understand how it had happened. She had intended to make quite sure of
+Trafford--and then put things straight.
+
+Only her father had spoilt everything.
+
+She regarded her father that night with a want of natural affection
+terrible to record. Why had he come just when he had, just as he had?
+Why had he been so violent, so impossible?
+
+Of course, she had no business to be there....
+
+She examined her character with a new unprecedented detachment. Wasn't
+she, after all, rather a mean human being? It had never occurred to her
+before to ask such a question. Now she asked it with only too clear a
+sense of the answer. She tried to trace how these multiplying threads of
+meanness had first come into the fabric of a life she had supposed
+herself to be weaving in extremely bright, honourable, and adventurous
+colours. She ought, of course, never to have accepted Magnet....
+
+She faced the disagreeable word; was she a liar?
+
+At any rate, she told lies.
+
+And she'd behaved with extraordinary meanness to Daphne. She realized
+that now. She had known, as precisely as if she had been told, how
+Daphne felt about Trafford, and she'd never given her an inkling of her
+own relations. She hadn't for a moment thought of Daphne. No wonder
+Daffy was sombre and bitter. Whatever she knew, she knew enough. She had
+heard Trafford's name in urgent whispers on the landing. "I suppose you
+couldn't leave him alone," Daffy had said, after a long hostile silence.
+That was all. Just a sentence without prelude or answer flung across the
+bedroom, revealing a perfect understanding--deeps of angry
+disillusionment. Marjorie had stared and gasped, and made no answer.
+
+Would she ever see him again? After this horror of rowdy intervention?
+She didn't deserve to; she didn't deserve anything.... Oh, the tangle of
+it all! The tangle of it all! And those bills at Oxbridge! She was just
+dragging Trafford down into her own miserable morass of a life.
+
+Her thoughts would take a new turn. "I love him," she whispered
+soundlessly. "I would die for him. I would like to lie under his
+feet--and him not know it."
+
+Her mind hung on that for a long time. "Not know it until afterwards,"
+she corrected.
+
+She liked to be exact, even in despair....
+
+And then in her memory he was struck again, and stood stiff and still.
+She wanted to kneel to him, imagined herself kneeling....
+
+And so on, quite inconclusively, round and round through the
+interminable night hours.
+
+
+Sec. 3
+
+The young man in the village was, if possible, more perplexed,
+round-eyed and generally inconclusive than anyone else in this series of
+nocturnal disturbances. He spent long intervals sitting on his
+window-sill regarding a world that was scented with nightstock, and
+seemed to be woven of moonshine and gossamer. Being an inexpert and
+infrequent soliloquist, his only audible comment on his difficulties was
+the repetition in varying intonations of his fervent, unalterable
+conviction that he was damned. But behind this simple verbal mask was a
+great fury of mental activity.
+
+He had something of Marjorie's amazement at the position of affairs.
+
+He had never properly realized that it was possible for any one to
+regard Marjorie as a daughter, to order her about and resent the
+research for her society as criminal. It was a new light in his world.
+Some day he was to learn the meaning of fatherhood, but in these night
+watches he regarded it as a hideous survival of mediaeval darknesses.
+
+"Of course," he said, entirely ignoring the actual quality of their
+conversation, "she had to explain about the Magnet affair. Can't
+one--converse?"
+
+He reflected through great intervals.
+
+"I _will_ see her! Why on earth shouldn't I see her?"
+
+"I suppose they can't lock her up!"
+
+For a time he contemplated a writ of Habeas Corpus. He saw reason to
+regret the gaps in his legal knowledge.
+
+"Can any one get a writ of Habeas Corpus for any one--it doesn't matter
+whom"--more especially if you are a young man of six-and-twenty,
+anxious to exchange a few richly charged words with a girl of twenty
+who is engaged to someone else?
+
+The night had no answer.
+
+It was nearly dawn when he came to the entirely inadvisable
+conclusion--I use his own word's--to go and have it out with the old
+ruffian. He would sit down and ask him what he meant by it all--and
+reason with him. If he started flourishing that stick again, it would
+have to be taken away.
+
+And having composed a peroration upon the institution of the family of a
+character which he fondly supposed to be extraordinarily tolerant,
+reasonable and convincing, but which was indeed calculated to madden Mr.
+Pope to frenzy, Mr. Trafford went very peacefully to sleep.
+
+
+Sec. 4
+
+Came dawn, with a noise of birds and afterwards a little sleep, and then
+day, and heavy eyes opened again, and the sound of frying and the smell
+of coffee recalled our actors to the stage. Mrs. Pope was past her worst
+despair; always the morning brings courage and a clearer grasp of
+things, and she could face the world with plans shaped subconsciously
+during those last healing moments of slumber.
+
+Breakfast was difficult, but not impossible. Mr. Pope loomed like a
+thundercloud, but Marjorie pleaded a headache very wisely, and was taken
+a sympathetic cup of tea. The pseudo-twins scented trouble, but Theodore
+was heedless and over-full of an entertaining noise made by a moorhen as
+it dived in the ornamental water that morning. You could make it
+practically _sotto voce_, and it amused Syd. He seemed to think the
+_Times_ opaque to such small sounds, and learnt better only to be
+dismissed underfed and ignominiously from the table to meditate upon the
+imperfections of his soul in the schoolroom. There for a time he was
+silent, and then presently became audible again, playing with a ball
+and, presumably, Marjorie's tennis racquet.
+
+Directly she could disentangle herself from breakfast Mrs. Pope, with
+all her plans acute, went up to the girls' room. She found her daughter
+dressing in a leisurely and meditative manner. She shut the door almost
+confidentially. "Marjorie," she said, "I want you to tell me all about
+this."
+
+"I thought I heard father telling you," said Marjorie.
+
+"He was too indignant," said Mrs. Pope, "to explain clearly. You see,
+Marjorie"--she paused before her effort--"he knows things--about this
+Professor Trafford."
+
+"What things?" asked Marjorie, turning sharply.
+
+"I don't know, my dear--and I can't imagine."
+
+She looked out of the window, aware of Marjorie's entirely distrustful
+scrutiny.
+
+"I don't believe it," said Marjorie.
+
+"Don't believe what, dear?"
+
+"Whatever he says."
+
+"I wish I didn't," said Mrs. Pope, and turned. "Oh, Madge," she cried,
+"you cannot imagine how all this distresses me! I cannot--I cannot
+conceive how you came to be in such a position! Surely honour----! Think
+of Mr. Magnet, how good and patient he has been! You don't know that
+man. You don't know all he is, and all that it means to a girl. He is
+good and honourable and--pure. He is kindness itself. It seemed to me
+that you were to be so happy--rich, honoured."
+
+She was overcome by a rush of emotion; she turned to the bed and sat
+down.
+
+"_There!_" she said desolately. "It's all ruined, shattered, gone."
+
+Marjorie tried not to feel that her mother was right.
+
+"If father hadn't interfered," she said weakly.
+
+"Oh, don't, my dear, speak so coldly of your father! You don't know what
+he has to put up with. You don't know his troubles and anxieties--all
+this wretched business." She paused, and her face became portentous.
+"Marjorie, do you know if these railways go on as they are going he may
+have to _eat into his capital_ this year. Just think of that, and the
+worry he has! And this last shame and anxiety!"
+
+Her voice broke again. Marjorie listened with an expression that was
+almost sullen.
+
+"But what is it," she asked, "that father knows about Mr. Trafford?"
+
+"I don't know, dear. I don't know. But it's something that matters--that
+makes it all different."
+
+"Well, may I speak to Mr. Trafford before he leaves Buryhamstreet?"
+
+"My dear! Never see him, dear--never think of him again! Your father
+would not dream----Some day, Marjorie, you will rejoice--you will want
+to thank your father on your bended knees that he saved you from the
+clutches of this man...."
+
+"I won't believe anything about Mr. Trafford," she said slowly, "until I
+know----"
+
+She left the sentence incomplete.
+
+She made her declaration abruptly. "I love Mr. Trafford," she said, with
+a catch in her voice, "and I don't love Mr. Magnet."
+
+Mrs. Pope received this like one who is suddenly stabbed. She sat still
+as if overwhelmed, one hand pressed to her side and her eyes closed.
+Then she said, as if she gasped involuntarily--
+
+"It's too dreadful! Marjorie," she said, "I want to ask you to do
+something. After all, a mother has _some_ claim. Will you wait just a
+little. Will you promise me to do nothing--nothing, I mean, to commit
+you--until your father has been able to make inquiries. Don't _see_ him
+for a little while. Very soon you'll be one-and-twenty, and then perhaps
+things may be different. If he cares for you, and you for him, a little
+separation won't matter.... Until your father has inquired...."
+
+"Mother," said Marjorie, "I can't----"
+
+Mrs. Pope drew in the air sharply between her teeth, as if in agony.
+
+"But, mother----Mother, I _must_ let Mr. Trafford know that I'm not to
+see him. I _can't_ suddenly cease.... If I could see him once----"
+
+"Don't!" said Mrs. Pope, in a hollow voice.
+
+Marjorie began weeping. "He'd not understand," she said. "If I might
+just speak to him!"
+
+"Not alone, Marjorie."
+
+Marjorie stood still. "Well--before you."
+
+Mrs. Pope conceded the point. "And then, Marjorie----" she said.
+
+"I'd keep my word, mother," said Marjorie, and began to sob in a manner
+she felt to be absurdly childish--"until--until I am one-and-twenty. I'd
+promise that."
+
+Mrs. Pope did a brief calculation. "Marjorie," she said, "it's only your
+happiness I think of."
+
+"I know," said Marjorie, and added in a low voice, "and father."
+
+"My dear, you don't understand your father.... I believe--I do firmly
+believe--if anything happened to any of you girls--anything bad--he
+would kill himself.... And I know he means that you aren't to go about
+so much as you used to do, unless we have the most definite promises. Of
+course, your father's ideas aren't always my ideas, Marjorie; but it's
+your duty--You know how hasty he is and--quick. Just as you know how
+good and generous and kind he is"--she caught Marjorie's eye, and added
+a little lamely--"at bottom." ... She thought. "I think I could get him
+to let you say just one word with Mr. Trafford. It would be very
+difficult, but----"
+
+She paused for a few seconds, and seemed to be thinking deeply.
+
+"Marjorie," she said, "Mr. Magnet must never know anything of this."
+
+"But, mother----!"
+
+"Nothing!"
+
+"I can't go on with my engagement!"
+
+Mrs. Pope shook her head inscrutably.
+
+"But how _can_ I, mother?"
+
+"You need not tell him _why_, Marjorie."
+
+"But----"
+
+"Just think how it would humiliate and distress him! You _can't_,
+Marjorie. You must find some excuse--oh, any excuse! But not the
+truth--not the truth, Marjorie. It would be too dreadful."
+
+Marjorie thought. "Look here, mother, I _may_ see Mr. Trafford again? I
+_may_ really speak to him?"
+
+"Haven't I promised?"
+
+"Then, I'll do as you say," said Marjorie.
+
+
+Sec. 5
+
+Mrs. Pope found her husband seated at the desk in the ultra-Protestant
+study, meditating gloomily.
+
+"I've been talking to her," she said, "She's in a state of terrible
+distress."
+
+"She ought to be," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Philip, you don't understand Marjorie."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"You think she was kissing that man."
+
+"Well, she was."
+
+"You can think _that_ of her!"
+
+Mr. Pope turned his chair to her. "But I _saw!_"
+
+Mrs. Pope shook her head. "She wasn't; she was struggling to get away
+from him. She told me so herself. I've been into it with her. You don't
+understand, Philip. A man like that has a sort of fascination for a
+girl. He dazzles her. It's the way with girls. But you're quite
+mistaken.... Quite. It's a sort of hypnotism. She'll grow out of it. Of
+course, she _loves_ Mr. Magnet. She does indeed. I've not a doubt of it.
+But----"
+
+"You're _sure_ she wasn't kissing him?"
+
+"Positive."
+
+"Then why didn't you say so?"
+
+"A girl's so complex. You didn't give her a chance. She's fearfully
+ashamed of herself--fearfully! but it's just because she _is_ ashamed
+that she won't admit it."
+
+"I'll make her admit it."
+
+"You ought to have had all boys," said Mrs. Pope. "Oh! she'll admit it
+some day--readily enough. But I believe a girl of her spirit would
+rather _die_ than begin explaining. You can't expect it of her. Really
+you can't."
+
+He grunted and shook his head slowly from side to side.
+
+She sat down in the arm-chair beside the desk.
+
+"I want to know just exactly what we are to do about the girl, Philip. I
+can't bear to think of her--up there."
+
+"How?" he asked. "Up there?"
+
+"Yes," she answered with that skilful inconsecutiveness of hers, and let
+a brief silence touch his imagination. "Do you think that man means to
+come here again?" she asked.
+
+"Chuck him out if he does," said Mr. Pope, grimly.
+
+She pressed her lips together firmly. She seemed to be weighing things
+painfully. "I wouldn't," she said at last.
+
+"What do you mean?" asked Mr. Pope.
+
+"I do not want you to make an open quarrel with Mr. Trafford."
+
+"_Not_ quarrel!"
+
+"Not an open one," said Mrs. Pope. "Of course I know how nice it would
+be if you _could_ use a horsewhip, dear. There's such a lot of
+things--if we only just slash. But--it won't help. Get him to go away.
+She's consented never to see him again--practically. She's ready to tell
+him so herself. Part them against their will--oh! and the thing may go
+on for no end of time. But treat it as it ought to be treated--She'll be
+very tragic for a week or so, and then she'll forget him like a dream.
+He _is_ a dream--a girl's dream.... If only we leave it alone, she'll
+leave it alone."
+
+
+Sec. 6
+
+Things were getting straight, Mrs. Pope felt. She had now merely to add
+a few touches to the tranquillization of Daphne, and the misdirection of
+the twin's curiosity. These touches accomplished, it seemed that
+everything was done. After a brief reflection, she dismissed the idea of
+putting things to Theodore. She ran over the possibilities of the
+servants eavesdropping, and found them negligible. Yes, everything was
+done--everything. And yet....
+
+The queer string in her nature between religiosity and superstition
+began to vibrate. She hesitated. Then she slipped upstairs, fastened the
+door, fell on her knees beside the bed and put the whole thing as
+acceptably as possible to Heaven in a silent, simple, but lucidly
+explanatory prayer....
+
+She came out of her chamber brighter and braver than she had been for
+eighteen long hours. She could now, she felt, await the developments
+that threatened with the serenity of one who is prepared at every point.
+She went almost happily to the kitchen, only about forty-five minutes
+behind her usual time, to order the day's meals and see with her own
+eyes that economies prevailed. And it seemed to her, on the whole,
+consoling, and at any rate a distraction, when the cook informed her
+that after all she _had_ meant to give notice on the day of aunt
+Plessington's visit.
+
+
+Sec. 7
+
+The unsuspecting Magnet, fatigued but happy--for three hours of solid
+humorous writing (omitting every unpleasant suggestion and mingling in
+the most acceptable and saleable proportions smiles and tears) had added
+its quota to the intellectual heritage of England, made a simple light
+lunch cooked in homely village-inn fashion, lit a well merited cigar,
+and turned his steps towards the vicarage. He was preceded at some
+distance along the avenuesque drive by the back of Mr. Trafford, which
+he made no attempt to overtake.
+
+Mr. Trafford was admitted and disappeared, and a minute afterwards
+Magnet reached the door.
+
+Mrs. Pope appeared radiant--about the weather. A rather tiresome man had
+just called upon Mr. Pope about business matters, she said, and he
+might be detained five or ten minutes. Marjorie and Daffy were
+upstairs--resting. They had been disturbed by bats in the night.
+
+"Isn't it charmingly rural?" said Mrs. Pope. "_Bats!_"
+
+She talked about bats and the fear she had of their getting in her hair,
+and as she talked she led the way brightly but firmly as far as possible
+out of earshot of the windows of the ultra Protestant study in which Mr.
+Pope was now (she did so hope temperately) interviewing Mr. Trafford.
+
+
+Sec. 8
+
+Directly Mr. Trafford had reached the front door it had opened for him,
+and closed behind him at once. He had found himself with Mrs. Pope. "You
+wish to see my husband?" she had said, and had led him to the study
+forthwith. She had returned at once to intercept Mr. Magnet....
+
+Trafford found Mr. Pope seated sternly at the centre of the writing
+desk, regarding him with a threatening brow.
+
+"Well, sir," said Mr. Pope breaking the silence, "you have come to offer
+some explanation----"
+
+While awaiting this encounter Mr. Pope had not been insensitive to the
+tactical and scenic possibilities of the occasion. In fact, he had spent
+the latter half of the morning in intermittent preparations, arranging
+desks, books, hassocks in advantageous positions, and not even
+neglecting such small details as the stamp tray, the articles of
+interest from Jerusalem, and the rock-crystal cenotaph, which he had
+exhibited in such a manner as was most calculated to damp, chill and
+subjugate an antagonist in the exposed area towards the window. He had
+also arranged the chairs in a highly favourable pattern.
+
+Mr. Trafford was greatly taken aback by Mr. Pope's juridical manner and
+by this form of address, and he was further put out by Mr. Pope saying
+with a regal gesture to the best illuminated and most isolated chair:
+"Be seated, sir."
+
+Mr. Trafford's exordium vanished from his mind, he was at a loss for
+words until spurred to speech by Mr. Pope's almost truculent: "Well?"
+
+"I am in love sir, with your daughter."
+
+"I am not aware of it," said Mr. Pope, and lifted and dropped the
+paper-weight. "My daughter, sir, is engaged to marry Mr. Magnet. If you
+had approached me in a proper fashion before presuming to attempt--to
+attempt----" His voice thickened with indignation,--"Liberties with her,
+you would have been duly informed of her position--and everyone would
+have been saved"--he lifted the paper-weight. "Everything that has
+happened." (Bump.)
+
+Mr. Trafford had to adjust himself to the unexpected elements in this
+encounter. "Oh!" he said.
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Pope, and there was a distinct interval.
+
+"Is your daughter in love with Mr. Magnet?" asked Mr. Trafford in an
+almost colloquial tone.
+
+Mr. Pope smiled gravely. "I presume so, sir."
+
+"She never gave me that impression, anyhow," said the young man.
+
+"It was neither her duty to give nor yours to receive that impression,"
+said Mr. Pope.
+
+Again Mr. Trafford was at a loss.
+
+"Have you come here, sir, merely to bandy words?" asked Mr. Pope,
+drumming with ten fingers on the table.
+
+Mr. Trafford thrust his hands into his pockets and assumed a fictitious
+pose of ease. He had never found any one in his life before quite so
+provocative of colloquialism as Mr. Pope.
+
+"Look here, sir, this is all very well," he began, "but why can't I fall
+in love with your daughter? I'm a Doctor of Science and all that sort of
+thing. I've a perfectly decent outlook. My father was rather a swell in
+his science. I'm an entirely decent and respectable person."
+
+"I beg to differ," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"But I am."
+
+"Again," said Mr. Pope, with great patience, and a slight forward bowing
+of the head, "I beg to differ."
+
+"Well--differ. But all the same----"
+
+He paused and began again, and for a time they argued to no purpose.
+They generalized about the position of an engaged girl and the rights
+and privileges of a father. Then Mr. Pope, "to cut all this short," told
+him frankly he wasn't wanted, his daughter did not want him, nobody
+wanted him; he was an invader, he had to be got rid of--"if possible by
+peaceful means." Trafford disputed these propositions, and asked to see
+Marjorie. Mr. Pope had been leading up to this, and at once closed with
+that request.
+
+"She is as anxious as any one to end this intolerable siege," he said.
+He went to the door and called for Marjorie, who appeared with
+conspicuous promptitude. She was in a dress of green linen that made her
+seem very cool as well as very dignified to Trafford; she was tense with
+restrained excitement, and either--for these things shade into each
+other--entirely without a disposition to act her part or acting with
+consummate ability. Trafford rose at the sight of her, and remained
+standing. Mr. Pope closed the door and walked back to the desk. "Mr.
+Trafford has to be told," he said, "that you don't want him in
+Buryhamstreet." He arrested Marjorie's forward movement towards Trafford
+by a gesture of the hand, seated himself, and resumed his drumming on
+the table. "Well?" he said.
+
+"I don't think you ought to stay in Buryhamstreet, Mr. Trafford," said
+Marjorie.
+
+"You don't want me to?"
+
+"It will only cause trouble--and scenes."
+
+"You want me to go?"
+
+"Away from here."
+
+"You really mean that?"
+
+Marjorie did not answer for a little time; she seemed to be weighing the
+exact force of all she was going to say.
+
+"Mr. Trafford," she answered, "everything I've ever said to
+you--everything--I've _meant_, more than I've ever meant anything.
+Everything!"
+
+A little flush of colour came into Trafford's cheeks. He regarded
+Marjorie with a brightening eye.
+
+"Oh well," he said, "I don't understand. But I'm entirely in your hands,
+of course."
+
+Marjorie's pose and expression altered. For an instant she was a miracle
+of instinctive expression, she shone at him, she conveyed herself to
+him, she assured him. Her eyes met his, she stood warmly flushed and
+quite unconquered--visibly, magnificently _his_. She poured into him
+just that riotous pride and admiration that gives a man altogether to a
+woman.... Then it seemed as if a light passed, and she was just an
+everyday Marjorie standing there.
+
+"I'll do anything you want me to," said Trafford.
+
+"Then I want you to go."
+
+"Ah!" said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Yes," said Trafford, with his eyes on her self-possession.
+
+"I've promised not to write or send to you, or--think more than I can
+help of you, until I'm twenty-one--nearly two months from now."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"I don't know. How can I?"
+
+"You hear, sir?" from Mr. Pope, in the pause of mutual scrutiny that
+followed.
+
+"One question," said Mr. Trafford.
+
+"You've surely asked enough, sir," said Mr. Pope.
+
+"Are you still engaged to Magnet?"
+
+"Sir!"
+
+"Please, father;" said Marjorie, with unusual daring and in her mother's
+voice. "Mr. Trafford, after what I've told you--you must leave that to
+me."
+
+"She _is_ engaged to Mr. Magnet," said Mr. Pope. "Tell him outright,
+Marjorie. Make it clear."
+
+"I think I understand," said Trafford, with his eyes on Marjorie.
+
+"I've not seen Mr. Magnet since last night," said Marjorie. "And
+so--naturally--I'm still engaged to him."
+
+"Precisely!" said Mr. Pope, and turned with a face of harsh
+interrogation to his importunate caller. Mr. Trafford seemed disposed
+for further questions. "I don't think we need detain you, Madge," said
+Mr. Pope, over his shoulder.
+
+The two young people stood facing one another for a moment, and I am
+afraid that they were both extremely happy and satisfied with each
+other. It was all right, they were quite sure--all right. Their lips
+were almost smiling. Then Marjorie made an entirely dignified exit. She
+closed the door very softly, and Mr. Pope turned to his visitor again
+with a bleak politeness. "I hope that satisfies you," he said.
+
+"There is nothing more to be said at present, I admit," said Mr.
+Trafford.
+
+"Nothing," said Mr. Pope.
+
+Both gentlemen bowed. Mr. Pope rose ceremoniously, and Mr. Trafford
+walked doorward. He had a sense of latent absurdities in these
+tremendous attitudes. They passed through the hall--processionally. But
+just at the end some lower strain in Mr. Trafford's nature touched the
+fine dignity of the occasion with an inappropriate remark.
+
+"Good-bye, sir," said Mr. Pope, holding the housedoor wide.
+
+"Good-bye, sir," said Mr. Trafford, and then added with a note of
+untimely intimacy in his voice, with an inexcusable levity upon his
+lips: "You know--there's nobody--no man in the world--I'd sooner have
+for a father-in-law than you."
+
+Mr. Pope, caught unprepared on the spur of the moment, bowed in a cold
+and distant manner, and then almost immediately closed the door to save
+himself from violence....
+
+From first to last neither gentleman had made the slightest allusion to
+a considerable bruise upon Mr. Trafford's left cheek, and a large
+abrasion above his ear.
+
+
+Sec. 9
+
+That afternoon Marjorie began her difficult task of getting disengaged
+from Mr. Magnet. It was difficult because she was pledged not to tell
+him of the one thing that made this line of action not only explicable,
+but necessary. Magnet, perplexed, and disconcerted, and secretly
+sustained by her mother's glancing sidelights on the feminine character
+and the instability of "girlish whims," remained at Buryhamstreet until
+the family returned to Hartstone Square. The engagement was
+ended--formally--but in such a manner that Magnet was left a rather
+pathetic and invincibly assiduous besieger. He lavished little presents
+upon both sisters, he devised little treats for the entire family, he
+enriched Theodore beyond the dreams of avarice, and he discussed his
+love and admiration for Marjorie, and the perplexities and delicacies of
+the situation not only with Mrs. Pope, but with Daphne. At first he had
+thought very little of Daphne, but now he was beginning to experience
+the subtle pleasures of a confidential friendship. She understood, he
+felt; it was quite wonderful how she understood. He found Daffy much
+richer in response than Marjorie, and far less disconcerting in
+reply....
+
+Mr. Pope, for all Marjorie's submission to his wishes, developed a Grand
+Dudgeon of exceptionally fine proportions when he heard of the breach of
+the engagement. He ceased to speak to his daughter or admit himself
+aware of her existence, and the Grand Dudgeon's blighting shadow threw a
+chill over the life of every one in the house. He made it clear that the
+Grand Dudgeon would only be lifted by Marjorie's re-engagement to
+Magnet, and that whatever blight or inconvenience fell on the others was
+due entirely to Marjorie's wicked obstinacy. Using Mrs. Pope as an
+intermediary, he also conveyed to Marjorie his decision to be no longer
+burthened with the charges of her education at Oxbridge, and he made it
+seem extremely doubtful whether he should remember her approaching
+twenty-first birthday.
+
+Marjorie received the news of her severance from Oxbridge, Mrs. Pope
+thought, with a certain hardness.
+
+"I thought he would do that," said Marjorie. "He's always wanted to do
+that," and said no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTH
+
+A TELEPHONE CALL
+
+
+Sec. 1
+
+Trafford went back to Solomonson for a day or so, and then to London, to
+resume the experimental work of the research he had in hand. But he was
+so much in love with Marjorie that for some days it was a very dazed
+mind that fumbled with the apparatus--arranged it and rearranged it, and
+fell into daydreams that gave the utmost concern to Durgan the
+bottle-washer.
+
+"He's not going straight at things," said Durgan the bottle-washer to
+his wife. "He usually goes so straight at things it's a pleasure to
+watch it. He told me he was going down into Kent to think everything
+out." Mr. Durgan paused impressively, and spoke with a sigh of
+perplexity. "He hasn't...."
+
+But later Durgan was able to report that Trafford had pulled himself
+together. The work was moving.
+
+"I was worried for a bit," said Mr. Durgan. "But I _think_ it's all
+right again. I _believe_ it's all right again."
+
+
+Sec. 2
+
+Trafford was one of those rare scientific men who really ought to be
+engaged in scientific research.
+
+He could never leave an accepted formula alone. His mind was like some
+insatiable corrosive, that ate into all the hidden inequalities and
+plastered weaknesses of accepted theories, and bit its way through
+every plausibility of appearance. He was extraordinarily fertile in
+exasperating alternative hypotheses. His invention of destructive test
+experiments was as happy as the respectful irony with which he brought
+them into contact with the generalizations they doomed. He was already,
+at six-and-twenty, hated, abused, obstructed, and respected. He was
+still outside the Royal Society, of course, and the editors of the
+scientific periodicals admired his papers greatly, and delayed
+publication; but it was fairly certain that that pressure of foreign
+criticism and competition which prevents English scientific men of good
+family and social position from maintaining any such national standards
+as we are able to do in art, literature, and politics, would finally
+carry him in. And since he had a small professorship worth three hundred
+a year, which gave him the command of a sufficient research laboratory
+and the services of Mr. Durgan, a private income of nearly three hundred
+more, a devoted mother to keep house for him, and an invincible faith in
+Truth, he had every prospect of winning in his particular struggle to
+inflict more Truth, new lucidities, and fresh powers upon this fractious
+and unreasonable universe.
+
+In the world of science now, even more than in the world of literature
+and political thought, the thing that is alive struggles,
+half-suffocated, amidst a copious production of things born dead. The
+endowment of research, the organization of scientific progress, the
+creation of salaried posts, and the assignment of honours, has attracted
+to this field just that type of man which is least gifted to penetrate
+and discover, and least able to admit its own defect or the quality of a
+superior. Such men are producing great, bulky masses of imitative
+research, futile inquiries, and monstrous entanglements of technicality
+about their subjects; and it is to their instinctive antagonism to the
+idea of a "gift" in such things that we owe the preposterous conception
+of a training for research, the manufacture of mental blinkers that is
+to say, to avoid what is the very soul of brilliant inquiry--applicable
+discursiveness. The trained investigator is quite the absurdest figure
+in the farce of contemporary intellectual life; he is like a bath-chair
+perpetually starting to cross the Himalayas by virtue of a licence to do
+so. For such enterprises one must have wings. Organization and genius
+are antipathetic. The vivid and creative mind, by virtue of its
+qualities, is a spasmodic and adventurous mind; it resents blinkers, and
+the mere implication that it can be driven in harness to the unexpected.
+It demands freedom. It resents regular attendance from ten to four and
+punctualities in general and all those paralyzing minor tests of conduct
+that are vitally important to the imagination of the authoritative dull.
+Consequently, it is being eliminated from its legitimate field, and it
+is only here and there among the younger men that such a figure as
+Trafford gives any promise of a renewal of that enthusiasm, that
+intellectual enterprise, which were distinctive of the great age of
+scientific advance.
+
+Trafford was the only son of his parents. His father had been a young
+surgeon, more attracted by knowledge than practice, who had been killed
+by a scratch of the scalpel in an investigation upon ulcerative
+processes, at the age of twenty-nine. Trafford at that time was three
+years old, so that he had not the least memory of his father; but his
+mother, by a thousand almost unpremeditated touches, had built up a
+figure for him and a tradition that was shaping his life. She had loved
+her husband passionately, and when he died her love burnt up like a
+flame released, and made a god of the good she had known with him. She
+was then a very beautiful and active-minded woman of thirty, and she did
+her best to reconstruct her life; but she could find nothing so living
+in the world as the clear courage, the essential simplicity, and tender
+memories of the man she had lost. And she was the more devoted to him
+that he had had little weaknesses of temper and bearing, and that an
+outrageous campaign had been waged against him that did not cease with
+his death. He had, in some medical periodical, published drawings of a
+dead dog clamped to display a deformity, and these had been seized upon
+by a group of anti-vivisection fanatics as the representation of a
+vivisection. A libel action had been pending when he died; but there is
+no protection of the dead from libel. That monstrous lie met her on
+pamphlet cover, on hoardings, in sensational appeals; it seemed
+immortal, and she would have suffered the pains of a dozen suttees if
+she could have done so, to show the world how the power and tenderness
+of this alleged tormentor of helpless beasts had gripped one woman's
+heart. It counted enormously in her decision to remain a widow and
+concentrate her life upon her son.
+
+She watched his growth with a care and passionate subtlety that even at
+six-and-twenty he was still far from suspecting. She dreaded his
+becoming a mother's pet, she sent him away to school and fretted through
+long terms alone, that he might be made into a man. She interested
+herself in literary work and social affairs lest she should press upon
+him unduly. She listened for the crude expression of growing thought in
+him with an intensity that was almost anguish. She was too intelligent
+to dream of forming his mind, he browsed on every doctrine to find his
+own, but she did desire most passionately, she prayed, she prayed in
+the darkness of sleepless nights, that the views, the breadths, the
+spacious emotions which had ennobled her husband in her eyes should rise
+again in him.
+
+There were years of doubt and waiting. He was a good boy and a bad boy,
+now brilliant, now touching, now disappointing, now gloriously
+reassuring, and now heart-rending as only the children of our blood can
+be. He had errors and bad moments, lapses into sheer naughtiness, phases
+of indolence, attacks of contagious vulgarity. But more and more surely
+she saw him for his father's son; she traced the same great curiosities,
+the same keen dauntless questioning; whatever incidents might disturb
+and perplex her, his intellectual growth went on strong and clear and
+increasing like some sacred flame that is carried in procession, halting
+perhaps and swaying a little but keeping on, over the heads of a
+tumultuous crowd.
+
+He went from his school to the Royal College of Science, thence to
+successes at Cambridge, and thence to Berlin. He travelled a little in
+Asia Minor and Persia, had a journey to America, and then came back to
+her and London, sunburnt, moustached, manly, and a little strange. When
+he had been a boy she had thought his very soul pellucid; it had clouded
+opaquely against her scrutiny as he passed into adolescence. Then
+through the period of visits and departures, travel together,
+separations, he grew into something detached and admirable, a man
+curiously reminiscent of his father, unexpectedly different. She ceased
+to feel what he was feeling in his mind, had to watch him, infer, guess,
+speculate about him. She desired for him and dreaded for him with an
+undying tenderness, but she no longer had any assurance that she could
+interfere to help him. He had his father's trick of falling into
+thought. Her brown eyes would watch him across the flowers and delicate
+glass and silver of her dinner table when he dined at home with her.
+Sometimes he seemed to forget she existed, sometimes he delighted in
+her, talked to amuse her, petted her; sometimes, and then it was she was
+happiest, he talked of plays and books with her, discussed general
+questions, spoke even of that broadly conceived scheme of work which
+engaged so much of his imagination. She knew that it was distinguished
+and powerful work. Old friends of her husband spoke of it to her,
+praised its inspired directness, its beautiful simplicity. Since the
+days of Wollaston, they said, no one had been so witty an experimenter,
+no one had got more out of mere scraps of apparatus or contrived more
+ingenious simplifications.
+
+When he had accepted the minor Professorship which gave him a footing in
+the world of responsible scientific men, she had taken a house in a
+quiet street in Chelsea which necessitated a daily walk to his
+laboratory. It was a little old Georgian house with worn and graceful
+rooms, a dignified front door and a fine gateway of Sussex ironwork much
+painted and eaten away. She arranged it with great care; she had kept
+most of her furniture, and his study had his father's bureau, and the
+selfsame agate paper-weight that had pressed the unfinished paper he
+left when he died. She was a woman of persistent friendships, and there
+came to her, old connections of those early times trailing fresher and
+younger people in their wake, sons, daughters, nephews, disciples; her
+son brought home all sorts of interesting men, and it was remarkable to
+her that amidst the talk and discussion at her table, she discovered
+aspects of her son and often quite intimate aspects she would never have
+seen with him alone.
+
+She would not let herself believe that this Indian summer of her life
+could last for ever. He was no passionless devotee of research, for all
+his silence and restraints. She had seen him kindle with anger at
+obstacles and absurdities, and quicken in the presence of beauty. She
+knew how readily and richly he responded to beauty. Things happened to
+have run smoothly with him so far, that was all. "Of course," she said,
+"he must fall in love. It cannot be long before he falls in love."
+
+Once or twice that had seemed to happen, and then it had come to
+nothing....
+
+She knew that sooner or later this completion of his possibilities must
+come, that the present steadfastness of purpose was a phase in which
+forces gathered, that love must sweep into his life as a deep and
+passionate disturbance. She wondered where it would take him, whether it
+would leave him enriched or devastated. She saw at times how young he
+was; she had, as I suppose most older people have about their juniors,
+the profoundest doubt whether he was wise enough yet to be trusted with
+a thing so good as himself. He had flashes of high-spirited
+indiscretion, and at times a wildfire of humour flared in his talk. So
+far that had done no worse for him than make an enemy or so in
+scientific circles. But she had no idea of the limits of his
+excitability. She would watch him and fear for him--she knew the
+wreckage love can make--and also she desired that he should lose nothing
+that life and his nature could give him.
+
+
+Sec. 3
+
+In the two months of separation that ensued before Marjorie was
+one-and-twenty, Trafford's mind went through some remarkable phases. At
+first the excitement of his passion for Marjorie obscured everything
+else, then with his return to London and his laboratory the immense
+inertia of habit and slowly developed purposes, the complex yet
+convergent system of ideas and problems to which so much of his life had
+been given, began to reassert itself. His love was vivid and intense, a
+light in his imagination, a fever in his blood; but it was a new thing;
+it had not crept into the flesh and bones of his being, it was away
+there in Surrey; the streets of London, his home, the white-walled
+chamber with its skylight and high windows and charts of constants, in
+which his apparatus was arranged, had no suggestion of her. She was
+outside--an adventure--a perplexing incommensurable with all these
+things.
+
+He had left Buryhamstreet with Marjorie riotously in possession of his
+mind. He could think of nothing but Marjorie in the train, and how she
+had shone at him in the study, and how her voice had sounded when she
+spoke, and how she stood and moved, and the shape and sensation of her
+hands, and how it had felt to hold her for those brief moments in the
+wood and press lips and body to his, and how her face had gleamed in the
+laced shadows of the moonlight, soft and wonderful.
+
+In fact, he thought of Marjorie.
+
+He thought she was splendid, courageous, wise by instinct. He had no
+doubt of her or that she was to be his--when the weeks of waiting had
+passed by. She was his, and he was Marjorie's; that had been settled
+from the beginning of the world. It didn't occur to him that anything
+had happened to alter his life or any of his arrangements in any way,
+except that they were altogether altered--as the world is altered
+without displacement when the sun pours up in the east. He was
+glorified--and everything was glorified.
+
+He wondered how they would meet again, and dreamt a thousand impossible
+and stirring dreams, but he dreamt them as dreams.
+
+At first, to Durgan's infinite distress, he thought of her all day, and
+then, as the old familiar interests grappled him again, he thought of
+her in the morning and the evening and as he walked between his home and
+the laboratory and at all sorts of incidental times--and even when the
+close-locked riddles of his research held the foreground and focus of
+his thoughts, he still seemed to be thinking of her as a radiant
+background to ions and molecules and atoms and interwoven systems of
+eddies and quivering oscillations deep down in the very heart of matter.
+
+And always he thought of her as something of the summer. The rich decays
+of autumn came, the Chelsea roads were littered with variegated leaves
+that were presently wet and dirty and slippery, the twilight crept down
+into the day towards five o'clock and four, but in his memory of her the
+leaves were green, the evenings were long, the warm quiet of rural
+Surrey in high August filled the air. So that it was with a kind of
+amazement he found her in London and in November close at hand. He was
+called to the college telephone one day from a conversation with a
+proposed research student. It was a middle-aged woman bachelor anxious
+for the D.Sc., who wished to occupy the further bench in the laboratory;
+but she had no mental fire, and his mind was busy with excuses and
+discouragements.
+
+He had no thought of Marjorie when she answered, and for an instant he
+did not recognize her voice.
+
+"Yes, I'm Mr. Trafford."...
+
+"Who is it?" he reiterated with a note of irascibility. "_Who?_"
+
+The little voice laughed. "Why! I'm Marjorie!" it said.
+
+Then she was back in his life like a lantern suddenly become visible in
+a wood at midnight.
+
+It was like meeting her as a china figure, neat and perfect and two
+inches high. It was her voice, very clear and very bright, and quite
+characteristic, as though he was hearing it through the wrong end of a
+telescope. It was her voice, clear as a bell; confident without a
+shadow.
+
+"It's _me!_ Marjorie! I'm twenty-one to-day!"
+
+It was like a little arrow of exquisite light shot into the very heart
+of his life.
+
+He laughed back. "Are you for meeting me then, Marjorie?"
+
+
+Sec. 4
+
+They met in Kensington Gardens with an air of being clandestine and
+defiant. It was one of those days of amber sunlight, soft air, and
+tender beauty with which London relieves the tragic glooms of the year's
+decline. There were still a residue of warm-tinted leaves in puffs and
+clusters upon the tree branches, a boat or two ruffled the blue
+Serpentine, and the waterfowl gave colour and animation to the selvage
+of the water. The sedges were still a greenish yellow.
+
+The two met shyly. They were both a little unfamiliar to each other.
+Trafford was black-coated, silk-hatted, umbrella-d, a decorous young
+professor in the place of the cheerful aeronaut who had fallen so gaily
+out of the sky. Marjorie had a new tailor-made dress of russet-green,
+and a little cloth toque ruled and disciplined the hair he had known as
+a ruddy confusion.... They had dreamt, I think, of extended arms and a
+wild rush to embrace one another. Instead, they shook hands.
+
+"And so," said Trafford, "we meet again!"
+
+"I don't see why we shouldn't meet!" said Marjorie.
+
+There was a slight pause.
+
+"Let's have two of those jolly little green chairs," said Trafford....
+
+They walked across the grass towards the chairs he had indicated, and
+both were full of the momentous things they were finding it impossible
+to say.
+
+"There ought to be squirrels here, as there are in New York," he said at
+last.
+
+They sat down. There was a moment's silence, and then Trafford's spirit
+rose in rebellion and he plunged at this--this stranger beside him.
+
+"Look here," he said, "do you still love me, Marjorie?"
+
+She looked up into his face with eyes in which surprise and scrutiny
+passed into something altogether beautiful. "I love you--altogether,"
+she said in a steady, low voice.
+
+And suddenly she was no longer a stranger, but the girl who had flitted
+to his arms breathless, unhesitating, through the dusk. His blood
+quickened. He made an awkward gesture as though he arrested an impulse
+to touch her. "My sweetheart," he said. "My dear one!"
+
+Marjorie's face flashed responses. "It's you," he said.
+
+"Me," she answered.
+
+"Do you remember?"
+
+"Everything!"
+
+"My dear!"
+
+"I want to tell you things," said Marjorie. "What are we to do?"....
+
+He tried afterwards to retrace that conversation. He was chiefly
+ashamed of his scientific preoccupations during that London interval. He
+had thought of a thousand things; Marjorie had thought of nothing else
+but love and him. Her happy assurance, her absolute confidence that his
+desires would march with hers, reproached and confuted every adverse
+thought in him as though it was a treachery to love. He had that sense
+which I suppose comes at times to every man, of entire unworthiness for
+the straight, unhesitating decision, the clear simplicity of a woman's
+passion. He had dreamt vaguely, unsubstantially, the while he had
+arranged his pressures and temperatures and infinitesimal ingredients,
+and worked with goniometer and trial models and the new calculating
+machine he had contrived for his research. But she had thought clearly,
+definitely, fully--of nothing but coming to him. She had thought out
+everything that bore upon that; reasons for preciptance, reasons for
+delay, she had weighed the rewards of conformity against the glamour of
+romance. It became more and more clear to him as they talked, that she
+was determined to elope with him, to go to Italy, and there have an
+extraordinarily picturesque and beautiful time. Her definiteness shamed
+his poverty of anticipation. Her enthusiasm carried him with her. Of
+course it was so that things must be done....
+
+When at last they parted under the multiplying lamps of the November
+twilight, he turned his face eastward. He was afraid of his mother's
+eyes--he scarcely knew why. He walked along Kensington Gore, and the
+clustering confused lights of street and house, white and golden and
+orange and pale lilac, the moving lamps and shining glitter of the
+traffic, the luminous interiors of omnibuses, the reflection of carriage
+and hoarding, the fading daylight overhead, the phantom trees to the
+left, the deepening shadows and blacknesses among the houses on his
+right, the bobbing heads of wayfarers, were just for him the stir and
+hue and texture of fairyland. All the world was fairyland. He went to
+his club and dined there, and divided the evening between geography, as
+it is condensed in Baedeker and Murray on North Italy, Italian
+Switzerland and the Italian Riviera, and a study of the marriage laws as
+they are expounded in "Whitaker's Almanac," the "Encyclopaedia
+Britannica," and other convenient works of reference. He replaced the
+books as he used them, and went at last from the library into the
+smoking-room, but seeing a man who might talk to him there, he went out
+at once into the streets, and fetched a wide compass by Baker Street,
+Oxford Street, and Hyde Park, home.
+
+He was a little astonished at himself and everything.
+
+But it was going to be--splendid.
+
+(What poor things words can be!)
+
+
+Sec. 5
+
+He found his mother still up. She had been re-reading "The Old Wives'
+Tale," and she sat before a ruddy fire in the shadow beyond the lit
+circle of a green-shaded electric light thinking, with the book put
+aside. In the dimness above was his father's portrait. "Time you were in
+bed, mother," he said reprovingly, and kissed her eyebrow and stood
+above her. "What's the book?" he asked, and picked it up and put it
+down, forgotten. Their eyes met. She perceived he had something to say;
+she did not know what. "Where have you been?" she asked.
+
+He told her, and they lapsed into silence. She asked another question
+and he answered her, and the indifferent conversation ended again. The
+silence lengthened. Then he plunged: "I wonder, mother, if it would put
+you out very much if I brought home a wife to you?"
+
+So it had come to this--and she had not seen it coming. She looked into
+the glowing recesses of the fire before her and controlled her voice by
+an effort. "I'd be glad for you to do it, dear--if you loved her," she
+said very quietly. He stared down at her for a moment; then he knelt
+down beside her and took her hand and kissed it. "_My dear_," she
+whispered softly, stroking his head, and her tears came streaming. For a
+time they said no more.
+
+Presently he put coal on the fire, and then sitting on the hearthrug at
+her feet and looking away from her into the flames--in an attitude that
+took her back to his boyhood--he began to tell her brokenly and
+awkwardly of Marjorie.
+
+"It's so hard, mother, to explain these things," he began. "One doesn't
+half understand the things that are happening to one. I want to make you
+in love with her, dear, just as I am. And I don't see how I can."
+
+"Perhaps I shall understand, my dear. Perhaps I shall understand better
+than you think."
+
+"She's such a beautiful thing--with something about her----. You know
+those steel blades you can bend back to the hilt--and they're steel! And
+she's tender. It's as if someone had taken tears, mother, and made a
+spirit out of them----"
+
+She caressed and stroked his hand. "My dear," she said, "I know."
+
+"And a sort of dancing daring in her eyes."
+
+"Yes," she said. "But tell me where she comes from, and how you met
+her--and all the circumstantial things that a sensible old woman can
+understand."
+
+He kissed her hand and sat down beside her, with his shoulder against
+the arm of her chair, his fingers interlaced about his knee. She could
+not keep her touch from his hair, and she tried to force back the
+thought in her mind that all these talks must end, that very soon indeed
+they would end. And she was glad, full of pride and joy too that her son
+was a lover after her heart, a clean and simple lover as his father had
+been before him. He loved this unknown Marjorie, finely, sweetly,
+bravely, even as she herself could have desired to have been loved. She
+told herself she did not care very greatly even if this Marjorie should
+prove unworthy. So long as her son was not unworthy.
+
+He pieced his story together. He gave her a picture of the Popes,
+Marjorie in her family like a jewel in an ugly setting, so it seemed to
+him, and the queer dull rage of her father and all that they meant to
+do. She tried to grasp his perplexities and advise, but chiefly she was
+filled with the thought that he was in love. If he wanted a girl he
+should have her, and if he had to take her by force, well, wasn't it his
+right? She set small store upon the Popes that night--or any
+circumstances. And since she herself had married on the slightest of
+security, she was concerned very little that this great adventure was to
+be attempted on an income of a few hundreds a year. It was outside her
+philosophy that a wife should be anything but glad to tramp the roads if
+need be with the man who loved her. He sketched out valiant plans, was
+for taking Marjorie away in the teeth of all opposition and bringing her
+back to London. It would have to be done decently, of course, but it
+would have, he thought, to be done. Mrs. Trafford found the prospect
+perfect; never before had he sounded and looked so like that dim figure
+which hung still and sympathetic above them. Ever and again she glanced
+up at her husband's quiet face....
+
+On one point she was very clear with him.
+
+"You'll live with us, mother?" he said abruptly.
+
+"Not with you. As near as you like. But one house, one woman.... I'll
+have a little flat of my own--for you both to come to me."
+
+"Oh, nonsense, mother! You'll have to be with us. Living alone, indeed!"
+
+"My dear, I'd _prefer_ a flat of my own. You don't
+understand--everything. It will be better for all of us like that."
+
+There came a little pause between them, and then her hand was on his
+head again. "Oh, my dear," she said, "I want you to be happy. And life
+can be difficult. I won't give a chance--for things to go wrong. You're
+hers, dear, and you've got to be hers--be each other's altogether. I've
+watched so many people. And that's the best, the very best you can have.
+There's just the lovers--the real enduring lovers; and the uncompleted
+people who've failed to find it."...
+
+
+Sec. 6
+
+Trafford's second meeting with Marjorie, which, by the by, happened on
+the afternoon of the following day, brought them near to conclusive
+decisions. The stiffness of their first encounter in London had
+altogether vanished. She was at her prettiest and in the highest
+spirits--and she didn't care for anything else in the world. A gauzy
+silk scarf which she had bought and not paid for that day floated
+atmospherically about her straight trim body; her hair had caught the
+infection of insurrection and was waving rebelliously about her ears. As
+he drew near her his grave discretion passed from him as clouds pass
+from a hillside. She smiled radiantly. He held out both his hands for
+both of hers, and never did a maiden come so near and yet not get a
+public and shameless kissing.
+
+One could as soon describe music as tell their conversation. It was a
+matter of tones and feelings. But the idea of flight together, of the
+bright awakening in unfamiliar sunshine with none to come between them,
+had gripped them both. A certain sober gravity of discussion only masked
+that deeper inebriety. It would be easy for them to get away; he had no
+lectures until February; he could, he said, make arrangements, leave his
+research. She dreaded disputation. She was for a simple disappearance,
+notes on pincushions and defiantly apologetic letters from Boulogne, but
+his mother's atmosphere had been a gentler one than her home's, with a
+more powerful disposition to dignity. He still couldn't understand that
+the cantankerous egotism of Pope was indeed the essential man; it seemed
+to him a crust of bad manners that reason ought to pierce.
+
+The difference in their atmospheres came out in their talk--in his
+desire for a handsome and dignified wedding--though the very heavens
+protested--and her resolve to cut clear of every one, to achieve a sort
+of gaol delivery of her life, make a new beginning altogether, with the
+minimum of friction and the maximum of surprise. Unused to fighting, he
+was magnificently prepared to fight; she, with her intimate knowledge of
+chronic domestic conflict, was for the evasion of all the bickerings,
+scoldings, and misrepresentations his challenge would occasion. He
+thought in his innocence a case could be stated and discussed; but no
+family discussion she had ever heard had even touched the realities of
+the issue that occasioned it.
+
+"I don't like this underhand preparation," he said.
+
+"Nor I," she echoed. "But what can one do?"
+
+"Well, oughtn't I to go to your father and give him a chance? Why
+shouldn't I? It's--the dignified way."
+
+"It won't be dignified for father," said Marjorie, "anyhow."
+
+"But what right has he to object?"
+
+"He isn't going to discuss his rights with you. He _will_ object."
+
+"But _why?_"
+
+"Oh! because he's started that way. He hit you. I haven't forgotten it.
+Well, if he goes back on that now----He'd rather die than go back on it.
+You see, he's ashamed in his heart. It would be like confessing himself
+wrong not to keep it up that you're the sort of man one hits. He just
+hates you because he hit you. I haven't been his daughter for twenty-one
+years for nothing."
+
+"I'm thinking of us," said Trafford. "I don't see we oughtn't to go to
+him just because he's likely to be--unreasonable."
+
+"My dear, do as you please. He'll forbid and shout, and hit tables until
+things break. Suppose he locks me up!"
+
+"Oh, Habeas Corpus, and my strong right arm! He's much more likely to
+turn you out-of-doors."
+
+"Not if he thinks the other will annoy you more. I'll have to bear a
+storm."
+
+"Not for long."
+
+"He'll bully mother till she cries over me. But do as you please. She'll
+come and she'll beg me----Do as you please. Perhaps I'm a coward. I'd
+far rather I could slip away."
+
+Trafford thought for a moment. "I'd far rather you could," he answered,
+in a voice that spoke of inflexible determinations.
+
+They turned to the things they meant to do. "_Italy!_" she whispered,
+"_Italy!_" Her face was alight with her burning expectation of beauty,
+of love, of the new heaven and the new earth that lay before them. The
+intensity of that desire blazing through her seemed to shame his dull
+discretions. He had to cling to his resolution, lest it should vanish in
+that contagious intoxication.
+
+"You understand I shall come to your father," he said, as they drew near
+the gate where it seemed discreet for them to part.
+
+"It will make it harder to get away," she said, with no apparent
+despondency. "It won't stop us. Oh! do as you please."
+
+She seemed to dismiss the question, and stood hand-in-hand with him in a
+state of glowing gravity. She wouldn't see him again for four-and-twenty
+hours. Then a thought came into her head--a point of great practical
+moment.
+
+"Oh!" she said, "of course, you won't tell father you've seen me."
+
+She met his eye. "Really you mustn't," she said. "You see--he'll make a
+row with mother for not having watched me better. I don't know what he
+isn't likely to do. It isn't myself----This is a confidential
+communication--all this. No one in this world knows I am meeting you. If
+you _must_ go to him, go to him."
+
+"For myself?"
+
+She nodded, with her open eyes on his--eyes that looked now very blue
+and very grave, and her lips a little apart.
+
+She surprised him a little, but even this sudden weakness seemed
+adorable.
+
+"All right," he said.
+
+"You don't think that I'm shirking----?" she asked, a little too
+eagerly.
+
+"You know your father best," he answered. "I'll tell you all he says and
+all the terror of him here to-morrow afternoon."
+
+
+Sec. 7
+
+In the stillness of the night Trafford found himself thinking over
+Marjorie; it was a new form of mental exercise, which was destined to
+play a large part in his existence for many subsequent years. There had
+come a shadow on his confidence in her. She was a glorious person; she
+had a kind of fire behind her and in her--shining through her, like the
+lights in a fire-opal, but----He wished she had not made him promise to
+conceal their meeting and their close co-operation from her father. Why
+did she do that? It would spoil his case with her father, and it could
+forward things for them in no conceivable way. And from that, in some
+manner too subtle to trace, he found his mind wandering to another
+problem, which was destined to reappear with a slowly dwindling
+importance very often in this procedure of thinking over Marjorie in the
+small hours. It was the riddle--it never came to him in the daytime, but
+only in those intercalary and detachedly critical periods of
+thought--why exactly had she engaged herself to Magnet? Why had she? He
+couldn't imagine himself, in Marjorie's position, doing anything of the
+sort. Marjorie had ways of her own; she was different.... Well, anyhow,
+she was splendid and loving and full of courage.... He had got no
+further than this when at last he fell asleep.
+
+
+Sec. 8
+
+Trafford's little attempt to regularise his position was as creditable
+to him as it was inevitably futile. He sought out 29, Hartstone Square
+in the morning on his way to his laboratory, and he found it one of a
+great row of stucco houses each with a portico and a dining-room window
+on the ground floor, and each with a railed area from which troglodytic
+servants peeped. Collectively the terrace might claim a certain ugly
+dignity of restraint, there was none of your Queen Anne nonsense of art
+or beauty about it, and the narrow height, the subterranean kitchens of
+each constituent house, told of a steep relentless staircase and the
+days before the pampering of the lower classes began. The houses formed
+a square, as if the British square so famous at Waterloo for its dogged
+resistance to all the forces of the universe had immortalized itself in
+buildings, and they stared upon a severely railed garden of hardy shrubs
+and gravel to which the tenants had the inestimable privilege of access.
+They did not use it much, that was their affair, but at any rate they
+had keys and a nice sense of rights assured, and at least it kept other
+people out.
+
+Trafford turned out of a busy high road full of the mixed exhilarating
+traffic of our time, and came along a quiet street into this place, and
+it seemed to him he had come into a corner of defence and retreat, into
+an atmosphere of obstinate and unteachable resistances. But this
+illusion of conservativism in its last ditch was dispelled altogether in
+Mr. Pope's portico. Youth flashed out of these solemnities like a dart
+shot from a cave. Trafford was raising his hand to the solid brass
+knocker when abruptly it was snatched from his fingers, the door was
+flung open and a small boy with a number of dirty books in a strap flew
+out and hit him with projectile violence.
+
+"Blow!" said the young gentleman recoiling, and Trafford recovering
+said: "Hullo, Theodore!"
+
+"Lord!" said Theodore breathless, "It's you! _What_ a lark! Your name's
+never mentioned--no how. What _did_ you do?... Wish I could stop and see
+it! I'm ten minutes late. _Ave atque vale_. So long!"
+
+He vanished with incredible velocity. And Mr. Trafford was alone in
+possession of the open doorway except for Toupee, who after a violent
+outbreak of hostility altered his mind and cringed to his feet in abject
+and affectionate propitiation. A pseudo-twin appeared, said "Hello!" and
+vanished, and then he had an instant's vision of Mr. Pope, newspaper in
+hand, appearing from the dining-room. His expression of surprise changed
+to malevolence, and he darted back into the room from which he had
+emerged. Trafford decided to take the advice of a small brass plate on
+his left hand, and "ring also."
+
+A housemaid came out of the bowels of the earth very promptly and
+ushered him up two flights of stairs into what was manifestly Mr. Pope's
+study.
+
+It was a narrow, rather dark room lit by two crimson-curtained windows,
+and with a gas fire before which Mr. Pope's walking boots were warming
+for the day. The apartment revealed to Trafford's cursory inspection
+many of the stigmata of an Englishman of active intelligence and
+literary tastes. There in the bookcase were the collected works of
+Scott, a good large illustrated Shakespeare in numerous volumes, and a
+complete set of bound _Punches_ from the beginning. A pile of back
+numbers of the _Times_ stood on a cane stool in a corner, and in a
+little bookcase handy for the occupier of the desk were Whitaker,
+Wisden and an old peerage. The desk bore traces of recent epistolary
+activity, and was littered with the printed matter of Aunt Plessington's
+movements. Two or three recent issues of _The Financial Review of
+Reviews_ were also visible. About the room hung steel engravings
+apparently of defunct judges or at any rate of exceedingly grim
+individuals, and over the mantel were trophies of athletic prowess, a
+bat witnessing that Mr. Pope had once captained the second eleven at
+Harrogby.
+
+Mr. Pope entered with a stern expression and a sentence prepared. "Well,
+sir," he said with a note of ironical affability, "to what may I ascribe
+this--intrusion?"
+
+Mr. Trafford was about to reply when Mr. Pope interrupted. "Will you be
+seated," he said, and turned his desk chair about for himself, and
+occupying it, crossed his legs and pressed the finger tips of his two
+hands together. "Well, sir?" he said.
+
+Trafford remained standing astraddle over the boots before the gas fire.
+
+"Look here, sir," he said; "I am in love with your daughter. She's one
+and twenty, and I want to see her--and in fact----" He found it hard to
+express himself. He could think only of a phrase that sounded
+ridiculous. "I want--in fact--to pay my addresses to her."
+
+"Well, sir, I don't want you to do so. That is too mild. I object
+strongly--very strongly. My daughter has been engaged to a very
+distinguished and able man, and I hope very shortly to hear that that
+engagement----Practically it is still going on. I don't want you to
+intrude upon my daughter further."
+
+"But look here, sir. There's a certain justice--I mean a certain
+reasonableness----"
+
+Mr. Pope held out an arresting hand. "I don't wish it. Let that be
+enough."
+
+"Of course it isn't enough. I'm in love with her--and she with me. I'm
+an entirely reputable and decent person----"
+
+"May I be allowed to judge what is or is not suitable companionship for
+my daughter--and what may or may not be the present state of her
+affections?"
+
+"Well, that's rather the point we are discussing. After all, Marjorie
+isn't a baby. I want to do all this--this affair, openly and properly if
+I can, but, you know, I mean to marry Marjorie--anyhow."
+
+"There are two people to consult in that matter."
+
+"I'll take the risk of that."
+
+"Permit me to differ."
+
+A feeling of helplessness came over Trafford. The curious irritation Mr.
+Pope always roused in him began to get the better of him. His face
+flushed hotly. "Oh really! really! this is--this is nonsense!" he cried.
+"I never heard anything so childish and pointless as your objection----"
+
+"Be careful, sir!" cried Mr. Pope, "be careful!"
+
+"I'm going to marry Marjorie."
+
+"If she marries you, sir, she shall never darken my doors again!"
+
+"If you had a thing against me!"
+
+"_Haven't_ I!"
+
+"What have you?"
+
+There was a quite perceptible pause before Pope fired his shot.
+
+"Does any decent man want the name of Trafford associated with his
+daughter. Trafford! Look at the hoardings, sir!"
+
+A sudden blaze of anger lit Trafford. "My God!" he cried and clenched
+his fists and seemed for a moment ready to fall upon the man before
+him. Then he controlled himself by a violent effort. "You believe in
+that libel on my dead father?" he said, with white lips.
+
+"Has it ever been answered?"
+
+"A hundred times. And anyhow!--Confound it! I don't believe--_you_
+believe it. You've raked it up--as an excuse! You want an excuse for
+your infernal domestic tyranny! That's the truth of it. You can't bear a
+creature in your household to have a will or preference of her own. I
+tell you, sir, you are intolerable--intolerable!"
+
+He was shouting, and Pope was standing now and shouting too. "Leave my
+house, sir. Get out of my house, sir. You come here to insult me, sir!"
+
+A sudden horror of himself and Pope seized the younger man. He stiffened
+and became silent. Never in his life before had he been in a bawling
+quarrel. He was amazed and ashamed.
+
+"Leave my house!" cried Pope with an imperious gesture towards the door.
+
+Trafford made an absurd effort to save the situation. "I am sorry, sir,
+I lost my temper. I had no business to abuse you----"
+
+"You've said enough."
+
+"I apologise for that. I've done what I could to manage things
+decently."
+
+"Will you go, sir?" threatened Mr. Pope.
+
+"I'm sorry I came," said Trafford.
+
+Mr. Pope took his stand with folded arms and an expression of weary
+patience.
+
+"I did what I could," said Trafford at the door.
+
+The staircase and passage were deserted. The whole house seemed to have
+caught from Mr. Pope that same quality of seeing him out....
+
+"Confound it!" said Trafford in the street. "How on earth did all this
+happen?"...
+
+He turned eastward, and then realized that work would be impossible that
+day. He changed his direction for Kensington Gardens, and in the
+flower-bordered walk near the Albert Memorial he sat down on a chair,
+and lugged at his moustache and wondered. He was extraordinarily
+perplexed, as well as ashamed and enraged by this uproar. How had it
+begun? Of course, he had been stupidly abusive, but the insult to his
+father had been unendurable. Did a man of Pope's sort quite honestly
+believe that stuff? If he didn't, he deserved kicking. If he did, of
+course he was entitled to have it cleared up. But then he wouldn't
+listen! Was there any case for the man at all? Had he, Trafford, really
+put the thing so that Pope would listen? He couldn't remember. What was
+it he had said in reply to Pope? What was it exactly that Pope had said?
+
+It was already vague; it was a confused memory of headlong words and
+answers; what wasn't vague, what rang in his ears still, was the hoarse
+discord of two shouting voices.
+
+Could Marjorie have heard?
+
+
+Sec. 9
+
+So Marjorie carried her point. She wasn't to be married tamely after the
+common fashion which trails home and all one's beginnings into the new
+life. She was to be eloped with, romantically and splendidly, into a
+glorious new world. She walked on shining clouds, and if she felt some
+remorse, it was a very tender and satisfactory remorse, and with a clear
+conviction below it that in the end she would be forgiven.
+
+They made all their arrangements elaborately and carefully. Trafford got
+a license to marry her; she was to have a new outfit from top to toe to
+go away with on that eventful day. It accumulated in the shop, and they
+marked the clothes _M.T._ She was watched, she imagined, but as her
+father did not know she had seen Trafford, nothing had been said to her,
+and no attempt was made to prohibit her going out and coming in.
+Trafford entered into the conspiracy with a keen interest, a certain
+amusement, and a queer little feeling of distaste. He hated to hide any
+act of his from any human being. The very soul of scientific work, you
+see, is publication. But Marjorie seemed to justify all things, and when
+his soul turned against furtiveness, he reminded it that the alternative
+was bawling.
+
+One eventful afternoon he went to the college, and Marjorie slipped
+round by his arrangement to have tea with Mrs. Trafford....
+
+He returned about seven in a state of nervous apprehension; came
+upstairs two steps at a time, and stopped breathless on the landing. He
+gulped as he came in, and his eyes were painfully eager. "She's been?"
+he asked.
+
+But Marjorie had won Mrs. Trafford.
+
+"She's been," she answered. "Yes, she's all right, my dear."
+
+"Oh, mother!" he said.
+
+"She's a beautiful creature, dear--and such a child! Oh! such a child!
+And God bless you, dear, God bless you....
+
+"I think all young people are children. I want to take you both in my
+arms and save you.... I'm talking nonsense, dear."
+
+He kissed her, and she clung to him as if he were something too precious
+to release.
+
+
+Sec. 10
+
+The elopement was a little complicated by a surprise manoeuvre of Mrs.
+Pope's. She was more alive to the quality of the situation, poor lady!
+than her daughter suspected; she was watching, dreading, perhaps even
+furtively sympathizing and trying to arrange--oh! trying dreadfully to
+arrange. She had an instinctive understanding of the deep blue quiet in
+Marjorie's eyes, and the girl's unusual tenderness with Daffy and the
+children. She peeped under the blind as Marjorie went out, noted the
+care in her dress, watched her face as she returned, never plumbed her
+with a question for fear of the answer. She did not dare to breathe a
+hint of her suspicions to her husband, but she felt things were adrift
+in swift, smooth water, and all her soul cried out for delay. So
+presently there came a letter from Cousin Susan Pendexter at Plymouth.
+The weather was beautiful, Marjorie must come at once, pack up and come
+and snatch the last best glow of the dying autumn away there in the
+west. Marjorie's jerry-built excuses, her manifest chagrin and
+reluctance, confirmed her mother's worst suspicions.
+
+She submitted and went, and Mrs. Pope and Syd saw her off.
+
+I do not like to tell how a week later Marjorie explained herself and
+her dressing-bag and a few small articles back to London from Plymouth.
+Suffice it that she lied desperately and elaborately. Her mother had
+never achieved such miracles of mis-statement, and she added a vigour
+that was all her own. It is easier to sympathize with her than exonerate
+her. She was in a state of intense impatience, and--what is
+strange--extraordinarily afraid that something would separate her from
+her lover if she did not secure him. She was in a fever of
+determination. She could not eat or sleep or attend to anything
+whatever; she was occupied altogether with the thought of assuring
+herself to Trafford. He towered in her waking vision over town and land
+and sea.
+
+He didn't hear the lies she told; he only knew she was magnificently
+coming back to him. He met her at Paddington, a white-faced, tired,
+splendidly resolute girl, and they went to the waiting registrar's
+forthwith.
+
+She bore herself with the intentness and dignity of one who is taking
+the cardinal step in life. They kissed as though it was a symbol, and
+were keenly business-like about cabs and luggage and trains. At last
+they were alone in the train together. They stared at one another.
+
+"We've done it, Mrs. Trafford!" said Trafford.
+
+She snapped like an over-taut string, crumpled, clung to him, and
+without a word was weeping passionately in his arms.
+
+It surprised him that she could weep as she did, and still more to see
+her as she walked by his side along the Folkestone pier, altogether
+recovered, erect, a little flushed and excited like a child. She seemed
+to miss nothing. "Oh, smell the sea!" she said, "Look at the lights!
+Listen to the swish of the water below." She watched the luggage
+spinning on the wire rope of the giant crane, and he watched her face
+and thought how beautiful she was. He wondered why her eyes could
+sometimes be so blue and sometimes dark as night.
+
+The boat cleared the pier and turned about and headed for France. They
+walked the upper deck together and stood side by side, she very close to
+him.
+
+"I've never crossed the sea before," she said.
+
+"Old England," she whispered. "It's like leaving a nest. A little row
+of lights and that's all the world I've ever known, shrunken to that
+already."
+
+Presently they went forward and peered into the night.
+
+"Look!" she said. "_Italy!_ There's sunshine and all sorts of beautiful
+things ahead. Warm sunshine, wonderful old ruins, green lizards...." She
+paused and whispered almost noiselessly: "_love_----"
+
+They pressed against each other.
+
+"And yet isn't it strange? All you can see is darkness, and clouds--and
+big waves that hiss as they come near...."
+
+
+Sec. 11
+
+Italy gave all her best to welcome them. It was a late year, a golden
+autumn, with skies of such blue as Marjorie had never seen before. They
+stayed at first in a pretty little Italian hotel with a garden on the
+lake, and later they walked over Salvator to Morcote and by boat to
+Ponte Tresa, and thence they had the most wonderful and beautiful tramp
+in the world to Luino, over the hills by Castelrotto. To the left of
+them all day was a broad valley with low-lying villages swimming in a
+luminous mist, to the right were purple mountains. They passed through
+paved streets with houses the colour of flesh and ivory, with balconies
+hung with corn and gourds, with tall church campaniles rising high, and
+great archways giving upon the blue lowlands; they tramped along avenues
+of sweet chestnut and between stretches of exuberant vineyard, in which
+men and women were gathering grapes--purple grapes, a hatful for a
+soldo, that rasped the tongue. Everything was strange and wonderful to
+Marjorie's eyes; now it would be a wayside shrine and now a yoke of
+soft-going, dewlapped oxen, now a chapel hung about with _ex votos_, and
+now some unfamiliar cultivation--or a gipsy-eyed child--or a scorpion
+that scuttled in the dust. The very names of the villages were like
+jewels to her, Varasca, Croglio, Ronca, Sesia, Monteggio. They walked,
+or sat by the wayside and talked, or rested at the friendly table of
+some kindly albergo. A woman as beautiful as Ceres, with a white neck
+all open, made them an omelette, and then fetched her baby from its
+cradle to nurse it while she talked to them as they made their meal. And
+afterwards she filled their pockets with roasted chestnuts, and sent
+them with melodious good wishes upon their way. And always high over all
+against the translucent blue hung the white shape of Monte Rosa, that
+warmed in colour as the evening came.
+
+Marjorie's head was swimming with happiness and beauty, and with every
+fresh delight she recurred again to the crowning marvel of this
+clean-limbed man beside her, who smiled and carried all her luggage in a
+huge rucksack that did not seem to exist for him, and watched her and
+caressed her--and was hers, _hers!_
+
+At Baveno there were letters. They sat at a little table outside a cafe
+and read them, suddenly mindful of England again. Incipient forgiveness
+showed through Mrs. Pope's reproaches, and there was also a simple,
+tender love-letter (there is no other word for it) from old Mrs.
+Trafford to her son.
+
+From Baveno they set off up Monte Mottarone--whence one may see the Alps
+from Visto to Ortler Spitz--trusting to find the inn still open, and if
+it was closed to get down to Orta somehow before night. Or at the worst
+sleep upon the mountain side.
+
+(Monte Mottarone! Just for a moment taste the sweet Italian name upon
+your lips.) These were the days before the funicular from Stresa, when
+one trudged up a rude path through the chestnuts and walnuts.
+
+As they ascended the long windings through the woods, they met an old
+poet and his wife, coming down from sunset and sunrise. There was a word
+or two about the inn, and they went upon their way. The old man turned
+ever and again to look at them.
+
+"Adorable young people," he said. "Adorable happy young people....
+
+"Did you notice, dear, how she held that dainty little chin of hers?...
+
+"Pride is such a good thing, my dear, clear, straight pride like
+theirs--and they were both so proud!...
+
+"Isn't it good, dear, to think that once you and I may have looked like
+that to some passer-by. I wish I could bless them--sweet, swift young
+things! I wish, dear, it was possible for old men to bless young people
+without seeming to set up for saints...."
+
+
+
+
+    BOOK THE SECOND
+    MARJORIE MARRIED
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIRST
+
+SETTLING DOWN
+
+
+Sec. 1
+
+It was in a boat among reeds upon the lake of Orta that Trafford first
+became familiarized with the idea that Marjorie was capable of debt.
+
+"Oh, I ought to have told you," she began, apropos of nothing.
+
+Her explanation was airy; she had let the thing slip out of her mind for
+a time. But there were various debts to Oxbridge tradespeople. How much?
+Well, rather a lot. Of course, the tradespeople were rather enticing
+when first one went up----How much, anyhow?
+
+"Oh, about fifty pounds," said Marjorie, after her manner. "Not _more_.
+I've not kept all the bills; and some haven't come in. You know how slow
+they are."
+
+"These things _will_ happen," said Trafford, though, as a matter of
+fact, nothing of the sort had happened in his case. "However, you'll be
+able to pay as soon as you get home, and get them all off your mind."
+
+"I think fifty pounds will clear me," said Marjorie, clinging to her
+long-established total, "if you'll let me have that."
+
+"Oh, we don't do things like that," said Trafford. "I'm arranging that
+my current account will be a sort of joint account, and your signature
+will be as good as mine--for the purpose of drawing, at least. You'll
+have your own cheque-book----"
+
+"I don't understand, quite," said Marjorie.
+
+"You'll have your own cheque-book and write cheques as you want them.
+That seems the simplest way to me."
+
+"Of course," said Marjorie. "But isn't this--rather unusual? Father
+always used to allowance mother."
+
+"It's the only decent way according to my ideas," said Trafford. "A man
+shouldn't marry when he can't trust."
+
+"Of course not," said Marjorie. Something between fear and compunction
+wrung her. "Do you think you'd better?" she asked, very earnestly.
+
+"Better?"
+
+"Do this."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"It's--it's so generous."
+
+He didn't answer. He took up an oar and began to push out from among the
+reeds with something of the shy awkwardness of a boy who becomes
+apprehensive of thanks. He stole a glance at her presently and caught
+her expression--there was something very solemn and intent in her
+eyes--and he thought what a grave, fine thing his Marjorie could be.
+
+But, indeed, her state of mind was quite exceptionally confused. She was
+disconcerted--and horribly afraid of herself.
+
+"Do you mean that I can spend what I like?" asked Marjorie.
+
+"Just as I may," he said.
+
+"I wonder," said Marjorie again, "if I'd better."
+
+She was tingling with delight at this freedom, and she knew she was not
+fit for its responsibility. She just came short of a passionate refusal
+of his proposal. He was still so new to her, and things were so
+wonderful, or I think she would have made that refusal.
+
+"You've got to," said Trafford, and ended the matter.
+
+So Marjorie was silent--making good resolutions.
+
+
+Sec. 2
+
+Perhaps some day it may be possible to tell in English again, in the
+language of Shakspeare and Herrick, of the passion, the tenderness, the
+beauty, and the delightful familiarizations of a happy honeymoon;
+suffice it now, in this delicate period, to record only how our two
+young lovers found one day that neither had a name for the other. He
+said she could be nothing better than Marjorie to him; and she, after a
+number of unsuccessful experiments, settled down to the old school-boy
+nickname made out of his initials, R. A. G.
+
+"Dick," she said, "is too bird-like and boy-like. Andrew I can't abide.
+Goodwin gives one no chances for current use. Rag you must be. Mag and
+Rag--poor innocents! Old rag!"
+
+"Mag," he said, "has its drawbacks! The street-boy in London says, 'Shut
+your mag.' No, I think I shall stick to Marjorie...."
+
+All honeymoons must end at last, so back they came to London, still very
+bright and happy. And then, Marjorie, whose eyes had changed from
+flashing stones to darkly shining pools of blue, but whose soul had
+still perhaps to finds its depths, set herself to the business of
+decorating and furnishing the little house Mrs. Trafford had found for
+them within ten minutes of her own. Meanwhile they lived in lodgings.
+
+There can be no denying that Marjorie began her furnishing with severely
+virtuous intentions. She was very particular to ask Trafford several
+times what he thought she might spend upon the enterprise. He had
+already a bedroom and a study equipped, and he threw out three hundred
+pounds as his conception of an acceptable figure. "Very well," said
+Marjorie, with a note of great precision, "now I shall know," and
+straightway that sum took a place in her imagination that was at once
+definitive and protective, just as her estimate of fifty pounds for her
+Oxbridge debts had always been. She assured herself she was going to do
+things, and she assured herself she was doing things, on three hundred
+pounds. At times the astonishment of two or three school friends, who
+joined her in her shopping, stirred her to a momentary surprise at the
+way she was managing to keep things within that limit, and following a
+financial method that had, after all, in spite of some momentary and
+already nearly forgotten distresses, worked very well at Oxbridge, she
+refrained from any additions until all the accounts had come to hand.
+
+It was an immense excitement shopping to make a home. There was in her
+composition a strain of constructive artistry with such concrete things,
+a strain that had hitherto famished. She was making a beautiful, secure
+little home for Trafford, for herself, for possibilities--remote
+perhaps, but already touching her imagination with the anticipation of
+warm, new, wonderful delights. There should be simplicity indeed in this
+home, but no bareness, no harshness, never an ugliness nor a discord.
+She had always loved colour in the skies, in the landscapes, in the
+texture of stuffs and garments; now out of the chaotic skein of
+countless shops she could choose and pick and mingle her threads in a
+glow of feminine self-expression.
+
+On three hundred pounds, that is to say--as a maximum.
+
+The house she had to deal with was, like Mrs. Trafford's, old and rather
+small; it was partly to its lack of bedroom accommodation, but much more
+to the invasion of the street by the back premises of Messrs. Siddons &
+Thrale, the great Chelsea outfitters, that the lowness of the rent was
+due, a lowness which brought it within the means of Trafford. Marjorie
+knew very clearly that her father would say her husband had taken her to
+live in a noisy slum, and that made her all the keener to ensure that
+every good point in the interior told to its utmost, and that whatever
+was to be accessible to her family should glow with a refined but warm
+prosperity. The room downstairs was shapely, and by ripping off the
+papered canvas of the previous occupier, some very dilapidated but
+admirably proportioned panelling was brought to light. The dining-room
+and study door on the ground floor, by a happy accident, were of
+mahogany, with really very beautiful brass furnishings; and the
+dining-room window upon the minute but by no means offensive paved
+garden behind, was curved and had a little shallow balcony of ironwork,
+half covered by a devitalized but leafy grapevine. Moreover, the
+previous occupier had equipped the place with electric light and a
+bathroom of almost American splendour on the landing, glass-shelved,
+white-tiled, and white painted, so that it was a delight to go into.
+
+Marjorie's mind leapt very rapidly to the possibilities of this little
+establishment. The panelling must be done and done well, anyhow; that
+would be no more than a wise economy, seeing it might at any time help
+them to re-let; it would be painted white, of course, and thus set the
+key for a clean brightness of colour throughout. The furniture would
+stand out against the softly shining white, and its line and
+proportions must be therefore the primary qualities to consider as she
+bought it. The study was much narrower than the dining-room, and so the
+passage, which the agent called the hall, was much broader and more
+commodious behind the happily wide staircase than in front, and she was
+able to banish out of the sight of the chance visitor all that litter of
+hat-stand and umbrella-stand, letters, boxes arriving and parcels to
+post, which had always offended her eye at home. At home there had been
+often the most unsightly things visible, one of Theo's awful caps, or
+his school books, and not infrequently her father's well-worn and all
+too fatally comfortable house slippers. A good effect at first is half
+the victory of a well done house, and Marjorie accomplished another of
+her real economies here by carpeting hall and staircase with a
+fine-toned, rich-feeling and rather high-priced blue carpet, held down
+by very thick brass stair-rods. She hung up four well-chosen steel
+engravings, put a single Chippendale chair in the hall, and a dark old
+Dutch clock that had turned out to be only five pounds when she had
+expected the shopman to say eleven or twelve, on the half-landing. That
+was all. Round the corner by the study door was a mahogany slab, and the
+litter all went upon a capacious but very simple dark-stained hat-stand
+and table that were out of the picture entirely until you reached the
+stairs.
+
+Her dining-room was difficult for some time. She had equipped that with
+a dark oak Welsh dresser made very bright with a dessert service that
+was, in view of its extremely decorative quality, remarkably cheap, and
+with some very pretty silver-topped glass bottles and flasks. This
+dresser and a number of simple but shapely facsimiles of old chairs,
+stood out against a nearly primrose paper, very faintly patterned, and a
+dark blue carpet with a margin of dead black-stained wood. Over the
+mantel was a German colour-print of waves full of sunlight breaking
+under cliffs, and between this and the window were dark bookshelves and
+a few bright-coloured books. On the wall, black-framed, were four very
+good Japanese prints, rich in greenish-blues and blueish-greys that
+answered the floor, and the window curtains took up some of the colours
+of the German print. But something was needed towards the window, she
+felt, to balance the warmly shining plates upon the dresser. The deep
+rose-red of the cherries that adorned them was too isolated, usurped too
+dominating a value. And while this was weighing upon her mind she saw in
+a window in Regent Street a number of Bokhara hangings very nobly
+displayed. They were splendid pieces of needlework, particularly
+glorious in their crimsons and reds, and suddenly it came to her that it
+was just one of these, one that had great ruby flowers upon it with
+dead-blue interlacings, that was needed to weld her gay-coloured scheme
+together. She hesitated, went half-way to Piccadilly Circus, turned
+back and asked the prices. The prices were towering prices, ten,
+fifteen, eighteen guineas, and when at last the shopman produced one
+with all the charm of colour she sought at eight, it seemed like ten
+guineas snatched back as they dropped from her hands. And still
+hesitating, she had three that pleased her most sent home, "on
+approval," before she decided finally to purchase one of them. But the
+trial was conclusive. And then, struck with a sudden idea, she carried
+off a long narrow one she had had no idea of buying before into the
+little study behind. Suppose, she thought, instead of hanging two
+curtains as anybody else would do in that window, she ran this glory of
+rich colour across from one side on a great rod of brass.
+
+She was giving the study the very best of her attention. After she had
+lapsed in some other part of the house from the standards of rigid
+economy she had set up, she would as it were restore the balance by
+adding something to the gracefully dignified arrangement of this den he
+was to use. And the brass rod of the Bokhara hanging that was to do
+instead of curtains released her mind somehow to the purchase of certain
+old candlesticks she had hitherto resisted. They were to stand, bored to
+carry candle electric lights, on either corner of the low bookcase that
+faced the window. They were very heavy, very shapely candlesticks, and
+they cost thirty-five shillings. They looked remarkably well when they
+were put up, except that a sort of hollowness appeared between them and
+clamoured for a delightful old brass-footed workbox she had seen in a
+shop in Baker Street. Enquiry confirmed her quick impression that this
+was a genuine piece (of quite exceptional genuineness) and that the
+price--they asked five pounds ten and came down to five guineas--was in
+accordance with this. It was a little difficult (in spite of the silent
+hunger between the candlesticks) to reconcile this particular article
+with her dominating idea of an austerely restrained expenditure, until
+she hit upon the device of calling it a _hors d'oeuvre_, and regarding
+it not as furniture but as a present from herself to Trafford that
+happened to fall in very agreeably with the process of house furnishing.
+She decided she would some day economise its cost out of her dress
+allowance. The bookcase on which it stood was a happy discovery in
+Kensington, just five feet high, and with beautiful oval glass fronts,
+and its capacity was supplemented and any excess in its price at least
+morally compensated by a very tall, narrow, distinguished-looking set of
+open shelves that had been made for some special corner in another
+house, and which anyhow were really and truly dirt cheap. The desk
+combined grace and good proportions to an admirable extent, the fender
+of pierced brass looked as if it had always lived in immediate contact
+with the shapely old white marble fireplace, and the two arm-chairs were
+marvels of dignified comfort. By the fireplace were a banner-shaped
+needlework firescreen, a white sheepskin hearthrug, a little patch and
+powder table adapted to carry books, and a green-shaded lamp, grouped in
+a common inaudible demand for a reader in slippers. Trafford, when at
+last the apartment was ready for his inspection, surveyed these
+arrangements with a kind of dazzled admiration.
+
+"By Jove!" he said. "How little people know of the homes of the Poor!"
+
+Marjorie was so delighted with his approval that she determined to show
+Mrs. Trafford next day how prettily at least her son was going to live.
+The good lady came and admired everything, and particularly the Bokhara
+hangings. She did not seem to appraise, but something set Marjorie
+talking rather nervously of a bargain-hunter's good fortune. Mrs.
+Trafford glanced at the candlesticks and the low bookcase, and returned
+to the glowing piece of needlework that formed the symmetrical window
+curtain in the study. She took it in her hand, and whispered,
+"beautiful!"
+
+"But aren't these rather good?" asked Mrs. Trafford.
+
+Marjorie answered, after a little pause. "They're not too good for
+_him_," she said.
+
+
+Sec. 3
+
+And now these young people had to resume life in London in earnest. The
+orchestral accompaniment of the world at large began to mingle with
+their hitherto unsustained duet. It had been inaudible in Italy. In
+Chelsea it had sounded, faintly perhaps but distinctly, from their very
+first inspection of the little house. A drawing-room speaks of callers,
+a dining-room of lunch-parties and dinners. It had swayed Marjorie from
+the front door inward.
+
+During their honeymoon they had been gloriously unconscious of comment.
+Now Marjorie began to show herself keenly sensitive to the advent of a
+score of personalities, and very anxious to show just how completely
+successful in every sense her romantic disobedience had been. She knew
+she had been approved of, admired, condemned, sneered at, thoroughly
+discussed. She felt it her first duty to Trafford, to all who had
+approved of her flight, to every one, herself included, to make this
+marriage obviously, indisputably, a success, a success not only by her
+own standards but by the standards of anyonesoever who chose to sit in
+judgment on her.
+
+There was Trafford. She felt she had to extort the admission from every
+one that he was the handsomest, finest, ablest, most promising and most
+delightful man a prominent humorist was ever jilted for. She wanted them
+to understand clearly just all that Trafford was--and that involved, she
+speedily found in practice, making them believe a very great deal that
+as yet Trafford wasn't. She found it practically impossible not to
+anticipate his election to the Royal Society and the probability of a
+more important professorship. She felt that anyhow he was an F.R.S. in
+the sight of God....
+
+It was almost equally difficult not to indicate a larger income than
+facts justified.
+
+It was entirely in Marjorie's vein in those early days that she would
+want to win on every score and by every standard of reckoning. If
+Marjorie had been a general she would have counted no victory complete
+if the struggle was not sustained and desperate, and if it left the
+enemy with a single gun or flag, or herself with so much as a man killed
+or wounded. The people she wanted to impress varied very widely. She
+wanted to impress the Carmel girls, and the Carmel girls, she knew, with
+their racial trick of acute appraisement, were only to be won by the
+very highest quality all round. They had, she knew, two standards of
+quality, cost and distinction. As far as possible, she would give them
+distinction. But whenever she hesitated over something on the verge of
+cheapness the thought of those impending judgments tipped the balance.
+The Carmel girls were just two influential representatives of a host.
+She wanted to impress quite a number of other school and college
+friends. There were various shy, plastic-spirited, emotional creatures,
+of course, for the most part with no confidence in their own appearance,
+who would be impressed quite adequately enough by Trafford's good looks
+and witty manner and easy temper. They might perhaps fall in love with
+him and become slavish to her after the way of their kind, and anyhow
+they would be provided for, but there were plenty of others of a harder
+texture whose tests would be more difficult to satisfy. There were girls
+who were the daughters of prominent men, who must be made to understand
+that Trafford was prominent, girls who were well connected, who must be
+made to realize the subtle excellence of Trafford's blood. As she
+thought of Constance Graham, for example, or Ottiline Winchelsea, she
+felt the strongest disposition to thicken the by no means well
+authenticated strands that linked Trafford with the Traffords of
+Trafford-over-Lea. She went about the house dreaming a little
+apprehensively of these coming calls, and the pitiless light of
+criticism they would bring to bear, not indeed upon her happiness--that
+was assured--but upon her success.
+
+The social side of the position would have to be strained to the
+utmost, Marjorie felt, with Aunt Plessington. The thought of Aunt
+Plessington made her peculiarly apprehensive. Aunt Plessington had to
+the fullest extent that contempt for merely artistic or scientific
+people which sits so gracefully upon the administrative English. You
+see people of that sort do not get on in the sense that a young lawyer
+or barrister gets on. They do not make steps; they boast and quarrel
+and are jealous perhaps, but that steady patient shove upward seems
+beyond their intelligence. The energies God manifestly gave them for
+shoving, they dissipate in the creation of weak beautiful things and
+unremunerative theories, or in the establishment of views sometimes
+diametrically opposed to the ideas of influential people. And they are
+"queer"--socially. They just moon about doing this so-called "work" of
+theirs, and even when the judgment of eccentric people forces a kind
+of reputation upon them--Heaven knows why?--they make no public or
+social use of it. It seemed to Aunt Plessington that the artist and
+the scientific man were dealt with very neatly and justly in the
+Parable of the Buried Talent. Moreover their private lives were often
+scandalous, they married for love instead of interest, often quite
+disadvantageously, and their relationships had all the instability
+that is natural upon such a foundation. And, after all, what good were
+they? She had never met an artist or a prominent imaginative writer or
+scientific man that she had not been able to subdue in a minute or so
+by flat contradiction, and if necessary slightly raising her voice.
+They had little or no influence even upon their own public
+appointments....
+
+The thought of the invasion of her agreeable little back street
+establishment by this Britannic system of judgments filled Marjorie's
+heart with secret terrors. She felt she had to grapple with and overcome
+Aunt Plessington, or be for ever fallen--at least, so far as that
+amiable lady's report went, and she knew it went pretty far. She
+wandered about the house trying to imagine herself Aunt Plessington.
+
+Immediately she felt the gravest doubts whether the whole thing wasn't
+too graceful and pretty. A rich and rather massive ugliness, of course,
+would have been the thing to fetch Aunt Plessington. Happily, it was
+Aunt Plessington's habit to veil her eyes with her voice. She might not
+see very much.
+
+The subjugation of Aunt Plessington was difficult, but not altogether
+hopeless, Marjorie felt, provided her rejection of Magnet had not been
+taken as an act of personal ingratitude. There was a case on her side.
+She was discovering, for example, that Trafford had a really very
+considerable range of acquaintance among quite distinguished people; big
+figures like Evesham and MacHaldo, for example, were intelligently
+interested in the trend of his work. She felt this gave her a basis for
+Plessingtonian justifications. She could produce those people--as one
+shows one's loot. She could imply, "Oh, Love and all that nonsense!
+Certainly not! _This_ is what I did it for." With skill and care and
+good luck, and a word here and there in edgeways, she believed she might
+be able to represent the whole adventure as the well-calculated opening
+of a campaign on soundly Plessingtonian lines. Her marriage to Trafford,
+she tried to persuade herself, might be presented as something almost
+as brilliant and startling as her aunt's swoop upon her undistinguished
+uncle.
+
+She might pretend that all along she had seen her way to things, to
+coveted dinner-tables and the familiarity of coveted guests, to bringing
+people together and contriving arrangements, to influence and
+prominence, to culminations and intrigues impossible in the
+comparatively specialized world of a successful humorist and playwright,
+and so at last to those high freedoms of authoritative and if necessary
+offensive utterance in a strangulated contralto, and from a position of
+secure eminence, which is the goal of all virtuously ambitious
+Englishwomen of the governing classes--that is to say, of all virtuously
+ambitious Englishwomen....
+
+
+Sec. 4
+
+And while such turbid solicitudes as these were flowing in again from
+the London world to which she had returned, and fouling the bright,
+romantic clearness of Marjorie's life, Trafford, in his ampler, less
+detailed way was also troubled about their coming re-entry into society.
+He, too, had his old associations.
+
+For example, he was by no means confident of the favourable judgments of
+his mother upon Marjorie's circle of school and college friends, whom he
+gathered from Marjorie's talk were destined to play a large part in this
+new phase of his life. She had given him very ample particulars of some
+of them; and he found them interesting rather than richly attractive
+personalities. It is to be noted that while he thought always of
+Marjorie as a beautiful, grown-up woman, and his mate and equal, he was
+still disposed to regard her intimate friends as schoolgirls of an
+advanced and aggressive type....
+
+Then that large circle of distinguished acquaintances which Marjorie saw
+so easily and amply utilized for the subjugation of Aunt Plessington
+didn't present itself quite in that service to Trafford's private
+thoughts. He hadn't that certitude of command over them, nor that
+confidence in their unhesitating approval of all he said and did. Just
+as Marjorie wished him to shine in the heavens over all her people, so,
+in regard to his associates, he was extraordinarily anxious that they
+should realize, and realize from the outset without qualification or
+hesitation, how beautiful, brave and delightful she was. And you know he
+had already begun to be aware of an evasive feeling in his mind that at
+times she did not altogether do herself justice--he scarcely knew as yet
+how or why....
+
+She was very young....
+
+One or two individuals stood out in his imagination, representatives and
+symbols of the rest. Particularly there was that old giant, Sir Roderick
+Dover, who had been, until recently, the Professor of Physics in the
+great Oxford laboratories. Dover and Trafford had one of those warm
+friendships which spring up at times between a rich-minded man whose
+greatness is assured and a young man of brilliant promise. It was all
+the more affectionate because Dover had been a friend of Trafford's
+father. These two and a group of other careless-minded, able,
+distinguished, and uninfluential men at the Winton Club affected the end
+of the smoking-room near the conservatory in the hours after lunch, and
+shared the joys of good talk and fine jesting about the big fireplace
+there. Under Dover's broad influence they talked more ideas and less
+gossip than is usual with English club men. Twaddle about appointments,
+about reputations, topics from the morning's papers, London
+architecture, and the commerce in "good stories" took refuge at the
+other end in the window bays or by the further fireplace. Trafford only
+began to realize on his return to London how large a share this
+intermittent perennial conversation had contributed to the atmosphere of
+his existence. Amidst the romantic circumstances of his flight with
+Marjorie he had forgotten the part these men played in his life and
+thoughts. Now he was enormously exercised in the search for a
+reconciliation between these, he felt, incommensurable factors.
+
+He was afraid of what might be Sir Roderick's unspoken judgment on
+Marjorie and the house she had made--though what was there to be afraid
+of? He was still more afraid--and this was even more remarkable--of the
+clear little judgments--hard as loose, small diamonds in a bed--that he
+thought Marjorie might pronounce on Sir Roderick. He had never disguised
+from himself that Sir Roderick was fat--nobody who came within a hundred
+yards of him could be under any illusion about that--and that he drank a
+good deal, ate with a cosmic spaciousness, loved a cigar, and talked and
+laughed with a freedom that sometimes drove delicate-minded new members
+into the corners remotest from the historical fireplace. Trafford knew
+himself quite definitely that there was a joy in Dover's laugh and
+voice, a beauty in his face (that was somehow mixed up with his healthy
+corpulence), and a breadth, a charity, a leonine courage in his mind
+(that was somehow mixed up with his careless freedom of speech) that
+made him an altogether satisfactory person.
+
+But supposing Marjorie didn't see any of that!
+
+Still, he was on the verge of bringing Sir Roderick home when a talk at
+the club one day postponed that introduction of the two extremes of
+Trafford's existence for quite a considerable time.
+
+Those were the days of the first enthusiasms of the militant suffrage
+movement, and the occasional smashing of a Downing Street window or an
+assault upon a minister kept the question of woman's distinctive
+intelligence and character persistently before the public. Godley
+Buzard, the feminist novelist, had been the guest of some member to
+lunch, and the occasion was too provocative for any one about Dover's
+fireplace to avoid the topic. Buzard's presence, perhaps, drove Dover
+into an extreme position on the other side; he forgot Trafford's
+new-wedded condition, and handled this great argument, an argument which
+has scarcely progressed since its beginning in the days of Plato and
+Aristophanes, with the freedoms of an ancient Greek and the explicitness
+of a modern scientific man.
+
+He opened almost apropos of nothing. "Women," he said, "are
+inferior--and you can't get away from it."
+
+"You can deny it," said Buzard.
+
+"In the face of the facts," said Sir Roderick. "To begin with, they're
+several inches shorter, several pounds lighter; they've less physical
+strength in footpounds."
+
+"More endurance," said Buzard.
+
+"Less sensitiveness merely. All those are demonstrable things--amenable
+to figures and apparatus. Then they stand nervous tensions worse, the
+breaking-point comes sooner. They have weaker inhibitions, and
+inhibition is the test of a creature's position in the mental scale."
+
+He maintained that in the face of Buzard's animated protest. Buzard
+glanced at their moral qualities. "More moral!" cried Dover, "more
+self-restraint! Not a bit of it! Their desires and passions are weaker
+even than their controls; that's all. Weaken restraints and they show
+their quality. A drunken woman is far worse than a drunken man. And as
+for their biological significance----"
+
+"They are the species," said Buzard, "and we are the accidents."
+
+"They are the stolon and we are the individualized branches. They are
+the stem and we are the fruits. Surely it's better to exist than just
+transmit existence. And that's a woman's business, though we've fooled
+and petted most of 'em into forgetting it...."
+
+He proceeded to an attack on the intellectual quality of women. He
+scoffed at the woman artist, at feminine research, at what he called the
+joke of feminine philosophy. Buzard broke in with some sentences of
+reply. He alleged the lack of feminine opportunity, inferior education.
+
+"You don't or won't understand me," said Dover. "It isn't a matter of
+education or opportunity, or simply that they're of inferior capacity;
+it lies deeper than that. They don't _want_ to do these things. They're
+different."
+
+"Precisely," ejaculated Buzard, as if he claimed a score.
+
+"They don't care for these things. They don't care for art or
+philosophy, or literature or anything except the things that touch them
+directly. That's their peculiar difference. Hunger they understand, and
+comfort, and personal vanity and desire, furs and chocolate and
+husbands, and the extreme importance conferred upon them by having
+babies at infrequent intervals. But philosophy or beauty for its own
+sake, or dreams! Lord! no! The Mahometans know they haven't souls, and
+they say it. We know, and keep it up that they have. Haven't all we
+scientific men had 'em in our laboratories working; don't we know the
+papers they turn out? Every sane man of five and forty knows something
+of the disillusionment of the feminine dream, but we who've had the
+beautiful creatures under us, weighing rather badly, handling rather
+weakly, invariably missing every fine detail and all the implications of
+our researches, never flashing, never leaping, never being even
+thoroughly bad,--we're specialists in the subject. At the present time
+there are far more educated young women than educated young men
+available for research work--and who wants them? Oh, the young
+professors who've still got ideals perhaps. And in they come, and if
+they're dull, they just voluminously do nothing, and if they're bright,
+they either marry your demonstrator or get him into a mess. And the
+work----? It's nothing to them. No woman ever painted for the love of
+painting, or sang for the sounds she made, or philosophized for the sake
+of wisdom as men do----"
+
+Buzard intervened with instances. Dover would have none of them. He
+displayed astonishing and distinctive knowledge. "Madame Curie,"
+clamoured Buzard, "Madame Curie."
+
+"There was Curie," said Dover. "No woman alone has done such things. I
+don't say women aren't clever," he insisted. "They're too clever. Give
+them a man's track or a man's intention marked and defined, they'll ape
+him to the life----"
+
+Buzard renewed his protests, talking at the same time as Dover, and was
+understood to say that women had to care for something greater than art
+or philosophy. They were custodians of life, the future of the race----
+
+"And that's my crowning disappointment," cried Dover. "If there was one
+thing in which you might think women would show a sense of some divine
+purpose in life, it is in the matter of children--and they show about
+as much care in that matter, oh!--as rabbits. Yes, rabbits! I stick to
+it. Look at the things a nice girl will marry; look at the men's
+children she'll consent to bring into the world. Cheerfully! Proudly!
+For the sake of the home and the clothes. Nasty little beasts they'll
+breed without turning a hair. All about us we see girls and women
+marrying ugly men, dull and stupid men, ill-tempered dyspeptic wrecks,
+sickly young fools, human rats--_rats!_"
+
+"No, no!" cried Trafford to Dover.
+
+Buzard's voice clamoured that all would be different when women had the
+vote.
+
+"If ever we get a decent care for Eugenics, it will come from men," said
+a white-faced little man on the sofa beside Trafford, in the
+confidential tone of one who tells a secret.
+
+"Doing it cheerfully!" insisted Dover.
+
+Trafford in mid-protest was suddenly stricken into silence by a memory.
+It was as if the past had thrown a stone at the back of his head and hit
+it smartly. He nipped his sentence in the bud. He left the case for
+women to Buzard....
+
+He revived that memory again on his way home. It had been in his mind
+overlaid by a multitude of newer, fresher things, but now he took it out
+and looked at it. It was queer, it was really very queer, to think that
+once upon a time, not so very long ago, Marjorie had been prepared to
+marry Magnet. Of course she had hated it, but still----....
+
+There is much to be discovered about life, even by a brilliant and
+rising young Professor of Physics....
+
+Presently Dover, fingering the little glass of yellow chartreuse he had
+hitherto forgotten in the heat of controversy, took a more personal
+turn.
+
+"Don't we know," he said, and made the limpid amber vanish in his pause.
+"Don't we know we've got to manage and control 'em--just as we've got to
+keep 'em and stand the racket of their misbehaviour? Don't our instincts
+tell us? Doesn't something tell us all that if we let a woman loose with
+our honour and trust, some other man will get hold of her? We've tried
+it long enough now, this theory that a woman's a partner and an equal;
+we've tried it long enough to see some of the results, and does it work?
+Does it? A woman's a prize, a possession, a responsibility, something to
+take care of and be careful about.... You chaps, if you'll forgive me,
+you advanced chaps, seem to want to have the women take care of you. You
+seem always to want to force decisions on them, make them answerable for
+things that you ought to decide and answer for.... If one could, if one
+could! If!... But they're not helps--that's a dream--they're
+distractions, gratifications, anxieties, dangers, undertakings...."
+
+Buzard got in his one effective blow at this point. "That's why you've
+never married, Sir Roderick?" he threw out.
+
+The big man was checked for a moment. Trafford wondered what memory lit
+that instant's pause. "I've had my science," said Dover.
+
+
+Sec. 5
+
+Mrs. Pope was of course among the first to visit the new home so soon as
+it was open to inspection. She arrived, looking very bright and neat in
+a new bonnet and some new black furs that suited her, bearing up bravely
+but obviously in a state of dispersed and miscellaneous emotion....
+
+In many ways Marjorie's marriage had been a great relief to her mother.
+Particularly it had been a financial relief. Marjorie had been the most
+expensive child of her family, and her cessation had led to increments
+both of Mrs. Pope's and Daphne's all too restricted allowances. Mrs.
+Pope had been able therefore to relapse from the orthodox Anglicanism
+into which poverty had driven her, and indulge for an hour weekly in the
+consolations of Higher Thought. These exercises in emancipated
+religiosity occurred at the house of Mr. Silas Root, and were greatly
+valued by a large circle of clients. Essentially they were orgies of
+vacuity, and they cost six guineas for seven hours. They did her no end
+of good. All through the precious weekly hour she sat with him in a
+silent twilight, very, very still and feeling--oh! "higher" than
+anything, and when she came out she wore an inane smile on her face and
+was prepared not to worry, to lie with facility, and to take the easiest
+way in every eventuality in an entirely satisfactory and exalted manner.
+Moreover he was "treating" her investments. Acting upon his advice, and
+doing the whole thing quietly with the idea of preparing a pleasant
+surprise for her husband, she had sold out of certain Home Railway
+debentures and invested in a company for working the auriferous waste
+which is so abundant in the drainage of Philadelphia, a company whose
+shareholders were chiefly higher thought disciples and whose profits
+therefore would inevitably be greatly enhanced by their concerted mental
+action. It was to the prospective profits in this that she owed the new
+black furs she was wearing.
+
+The furs and the bonnet and the previous day's treatment she had had,
+all helped to brace her up on Marjorie's doorstep for a complex and
+difficult situation, and to carry her through the first tensions of her
+call. She was so much to pieces as it was that she could not help
+feeling how much more to pieces she might have been--but for the grace
+of Silas Root. She knew she ought to have very strong feelings about
+Trafford, though it was not really clear to her what feelings she ought
+to have. On the whole she was inclined to believe she was experiencing
+moral disapproval mixed up with a pathetic and rather hopeless appeal
+for the welfare of the tender life that had entrusted itself so
+recklessly to these brutal and discreditable hands, though indeed if she
+had really dared to look inside her mind her chief discovery would have
+been a keenly jealous appreciation of Trafford's good looks and generous
+temper, and a feeling of injustice as between her own lot and
+Marjorie's. However, going on her assumed basis she managed to be very
+pale, concise and tight-lipped at any mention of her son-in-law, and to
+put a fervour of helpless devotion into her embraces of her daughter.
+She surveyed the house with a pained constrained expression, as though
+she tried in vain to conceal from herself that it was all slightly
+improper, and even such objects as the Bokhara hangings failed to extort
+more than an insincere, "Oh, very nice, dear--_very_ nice."
+
+In the bedroom, she spoke about Mr. Pope. "He was dreadfully upset," she
+said. "His first thought was to come after you both with a pistol.
+If--if _he_ hadn't married you----"
+
+"But dear Mummy, of _course_ we meant to marry! We married right away."
+
+"Yes, dear, of course. But if he hadn't----"
+
+She paused, and Marjorie, with a momentary flush of indignation in her
+cheeks, did not urge her to conclude her explanation.
+
+"He's _wounded_," said Mrs. Pope. "Some day perhaps he'll come
+round--you were always his favourite daughter."
+
+"I know," said Marjorie concisely, with a faint flavour of cynicism in
+her voice.
+
+"I'm afraid dear, at present--he will do nothing for you."
+
+"I don't think Rag would like him to," said Marjorie with an unreal
+serenity; "_ever_."
+
+"For a time I'm afraid he'll refuse to see you. He just wants to
+forget----. Everything."
+
+"Poor old Dad! I wish he wouldn't put himself out like this. Still, I
+won't bother him, Mummy, if you mean that."
+
+Then suddenly into Mrs. Pope's unsystematic, unstable mind, started
+perhaps by the ring in her daughter's voice, there came a wave of
+affectionate feeling. That she had somehow to be hostile and
+unsympathetic to Marjorie, that she had to pretend that Trafford was
+wicked and disgusting, and not be happy in the jolly hope and happiness
+of this bright little house, cut her with a keen swift pain. She didn't
+know clearly why she was taking this coldly hostile attitude, or why she
+went on doing so, but the sense of that necessity hurt her none the
+less. She put out her hands upon her daughter's shoulders and whimpered:
+"Oh my dear! I do wish things weren't so difficult--so very difficult."
+
+The whimper changed by some inner force of its own to honest sobs and
+tears.
+
+Marjorie passed through a flash of amazement to a sudden understanding
+of her mother's case. "Poor dear Mummy," she said. "Oh! poor dear Mummy.
+It's a shame of us!"
+
+She put her arms about her mother and held her for awhile.
+
+"It _is_ a shame," said her mother in a muffled voice, trying to keep
+hold of this elusive thing that had somehow both wounded her and won her
+daughter back. But her poor grasp slipped again. "I knew you'd come to
+see it," she said, dabbing with her handkerchief at her eyes. "I knew
+you would." And then with the habitual loyalty of years resuming its
+sway: "He's always been so good to you."...
+
+But Mrs. Pope had something more definite to say to Marjorie, and came
+to it at last with a tactful offhandedness. Marjorie communicated it to
+Trafford about an hour later on his return from the laboratory. "I say,"
+she said, "old Daffy's engaged to Magnet!"
+
+She paused, and added with just the faintest trace of resentment in her
+voice: "She can have him, as far as I'm concerned."
+
+"He didn't wait long," said Trafford tactlessly.
+
+"No," said Marjorie; "he didn't wait long.... Of course she got him on
+the rebound."...
+
+
+Sec. 6
+
+Mrs. Pope was only a day or so ahead of a cloud of callers. The Carmel
+girls followed close upon her, tall figures of black fur, with
+costly-looking muffs and a rich glitter at neck and wrist. Marjorie
+displayed her house, talking fluently about other things, and watching
+for effects. The Carmel girls ran their swift dark eyes over her
+appointments, glanced quickly from side to side of her rooms, saw only
+too certainly that the house was narrow and small----. But did they see
+that it was clever? They saw at any rate that she meant it to be clever,
+and with true Oriental politeness said as much urgently and
+extravagantly. Then there were the Rambord girls and their mother, an
+unobservant lot who chattered about the ice at Prince's; then Constance
+Graham came with a thoroughbred but very dirty aunt, and then Ottiline
+Winchelsea with an American minor poet, who wanted a view of mountains
+from the windows at the back, and said the bathroom ought to be done in
+pink. Then Lady Solomonson came; an extremely expensive-looking fair
+lady with an affectation of cynicism, a keen intelligence, acutely apt
+conversation, and a queer effect of thinking of something else all the
+time she was talking. She missed nothing....
+
+Hardly anybody failed to appreciate the charm and decision of Marjorie's
+use of those Bokhara embroideries.
+
+They would have been cheap at double the price.
+
+
+Sec. 7
+
+And then our two young people went out to their first dinner-parties
+together. They began with Trafford's rich friend Solomonson, who had
+played so large and so passive a part in their first meeting. He had
+behaved with a sort of magnanimous triumph over the marriage. He made it
+almost his personal affair, as though he had brought it about. "I knew
+there was a girl in it," he insisted, "and you told me there wasn't.
+O-a-ah! And you kept me in that smell of disinfectant and things--what a
+chap that doctor was for spilling stuff!--for six blessed days!..."
+
+Marjorie achieved a dress at once simple and good with great facility by
+not asking the price until it was all over. (There is no half-success
+with dinner-dresses, either the thing is a success and inestimable, or
+not worth having at any price at all.) It was blue with a thread of
+gold, and she had a necklace of blueish moonstones, gold-set, and her
+hair ceased to be copper and became golden, and her eyes unfathomable
+blue. She was radiant with health and happiness, no one else there had
+her clear freshness, and her manner was as restrained and dignified and
+ready as a proud young wife's can be. Everyone seemed to like her and
+respect her and be interested in her, and Trafford kissed her flushed
+cheek in the hansom as they came home again and crowned her happiness.
+It had been quite a large party, and really much more splendid and
+brilliant than anything she had ever seen before. There had been one old
+gentleman with a coloured button and another with a ribbon; there had
+been a countess with historical pearls, and half-a-dozen other people
+one might fairly call distinguished. The house was tremendous in its
+way, spacious, rich, glowing with lights, abounding in vistas and fine
+remote backgrounds. In the midst of it all she had a sudden thrill at
+the memory that less than a year ago she had been ignominiously
+dismissed from the dinner-table by her father for a hiccup....
+
+A few days after Aunt Plessington suddenly asked the Traffords to one of
+her less important but still interesting gatherings; not one of those
+that swayed the world perhaps, but one which Marjorie was given to
+understand achieved important subordinate wagging. Aunt Plessington had
+not called, she explained in her note, because of the urgent demands the
+Movement made upon her time; it was her wonderful hard-breathing way
+never to call on anyone, and it added tremendously to her reputation;
+none the less it appeared--though here the scrawl became illegible--she
+meant to shove and steer her dear niece upward at a tremendous pace.
+They were even asked to come a little early so that she might make
+Trafford's acquaintance.
+
+The dress was duly admired, and then Aunt Plessington--assuming the
+hearthrug and forgetting the little matter of their career--explained
+quite Napoleonic and wonderful things she was going to do with her
+Movement, fresh principles, fresh applications, a big committee of all
+the "names"--they were easy to get if you didn't bother them to do
+things--a new and more attractive title, "Payment in Kind" was to give
+way to "Reality of Reward," and she herself was going to have her hair
+bleached bright white (which would set off her eyes and colour and the
+general geniality of appearance due to her projecting teeth), and so
+greatly increase her "platform efficiency." Hubert, she said, was
+toiling away hard at the detail of these new endeavours. He would be
+down in a few minutes' time. Marjorie, she said, ought to speak at their
+meetings. It would help both the Traffords to get on if Marjorie cut a
+dash at the outset, and there was no such dash to be cut as speaking at
+Aunt Plessington's meetings. It was catching on; all next season it was
+sure to be the thing. So many promising girls allowed themselves to be
+submerged altogether in marriage for a time, and when they emerged
+everyone had forgotten the promise of their debut. She had an air of
+rescuing Marjorie from an impending fate by disabusing Trafford from
+injurious prepossessions....
+
+Presently the guests began to drop in, a vegetarian health specialist, a
+rising young woman factory inspector, a phrenologist who was being
+induced to put great talents to better uses under Aunt Plessington's
+influence, his dumb, obscure, but inevitable wife, a colonial bishop, a
+baroness with a taste rather than a capacity for intellectual society, a
+wealthy jam and pickle manufacturer and his wife, who had subscribed
+largely to the funds of the Movement and wanted to meet the lady of
+title, and the editor of the Movement's organ, _Upward and On_, a young
+gentleman of abundant hair and cadaverous silences, whom Aunt
+Plessington patted on the shoulder and spoke of as "one of our
+discoveries." And then Uncle Hubert came down, looking ruffled and
+overworked, with his ready-made dress-tie--he was one of those men who
+can never master the art of tying a bow--very much askew. The
+conversation turned chiefly on the Movement; if it strayed Aunt
+Plessington reached out her voice after it and brought it back in a
+masterful manner.
+
+Through soup and fish Marjorie occupied herself with the inflexible
+rigour of the young editor, who had brought her down. When she could
+give her attention to the general conversation she discovered her
+husband a little flushed and tackling her aunt with an expression of
+quiet determination. The phrenologist and the vegetarian health
+specialist were regarding him with amazement, the jam and pickle
+manufacturer's wife was evidently deeply shocked. He was refusing to
+believe in the value of the Movement, and Aunt Plessington was
+manifestly losing her temper.
+
+"I don't see, Mrs. Plessington," he was saying, "that all this amounts
+to more than a kind of Glorious District Visiting. That is how I see it.
+You want to attack people in their homes--before they cry out to you.
+You want to compel them by this Payment in Kind of yours to do what you
+want them to do instead of trying to make them want to do it. Now, I
+think your business is to make them want to do it. You may perhaps
+increase the amount of milk in babies, and the amount of whitewash in
+cottages and slums by your methods--I don't dispute the promise of your
+statistics--but you're going to do it at a cost of human self-respect
+that's out of all proportion----"
+
+Uncle Hubert's voice, with that thick utterance that always suggested a
+mouthful of plums, came booming down the table. "All these arguments,"
+he said, "have been answered long ago."
+
+"No doubt," said Trafford with a faint asperity. "But tell me the
+answers."
+
+"It's ridiculous," said Aunt Plessington, "to talk of the self-respect
+of the kind of people--oh! the very dregs!"
+
+"It's just because the plant is delicate that you've got to handle it
+carefully," said Trafford.
+
+"Here's Miss Gant," said Aunt Plessington, "_she_ knows the strata we
+are discussing. She'll tell you they have positively _no_
+self-respect--none at all."
+
+"_My_ people," said Miss Gant, as if in conclusive testimony, "actually
+conspire with their employers to defeat me."
+
+"I don't see the absence of self-respect in that," said Trafford.
+
+"But all their interests----"
+
+"I'm thinking of their pride."...
+
+The discussion lasted to the end of dinner and made no headway. As soon
+as the ladies were in the drawing-room, Aunt Plessington, a little
+flushed from the conflict, turned on Marjorie and said, "I _like_ your
+husband. He's wrong-headed, but he's young, and he's certainly spirited.
+He _ought_ to get on if he wants to. Does he do nothing but his
+researches?"
+
+"He lectures in the spring term," said Marjorie.
+
+"Ah!" said Aunt Plessington with a triumphant note, "you must alter all
+that. You must interest him in wider things. You must bring him out of
+his shell, and let him see what it is to deal with Affairs. Then he
+wouldn't talk such nonsense about our Work."
+
+Marjory was at a momentary loss for a reply, and in the instant's
+respite Aunt Plessington turned to the jam and pickle lady and asked in
+a bright, encouraging note: "Well! And how's the Village Club getting
+on?"...
+
+She had another lunge at Trafford as he took his leave. "You must come
+again soon," she said. "I _love_ a good wrangle, and Hubert and I never
+want to talk about our Movement to any one but unbelievers. You don't
+know the beginnings of it yet. Only I warn you they have a way of
+getting converted. I warn you."...
+
+On this occasion there was no kissing in the cab. Trafford was
+exasperated.
+
+"Of all the intolerable women!" he said, and was silent for a time.
+
+"The astounding part of it is," he burst out, "that this sort of thing,
+this Movement and all the rest of it, does really give the quality of
+English public affairs. It's like a sample--dredged. The--the
+_cheapness_ of it! Raised voices, rash assertions, sham investigations,
+meetings and committees and meetings, that's the stuff of it, and
+politicians really have to attend to it, and silly, ineffective,
+irritating bills really get drafted and messed about with and passed on
+the strength of it. Public affairs are still in the Dark Ages. Nobody
+now would think of getting together a scratch committee of rich old
+women and miscellaneous conspicuous people to design an electric tram,
+and jabbering and jabbering and jabbering, and if any one objects"--a
+note of personal bitterness came into his voice--"jabbering faster; but
+nobody thinks it ridiculous to attempt the organization of poor people's
+affairs in that sort of way. This project of the supersession of Wages
+by Payment in Kind--oh! it's childish. If it wasn't it would be
+outrageous and indecent. Your uncle and aunt haven't thought for a
+moment of any single one of the necessary consequences of these things
+they say their confounded Movement aims at, effects upon the race, upon
+public spirit, upon people's habits and motives. They've just a queer
+craving to feel powerful and influential, which they think they can best
+satisfy by upsetting the lives of no end of harmless poor people--the
+only people they dare upset--and that's about as far as they go.... Your
+aunt's detestable, Marjorie."
+
+Marjorie had never seen him so deeply affected by anything but herself.
+It seemed to her he was needlessly disturbed by a trivial matter. He
+sulked for a space, and then broke out again.
+
+"That confounded woman talks of my physical science," he said, "as if
+research were an amiable weakness, like collecting postage stamps. And
+it's changed human conditions more in the last ten years than all the
+parliamentary wire-pullers and legislators and administrative experts
+have done in two centuries. And for all that, there's more clerks in
+Whitehall than professors of physics in the whole of England."...
+
+"I suppose it's the way that sort of thing gets done," said Marjorie,
+after an interval.
+
+"That sort of thing doesn't get done," snapped Trafford. "All these
+people burble about with their movements and jobs, and lectures and
+stuff--and _things happen_. Like some one getting squashed to death in a
+crowd. Nobody did it, but anybody in the muddle can claim to have done
+it--if only they've got the cheek of your Aunt Plessington."
+
+He seemed to have finished.
+
+"_Done!_" he suddenly broke out again. "Why! people like your Aunt
+Plessington don't even know where the handle is. If they ventured to
+look for it, they'd give the whole show away! Done, indeed!"
+
+"Here we are!" said Marjorie, a little relieved to find the hansom
+turning out of King's Road into their own side street....
+
+And then Marjorie wore the blue dress with great success at the
+Carmels'. The girls came and looked at it and admired it--it was no mere
+politeness. They admitted there was style about it, a quality--there was
+no explaining. "You're _wonderful_, Madge!" cried the younger Carmel
+girl.
+
+The Carmel boy, seizing the opportunity of a momentary seclusion in a
+corner, ended a short but rather portentous silence with "I say, you
+_do_ look ripping," in a voice that implied the keenest regret for the
+slacknesses of a summer that was now infinitely remote to Marjorie. It
+was ridiculous that the Carmel boy should have such emotions--he was six
+years younger than Trafford and only a year older than Marjorie, and yet
+she was pleased by his manifest wound....
+
+There was only one little thing at the back of her mind that alloyed her
+sense of happy and complete living that night, and that was the ghost of
+an addition sum. At home, in her pretty bureau, a little gathering pile
+of bills, as yet unpaid, and an empty cheque-book with appealing
+counterfoils, awaited her attention.
+
+Marjorie had still to master the fact that all the fine braveries and
+interests and delights of life that offer themselves so amply to the
+favoured children of civilization, trail and, since the fall of man at
+any rate, have trailed after them something--something, the
+justification of morality, the despair of all easy, happy souls, the
+unavoidable drop of bitterness in the cup of pleasure--the Reckoning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SECOND
+
+THE CHILD OF THE AGES
+
+
+Sec. 1
+
+When the intellectual history of this time comes to be written, nothing
+I think will stand out more strikingly than the empty gulf in quality
+between the superb and richly fruitful scientific investigations that
+are going on and the general thought of other educated sections of the
+community. I do not mean that the scientific men are as a whole a class
+of supermen, dealing with and thinking about everything in a way
+altogether better than the common run of humanity, but that in their own
+field, they think and work with an intensity, an integrity, a breadth,
+boldness, patience, thoroughness and faithfulness that (excepting only a
+few artists) puts their work out of all comparison with any other human
+activity. Often the field in which the work is done is very narrow, and
+almost universally the underlying philosophy is felt rather than
+apprehended. A scientific man may be large and deep-minded, deliberate
+and personally detached in his work, and hasty, commonplace and
+superficial in every other relation of life. Nevertheless it is true
+that in these particular directions the human mind has achieved a new
+and higher quality of attitude and gesture, a veracity, self-detachment
+and self-abnegating vigour of criticism that tend to spread out and must
+ultimately spread out to every other human affair. In these
+uncontroversial issues at least mankind has learnt the rich rewards that
+ensue from patience and infinite pains.
+
+The peculiar circumstances of Trafford's birth and upbringing had
+accentuated his natural disposition toward this new thoroughness of
+intellectual treatment which has always distinguished the great artist,
+and which to-day is also the essential quality of the scientific method.
+He had lived apart from any urgency to produce and compete in the common
+business of the world; his natural curiosities, fed and encouraged by
+his natural gifts, had grown into a steady passion for clarity and
+knowledge. But with him there was no specialization. He brought out from
+his laboratory into the everyday affairs of the world the same sceptical
+restraint of judgment which is the touchstone of scientific truth. This
+made him a tepid and indeed rather a scornful spectator of political and
+social life. Party formulae, international rivalries, social customs,
+and very much of the ordinary law of our state impressed him as a kind
+of fungoid growth out of a fundamental intellectual muddle. It all
+maintained itself hazardously, changing and adapting itself
+unintelligently to unseen conditions. He saw no ultimate truth in this
+seething welter of human efforts, no tragedy as yet in its defeats, no
+value in its victories. It had to go on, he believed, until the
+spreading certitudes of the scientific method pierced its unsubstantial
+thickets, burst its delusive films, drained away its folly. Aunt
+Plessington's talk of order and progress and the influence of her
+Movement impressed his mind very much as the cackle of some larger kind
+of hen--which cackles because it must. Only Aunt Plessington being human
+simply imagined the egg. She laid--on the plane of the ideal. When the
+great nonsensical issues between liberal and conservative, between
+socialist and individualist, between "Anglo-Saxon" and "Teuton," between
+the "white race" and the "yellow race" arose in Trafford's company, he
+would if he felt cheerful take one side or the other as chance or his
+amusement with his interlocutors determined, and jest and gibe at the
+opponent's inconsistencies, and if on the other hand he chanced to be
+irritable he would lose his temper at this "chewing of mesembryanthemum"
+and sulk into silence. "Chewing mesembryanthemum" was one of Trafford's
+favourite images,--no doubt the reader knows that abundant fleshy
+Mediterranean weed and the weakly unpleasant wateriness of its
+substance. He went back to his laboratory and his proper work after such
+discussions with a feeling of escape, as if he shut a door upon a dirty
+and undisciplined market-place crowded with mental defectives. Yet even
+before he met and married Marjorie, there was a queer little undertow of
+thought in his mind which insisted that this business could not end with
+door-slamming, that he didn't altogether leave the social confusion
+outside his panels when he stood alone before his apparatus, and that
+sooner or later that babble of voices would force his defences and
+overcome his disdain.
+
+His particular work upon the intimate constitution of matter had
+broadened very rapidly in his hands. The drift of his work had been to
+identify all colloids as liquid solutions of variable degrees of
+viscosity, and to treat crystalline bodies as the only solids. He had
+dealt with oscillating processes in colloid bodies with especial
+reference to living matter. He had passed from a study of the melting
+and toughening of glass to the molecular structure of a number of
+elastic bodies, and so, by a characteristic leap into botanical
+physiology, to the states of resinous and gummy substances at the moment
+of secretion. He worked at first upon a false start, and then resumed to
+discover a growing illumination. He found himself in the presence of
+phenomena that seemed to him to lie near the still undiscovered
+threshold to the secret processes of living protoplasm. He was, as it
+were, breaking into biology by way of molecular physics. He spent many
+long nights of deep excitement, calculating and arranging the
+development of these seductive intimations. It was this work which his
+marriage had interrupted, and to which he was now returning.
+
+He was surprised to find how difficult it was to take it up again. He
+had been only two months away from it, and yet already it had not a
+little of the feeling of a relic taken from a drawer. Something had
+faded. It was at first as if a film had come over his eyes, so that he
+could no longer see these things clearly and subtly and closely. His
+senses, his emotions, had been living in a stirring and vivid
+illumination. Now in this cool quietude bright clouds of coloured
+memory-stuff swam distractingly before his eyes. Phantom kisses on his
+lips, the memory of touches and the echoing vibrations of an adorable
+voice, the thought of a gay delightful fireside and the fresh
+recollection of a companion intensely felt beside him, effaced the
+delicate profundities of this dim place. Durgan hovered about him,
+helpful and a mute reproach. Trafford had to force his attention daily
+for the better part of two weeks before he had fully recovered the fine
+enchanting interest of that suspended work.
+
+
+Sec. 2
+
+At last one day he had the happiness of possession again. He had exactly
+the sensation one gets when some hitherto intractable piece of a machine
+one is putting together, clicks neatly and beyond all hoping, into its
+place. He found himself working in the old style, with the hours
+slipping by disregarded. He sent out Durgan to get him tobacco and tea
+and smoked-salmon sandwiches, and he stayed in the laboratory all night.
+He went home about half-past five, and found a white-faced, red-eyed
+Marjorie still dressed, wrapped in a travelling-rug, and crumpled and
+asleep in his study arm-chair beside the grey ashes of an extinct fire.
+
+In the instant before she awoke he could see what a fragile and pitiful
+being a healthy and happy young wife can appear. Her pose revealed an
+unsuspected slender weakness of body, her face something infantile and
+wistful he had still to reckon with. She awoke with a start and stared
+at him for a moment, and at the room about her. "Oh, where have you
+been?" she asked almost querulously. "Where _have_ you been?"
+
+"But my dear!" he said, as one might speak to a child, "why aren't you
+in bed? It's just dawn."
+
+"Oh," she said, "I waited and I waited. It seemed you _must_ come. I
+read a book. And then I fell asleep." And then with a sob of feeble
+self-pity, "And here I am!" She rubbed the back of her hand into one eye
+and shivered. "I'm cold," she said, "and I want some tea."
+
+"Let's make some," said Trafford.
+
+"It's been horrible waiting," said Marjorie without moving; "horrible!
+Where have you been?"
+
+"I've been working. I got excited by my work. I've been at the
+laboratory. I've had the best spell of work I've ever had since our
+marriage."
+
+"But I have been up all night!" she cried with her face and voice
+softening to tears. "How _could_ you? How _could_ you?"
+
+He was surprised by her weeping. He was still more surprised by the
+self-abandonment that allowed her to continue. "I've been working," he
+repeated, and then looked about with a man's helplessness for the tea
+apparatus. One must have hot water and a teapot and a kettle; he would
+find those in the kitchen. He strolled thoughtfully out of the room,
+thinking out the further details of tea-making all mixed up with
+amazement at Marjorie, while she sat wiping her eyes with a crumpled
+pocket-handkerchief. Presently she followed him down with the rug about
+her like a shawl, and stood watching him as he lit a fire of wood and
+paper among the ashes in the kitchen fireplace. "It's been dreadful,"
+she said, not offering to help.
+
+"You see," he said, on his knees, "I'd really got hold of my work at
+last."
+
+"But you should have sent----"
+
+"I was thinking of my work. I clean forgot."
+
+"Forgot?"
+
+"Absolutely."
+
+"Forgot--_me!_"
+
+"Of course," said Trafford, with a slightly puzzled air, "you don't see
+it as I do."
+
+The kettle engaged him for a time. Then he threw out a suggestion.
+"We'll have to have a telephone."
+
+"I couldn't imagine where you were. I thought of all sorts of things. I
+almost came round--but I was so horribly afraid I mightn't find you."
+
+He renewed his suggestion of a telephone.
+
+"So that if I really want you----" said Marjorie. "Or if I just want to
+feel you're there."
+
+"Yes," said Trafford slowly, jabbing a piece of firewood into the glow;
+but it was chiefly present in his mind that much of that elaborate
+experimenting of his wasn't at all a thing to be cut athwart by the
+exasperating gusts of a telephone bell clamouring for attention.
+Hitherto the laboratory telephone had been in the habit of disconnecting
+itself early in the afternoon.
+
+And yet after all it was this instrument, the same twisted wire and
+little quivering tympanum, that had brought back Marjorie into his life.
+
+
+Sec. 3
+
+And now Trafford fell into a great perplexity of mind. His banker had
+called his attention to the fact that his account was overdrawn to the
+extent of three hundred and thirteen pounds, and he had been under that
+vague sort of impression one always has about one's current account that
+he was a hundred and fifty or so to the good. His first impression was
+that those hitherto infallible beings, those unseen gnomes of the
+pass-book whose lucid figures, neat tickings, and unrelenting additions
+constituted banks to his imagination, must have made a mistake; his
+second that some one had tampered with a cheque. His third thought
+pointed to Marjorie and the easy circumstances of his home. For a
+fortnight now she had been obviously ailing, oddly irritable; he did not
+understand the change in her, but it sufficed to prevent his taking the
+thing to her at once and going into it with her as he would have done
+earlier. Instead he had sent for his pass-book, and in the presence of
+its neat columns realized for the first time the meaning of Marjorie's
+"three hundred pounds." Including half-a-dozen cheques to Oxbridge
+tradesmen for her old debts, she had spent, he discovered, nearly seven
+hundred and fifty.
+
+He sat before the little bundle of crumpled strips of pink and white,
+perforated, purple stamped and effaced, in a state of extreme
+astonishment. It was no small factor in his amazement to note how very
+carelessly some of those cheques of Marjorie's had been written. Several
+she had not even crossed. The effect of it all was that she'd just spent
+his money--freely--with an utter disregard of the consequences.
+
+Up to that moment it had never occurred to Trafford that anybody one
+really cared for, could be anything but punctilious about money. Now
+here, with an arithmetical exactitude of demonstration, he perceived
+that Marjorie wasn't.
+
+It was so tremendous a discovery for him, so disconcerting and
+startling, that he didn't for two days say a word to her about it. He
+couldn't think of a word to say. He felt that even to put these facts
+before her amounted to an accusation of disloyalty and selfishness that
+he hadn't the courage to make. His work stopped altogether. He struggled
+hourly with that accusation. Did she realize----? There seemed no escape
+from his dilemma; either she didn't care or she didn't understand!
+
+His thoughts went back to the lake of Orta, when he had put all his
+money at her disposal. She had been surprised, and now he perceived she
+had also been a little frightened. The chief excuse he could find for
+her was that she was inexperienced--absolutely inexperienced.
+
+Even now, of course, she was drawing fresh cheques....
+
+He would have to pull himself together, and go into the whole thing--for
+all its infinite disagreeableness--with her....
+
+But it was Marjorie who broached the subject.
+
+He had found work at the laboratory unsatisfactory, and after lunching
+at his club he had come home and gone to his study in order to think out
+the discussion he contemplated with her. She came in to him as he sat
+at his desk. "Busy?" she said. "Not very," he answered, and she came up
+to him, kissed his head, and stood beside him with her hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+"Pass-book?" she asked.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"I've been overrunning."
+
+"No end."
+
+The matter was opened. What would she say?
+
+She bent to his ear and whispered. "I'm going to overrun some more."
+
+His voice was resentful. "You _can't_," he said compactly without
+looking at her. "You've spent--enough."
+
+"There's--things."
+
+"What things?"
+
+Her answer took some time in coming. "We'll have to give a wedding
+present to Daffy.... I shall want--some more furniture."
+
+Well, he had to go into it now. "I don't think you can have it," he
+said, and then as she remained silent, "Marjorie, do you know how much
+money I've got?"
+
+"Six thousand."
+
+"I _had_. But we've spent nearly a thousand pounds. Yes--one thousand
+pounds--over and above income. We meant to spend four hundred. And now,
+we've got--hardly anything over five."
+
+"Five thousand," said Marjorie.
+
+"Five thousand."
+
+"And there's your salary."
+
+"Yes, but at this pace----"
+
+"Dear," said Marjorie, and her hands came about his neck, "dear--there's
+something----"
+
+She broke off. An unfamiliar quality in her voice struck into him. He
+turned his head to see her face, rose to his feet staring at her.
+
+This remarkable young woman had become soft and wonderful as April hills
+across which clouds are sweeping. Her face was as if he had never seen
+it before; her eyes bright with tears.
+
+"Oh! don't let's spoil things by thinking of money," she said. "I've got
+something----" Her voice fell to a whisper. "Don't let's spoil things by
+thinking of money.... It's too good, dear, to be true. It's too good to
+be true. It makes everything perfect.... We'll have to furnish that
+little room. I didn't dare to hope it--somehow. I've been so excited and
+afraid. But we've got to furnish that little room there--that empty
+little room upstairs, dear, that we left over.... Oh my _dear!_ my
+_dear!_"
+
+
+Sec. 4
+
+The world of Trafford and Marjorie was filled and transfigured by the
+advent of their child.
+
+For two days of abundant silences he had been preparing a statement of
+his case for her, he had been full of the danger to his research and all
+the waste of his life that her extravagance threatened. He wanted to
+tell her just all that his science meant to him, explain how his income
+and life had all been arranged to leave him, mind and time and energy,
+free for these commanding investigations. His life was to him the
+service of knowledge--or futility. He had perceived that she did not
+understand this in him; that for her, life was a blaze of eagerly sought
+experiences and gratifications. So far he had thought out things and had
+them ready for her. But now all this impending discussion vanished out
+of his world. Their love was to be crowned by the miracle of parentage.
+This fact flooded his outlook and submerged every other consideration.
+
+This manifest probability came to him as if it were an unforeseen
+marvel. It was as if he had never thought of such a thing before, as
+though a fact entirely novel in the order of the universe had come into
+existence. Marjorie became again magical and wonderful for him, but in a
+manner new and strange, she was grave, solemn, significant. He was
+filled with a passionate solicitude for her welfare, and a passionate
+desire to serve her. It seemed impossible to him that only a day or so
+ago he should have been accusing her in his heart of disloyalty, and
+searching for excuses and mitigations....
+
+All the freshness of his first love for Marjorie returned, his keen
+sense of the sweet gallantry of her voice and bearing, his admiration
+for the swift, falconlike swoop of her decisions, for the grace and
+poise of her body, and the steady frankness of her eyes; but now it was
+all charged with his sense of this new joint life germinating at the
+heart of her slender vigour, spreading throughout her being to change it
+altogether into womanhood for ever. In this new light his passion for
+research and all the scheme of his life appeared faded and unworthy, as
+much egotism as if he had been devoted to hunting or golf or any such
+aimless preoccupation. Fatherhood gripped him and faced him about. It
+was manifestly a monstrous thing that he should ever have expected
+Marjorie to become a mere undisturbing accessory to the selfish
+intellectualism of his career, to shave and limit herself to a mere
+bachelor income, and play no part of her own in the movement of the
+world. He knew better now. Research must fall into its proper place,
+and for his immediate business he must set to work to supplement his
+manifestly inadequate resources.
+
+At first he could form no plan at all for doing that. He determined that
+research must still have his morning hours until lunch-time, and, he
+privately resolved, some part of the night. The rest of his day, he
+thought, he would set aside for a time to money-making. But he was
+altogether inexperienced in the methods of money-making; it was a new
+problem, and a new sort of problem to him altogether. He discovered
+himself helpless and rather silly in the matter. The more obvious
+possibilities seemed to be that he might lecture upon his science or
+write. He communicated with a couple of lecture agencies, and was amazed
+at their scepticism; no doubt he knew his science, on that point they
+were complimentary in a profuse, unconvincing manner, but could he
+interest like X--and here they named a notorious quack--could he _draw_?
+He offered Science Notes to a weekly periodical; the editor answered
+that for the purposes of his publication he preferred, as between
+professors and journalists, journalists. "You real scientific men," he
+said, "are no doubt a thousand times more accurate and novel and all
+that, but as no one seems able to understand you----" He went to his old
+fellow-student, Gwenn, who was editing _The Scientific Review_, and
+through him he secured some semi-popular lectures, which involved, he
+found, travelling about twenty-nine miles weekly at the rate of
+four-and-sixpence a mile--counting nothing for the lectures. Afterwards
+Gwenn arranged for some regular notes on physics and micro-chemistry.
+Trafford made out a weekly time-table, on whose white of dignity,
+leisure, and the honourable pursuit of knowledge, a diaper of red marked
+the claims of domestic necessity.
+
+
+Sec. 5
+
+It was astonishing how completely this coming child dominated the whole
+atmosphere and all the circumstances of the Traffords. It became their
+central fact, to which everything else turned and pointed. Its effect on
+Marjorie's circle of school and college friends was prodigious. She was
+the first of their company to cross the mysterious boundaries of a
+woman's life. She became to them a heroine mingled with something of the
+priestess. They called upon her more abundantly and sat with her, noted
+the change in her eyes and voice and bearing, talking with a kind of awe
+and a faint diffidence of the promised new life.
+
+Many of them had been deeply tinged by the women's suffrage movement,
+the feminist note was strong among them, and when one afternoon Ottiline
+Winchelsea brought round Agatha Alimony, the novelist, and Agatha said
+in that deep-ringing voice of hers: "I hope it will be a girl, so that
+presently she may fight the battle of her sex," there was the
+profoundest emotion. But when Marjorie conveyed that to Trafford he was
+lacking in response.
+
+"I want a boy," he said, and, being pressed for a reason, explained:
+"Oh, one likes to have a boy. I want him with just your quick eyes and
+ears, my dear, and just my own safe and certain hands."
+
+Mrs. Pope received the news with that depth and aimless complexity of
+emotion which had now become her habitual method with Marjorie. She
+kissed and clasped her daughter, and thought confusedly over her
+shoulder, and said: "Of course, dear----. Oh, I _do_ so hope it won't
+annoy your father." Daffy was "nice," but vague, and sufficiently
+feminist to wish it a daughter, and the pseudo-twins said "_Hoo_-ray!"
+and changed the subject at the earliest possible opportunity. But
+Theodore was deeply moved at the prospect of becoming an uncle, and went
+apart and mused deeply and darkly thereon for some time. It was
+difficult to tell just what Trafford's mother thought, she was complex
+and subtle, and evidently did not show Marjorie all that was in her
+mind; but at any rate it was clear the prospect of a grandchild pleased
+and interested her. And about Aunt Plessington's views there was no
+manner of doubt at all. She thought, and remarked judicially, as one
+might criticize a game of billiards, that on the whole it was just a
+little bit too soon.
+
+
+Sec. 6
+
+Marjorie kept well throughout March and April, and then suddenly she
+grew unutterably weary and uncomfortable in London. The end of April
+came hot and close and dry--it might have been July for the heat--the
+scrap of garden wilted, and the streets were irritating with fine dust
+and blown scraps of paper and drifting straws. She could think of
+nothing but the shade of trees, and cornfields under sunlight and the
+shadows of passing clouds. So Trafford took out an old bicycle and
+wandered over the home counties for three days, and at last hit upon a
+little country cottage near Great Missenden, a cottage a couple of girl
+artists had furnished and now wanted to let. It had a long, untidy
+vegetable garden and a small orchard and drying-ground, with an old,
+superannuated humbug of a pear-tree near the centre surrounded by a
+green seat, and high hedges with the promise of honeysuckle and
+dog-roses, and gaps that opened into hospitable beechwoods--woods not
+so thick but that there were glades of bluebells, bracken and, to be
+exact, in places embattled stinging-nettles. He took it and engaged a
+minute, active, interested, philoprogenitive servant girl for it, and
+took Marjorie thither in a taxi-cab. She went out, wrapped in a shawl,
+and sat under the pear-tree and cried quietly with weakness and
+sentiment and the tenderness of afternoon sunshine, and forthwith began
+to pick up wonderfully, and was presently writing to Trafford to buy her
+a dog to go for walks with, while he was away in London.
+
+Trafford was still struggling along with his research in spite of a
+constant gravitation to the cottage and Marjorie's side, but he was also
+doing his best to grapple with the difficulties of his financial
+situation. His science notes, which were very uncongenial and difficult
+to do, and his lecturing, still left his income far behind his
+expenditure, and the problem of minimising the inevitable fresh inroads
+on his capital was insistent and distracting. He discovered that he
+could manage his notes more easily and write a more popular article if
+he dictated to a typist instead of writing out the stuff in his own
+manuscript. Dictating made his sentences more copious and open, and the
+effect of the young lady's by no means acquiescent back was to make him
+far more explicit than he tended to be pen in hand. With a pen and alone
+he felt the boredom of the job unendurably, and, to be through with it,
+became more and more terse, allusive, and compactly technical, after the
+style of his original papers. One or two articles by him were accepted
+and published by the monthly magazines, but as he took what the editors
+sent him, he did not find this led to any excessive opulence....
+
+But his heart was very much with Marjorie through all this time.
+Hitherto he had taken her health and vigour and companionship for
+granted, and it changed his attitudes profoundly to find her now an
+ailing thing, making an invincible appeal for restraint and
+consideration and help. She changed marvellously, she gained a new
+dignity, and her complexion took upon itself a fresh, soft beauty. He
+would spend three or four days out of a week at the cottage, and long
+hours of that would be at her side, paper and notes of some forthcoming
+lecture at hand neglected, talking to her consolingly and dreamingly.
+His thoughts were full of ideas about education; he was obsessed, as are
+most intelligent young parents of the modern type, by the enormous
+possibilities of human improvement that might be achieved--if only one
+could begin with a baby from the outset, on the best lines, with the
+best methods, training and preparing it--presumably for a cleaned and
+chastened world. Indeed he made all the usual discoveries of intelligent
+modern young parents very rapidly, fully and completely, and overlooked
+most of those practical difficulties that finally reduce them to human
+dimensions again in quite the normal fashion.
+
+"I sit and muse sometimes when I ought to be computing," he said. "Old
+Durgan watches me and grunts. But think, if we take reasonable care,
+watch its phases, stand ready with a kindergarten toy directly it
+stretches out its hand--think what we can make of it!"...
+
+"We will make it the most wonderful child in the world," said Marjorie.
+"Indeed! what else can it be?"
+
+"Your eyes," said Trafford, "and my hands."
+
+"A girl."
+
+"A boy."
+
+He kissed her white and passive wrist.
+
+
+Sec. 7
+
+The child was born a little before expectation at the cottage throughout
+a long summer's night and day in early September. Its coming into the
+world was a long and painful struggle; the general practitioner who had
+seemed two days before a competent and worthy person enough, revealed
+himself as hesitating, old-fashioned, and ill-equipped. He had a
+lingering theological objection to the use of chloroform, and the nurse
+from London sulked under his directions and came and discussed his
+methods scornfully with Trafford. From sundown until daylight Trafford
+chafed in the little sitting-room and tried to sleep, and hovered
+listening at the foot of the narrow staircase to the room above. He
+lived through interminable hours of moaning and suspense....
+
+The dawn and sunrise came with a quality of beautiful horror. For years
+afterwards that memory stood out among other memories as something
+peculiarly strange and dreadful. Day followed an interminable night and
+broke slowly. Things crept out of darkness, awoke as it were out of
+mysteries and reclothed themselves in unsubstantial shadows and
+faint-hued forms. All through that slow infiltration of the world with
+light and then with colour, the universe it seemed was moaning and
+endeavouring, and a weak and terrible struggle went on and kept on in
+that forbidden room whose windows opened upon the lightening world,
+dying to a sobbing silence, rising again to agonizing cries,
+fluctuating, a perpetual obstinate failure to achieve a tormenting end.
+He went out, and behold the sky was a wonder of pink flushed level
+clouds and golden hope, and nearly every star except the morning star
+had gone, the supine moon was pale and half-dissolved in blue, and the
+grass which had been grey and wet, was green again, and the bushes and
+trees were green. He returned and hovered in the passage, washed his
+face, listened outside the door for age-long moments, and then went out
+again to listen under the window....
+
+He went to his room and shaved, sat for a long time thinking, and then
+suddenly knelt by his bed and prayed. He had never prayed before in all
+his life....
+
+He returned to the garden, and there neglected and wet with dew was the
+camp chair Marjorie had sat on the evening before, the shawl she had
+been wearing, the novel she had been reading. He brought these things in
+as if they were precious treasures....
+
+Light was pouring into the world again now. He noticed with an extreme
+particularity the detailed dewy delicacy of grass and twig, the silver
+edges to the leaves of briar and nettle, the soft clearness of the moss
+on bank and wall. He noted the woods with the first warmth of autumn
+tinting their green, the clear, calm sky, with just a wisp or so of
+purple cloud waning to a luminous pink on the brightening east, the
+exquisite freshness of the air. And still through the open window,
+incessant, unbearable, came this sound of Marjorie moaning, now dying
+away, now reviving, now weakening again....
+
+Was she dying? Were they murdering her? It was incredible this torture
+could go on. Somehow it must end. Chiefly he wanted to go in and kill
+the doctor. But it would do no good to kill the doctor!
+
+At last the nurse came out, looking a little scared, to ask him to cycle
+three miles away and borrow some special sort of needle that the fool of
+a doctor had forgotten. He went, outwardly meek, and returning was met
+by the little interested servant, very alert and excited and rather
+superior--for here was something no man can do--with the news that he
+had a beautiful little daughter, and that all was well with Marjorie.
+
+He said "Thank God, thank God!" several times, and then went out into
+the kitchen and began to eat some flabby toast and drink some lukewarm
+tea he found there. He was horribly fatigued. "Is she all right?" he
+asked over his shoulder, hearing the doctor's footsteps on the
+stairs....
+
+They were very pontifical and official with him.
+
+Presently they brought out a strange, wizened little animal, wailing
+very stoutly, with a face like a very, very old woman, and reddish skin
+and hair--it had quite a lot of wet blackish hair of an incredible
+delicacy of texture. It kicked with a stumpy monkey's legs and inturned
+feet. He held it: his heart went out to it. He pitied it beyond measure,
+it was so weak and ugly. He was astonished and distressed by the fact of
+its extreme endearing ugliness. He had expected something strikingly
+pretty. It clenched a fist, and he perceived it had all its complement
+of fingers and ridiculous, pretentious little finger nails. Inside that
+fist it squeezed his heart.... He did not want to give it back to them.
+He wanted to protect it. He felt they could not understand it or
+forgive, as he could forgive, its unjustifiable feebleness....
+
+Later, for just a little while, he was permitted to see
+Marjorie--Marjorie so spent, so unspeakably weary, and yet so
+reassuringly vital and living, so full of gentle pride and gentler
+courage amidst the litter of surgical precaution, that the tears came
+streaming down his face and he sobbed shamelessly as he kissed her.
+"Little daughter," she whispered and smiled--just as she had always
+smiled--that sweet, dear smile of hers!--and closed her eyes and said
+no more....
+
+Afterwards as he walked up and down the garden he remembered their
+former dispute and thought how characteristic of Marjorie it was to have
+a daughter in spite of all his wishes.
+
+
+Sec. 8
+
+For weeks and weeks this astonishing and unprecedented being filled the
+Traffords' earth and sky. Very speedily its minute quaintness passed,
+and it became a vigorous delightful baby that was, as the nurse
+explained repeatedly and very explicitly, not only quite exceptional and
+distinguished, but exactly everything that a baby should be. Its weight
+became of supreme importance; there was a splendid week when it put on
+nine ounces, and an indifferent one when it added only one. And then
+came a terrible crisis. It was ill; some sort of infection had reached
+it, an infantile cholera. Its temperature mounted to a hundred and three
+and a half. It became a flushed misery, wailing with a pathetic feeble
+voice. Then it ceased to wail. Marjorie became white-lipped and
+heavy-eyed from want of sleep, and it seemed to Trafford that perhaps
+his child might die. It seemed to him that the spirit of the universe
+must be a monstrous calivan since children had to die. He went for a
+long walk through the October beechwoods, under a windy sky, and in a
+drift of falling leaves, wondering with a renewed freshness at the
+haunting futilities of life.... Life was not futile--anything but that,
+but futility seemed to be stalking it, waiting for it.... When he
+returned the child was already better, and in a few days it was well
+again--but very light and thin.
+
+When they were sure of its safety, Marjorie and he confessed the
+extremity of their fears to one another. They had not dared to speak
+before, and even now they spoke in undertones of the shadow that had
+hovered and passed over the dearest thing in their lives.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRD
+
+THE NEW PHASE
+
+
+Sec. 1
+
+In the course of the next six months the child of the ages became an
+almost ordinary healthy baby, and Trafford began to think consecutively
+about his scientific work again--in the intervals of effort of a more
+immediately practical sort.
+
+The recall of molecular physics and particularly of the internal
+condition of colloids to something like their old importance in his life
+was greatly accelerated by the fact that a young Oxford don named
+Behrens was showing extraordinary energy in what had been for a time
+Trafford's distinctive and undisputed field. Behrens was one of those
+vividly clever energetic people who are the despair of originative men.
+He had begun as Trafford's pupil and sedulous ape; he had gone on to
+work that imitated Trafford's in everything except its continual
+freshness, and now he was ransacking every scrap of suggestion to be
+found in Trafford's work, and developing it with an intensity of
+uninspired intelligence that most marvellously simulated originality. He
+was already being noted as an authority; sometimes in an article his
+name would be quoted and Trafford's omitted in relation to Trafford's
+ideas, and in every way his emergence and the manner of his emergence
+threatened and stimulated his model and master. A great effort had to be
+made. Trafford revived the drooping spirits of Durgan by a renewed
+punctuality in the laboratory. He began to stay away from home at night
+and work late again, now, however, under no imperative inspiration, but
+simply because it was only by such an invasion of the evening and night
+that it would be possible to make headway against Behren's unremitting
+industry. And this new demand upon Trafford's already strained mental
+and nervous equipment began very speedily to have its effect upon his
+domestic life.
+
+It is only in romantic fiction that a man can work strenuously to the
+limit of his power and come home to be sweet, sunny and entertaining.
+Trafford's preoccupation involved a certain negligence of Marjorie, a
+certain indisposition to be amused or interested by trifling things, a
+certain irritability....
+
+
+Sec. 2
+
+And now, indeed, the Traffords were coming to the most difficult and
+fatal phase in marriage. They had had that taste of defiant adventure
+which is the crown of a spirited love affair, they had known the
+sweetness of a maiden passion for a maid, and they had felt all those
+rich and solemn emotions, those splendid fears and terrible hopes that
+weave themselves about the great partnership in parentage. And now, so
+far as sex was concerned, there might be much joy and delight still, but
+no more wonder, no fresh discoveries of incredible new worlds and
+unsuspected stars. Love, which had been a new garden, an unknown land, a
+sunlit sea to launch upon, was now a rich treasure-house of memories.
+And memories, although they afford a perpetually increasing enrichment
+to emotion, are not sufficient in themselves for the daily needs of
+life.
+
+For this, indeed, is the truth of passionate love, that it works outs
+its purpose and comes to an end. A day arrives in every marriage when
+the lovers must face each other, disillusioned, stripped of the last
+shred of excitement--undisguisedly themselves. And our two were married;
+they had bound themselves together under a penalty of scandalous
+disgrace, to take the life-long consequences of their passionate
+association.
+
+It was upon Trafford that this exhaustion of the sustaining magic of
+love pressed most severely, because it was he who had made the greatest
+adaptations to the exigencies of their union. He had crippled, he
+perceived more and more clearly, the research work upon which his whole
+being had once been set, and his hours were full of tiresome and trivial
+duties and his mind engaged and worried by growing financial anxieties.
+He had made these abandonments in a phase of exalted passion for the one
+woman in the world and her unprecedented child, and now he saw, in spite
+of all his desire not to see, that she was just a weak human being among
+human beings, and neither she nor little Margharita so very marvellous.
+
+But while Marjorie shrank to the dimensions of reality, research
+remained still a luminous and commanding dream. In love one fails or one
+wins home, but the lure of research is for ever beyond the hills, every
+victory is a new desire. Science has inexhaustibly fresh worlds to
+conquer....
+
+He was beginning now to realize the dilemma of his life, the reality of
+the opposition between Marjorie and child and home on the one hand and
+on the other this big wider thing, this remoter, severer demand upon his
+being. He had long perceived these were distinct and different things,
+but now it appeared more and more inevitable that they should be
+antagonistic and mutually disregardful things. Each claimed him
+altogether, it seemed, and suffered compromise impatiently. And this is
+where the particular stress of his situation came in. Hitherto he had
+believed that nothing of any importance was secret or inexplicable
+between himself and Marjorie. His ideal of his relationship had assumed
+a complete sympathy of feeling, an almost instinctive identity of
+outlook. And now it was manifest they were living in a state of
+inadequate understanding, that she knew only in the most general and
+opaque forms, the things that interested him so profoundly, and had but
+the most superficial interest in his impassioned curiosities. And
+missing as she did the strength of his intellectual purpose she missed
+too, she had no inkling of, the way in which her careless expansiveness
+pressed upon him. She was unaware that she was destroying an essential
+thing in his life.
+
+He could not tell how far this antagonism was due to inalterable
+discords of character, how far it might not be an ineradicable sex
+difference, a necessary aspect of marriage. The talk of old Sir Roderick
+Dover at the Winton Club germinated in his mind, a branching and
+permeating suggestion. And then would come a phase of keen sympathy with
+Marjorie; she would say brilliant and penetrating things, display a
+swift cleverness that drove all these intimations of incurable
+divergence clean out of his head again. Then he would find explanations
+in the differences between his and Marjorie's training and early
+associations. He perceived his own upbringing had had a steadfastness
+and consistency that had been altogether lacking in hers. He had had the
+rare advantage of perfect honesty in the teaching and tradition of his
+home. There had never been any shams or sentimentalities for him to find
+out and abandon. From boyhood his mother's hand had pointed steadily to
+the search for truth as the supreme ennobling fact in life. She had
+never preached this to him, never delivered discourses upon his father's
+virtues, but all her conversation and life was saturated with this idea.
+Compared with this atmosphere of high and sustained direction, the
+intellectual and moral quality of the Popes, he saw, was the quality of
+an agitated rag bag. They had thought nothing out, joined nothing
+together, they seemed to believe everything and nothing, they were
+neither religious nor irreligious, neither moral nor adventurous. In the
+place of a religion, and tainting their entire atmosphere, they had the
+decaying remains of a dead Anglicanism; it was clear they did not
+believe in its creed, and as clear that they did not want to get rid of
+it; it afforded them no guidance, but only vague pretensions, and the
+dismal exercises of Silas Root flourished in its shadows, a fungus, a
+post-mortem activity of the soul. None of them had any idea of what they
+were for or what their lives as a whole might mean; they had no
+standards, but only instincts and an instinctive fear of instincts; Pope
+wanted to be tremendously respected and complimented by everybody and
+get six per cent. for his money; Mrs. Pope wanted things to go smoothly;
+the young people had a general indisposition to do anything that might
+"look bad," and otherwise "have a good time." But neither Marjorie nor
+any of them had any test for a good time, and so they fluctuated in
+their conceptions of what they wanted from day to day. Now it was
+Plessingtonian standards, now Carmel standards, now the standards of
+Agatha Alimony; now it was a stimulating novel, now a gleam of aesthetic
+imaginativeness come, Heaven knows whence, that dominated her mood. He
+was beginning to understand all this at last, and to see the need of
+coherence in Marjorie's mood.
+
+He realized the unfairness of keeping his thoughts to himself, the need
+of putting his case before her, and making her realize their fatal and
+widening divergence. He wanted to infect her with his scientific
+passion, to give her his sense of the gravity of their practical
+difficulties. He would sit amidst his neglected work in his laboratory
+framing explanatory phrases. He would prepare the most lucid and
+complete statements, and go about with these in his mind for days
+waiting for an opportunity of saying what he felt so urgently had to be
+said.
+
+But the things that seemed so luminous and effective in the laboratory
+had a curious way of fading and shrinking beside the bright colours of
+Marjorie's Bokhara hangings, in the presence of little Margharita pink
+and warm and entertaining in her bath, or amidst the fluttering rustle
+of the afternoon tea-parties that were now becoming frequent in his
+house. And when he was alone with her he discovered they didn't talk now
+any more--except in terms of a constrained and formal affection.
+
+What had happened to them? What was the matter between himself and
+Marjorie that he couldn't even intimate his sense of their divergence?
+He would have liked to discuss the whole thing with his mother, but
+somehow that seemed disloyal to Marjorie....
+
+One day they quarrelled.
+
+He came in about six in the afternoon, jaded from the delivery of a
+suburban lecture, and the consequent tedium of suburban travel, and
+discovered Marjorie examining the effect of a new picture which had
+replaced the German print of sunlit waves over the dining-room
+mantelpiece. It was a painting in the post-impressionist manner, and it
+had arrived after the close of the exhibition in Weldon Street, at
+which Marjorie had bought it. She had bought it in obedience to a sudden
+impulse, and its imminence had long weighed upon her conscience. She had
+gone to the show with Sydney Flor and old Mrs. Flor, Sydney's mother,
+and a kind of excitement had come upon them at the idea of possessing
+this particular picture. Mrs. Flor had already bought three Herbins, and
+her daughter wanted to dissuade her from more. "But they're so
+delightful," said Mrs. Flor. "You're overrunning your allowance," said
+Sydney. Disputing the point, they made inquiries for the price, and
+learnt that this bright epigram in colour was going begging--was even
+offered at a reduction from the catalogue price. A reduced price always
+had a strong appeal nowadays to Marjorie's mind. "If you don't get it,"
+she said abruptly, "I shall."
+
+The transition from that attitude to ownership was amazingly rapid. Then
+nothing remained but to wait for the picture. She had dreaded a mistake,
+a blundering discord, but now with the thing hung she could see her
+quick eye had not betrayed her. It was a mass of reds, browns, purples,
+and vivid greens and greys; an effect of roof and brick house facing
+upon a Dutch canal, and it lit up the room and was echoed and reflected
+by all the rest of her courageous colour scheme, like a coal-fire amidst
+mahogany and metal. It justified itself to her completely, and she faced
+her husband with a certain confidence.
+
+"Hullo!" he cried.
+
+"A new picture," she said. "What do you think of it?"
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"A town or something--never mind. Look at the colour. It heartens
+everything."
+
+Trafford looked at the painting with a reluctant admiration.
+
+"It's brilliant--and impudent. He's an artist--whoever he is. He hits
+the thing. But--I say--how did you get it?"
+
+"I bought it."
+
+"Bought it! Good Lord! How much?"
+
+"Oh! ten guineas," said Marjorie, with an affectation of ease; "it will
+be worth thirty in ten years' time."
+
+Trafford's reply was to repeat: "Ten guineas!"
+
+Their eyes met, and there was singularly little tenderness in their
+eyes.
+
+"It was priced at thirteen," said Marjorie, ending a pause, and with a
+sinking heart.
+
+Trafford had left her side. He walked to the window and sat down in a
+chair.
+
+"I think this is too much," he said, and his voice had disagreeable
+notes in it she had never heard before. "I have just been earning two
+guineas at Croydon, of all places, administering comminuted science to
+fools--and here I find--this exploit! Ten guineas' worth of picture. To
+say we can't afford it is just to waste a mild expression. It's--mad
+extravagance. It's waste of money--it's--oh!--monstrous disloyalty.
+Disloyalty!" He stared resentful at the cheerful, unhesitating daubs of
+the picture for a moment. Its affected carelessness goaded him to fresh
+words. He spoke in a tone of absolute hostility. "I think this winds me
+up to something," he said. "You'll have to give up your cheque-book,
+Marjorie."
+
+"Give up my cheque-book!"
+
+He looked up at her and nodded. There was a warm flush in her cheeks,
+her lips panted apart, and tears of disappointment and vexation were
+shining beautifully in her eyes. She mingled the quality of an
+indignant woman with the distress and unreasonable resentment of a
+child.
+
+"Because I've bought this picture?"
+
+"Can we go on like this?" he asked, and felt how miserably he had
+bungled in opening this question that had been in his mind so long.
+
+"But it's _beautiful!_" she said.
+
+He disregarded that. He felt now that he had to go on with these
+long-premeditated expostulations. He was tired and dusty from his
+third-class carriage, his spirit was tired and dusty, and he said what
+he had to say without either breadth or power, an undignified statement
+of personal grievances, a mere complaint of the burthen of work that
+falls upon a man. That she missed the high aim in him, and all sense of
+the greatness they were losing had vanished from his thoughts. He had
+too heavy a share of the common burthen, and she pressed upon him
+unthinkingly; that was all he could say. He girded at her with a bitter
+and loveless truth; it was none the less cruel that in her heart she
+knew these things he said were true. But he went beyond justice--as
+every quarrelling human being does; he called the things she had bought
+and the harmonies she had created, "this litter and rubbish for which I
+am wasting my life." That stabbed into her pride acutely and deeply. She
+knew anyhow that it wasn't so simple and crude as that. It was not mere
+witlessness she contributed to their trouble. She tried to indicate her
+sense of that. But she had no power of ordered reasoning, she made
+futile interruptions, she was inexpressive of anything but emotion, she
+felt gagged against his flow of indignant, hostile words. They blistered
+her.
+
+Suddenly she went to her little desk in the corner, unlocked it with
+trembling hands, snatched her cheque-book out of a heap of still
+unsettled bills, and having locked that anti-climax safe away again,
+turned upon him. "Here it is," she said, and stood poised for a moment.
+Then she flung down the little narrow grey cover--nearly empty, it was,
+of cheques, on the floor before him.
+
+"Take it," she cried, "take it. I never asked you to give it me."
+
+A memory of Orta and its reeds and sunshine and love rose like a
+luminous mist between them....
+
+She ran weeping from the room.
+
+He leapt to his feet as the door closed. "Marjorie!" he cried.
+
+But she did not hear him....
+
+
+Sec. 3
+
+The disillusionment about marriage which had discovered Trafford a
+thwarted, overworked, and worried man, had revealed Marjorie with time
+on her hands, superabundant imaginative energy, and no clear intimation
+of any occupation. With them, as with thousands of young couples in
+London to-day, the breadwinner was overworked, and the spending
+partner's duty was chiefly the negative one of not spending. You cannot
+consume your energies merely in not spending money. Do what she could,
+Marjorie could not contrive to make house and child fill the waking
+hours. She was far too active and irritable a being to be beneficial
+company all day for genial, bubble-blowing little Margharita; she could
+play with that young lady and lead her into ecstasies of excitement and
+delight, and she could see with an almost instinctive certainty when
+anything was going wrong; but for the rest that little life reposed far
+more beneficially upon the passive acquiescence of May, her pink and
+wholesome nurse. And the household generally was in the hands of a
+trustworthy cook-general, who maintained a tolerable routine. Marjorie
+did not dare to have an idea about food or domestic arrangements; if she
+touched that routine so much as with her little finger it sent up the
+bills. She could knock off butcher and greengrocer and do every scrap of
+household work that she could touch, in a couple of hours a day. She
+tried to find some work to fill her leisure; she suggested to Trafford
+that she might help him by writing up his Science Notes from rough
+pencil memoranda, but when it became clear that the first step to her
+doing this would be the purchase of a Remington typewriter and a special
+low table to carry it, he became bluntly discouraging. She thought of
+literary work, and sat down one day to write a short story and earn
+guineas, and was surprised to find that she knew nothing of any sort of
+human being about whom she could invent a story. She tried a cheap
+subscription at Mudie's and novels, and they filled her with a thirst
+for events; she tried needlework, and found her best efforts
+aesthetically feeble and despicable, and that her mind prowled above the
+silks and colours like a hungry wolf.
+
+The early afternoons were the worst time, from two to four, before
+calling began. The devil was given great power over Marjorie's early
+afternoon. She could even envy her former home life then, and reflect
+that there, at any rate, one had a chance of a game or a quarrel with
+Daffy or Syd or Rom or Theodore. She would pull herself together and go
+out for a walk, and whichever way she went there were shops and shops
+and shops, a glittering array of tempting opportunities for spending
+money. Sometimes she would give way to spending exactly as a struggling
+drunkard decides to tipple. She would fix on some object, some object
+trivial and a little rare and not too costly, as being needed--when she
+knew perfectly well it wasn't needed--and choose the most remotest shops
+and display the exactest insistence upon her requirements. Sometimes she
+would get home from these raids without buying at all. After four the
+worst of the day was over; one could call on people or people might
+telephone and follow up with a call; and there was a chance of Trafford
+coming home....
+
+One day at the Carmels' she found herself engaged in a vigorous
+flirtation with young Carmel. She hadn't noticed it coming on, but there
+she was in a windowseat talking quite closely to him. He said he was
+writing a play, a wonderful passionate play about St. Francis, and only
+she could inspire and advise him. Wasn't there some afternoon in the
+week when she sat and sewed, so that he might come and sit by her and
+read to her and talk to her? He made his request with a certain
+confidence, but it filled her with a righteous panic; she pulled him up
+with an abruptness that was almost inartistic. On her way home she was
+acutely ashamed of herself; this was the first time she had let any man
+but Trafford think he might be interesting to her, but once or twice on
+former occasions she had been on the verge of such provocative
+intimations. This sort of thing anyhow mustn't happen.
+
+But if she didn't dress with any distinction--because of the cost--and
+didn't flirt and trail men in her wake, what was she to do at the
+afternoon gatherings which were now her chief form of social contact?
+What was going to bring people to her house? She knew that she was more
+than ordinarily beautiful and that she could talk well, but that does
+not count for much if you are rather dowdy, and quite uneventfully
+virtuous.
+
+It became the refrain of all her thoughts that she must find something
+to do.
+
+There remained "Movements."
+
+She might take up a movement. She was a rather exceptionally good public
+speaker. Only her elopement and marriage had prevented her being
+president of her college Debating Society. If she devoted herself to
+some movement she would be free to devise an ostentatiously simple dress
+for herself and stick to it, and she would be able to give her little
+house a significance of her own, and present herself publicly against
+what is perhaps quite the best of all backgrounds for a good-looking,
+clear-voiced, self-possessed woman, a platform. Yes; she had to go in
+for a Movement.
+
+She reviewed the chief contemporary Movements much as she might have
+turned over dress fabrics in a draper's shop, weighing the advantages
+and disadvantages of each....
+
+London, of course, is always full of Movements. Essentially they are
+absorbents of superfluous feminine energy. They have a common flavour of
+progress and revolutionary purpose, and common features in abundant
+meetings, officials, and organization generally. Few are expensive, and
+still fewer produce any tangible results in the world. They direct
+themselves at the most various ends; the Poor, that favourite butt,
+either as a whole or in such typical sections as the indigent invalid or
+the indigent aged, the young, public health, the woman's cause, the
+prevention of animal food, anti-vivisection, the gratuitous
+advertisement of Shakespear (that neglected poet), novel but genteel
+modifications of medical or religious practice, dress reform, the
+politer aspects of socialism, the encouragement of aeronautics, universal
+military service, garden suburbs, domestic arts, proportional
+representation, duodecimal arithmetic, and the liberation of the drama.
+They range in size and importance from campaigns on a Plessingtonian
+scale to sober little intellectual Beckingham things that arrange to
+meet half-yearly, and die quietly before the second assembly. If Heaven
+by some miracle suddenly gave every Movement in London all it professed
+to want, our world would be standing on its head and everything would be
+extremely unfamiliar and disconcerting. But, as Mr. Roosevelt once
+remarked, the justifying thing about life is the effort and not the
+goal, and few Movements involve any real and impassioned struggle to get
+to the ostensible object. They exist as an occupation; they exercise the
+intellectual and moral activities without undue disturbance of the
+normal routines of life. In the days when everybody was bicycling an
+ingenious mechanism called Hacker's Home Bicycle used to be advertised.
+Hacker's Home Bicycle was a stand bearing small rubber wheels upon which
+one placed one's bicycle (properly equipped with a cyclometer) in such a
+way that it could be mounted and ridden without any sensible forward
+movement whatever. In bad weather, or when the state of the roads made
+cycling abroad disagreeable Hacker's Home Bicycle could be placed in
+front of an open window and ridden furiously for any length of time.
+Whenever the rider tired, he could descend--comfortably at home
+again--and examine the cyclometer to see how far he had been. In exactly
+the same way the ordinary London Movement gives scope for the restless
+and progressive impulse in human nature without the risk of personal
+entanglements or any inconvenient disturbance of the milieu.
+
+Marjorie considered the Movements about her. She surveyed the accessible
+aspects of socialism, but that old treasure-house of constructive
+suggestion had an effect like a rich chateau which had been stormed and
+looted by a mob. For a time the proposition that "we are all Socialists
+nowadays" had prevailed. The blackened and discredited frame remained,
+the contents were scattered; Aunt Plessington had a few pieces, the Tory
+Democrats had taken freely, the Liberals were in possession of a hastily
+compiled collection. There wasn't, she perceived, and there never had
+been a Socialist Movement; the socialist idea which had now become part
+of the general consciousness, had always been too big for polite
+domestication. She weighed Aunt Plessington, too, in the balance, and
+found her not so much wanting indeed as excessive. She felt that a
+Movement with Aunt Plessington in it couldn't possibly offer even
+elbow-room for anybody else. Philanthropy generally she shunned. The
+movements that aim at getting poor people into rooms and shouting at
+them in an improving, authoritative way, aroused an instinctive dislike
+in her. Her sense of humour, again, would not let her patronize
+Shakespear or the stage, or raise the artistic level of the country by
+means of green-dyed deal, and the influence of Trafford on her mind
+debarred her from attempting the physical and moral regeneration of
+humanity by means of beans and nut butter. It was indeed rather by the
+elimination of competing movements than by any positive preference that
+she found herself declining at last towards Agatha Alimony's section of
+the suffrage movement.... It was one of the less militant sections, but
+it held more meetings and passed more resolutions than any two others.
+
+One day Trafford, returning from an afternoon of forced and
+disappointing work in his laboratory,--his mind had been steadfastly
+sluggish and inelastic,--discovered Marjorie's dining room crowded with
+hats and all the rustle and colour which plays so large a part in
+constituting contemporary feminine personality. Buzard, the feminist
+writer, and a young man just down from Cambridge who had written a
+decadent poem, were the only men present. The chairs were arranged
+meeting-fashion, but a little irregularly to suggest informality; the
+post-impressionist picture was a rosy benediction on the gathering, and
+at a table in the window sat Mrs. Pope in the chair, looking quietly
+tactful in an unusually becoming bonnet, supported by her daughter and
+Agatha Alimony. Marjorie was in a simple gown of blueish-grey, hatless
+amidst a froth of foolish bows and feathers, and she looked not only
+beautiful and dignified but deliberately and conscientiously patient
+until she perceived the new arrival. Then he noted she was a little
+concerned for him, and made some futile sign he did not comprehend. The
+meeting was debating the behaviour of women at the approaching census,
+and a small, earnest, pale-faced lady with glasses was standing against
+the fireplace with a crumpled envelope covered with pencil notes in her
+hand, and making a speech. Trafford wanted his tea badly, but he had not
+the wit to realize that his study had been converted into a refreshment
+room for the occasion; he hesitated, and seated himself near the
+doorway, and so he was caught; he couldn't, he felt, get away and seem
+to slight a woman who was giving herself the pains of addressing him.
+
+The small lady in glasses was giving a fancy picture of the mind of Mr.
+Asquith and its attitude to the suffrage movement, and telling with a
+sort of inspired intimacy just how Mr. Asquith had hoped to "bully women
+down," and just how their various attempts to bring home to him the
+eminent reasonableness of their sex by breaking his windows,
+interrupting his meetings, booing at him in the streets and threatening
+his life, had time after time baffled this arrogant hope. There had been
+many signs lately that Mr. Asquith's heart was failing him. Now here was
+a new thing to fill him with despair. When Mr. Asquith learnt that women
+refused to be counted in the census, then at least she was convinced he
+must give in. When he gave in it would not be long--she had her
+information upon good authority--before they got the Vote. So what they
+had to do was not to be counted in the census. That was their paramount
+duty at the present time. The women of England had to say quietly but
+firmly to the census man when he came round: "No, we don't count in an
+election, and we won't count now. Thank you." No one could force a woman
+to fill in a census paper she didn't want to, and for her own part, said
+the little woman with the glasses, she'd starve first. (Applause.) For
+her own part she was a householder with a census paper of her own, and
+across that she was going to write quite plainly and simply what she
+thought of Mr. Asquith. Some of those present wouldn't have census
+papers to fill up; they would be sent to the man, the so-called Head of
+the House. But the W.S.P.U. had foreseen that. Each householder had to
+write down the particulars of the people who slept in his house on
+Sunday night, or who arrived home before mid-day on Monday; the reply of
+the women of England must be not to sleep in a house that night where
+census papers were properly filled, and not to go home until the
+following afternoon. All through that night the women of England must be
+abroad. She herself was prepared, and her house would be ready. There
+would be coffee and refreshments enough for an unlimited number of
+refugees, there would be twenty or thirty sofas and mattresses and piles
+of blankets for those who chose to sleep safe from all counting. In
+every quarter of London there would be houses of refuge like hers. And
+so they would make Mr. Asquith's census fail, as it deserved to fail, as
+every census would fail until women managed these affairs in a sensible
+way. For she supposed they were all agreed that only women could manage
+these things in a sensible way. That was _her_ contribution to this
+great and important question. (Applause, amidst which the small lady
+with the glasses resumed her seat.)
+
+Trafford glanced doorward, but before he could move another speaker was
+in possession of the room. This was a very young, tall, fair,
+round-shouldered girl who held herself with an unnatural rigidity, fixed
+her eyes on the floor just in front of the chairwoman, and spoke with
+knitted brows and an effect of extreme strain. She remarked that some
+people did not approve of this proposed boycott of the census. She hung
+silent for a moment, as if ransacking her mind for something mislaid,
+and then proceeded to remark that she proposed to occupy a few moments
+in answering that objection--if it could be called an objection. They
+said that spoiling the census was an illegitimate extension of the woman
+movement. Well, she objected--she objected fiercely--to every word of
+that phrase. Nothing was an illegitimate extension of the woman
+movement. Nothing could be. (Applause.) That was the very principle
+they had been fighting for all along. So that, examined in this way,
+this so-called objection resolved itself into a mere question begging
+phrase. Nothing more. And her reply therefore to those who made it was
+that they were begging the question, and however well that might do for
+men, it would certainly not do, they would find, for women. (Applause.)
+For the freshly awakened consciousness of women. (Further applause.)
+This was a war in which quarter was neither asked nor given; if it were
+not so things might be different. She remained silent after that for the
+space of twenty seconds perhaps, and then remarked that that seemed to
+be all she had to say, and sat down amidst loud encouragement.
+
+Then with a certain dismay Trafford saw his wife upon her feet. He was
+afraid of the effect upon himself of what she was going to say, but he
+need have had no reason for his fear. Marjorie was a seasoned debater,
+self-possessed, with a voice very well controlled and a complete mastery
+of that elaborate appearance of reasonableness which is so essential to
+good public speaking. She could speak far better than she could talk.
+And she startled the meeting in her opening sentence by declaring that
+she meant to stay at home on the census night, and supply her husband
+with every scrap of information he hadn't got already that might be
+needed to make the return an entirely perfect return. (Marked absence of
+applause.)
+
+She proceeded to avow her passionate interest in the feminist movement
+of which this agitation for the vote was merely the symbol. (A voice:
+"No!") No one could be more aware of the falsity of woman's position at
+the present time than she was--she seemed to be speaking right across
+the room to Trafford--they were neither pets nor partners, but
+something between the two; now indulged like spoilt children, now
+blamed like defaulting partners; constantly provoked to use the arts of
+their sex, constantly mischievous because of that provocation. She
+caught her breath and stopped for a moment, as if she had suddenly
+remembered the meeting intervening between herself and Trafford. No, she
+said, there was no more ardent feminist and suffragist than herself in
+the room. She wanted the vote and everything it implied with all her
+heart. With all her heart. But every way to get a thing wasn't the right
+way, and she felt with every fibre of her being that this petulant
+hostility to the census was a wrong way and an inconsistent way, and
+likely to be an unsuccessful way--one that would lose them the sympathy
+and help of just that class of men they should look to for support, the
+cultivated and scientific men. (A voice: "_Do_ we want them?") What was
+the commonest charge made by the man in the street against women?--that
+they were unreasonable and unmanageable, that it was their way to get
+things by crying and making an irrelevant fuss. And here they were, as a
+body, doing that very thing! Let them think what the census and all that
+modern organization of vital statistics of which it was the central
+feature stood for. It stood for order, for the replacement of guesses
+and emotional generalization by a clear knowledge of facts, for the
+replacement of instinctive and violent methods, by which women had
+everything to lose (a voice: "No!") by reason and knowledge and
+self-restraint, by which women had everything to gain. To her the
+advancement of science, the progress of civilization, and the
+emancipation of womanhood were nearly synonymous terms. At any rate,
+they were different phases of one thing. They were different aspects of
+one wider purpose. When they struck at the census, she felt, they
+struck at themselves. She glanced at Trafford as if she would convince
+him that this was the real voice of the suffrage movement, and sat down
+amidst a brief, polite applause, that warmed to rapture as Agatha
+Alimony, the deep-voiced, stirring Agatha, rose to reply.
+
+Miss Alimony, who was wearing an enormous hat with three nodding ostrich
+feathers, a purple bow, a gold buckle and numerous minor ornaments of
+various origin and substance, said they had all of them listened with
+the greatest appreciation and sympathy to the speech of their hostess.
+Their hostess was a newcomer to the movement, she knew she might say
+this without offence, and was passing through a phase, an early phase,
+through which many of them had passed. This was the phase of trying to
+take a reasonable view of an unreasonable situation. (Applause.) Their
+hostess had spoken of science, and no doubt science was a great thing;
+but there was something greater than science, and that was the ideal. It
+was woman's place to idealize. Sooner or later their hostess would
+discover, as they had all discovered, that it was not to science but the
+ideal that women must look for freedom. Consider, she said, the
+scientific men of to-day. Consider, for example, Sir James
+Crichton-Browne, the physiologist. Was he on their side? On the
+contrary, he said the most unpleasant things about them on every
+occasion. He went out of his way to say them. Or consider Sir Almroth
+Wright, did he speak well of women? Or Sir Ray Lankester, the biologist,
+who was the chief ornament of the Anti-Suffrage Society. Or Sir Roderick
+Dover, the physicist, who--forgetting Madame Curie, a far more
+celebrated physicist than himself, she ventured to say (Applause.) had
+recently gone outside his province altogether to abuse feminine
+research. There were your scientific men. Mrs. Trafford had said their
+anti-census campaign would annoy scientific men; well, under the
+circumstances, she wanted to annoy scientific men. (Applause.) She
+wanted to annoy everybody. Until women got the vote (loud applause) the
+more annoying they were the better. When the whole world was impressed
+by the idea that voteless women were an intolerable nuisance, then there
+would cease to be voteless women. (Enthusiasm.) Mr. Asquith had said--
+
+And so on for quite a long time....
+
+Buzard rose out of waves of subsiding emotion. Buzard was a slender,
+long-necked, stalk-shaped man with gilt glasses, uneasy movements and a
+hypersensitive manner. He didn't so much speak as thrill with thought
+vibrations; he spoke like an entranced but still quite gentlemanly
+sibyl. After Agatha's deep trumpet calls, he sounded like a solo on the
+piccolo. He picked out all his more important words with a little stress
+as though he gave them capitals. He said their hostess's remarks had set
+him thinking. He thought it was possible to stew the Scientific Argument
+in its own Juice. There was something he might call the Factuarial
+Estimate of Values. Well, it was a High Factuarial Value on their side,
+in his opinion at any rate, when Anthropologists came and told him that
+the Primitive Human Society was a Matriarchate. ("But it wasn't!" said
+Trafford to himself.) It had a High Factuarial Value when they assured
+him that Every One of the Great Primitive Inventions was made by a
+Woman, and that it was to Women they owed Fire and the early Epics and
+Sagas. ("Good Lord!" said Trafford.) It had a High Factuarial Value when
+they not only asserted but proved that for Thousands of Years, and
+perhaps for Hundreds of Thousands of Years, Women had been in possession
+of Articulate Speech before men rose to that Level of Intelligence....
+
+It occurred suddenly to Trafford that he could go now; that it would be
+better to go; that indeed he _must_ go; it was no doubt necessary that
+his mind should have to work in the same world as Buzard's mental
+processes, but at any rate those two sets of unsympathetic functions
+need not go on in the same room. Something might give way. He got up,
+and with those elaborate efforts to be silent that lead to the violent
+upsetting of chairs, got himself out of the room and into the passage,
+and was at once rescued by the sympathetic cook-general, in her most
+generalized form, and given fresh tea in his study--which impressed him
+as being catastrophically disarranged....
+
+
+Sec. 4
+
+When Marjorie was at last alone with him she found him in a state of
+extreme mental stimulation. "Your speech," he said, "was all right. I
+didn't know you could speak like that, Marjorie. But it soared like the
+dove above the waters. Waters! I never heard such a flood of rubbish....
+You know, it's a mistake to _mass_ women. It brings out something
+silly.... It affected Buzard as badly as any one. The extraordinary
+thing is they have a case, if only they'd be quiet. Why did you get them
+together?"
+
+"It's our local branch."
+
+"Yes, but _why?_"
+
+"Well, if they talk about things--Discussions like this clear up their
+minds."
+
+"Discussion! It wasn't discussion."
+
+"Oh! it was a beginning."
+
+"Chatter of that sort isn't the beginning of discussion, it's the end.
+It's the death-rattle. Nobody was meeting the thoughts of any one. I
+admit Buzard, who's a man, talked the worst rubbish of all. That
+Primitive Matriarchate of his! So it isn't sex. I've noticed before that
+the men in this movement of yours are worse than the women. It isn't
+sex. It's something else. It's a foolishness. It's a sort of
+irresponsible looseness." He turned on her gravely. "You ought not to
+get all these people here. It's contagious. Before you know it you'll
+find your own mind liquefy and become enthusiastic and slop about.
+You'll begin to talk monomania about Mr. Asquith."
+
+"But it's a great movement, Rag, even if incidentally they say and do
+silly things!"
+
+"My dear! aren't I feminist? Don't I want women fine and sane and
+responsible? Don't I want them to have education, to handle things, to
+vote like men and bear themselves with the gravity of men? And these
+meetings--all hat and flutter! These displays of weak, untrained,
+hysterical vehemence! These gatherings of open-mouthed impressionable
+young girls to be trained in incoherence! You can't go on with it!"
+
+Marjorie regarded him quietly for a moment. "I must go on with
+something," she said.
+
+"Well, not this."
+
+"Then _what?_"
+
+"Something sane."
+
+"Tell me what."
+
+"It must come out of yourself."
+
+Marjorie thought sullenly for a moment. "Nothing comes out of myself,"
+she said.
+
+"I don't think you realize a bit what my life has become," she went on;
+"how much I'm like some one who's been put in a pleasant, high-class
+prison."
+
+"This house! It's your own!"
+
+"It doesn't give me an hour's mental occupation in the day. It's all
+very well to say I might do more in it. I can't--without absurdity. Or
+expenditure. I can't send the girl away and start scrubbing. I can't
+make jam or do ornamental needlework. The shops do it better and
+cheaper, and I haven't been trained to it. I've been trained _not_ to do
+it. I've been brought up on games and school-books, and fed on mixed
+ideas. I can't sit down and pacify myself with a needle as women used to
+do. Besides, I not only detest doing needlework but I hate it--the sort
+of thing a woman of my kind does anyhow--when it's done. I'm no artist.
+I'm not sufficiently interested in outside things to spend my time in
+serious systematic reading, and after four or five novels--oh, these
+meetings are better than that! You see, you've got a life--too much of
+it--_I_ haven't got enough. I wish almost I could sleep away half the
+day. Oh! I want something _real_, Rag; something more than I've got." A
+sudden inspiration came to her. "Will you let me come to your laboratory
+and work with you?"
+
+She stopped abruptly. She caught up her own chance question and pointed
+it at him, a vitally important challenge. "Will you let me come to your
+laboratory and work?" she repeated.
+
+Trafford thought. "No," he said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I'm in love with you. I can't think of my work when you're
+about.... And you're too much behind. Oh my dear! don't you see how
+you're behind?" He paused. "I've been soaking in this stuff of mine for
+ten long years."
+
+"Yes," assented Marjorie flatly.
+
+He watched her downcast face, and then it lifted to him with a helpless
+appeal in her eyes, and lift in her voice. "But look here, Rag!" she
+cried--"what on earth am I to _DO?_"
+
+
+Sec. 5
+
+At least there came out of these discussions one thing, a phrase, a
+purpose, which was to rule the lives of the Traffords for some years. It
+expressed their realization that instinct and impulse had so far played
+them false, that life for all its rich gifts of mutual happiness wasn't
+adjusted between them. "We've got," they said, "to talk all this out
+between us. We've got to work this out." They didn't mean to leave
+things at a misfit, and that was certainly their present relation. They
+were already at the problem of their joint lives, like a tailor with his
+pins and chalk. Marjorie hadn't rejected a humorist and all his works in
+order to decline at last to the humorous view of life, that rather
+stupid, rather pathetic, grin-and-bear-it attitude compounded in
+incalculable proportions of goodwill, evasion, indolence, slovenliness,
+and (nevertheless) spite (masquerading indeed as jesting comment), which
+supplies the fabric of everyday life for untold thousands of educated
+middle-class people. She hated the misfit. She didn't for a moment
+propose to pretend that the ungainly twisted sleeve, the puckered back,
+was extremely jolly and funny. She had married with a passionate
+anticipation of things fitting and fine, and it was her nature, in great
+matters as in small, to get what she wanted strenuously before she
+counted the cost. About both their minds there was something sharp and
+unrelenting, and if Marjorie had been disposed to take refuge from facts
+in swathings of aesthetic romanticism, whatever covering she contrived
+would have been torn to rags very speedily by that fierce and steely
+veracity which swung down out of the laboratory into her home.
+
+One may want to talk things out long before one hits upon the phrases
+that will open up the matter.
+
+There were two chief facts in the case between them and so far they had
+looked only one in the face, the fact that Marjorie was unemployed to a
+troublesome and distressing extent, and that there was nothing in her
+nature or training to supply, and something in their circumstances and
+relations to prevent any adequate use of her energies. With the second
+fact neither of them cared to come to close quarters as yet, and neither
+as yet saw very distinctly how it was linked to the first, and that was
+the steady excess of her expenditure over their restricted means. She
+was secretly surprised at her own weakness. Week by week and month by
+month, they were spending all his income and eating into that little
+accumulation of capital that had once seemed so sufficient against the
+world....
+
+And here it has to be told that although Trafford knew that Marjorie had
+been spending too much money, he still had no idea of just how much
+money she had spent. She was doing her utmost to come to an
+understanding with him, and at the same time--I don't explain it, I
+don't excuse it--she was keeping back her bills from him, keeping back
+urgent second and third and fourth demands, that she had no cheque-book
+now to stave off even by the most partial satisfaction. It kept her
+awake at nights, that catastrophic explanation, that all unsuspected by
+Trafford hung over their attempts at mutual elucidation; it kept her
+awake but she could not bring it to the speaking point, and she clung,
+in spite of her own intelligence, to a persuasion that _after_ they had
+got something really settled and defined then it would be time enough
+to broach the particulars of this second divergence....
+
+Talking one's relations over isn't particularly easy between husband and
+wife at any time; we are none of us so sure of one another as to risk
+loose phrases or make experiments in expression in matters so vital;
+there is inevitably an excessive caution on the one hand and an abnormal
+sensitiveness to hints and implications on the other. Marjorie's bills
+were only an extreme instance of these unavoidable suppressions that
+always occur. Moreover, when two people are continuously together, it is
+amazingly hard to know when and where to begin; where intercourse is
+unbroken it is as a matter of routine being constantly interrupted. You
+cannot broach these broad personalities while you are getting up in the
+morning, or over the breakfast-table while you make the coffee, or when
+you meet again after a multitude of small events at tea, or in the
+evening when one is rather tired and trivial after the work of the day.
+Then Miss Margharita Trafford permitted no sustained analysis of life in
+her presence. She synthesized things fallaciously, but for the time
+convincingly; she insisted that life wasn't a thing you discussed, but
+pink and soft and jolly, which you crowed at and laughed at and
+addressed as "Goo." Even without Margharita there were occasions when
+the Traffords were a forgetfulness to one another. After an ear has been
+pinched or a hand has been run through a man's hair, or a pretty bare
+shoulder kissed, all sorts of broader interests lapse into a temporary
+oblivion. They found discussion much more possible when they walked
+together. A walk seemed to take them out of the everyday sequence,
+isolate them from their household, abstract them a little from one
+another. They set out one extravagant spring Sunday to Great Missenden,
+and once in spring also they discovered the Waterlow Park. On each
+occasion they seemed to get through an enormous amount of talking. But
+the Great Missenden walk was all mixed up with a sweet keen wind, and
+beechwoods just shot with spring green and bursting hedges and the
+extreme earliness of honeysuckle, which Trafford noted for the first
+time, and a clamorous rejoicing of birds. And in the Waterlow Park there
+was a great discussion of why the yellow crocus comes before white and
+purple, and the closest examination of the manner in which daffodils and
+narcissi thrust their green noses out of the garden beds. Also they
+found the ugly, ill-served, aggressively propagandist non-alcoholic
+refreshment-room in that gracious old house a scandal and
+disappointment, and Trafford scolded at the stupidity of officialdom
+that can control so fine a thing so ill.
+
+Though they talked on these walks they were still curiously evasive.
+Indeed, they were afraid of each other. They kept falling away from
+their private thoughts and intentions. They generalized, they discussed
+Marriage and George Gissing and Bernard Shaw and the suffrage movement
+and the agitation for the reform of the divorce laws. They pursued
+imaginary cases into distant thickets of contingency remotely far from
+the personal issues between them....
+
+
+Sec. 6
+
+One day came an incident that Marjorie found wonderfully illuminating.
+Trafford had a fit of rage. Stung by an unexpected irritation, he forgot
+himself, as people say, and swore, and was almost physically violent,
+and the curious thing was that so he lit up things for her as no
+premeditated attempt of his had ever done.
+
+A copy of the _Scientific Bulletin_ fired the explosion. He sat down at
+the breakfast-table with the heaviness of a rather overworked and
+worried man, tasted his coffee, tore open a letter and crumpled it with
+his hand, turned to the _Bulletin_, regarded its list of contents with a
+start, opened it, read for a minute, and expressed himself with an
+extraordinary heat of manner in these amazing and unprecedented words:
+
+"Oh! Damnation and damnation!"
+
+Then he shied the paper into the corner of the room and pushed his plate
+from him.
+
+"Damn the whole scheme of things!" he said, and met the blank amazement
+of Marjorie's eye.
+
+"Behrens!" he said with an air of explanation.
+
+"Behrens?" she echoed with a note of inquiry.
+
+"He's doing my stuff!"
+
+He sat darkling for a time and then hit the table with his fist so hard
+that the breakfast things seemed to jump together--to Marjorie's
+infinite amazement. "I can't _stand_ it!" he said.
+
+She waited some moments. "I don't understand," she began. "What has he
+done?"
+
+"Oh!" was Trafford's answer. He got up, recovered the crumpled paper and
+stood reading. "Fool and thief," he said.
+
+Marjorie was amazed beyond measure. She felt as though she had been
+effaced from Trafford's life. "Ugh!" he cried and slapped back the
+_Bulletin_ into the corner with quite needless violence. He became aware
+of Marjorie again.
+
+"He's doing my work," he said.
+
+And then as if he completed the explanation: "And I've got to be in
+Croydon by half-past ten to lecture to a pack of spinsters and duffers,
+because they're too stupid to get the stuff from books. It's all in
+books,--every bit of it."
+
+He paused and went on in tones of unendurable wrong. "It isn't as though
+he was doing it right. He isn't. He can't. He's a fool. He's a clever,
+greedy, dishonest fool with a twist. Oh! the pile, the big Pile of silly
+muddled technicalities he's invented already! The solemn mess he's
+making of it! And there he is, I can't get ahead of him, I can't get at
+him. I've got no time. I've got no room or leisure to swing my mind in!
+Oh, curse these engagements, curse all these silly fretting
+entanglements of lecture and article! I never get the time, I can't get
+the time, I can't get my mind clear! I'm worried! I'm badgered! And
+meanwhile Behrens----!"
+
+"Is he discovering what you want to discover?"
+
+"Behrens! _No!_ He's going through the breaches I made. He's guessing
+out what I meant to do. And he's getting it set out all
+wrong,--misleading terminology,--distinctions made in the wrong place.
+Oh, the fool he is!"
+
+"But afterwards----"
+
+"Afterwards I may spend my life--removing the obstacles he's made. He'll
+be established and I shan't. You don't know anything of these things.
+You don't understand."
+
+She didn't. Her next question showed as much. "Will it affect your
+F.R.S.?" she asked.
+
+"Oh! _that's_ safe enough, and it doesn't matter anyhow. The F.R.S.!
+Confound the silly little F.R.S.! As if that mattered. It's seeing all
+my great openings--misused. It's seeing all I might be doing. This
+brings it all home to me. Don't you understand, Marjorie? Will you
+never understand? I'm getting away from all _that!_ I'm being hustled
+away by all this work, this silly everyday work to get money. Don't you
+see that unless I can have time for thought and research, life is just
+darkness to me? I've made myself master of that stuff. I had at any
+rate. No one can do what I can do there. And when I find myself--oh,
+shut out, shut out! I come near raving. As I think of it I want to rave
+again." He paused. Then with a swift transition: "I suppose I'd better
+eat some breakfast. Is that egg boiled?"
+
+She gave him an egg, brought his coffee, put things before him, seated
+herself at the table. For a little while he ate in silence. Then he
+cursed Behrens.
+
+"Look here!" she said. "Bad as I am, you've got to reason with me, Rag.
+I didn't know all this. I didn't understand ... I don't know what to do."
+
+"What _is_ there to do?"
+
+"I've got to do something. I'm beginning to see things. It's just as
+though everything had become clear suddenly." She was weeping. "Oh, my
+dear! I want to help you. I have so wanted to help you. Always. And it's
+come to this!"
+
+"But it's not _your_ fault. I didn't mean that. It's--it's in the nature
+of things."
+
+"It's my fault."
+
+"It's not your fault."
+
+"It is."
+
+"Confound it, Marjorie. When I swear at Behrens I'm not swearing at
+you."
+
+"It's my fault. All this is my fault. I'm eating you up. What's the good
+of your pretending, Rag. You know it is. Oh! When I married you I meant
+to make you happy, I had no thought but to make you happy, to give
+myself to you, my body, my brains, everything, to make life beautiful
+for you----"
+
+"Well, _haven't_ you?" He thrust out a hand she did not take.
+
+"I've broken your back," she said.
+
+An unwonted resolution came into her face. Her lips whitened. "Don't you
+know, Rag," she said, forcing herself to speak----"Don't you guess? You
+don't know half! In that bureau there----In there! It's stuffed with
+bills. Unpaid bills."
+
+She was weeping, with no attempt to wipe the streaming tears away;
+terror made the expression of her wet face almost fierce. "Bills," she
+repeated. "More than a hundred pounds still. Yes! Now. _Now!_"
+
+He drew back, stared at her and with no trace of personal animus, like
+one who hears of a common disaster, remarked with a quiet emphasis: "Oh,
+_damn!_"
+
+"I know," she said, "Damn!" and met his eyes. There was a long silence
+between them. She produced a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. "That's
+what I amount to," she said.
+
+"It's your silly upbringing," he said after a long pause.
+
+"And my silly self."
+
+She stood up, unlocked and opened her littered desk, turned and held out
+the key to him.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"Take it. You gave me a cheque-book of my own and a corner of my own,
+and they--they are just ambushes--against you."
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"Take it," said Marjorie with quiet insistence.
+
+He obeyed. She stood with her eyes on the crumpled heap of bills. They
+were not even tidily arranged. That seemed to her now an extreme
+aggravation of her offence.
+
+"I ought to be sent to the chemist's," she remarked, "as one sends a
+worthless cat."
+
+Trafford weighed this proposition soberly for some moments. "You're a
+bother, Marjorie," he said with his eyes on the desk; "no end of a
+bother. I'd better have those bills."
+
+He looked at her, stood up, put his hands on her shoulders, drew her to
+him and kissed her forehead. He did it without passion, without
+tenderness, with something like resignation in his manner. She clung to
+him tightly, as though by clinging she could warm and soften him.
+
+"Rag," she whispered; "all my heart is yours.... I want to help you....
+And this is what I have done."
+
+"I know," he said--almost grimly.
+
+He repeated his kiss.
+
+Then he seemed to explode again. "Gods!" he cried, "look at the clock. I
+shall miss that Croydon lecture!" He pushed her from him. "Where are my
+boots?..."
+
+
+Sec. 7
+
+Marjorie spent the forenoon and the earlier part of the afternoon
+repeating and reviewing this conversation. Her mind was full of the long
+disregarded problem of her husband's state of mind. She thought with a
+sympathetic astonishment of his swearing, of his startling blow upon the
+table. She hadn't so far known he could swear. But this was the real
+thing, the relief of vehement and destructive words. His voice, saying
+"damnation and damnation," echoed and re-echoed in her ears. Somehow she
+understood that as she had never understood any sober statement of his
+case. Such women as Marjorie, I think, have an altogether keener
+understanding of people who have lost control of themselves than they
+have of reasoned cases. Perhaps that is because they themselves always
+reserve something when they state a reasoned case.
+
+She went on to the apprehension of a change in him that hitherto she had
+not permitted herself to see--a change in his attitude to her. There had
+been a time when she had seemed able without an effort to nestle inside
+his heart. Now she felt distinctly for the first time that that hadn't
+happened. She had instead a sense of her embrace sliding over a rather
+deliberately contracted exterior.... Of course he had been in a
+hurry....
+
+She tried to follow him on his journey to Croydon. Now he'd have just
+passed out of London Bridge. What was he thinking and feeling about her
+in the train? Now he would be going into the place, wherever it was,
+where he gave his lecture. Did he think of Behrens and curse her under
+his breath as he entered that tiresome room?...
+
+It seemed part of the prevailing inconvenience of life that Daffy should
+see fit to pay an afternoon call.
+
+Marjorie heard the sobs and uproar of an arrested motor, and glanced
+discreetly from the window to discover the dark green car with its
+green-clad chauffeur which now adorned her sister's life, and which
+might under different circumstances, have adorned her own. Wilkins--his
+name was Wilkins, his hair was sandy and his expression discreet, and he
+afforded material for much quiet humorous observation--descended smartly
+and opened the door. Daffy appeared in black velvet, with a huge black
+fur muff, and an air of being unaware that there were such things as
+windows in the world.
+
+It was just four, and the cook-general, who ought to have been now in
+her housemaid's phase, was still upstairs divesting herself of her more
+culinary characteristics. Marjorie opened the door.
+
+"Hullo, old Daffy!" she said.
+
+"Hullo, old Madge!" and there was an exchange of sisterly kisses and a
+mutual inspection.
+
+"Nothing wrong?" asked Daffy, surveying her.
+
+"_Wrong?_"
+
+"You look pale and--tired about the eyes," said Daffy, leading the way
+into the drawing-room. "Thought you might be a bit off it, that's all.
+No offence, Madge."
+
+"I'm all right," said Marjorie, getting her back to the light. "Want a
+holiday, perhaps. How's every one?"
+
+"All right. _We're_ off to Lake Garda next week. This new play has taken
+it out of Will tremendously. He wants a rest and fresh surroundings.
+It's to be the biggest piece of work he's done--so far, and it's
+straining him. And people worry him here; receptions, first nights,
+dinners, speeches. He's so neat, you know, in his speeches.... But it
+wastes him. He wants to get away. How's Rag?"
+
+"Busy."
+
+"Lecturing?"
+
+"And his Research of course."
+
+"Oh! of course. How's the Babe?"
+
+"Just in. Come up and see the little beast, Daffy! It is getting so
+pretty, and it talks----"
+
+Margharita dominated intercourse for a time. She was one of those
+tactful infants who exactly resemble their fathers and exactly resemble
+their mothers, and have a charm and individuality quite distinctly their
+own, and she was now beginning to converse with startling enterprise and
+intelligence.
+
+"Big, big, bog," she said at the sight of Daffy.
+
+"Remembers you," said Marjorie.
+
+"Bog! Go ta-ta!" said Margharita.
+
+"There!" said Marjorie, and May, the nurse in the background, smiled
+unlimited appreciation.
+
+"Bably," said Margharita.
+
+"That's herself!" said Marjorie, falling on her knees. "She talks like
+this all day. Oh de sweetums, den!" _Was_ it?
+
+Daffy made amiable gestures and canary-like noises with her lips, and
+Margharita responded jovially.
+
+"You darling!" cried Marjorie, "you delight of life," kneeling by the
+cot and giving the crowing, healthy little mite a passionate hug.
+
+"It's really the nicest of babies," Daffy conceded, and reflected....
+
+"I don't know what I should do with a kiddy," said Daffy, as the infant
+worship came to an end; "I'm really glad we haven't one--yet. He'd love
+it, I know. But it would be a burthen in some ways. They _are_ a tie. As
+he says, the next few years means so much for him. Of course, here his
+reputation is immense, and he's known in Germany, and there are
+translations into Russian; but he's still got to conquer America, and he
+isn't really well known yet in France. They read him, of course, and buy
+him in America, but they're--_restive_. Oh! I do so wish they'd give him
+the Nobel prize, Madge, and have done with it! It would settle
+everything. Still, as he says, we mustn't think of that--yet, anyhow. He
+isn't venerable enough. It's doubtful, he thinks, that they would give
+the Nobel prize to any humorist now that Mark Twain is dead. Mark Twain
+was different, you see, because of the German Emperor and all that white
+hair and everything."
+
+At this point Margharita discovered that the conversation had drifted
+away from herself, and it was only when they got downstairs again that
+Daffy could resume the thread of Magnet's career, which had evidently
+become the predominant interest in her life. She brought out all the
+worst elements of Marjorie's nature and their sisterly relationship.
+There were moments when it became nakedly apparent that she was
+magnifying Magnet to belittle Trafford. Marjorie did her best to
+counter-brag. She played her chief card in the F. R. S.
+
+"They always ask Will to the Royal Society Dinner," threw out Daffy;
+"but of course he can't always go. He's asked to so many things."
+
+Five years earlier Marjorie would have kicked her shins for that.
+
+Instead she asked pointedly, offensively, if Magnet was any balder.
+
+"He's not really bald," said Daffy unruffled, and went on to discuss the
+advisability of a second motor car--purely for town use. "I tell him I
+don't want it," said Daffy, "but he's frightfully keen upon getting
+one."
+
+
+Sec. 8
+
+When Daffy had at last gone Marjorie went back into Trafford's study and
+stood on the hearthrug regarding its appointments, with something of the
+air of one who awakens from a dream. She had developed a new, appalling
+thought. Was Daffy really a better wife than herself? It was dawning
+upon Marjorie that she hadn't been doing the right thing by her husband,
+and she was as surprised as if it had been suddenly brought home to her
+that she was neglecting Margharita. This was her husband's study--and it
+showed just a little dusty in the afternoon sunshine, and everything
+about it denied the pretensions of serene sustained work that she had
+always made to herself. Here were the crumpled galley proofs of his
+science notes; here were unanswered letters. There, she dare not touch
+them, were computations, under a glass paper-weight. What did they
+amount to now? On the table under the window were back numbers of the
+_Scientific Bulletin_ in a rather untidy pile, and on the footstool by
+the arm-chair she had been accustomed to sit at his feet when he stayed
+at home to work, and look into the fire, and watch him furtively, and
+sometimes give way to an overmastering tenderness and make love to him.
+The thought of Magnet, pampered, fenced around, revered in his
+industrious tiresome repetitions, variations, dramatizations and so
+forth of the half-dozen dry little old jokes which the British public
+accepted as his characteristic offering and rewarded him for so highly,
+contrasted vividly with her new realization of Trafford's thankless work
+and worried face.
+
+And she loved him, she loved him--_so_. She told herself in the presence
+of all these facts, and without a shadow of doubt in her mind that all
+she wanted in the world was to make him happy.
+
+It occurred to her as a rather drastic means to this end that she might
+commit suicide.
+
+She had already gone some way in the composition of a touching letter of
+farewell to him, containing a luminous analysis of her own defects,
+before her common-sense swept away this imaginative exercise.
+
+Meanwhile, as if it had been working at her problem all the time that
+this exciting farewell epistle had occupied the foreground of her
+thoughts, her natural lucidity emerged with the manifest conclusion that
+she had to alter her way of living. She had been extraordinarily
+regardless of him, she only began to see that, and now she had to take
+up the problem of his necessities. Her self-examination now that it had
+begun was thorough. She had always told herself before that she had made
+a most wonderful and beautiful little home for him. But had she made it
+for him? Had he as a matter of fact ever wanted it, except that he was
+glad to have it through her? No doubt it had given him delight and
+happiness, it had been a marvellous little casket of love for them, but
+how far did that outweigh the burthen and limitation it had imposed upon
+him? She had always assumed he was beyond measure grateful to her for
+his home, in spite of all her bills, but was he? It was like sticking a
+knife into herself to ask that, but she was now in a phase heroic enough
+for the task--was he? She had always seen herself as the giver of
+bounties; greatest bounty of all was Margharita. She had faced pains and
+terrors and the shadow of death to give him Margharita. Now with Daffy's
+illuminating conversation in her mind, she could turn the light upon a
+haunting doubt that had been lurking in the darkness for a long time.
+Had he really so greatly wanted Margharita? Had she ever troubled to get
+to the bottom of that before? Hadn't she as a matter of fact wanted
+Margharita ten thousand times more than he had done? Hadn't she in
+effect imposed Margharita upon him, as she had imposed her distinctive
+and delightful home upon him, regardlessly, because these things were
+the natural and legitimate developments of herself?
+
+These things were not his ends.
+
+Had she hitherto ever really cared what his ends might be?
+
+A phrase she had heard abundantly enough in current feminist discussion
+recurred to her mind, "the economic dependence of women," and now for
+the first time it was charged with meaning. She had imposed these things
+upon him not because she loved him, but because these things that were
+the expansions and consequences of her love for him were only obtainable
+through him. A woman gives herself to a man out of love, and remains
+clinging parasitically to him out of necessity. Was there no way of
+evading that necessity?
+
+For a time she entertained dreams of marvellous social reconstructions.
+Suppose the community kept all its women, suppose all property in homes
+and furnishings and children vested in them! That was Marjorie's version
+of that idea of the Endowment of Womanhood which has been creeping into
+contemporary thought during the last two decades. Then every woman would
+be a Princess to the man she loved.... He became more definitely
+personal. Suppose she herself was rich, then she could play the Princess
+to Trafford; she could have him free, unencumbered, happy and her lover!
+Then, indeed, her gifts would be gifts, and all her instincts and
+motives would but crown his unhampered life! She could not go on from
+that idea, she lapsed into a golden reverie, from which she was roused
+by the clock striking five.
+
+In half an hour perhaps Trafford would be home again. She could at least
+be so much of a princess as to make his home sweet for his home-coming.
+There should be tea in here, where callers did not trouble. She glanced
+at an empty copper vase. It ached. There was no light in the room. There
+would be just time to dash out into High Street and buy some flowers for
+it before he came....
+
+
+Sec. 9
+
+Spring and a renewed and deepened love for her husband were in
+Marjorie's blood. Her mind worked rapidly during the next few days, and
+presently she found herself clearly decided upon her course of action.
+She had to pull herself together and help him, and if that meant a
+Spartan and strenuous way of living, then manifestly she must be Spartan
+and strenuous. She must put an end once for all to her recurrent
+domestic deficits, and since this could only be done by getting rid of
+May, she must get rid of May and mind the child herself. (Every day,
+thank Heaven! Margharita became more intelligent, more manageable, and
+more interesting.) Then she must also make a far more systematic and
+thorough study of domestic economy than she had hitherto done, and run
+the shopping and housekeeping on severer lines; she bought fruit
+carelessly, they had far too many joints; she never seemed able to
+restrain herself when it came to flowers. And in the evenings, which
+would necessarily be very frequently lonely evenings if Trafford's
+researches were to go on, she would typewrite, and either acquire great
+speed at that or learn shorthand, and so save Trafford's present
+expenditure on a typist. That unfortunately would mean buying a
+typewriter.
+
+She found one afternoon in a twopenny book-box, with which she was
+trying to allay her craving for purchases, a tattered little pamphlet
+entitled: "Proposals for the Establishment of an Order of Samurai,"
+which fell in very exactly with her mood. The title "dated"; it carried
+her mind back to her middle girlhood and the defeats of Kuropatki and
+the futile earnest phase in English thought which followed the Boer War.
+The order was to be a sort of self-appointed nobility serving the world.
+It shone with the light of a generous dawn, but cast, I fear, the shadow
+of the prig. Its end was the Agenda Club.... She read and ceased to
+read--and dreamt.
+
+The project unfolded the picture of a new method of conduct to her,
+austere, yet picturesque and richly noble. These Samurai, it was
+intimated, were to lead lives of hard discipline and high effort, under
+self-imposed rule and restraint. They were to stand a little apart from
+the excitements and temptations of everyday life, to eat sparingly,
+drink water, resort greatly to self-criticism and self-examination, and
+harden their spirits by severe and dangerous exercises. They were to
+dress simply, work hard, and be the conscious and deliberate salt of the
+world. They were to walk among mountains. Incidentally, great power was
+to be given them. Such systematic effort and self-control as this,
+seemed to Marjorie to give just all she wasn't and needed to be, to save
+her life and Trafford's from a common disaster....
+
+It particularly appealed to her that they were to walk among
+mountains....
+
+But it is hard to make a change in the colour of one's life amidst the
+routine one has already established about oneself, in the house that is
+grooved by one's weaknesses, amidst hangings and ornaments living and
+breathing with the life of an antagonistic and yet insidiously congenial
+ideal. A great desire came upon Marjorie to go away with Trafford for a
+time, out of their everyday life into strange and cool and spacious
+surroundings. She wanted to leave London and its shops, and the home and
+the movements and the callers and rivalries, and even dimpled little
+Margharita's insistent claims, and get free and think. It was the first
+invasion of their lives by this conception, a conception that was ever
+afterwards to leave them altogether, of retreat and reconstruction. She
+knelt upon the white sheepskin hearthrug at Trafford's feet one night,
+and told him of her desire. He, too, was tired of his work and his
+vexations, and ripe for this suggestion of an altered life. The Easter
+holiday was approaching, and nearly twenty unencumbered days. Mrs.
+Trafford, they knew, would come into the house, meanwhile, and care for
+Margharita. They would go away somewhere together and walk, no luggage
+but a couple of knapsacks, no hotel but some homely village inn. They
+would be in the air all day, until they were saturated with sweet air
+and spirit of clean restraints. They would plan out their new rule,
+concentrate their aims. "And I could think," said Trafford, "of this new
+work I can't begin here. I might make some notes." Presently came the
+question of where the great walk should be. Manifestly, it must be among
+mountains, manifestly, and Marjorie's eye saw those mountains with snow
+upon their summits and cold glaciers on their flanks. Could they get to
+Switzerland? If they travelled second class throughout, and took the
+cheaper way, as Samurai should?...
+
+
+Sec. 10
+
+That holiday seemed to Marjorie as if they had found a lost and
+forgotten piece of honeymoon. She had that same sense of fresh
+beginnings that had made their first walk in Italian Switzerland so
+unforgettable. She was filled with the happiness of recovering Trafford
+when he had seemed to be slipping from her. All day they talked of their
+outlook, and how they might economise away the need of his extra work,
+and so release him for his search again. For the first time he talked of
+his work to her, and gave her some intimation of its scope and quality.
+He became enthusiastic with the sudden invention of experimental
+devices, so that it seemed to her almost worth while if instead of going
+on they bolted back, he to his laboratory and she to her nursery, and
+so at once inaugurated the new regime. But they went on, to finish the
+holiday out. And the delight of being together again with unfettered
+hours of association! They rediscovered each other, the same--and a
+little changed. If their emotions were less bright and intense, their
+interest was far wider and deeper.
+
+The season was too early for high passes, and the weather was
+changeable. They started from Fribourg and walked to Thun and then back
+to Bulle, and so to Bultigen, Saanen, Montbovon and the Lake of Geneva.
+They had rain several days, the sweet, soft, windless mountain rain that
+seemed so tolerable to those who are accustomed to the hard and driven
+downpours of England, and in places they found mud and receding snow;
+the inns were at their homeliest, and none the worse for that, and there
+were days of spring sunshine when a multitude of minute and delightful
+flowers came out as it seemed to meet them--it was impossible to suppose
+so great a concourse universal--and spread in a scented carpet before
+their straying feet. The fruit trees in the valleys were powdered with
+blossom, and the new grass seemed rather green-tinted sunlight than
+merely green. And they walked with a sort of stout leisureliness,
+knapsacks well-hung and cloaks about them, with their faces fresh and
+bright under the bracing weather, and their lungs deep charged with
+mountain air, talking of the new austerer life that was now beginning.
+With great snow-capped mountains in the background, streaming precipices
+overhead, and a sward of flowers to go upon, that strenuous prospect was
+altogether delightful. They went as it pleased them, making detours into
+valleys, coming back upon their steps. The interludes of hot, bright
+April sunshine made them indolent, and they would loiter and halt where
+some rock or wall invited, and sit basking like happy, animals, talking
+very little, for long hours together. Trafford seemed to have forgotten
+all the strain and disappointment of the past two years, to be amazed
+but in no wise incredulous at this enormous change in her and in their
+outlook; it filled her with a passion of pride and high resolve to think
+that so she could recover and uplift him.
+
+He was now very deeply in love with her again. He talked indeed of his
+research, but so that it might interest her, and when he thought alone,
+he thought, not of it, but of her, making again the old discoveries, his
+intense delight in the quality of her voice, his joy in a certain
+indescribable gallantry in her bearing. He pitied all men whose wives
+could not carry themselves, and whose voices failed and broke under the
+things they had to say. And then again there was the way she moved her
+arms, the way her hands took hold of things, the alert lucidity of her
+eyes, and then that faint, soft shadow of a smile upon her lips when she
+walked thinking or observant, all unaware that he was watching her.
+
+It rained in the morning of their eleventh day and then gave way to
+warmth and sunshine, so that they arrived at Les Avants in the afternoon
+a little muddy and rather hot. At one of the tables under the trees
+outside the Grand Hotel was a small group of people dressed in the
+remarkable and imposing costume which still in those days distinguished
+the motorist. They turned from their tea to a more or less frank
+inspection of the Traffords, and suddenly broke out into cries of
+recognition and welcome. Solomonson--for the most part brown
+leather--emerged with extended hands, and behind him, nestling in the
+midst of immense and costly furs, appeared the kindly salience and
+brightness of his Lady's face. "Good luck!" cried Solomonson. "Good
+luck! Come and have tea with us! But this is a happy encounter!"
+
+"We're dirty--but so healthy!" cried Marjorie, saluting Lady Solomonson.
+
+"You look, oh!--splendidly well," that Lady responded.
+
+"We've been walking."
+
+"With just that knapsack!"
+
+"It's been glorious."
+
+"But the courage!" said Lady Solomonson, and did not add, "the tragic
+hardship!" though her tone conveyed it. She had all the unquestioning
+belief of her race in the sanity of comfort. She had ingrained in her
+the most definite ideas of man's position and woman's, and that any one,
+man or woman, should walk in mud except under dire necessity, was
+outside the range of her philosophy. She thought Marjorie's thick boots
+and short skirts quite the most appalling feminine costume she had ever
+seen. She saw only a ruined complexion and damaged womanhood in
+Marjorie's rain-washed, sun-bit cheek. Her benevolent heart rebelled at
+the spectacle. It was dreadful, she thought, that nice young people like
+the Traffords should have come to this.
+
+The rest of the party were now informally introduced. They were all very
+splendid and disconcertingly free from mud. One was Christabel Morrison,
+the actress, a graceful figure in a green baize coat and brown fur, who
+looked ever so much more charming than her innumerable postcards and
+illustrated-paper portraits would have led one to expect; her neighbour
+was Solomonson's cousin Lee, the organizer of the Theatre Syndicate, a
+brown-eyed, attenuated, quick-minded little man with an accent that
+struck Trafford as being on the whole rather Dutch, and the third lady
+was Lady Solomonson's sister, Mrs. Lee. It appeared they were all
+staying at Lee's villa above Vevey, part of an amusing assembly of
+people who were either vividly rich or even more vividly clever, an
+accumulation which the Traffords in the course of the next twenty
+minutes were three times invited, with an increasing appreciation and
+earnestness, to join.
+
+From the first our two young people were not indisposed to do so. For
+eleven days they had maintained their duologue at the very highest
+level; seven days remained to them before they must go back to begin the
+hard new life in England, and there was something very attractive--they
+did not for a moment seek to discover the elements of that
+attractiveness--in this proposal of five or six days of luxurious
+indolence above the lake, a sort of farewell to the worldly side of
+worldly things, before they set forth upon the high and narrow path they
+had resolved to tread.
+
+"But we've got no clothes," cried Marjorie, "no clothes at all! We've
+these hobnail boots and a pair each of heelless slippers."
+
+"My dear!" cried Lady Solomonson in real distress, and as much aside as
+circumstances permitted, "my dear! My sister can manage all that!" Her
+voice fell to earnest undertones. "We can really manage all that. The
+house is packed with things. We'll come to dinner in fancy dress. And
+Scott, my maid, is so clever."
+
+"But really!" said Marjorie.
+
+"My dear!" said Lady Solomonson. "Everything." And she changed places
+with Lee in order to be perfectly confidential and explicit. "Rachel!"
+she cried, and summoned her sister for confirmatory assurances....
+
+"But my husband!" Marjorie became audible.
+
+"We've long Persian robes," said Mrs. Lee, with a glance of undisguised
+appraisement. "He'll be splendid. He'll look like a Soldan...."
+
+The rest of the company forced a hectic conversation in order not to
+seem to listen, and presently Lady Solomonson and her sister were
+triumphant. They packed Marjorie into the motor car, and Trafford and
+Solomonson returned to Vevey by train and thence up to the villa by a
+hired automobile.
+
+
+Sec. 11
+
+They didn't go outside the magic confines of the Lees' villa for three
+days, and when they did they were still surrounded by their host's
+service and possessions; they made an excursion to Chillon in his
+motor-cars, and went in his motor-boat to lunch with the Maynards in
+their lake-side villa close to Geneva. During all that time they seemed
+lifted off the common earth into a world of fine fabrics, agreeable
+sounds, noiseless unlimited service, and ample untroubled living. It had
+an effect of enchantment, and the long healthy arduous journey thither
+seemed a tale of incredible effort amidst these sunny excesses. The
+weather had the whim to be serenely fine, sunshine like summer and the
+bluest of skies shone above the white wall and the ilex thickets and
+cypresses that bounded them in from the great world of crowded homes and
+sous and small necessities. And through the texture of it all for
+Trafford ran a thread of curious new suggestion. An intermittent
+discussion of economics and socialism was going on between himself and
+Solomonson and an agreeable little stammering man in brown named Minter,
+who walked up in the afternoon from Vevey,--he professed to be writing a
+novel--during the earlier half of the day. Minter displayed the keenest
+appreciation of everything in his entertainment, and blinked cheerfully
+and expressed opinions of the extremest socialistic and anarchistic
+flavour to an accompaniment of grateful self-indulgence. "Your port-wine
+is wonderful, Lee," he would say, sipping it. "A terrible retribution
+will fall upon you some day for all this."
+
+The villa had been designed by Lee to please his wife, and if it was
+neither very beautiful nor very dignified, it was at any rate very
+pretty and amusing. It might have been built by a Parisian
+dressmaker--in the chateauesque style. It was of greyish-white stone,
+with a roof of tiles. It had little balconies and acutely roofed
+turrets, and almost burlesque buttresses, pierced by doors and gates;
+and sun-trap loggias, as pleasantly casual as the bows and embroideries
+of a woman's dress; and its central hall, with an impluvium that had
+nothing to do with rain-water, and its dining-room, to which one
+ascended from this hall between pillars up five broad steps, were
+entirely irrelevant to all its exterior features. Unobtrusive
+men-servants in grey with scarlet facings hovered serviceably.
+
+From the little terrace, all set with orange-trees in tubs, one could
+see, through the branches and stems of evergreens and over a foreground
+of budding, starting vineyard, the clustering roofs of Vevey below, an
+agglomeration veiled ever so thinly in the morning by a cobweb of wood
+smoke, against the blue background of lake with its winged
+sailing-boats, and sombre Alpine distances. Minter made it all
+significant by a wave of the hand. "All this," he said, and of the
+crowded work-a-day life below, "all that."
+
+"All this," with its rich litter of stuffs and ornaments, its fine
+profusion, its delicacies of flower and food and furniture, its frequent
+inconsecutive pleasures, its noiseless, ready service, was remarkably
+novel and yet remarkably familiar to Trafford. For a time he could not
+understand this undertone of familiarity, and then a sunlit group of
+hangings in one of the small rooms that looked out upon the lake took
+his mind back to his own dining-room, and the little inadequate, but
+decidedly good, Bokhara embroidery that dominated it like a flag, that
+lit it, and now lit his understanding, like a confessed desire. Of
+course, Mrs. Lee--happy woman!--was doing just everything that Marjorie
+would have loved to do. Marjorie had never confessed as much, perhaps
+she had never understood as much, but now in the presence of Mrs. Lee's
+aesthetic exuberances, Trafford at least understood. He surveyed the
+little room, whose harmonies he had at first simply taken for granted,
+noted the lustre-ware that answered to the gleaming Persian tiles, the
+inspiration of a metallic thread in the hangings, and the exquisite
+choice of the deadened paint upon the woodwork, and realized for the
+first time how little aimless extravagance can be, and all the timid,
+obstinately insurgent artistry that troubled his wife. He stepped
+through the open window into a little loggia, and stared unseeingly over
+glittering, dark-green leaves to the mysteries of distance in the great
+masses above St. Gingolph, and it seemed for the first time that perhaps
+in his thoughts he had done his wife a wrong. He had judged her fickle,
+impulsive, erratic, perhaps merely because her mind followed a different
+process from his, because while he went upon the lines of constructive
+truth, her guide was a more immediate and instinctive sense of beauty.
+
+He was very much alive to her now, and deeply in love with her. He had
+reached Les Avants with all his sense of their discordance clean washed
+and walked out of his mind, by rain and sun and a flow of high
+resolutions, and the brotherly swing of their strides together. They had
+come to the Lee's villa, mud-splashed, air-sweet comrades, all unaware
+of the subtle differences of atmosphere they had to encounter. They had
+no suspicion that it was only about half of each other that had
+fraternized. Now here they were in a company that was not only
+altogether alien to their former mood, but extremely interesting and
+exciting and closely akin to the latent factors in Marjorie's
+composition. Their hostess and her sister had the keen, quick aesthetic
+sensibilities of their race, with all that freedom of reading and
+enfranchisement of mind which is the lot of the Western women. Lee had
+an immense indulgent affection for his wife, he regarded her
+arrangements and exploits with an admiration that was almost American.
+And Mrs. Lee's imagination had run loose in pursuit of beautiful and
+remarkable people and splendours rather than harmonies of line and
+colour. Lee, like Solomonson, had that inexplicable alchemy of mind
+which distils gold from the commerce of the world ("All this," said
+Minter to Trafford, "is an exhalation from all that"); he accumulated
+wealth as one grows a beard, and found his interest in his uxorious
+satisfactions, and so Mrs. Lee, with her bright watchful eyes, quick
+impulsive movements and instinctive command had the utmost freedom to
+realize her ideals.
+
+In the world at large Lee and Solomonson seemed both a little short and
+a little stout, and a little too black and bright for their entirely
+conventional clothing, but for the dinner and evening of the villa they
+were now, out of consideration for Trafford, at their ease, and far more
+dignified in Oriental robes. Trafford was accommodated with a long,
+black, delicately embroidered garment that reached to his feet, and
+suited something upstanding and fine in his bearing; Minter, who had
+stayed on from an afternoon call, was gorgeous in Chinese embroidery.
+The rest of the men clung boldly or bashfully to evening dress....
+
+On the evening of his arrival Trafford, bathed and robed, found the rest
+of the men assembling about an open wood fire in the smaller hall at the
+foot of the main staircase. Lee was still upstairs, and Solomonson, with
+a new grace of gesture begotten by his costume, made the necessary
+introductions; a little man with fine-cut features and a Galway accent
+was Rex the playwright; a tall, grey-haired, clean-shaven man was Bright
+from the New York Central Museum; and a bearded giant with a roof of red
+hair and a remote eye was Radlett Barns, the great portrait-painter, who
+consents to paint your portrait for posterity as the King confers a
+knighthood. These were presently joined by Lee and Pacey, the
+blond-haired musician, and Mottersham, whose patents and inventions
+control electric lighting and heating all over the world, and then, with
+the men duly gathered and expectant, the women came down the wide
+staircase.
+
+The staircase had been planned and lit for these effects, and Mrs. Lee
+meant to make the most of her new discovery. Her voice could be heard in
+the unseen corridor above arranging the descent: "You go first, dear.
+Will you go with Christabel?" The conversation about the fire checked
+and ceased with the sound of voices above and the faint rustle of
+skirts. Then came Christabel Morrison, her slender grace beautifully
+contrasted with the fuller beauties of that great lady of the stage,
+Marion Rufus. Lady Solomonson descended confidently in a group of three,
+with Lady Mottersham and sharp-tongued little Mrs. Rex, all very rich
+and splendid. After a brief interval their hostess preceded Marjorie,
+and was so much of an artist that she had dressed herself merely as a
+foil to this new creation. She wore black and scarlet, that made the
+white face and bright eyes under her sombre hair seem the face of an
+inspiring spirit. A step behind her and to the right of her came
+Marjorie, tall and wonderful, as if she were the queen of earth and
+sunshine, swathed barbarically in gold and ruddy brown, and with her
+abundant hair bound back by a fillet of bloodstones and gold. Radlett
+Barns exclaimed at the sight of her. She was full of the manifest
+consciousness of dignity as she descended, quite conscious and quite
+unembarrassed; two borrowed golden circlets glittered on her shining
+arm, and a thin chain of gold and garnets broke the contrast of the
+warm, sun-touched neck above, with the unsullied skin below.
+
+She sought and met her husband's astonishment with the faintest,
+remotest of smiles. It seemed to him that never before had he
+appreciated her beauty. His daily companion had become this splendour in
+the sky. She came close by him with hand extended to greet Sir Philip
+Mottersham. He was sensible of the glow of her, as it were of a scented
+aura about her. He had a first full intimation of the cult and worship
+of woman and the magnificence of women, old as the Mediterranean and its
+goddesses, and altogether novel to his mind....
+
+Christabel Morrison found him a pleasant but not very entertaining or
+exciting neighbor at the dinner-table, and was relieved when the time
+came for her to turn an ear to the artistic compliments of Radlett
+Barns. But Trafford was too interested and amused by the general effect
+of the dinner to devote himself to the rather heavy business of really
+exhilarating Christabel. He didn't give his mind to her. He found the
+transformation of Sir Rupert into a turbanned Oriental who might have
+come out of a picture by Carpaccio, gently stimulating and altogether
+delightful. His attention returned again and again to that genial
+swarthiness. Mrs. Lee on his left lived in her eyes, and didn't so much
+talk to him as rattle her mind at him almost absent-mindedly, as one
+might dangle keys at a baby while one talked to its mother. Yet it was
+evident she liked the look of him. Her glance went from his face to his
+robe, and up and down the table, at the bright dresses, the shining
+arms, the glass and light and silver. She asked him to tell her just
+where he had tramped and just what he had seen, and he had scarcely
+begun answering her question before her thoughts flew off to three
+trophies of china and silver, struggling groups of china boys bearing up
+great silver shells of fruit and flowers that stood down the centre of
+the table. "What do you think of my chubby boys?" she asked. "They're
+German work. They came from a show at Duesseldorf last week. Ben saw I
+liked them, and sent back for them secretly, and here they, are! I
+thought they might be too colourless. But are they?"
+
+"No," said Trafford, "they're just cool. Under that glow of fruit. Is
+this salt-cellar English cut glass?"
+
+"Old Dutch," said Mrs. Lee. "Isn't it jolly?" She embarked with a roving
+eye upon the story of her Dutch glass, which was abundant and admirable,
+and broke off abruptly to say, "Your wife is wonderful."
+
+"Her hair goes back," she said, "like music. You know what I mean--a
+sort of easy rhythm. You don't mind my praising your wife?"
+
+Trafford said he didn't.
+
+"And there's a sort of dignity about her. All my life, Mr. Trafford,
+I've wanted to be tall. It stopped my growth."
+
+She glanced off at a tangent. "Tell me, Mr. Trafford," she asked, "was
+your wife beautiful like this when you married her? I mean--of course
+she was a beautiful girl and adorable and all that; but wasn't she just
+a slender thing?"
+
+She paused, but if she had a habit of asking disconcerting questions she
+did not at any rate insist upon answers, and she went on to confess that
+she believed she would be a happier woman poor than rich--"not that Ben
+isn't all he should be"--but that then she would have been a fashionable
+dressmaker. "People want help," she said, "so much more help than they
+get. They go about with themselves--what was it Mr. Radlett Barns said
+the other night--oh!--like people leading horses they daren't ride. I
+think he says such good things at times, don't you? So wonderful to be
+clever in two ways like that. Just look _now_ at your wife--now I mean,
+that they've drawn that peacock-coloured curtain behind her. My
+brother-in-law has been telling me you keep the most wonderful and
+precious secrets locked up in your breast, that you know how to make
+gold and diamonds and all sorts of things. If I did,--I should make
+them."
+
+She pounced suddenly upon Rex at her left with questions about the
+Keltic Renascence, was it still going on--or what? and Trafford was at
+liberty for a time to enjoy the bright effects about him, the shadowed
+profile and black hair of Christabel to the right of him, and the
+coruscating refractions and reflections of Lady Solomonson across the
+white and silver and ivory and blossom of the table. Then Mrs. Lee
+dragged him into a sudden conflict with Rex, by saying abruptly--
+
+"Of course, Mr. Trafford wouldn't believe that."
+
+He looked perhaps a little lost.
+
+"I was telling Mrs. Lee," said Rex, "that I don't believe there's any
+economy of human toil in machinery whatever. I mean that the machine
+itself really embodies all the toil it seems to save, toil that went to
+the making of it and preparing it and getting coal for it...."
+
+
+Sec. 12
+
+Next morning they found their hostess at breakfast in the dining-room
+and now the sun was streaming through a high triple window that had been
+curtained overnight, and they looked out through clean, bright
+plate-glass upon mountains half-dissolved in a luminous mist, and a
+mist-veiled lake below. Great stone jars upon the terrace bore a blaze
+of urged and early blossom, and beyond were cypresses. Their hostess
+presided at one of two round tables, at a side table various breakfast
+dishes kept warm over spirit lamps, and two men servants dispensed tea
+and coffee. In the bay of the window was a fruit table, with piled
+fruit-plates and finger-bowls.
+
+Mrs. Lee waved a welcoming hand, and drew Marjorie to a seat beside her.
+Rex was consuming trout and Christabel peaches, and Solomonson, all his
+overnight Orientalism abandoned, was in outspoken tweeds and quite under
+the impression that he was interested in golf. Trafford got frizzled
+bacon for Marjorie and himself, and dropped into a desultory
+conversation, chiefly sustained by Christabel, about the peculiarly
+exalting effect of beautiful scenery on Christabel's mind. Mrs. Lee was
+as usual distraught, and kept glancing towards the steps that led up
+from the hall. Lady Solomonson appeared with a rustle in a wrapper of
+pink Chinese silk. "I came down after all," she said. "I lay in bed
+weighing rolls and coffee and relaxed muscles against your English
+breakfast downstairs. And suddenly I remembered your little sausages!"
+
+She sat down with a distribution of handkerchief, bag, letters, a gold
+fountain pen and suchlike equipments, and Trafford got her some of the
+coveted delicacies. Mrs. Lee suddenly cried out, "_Here_ they come!
+_Here_ they come!" and simultaneously the hall resonated with children's
+voices and the yapping of a Skye terrier.
+
+Then a gay little procession appeared ascending the steps. First came a
+small but princely little boy of three, with a ruddy face and curly
+black hair, behind him was a slender, rather awkward girl of perhaps
+eleven, and a sturdier daughter of Israel of nine. A nurse in artistic
+purple followed, listening inattentively to some private whisperings of
+a knickerbockered young man of five, and then came another purple-robed
+nurse against contingencies, and then a nurse of a different,
+white-clad, and more elaborately costumed sort, carrying a sumptuous
+baby of eight or nine months. "Ah! the _darlings!_" cried Christabel,
+springing up quite beautifully, and Lady Solomonson echoed the cry. The
+procession broke against the tables and split about the breakfast party.
+The small boy in petticoats made a confident rush for Marjorie,
+Christabel set herself to fascinate his elder brother, the young woman
+of eleven scrutinized Trafford with speculative interest and edged
+towards him coyly, and Mrs. Lee interviewed her youngest born. The
+amiable inanities suitable to the occasion had scarcely begun before a
+violent clapping of hands announced the appearance of Lee.
+
+It was Lee's custom, Mrs. Lee told Marjorie over her massively robed
+baby, to get up very early and work on rolls and coffee; he never
+breakfasted nor joined them until the children came. All of them rushed
+to him for their morning kiss, and it seemed to Trafford that Lee at
+least was an altogether happy creature as he accepted the demonstrative
+salutations of this struggling, elbowing armful of offspring, and
+emerged at last like a man from a dive, flushed and ruffled and smiling,
+to wish his adult guests good morning.
+
+"Come upstairs with us, daddy," cried the children, tugging at him.
+"Come upstairs!"
+
+Mrs. Lee ran her eye about her table and rose. "It's the children's
+hour," she said to Marjorie. "You don't I hope, mind children?"
+
+"But," said Trafford incredulous, and with a friendly arm about his
+admirer, "is this tall young woman yours?"
+
+The child shot him a glance of passionate appreciation for this scrap of
+flattery.
+
+"We began young," said Mrs. Lee, with eyes of uncritical pride for the
+ungainly one, and smiled at her husband.
+
+"Upstairs," cried the boy of five and the girl of nine. "Upstairs."
+
+"May we come?" asked Marjorie.
+
+"May we all come?" asked Christabel, determined to be in the movement.
+
+Rex strolled towards the cigars, with disentanglement obviously in his
+mind.
+
+"Do you really care?" asked Mrs. Lee. "You know, I'm so proud of their
+nursery. Would you care----? Always I go up at this time."
+
+"I've my little nursery, too," said Marjorie.
+
+"Of course!" cried Mrs. Lee, "I forgot. Of course;" and overwhelmed
+Marjorie with inquiries as she followed her husband. Every one joined
+the nurseryward procession except Rex, who left himself behind with an
+air of inadvertency, and escaped to the terrace and a cigar....
+
+It was a wonderful nursery, a suite of three bedrooms, a green and
+white, well-lit schoolroom and a vast playroom, and hovering about the
+passage Trafford remarked a third purple nurse and a very efficient and
+serious-looking Swiss governess. The schoolroom and the nursery
+displayed a triumph of judicious shopping and arrangement, the best of
+German and French and English things had been blended into a harmony at
+once hygienic and pedagogic and humanly charming. For once Marjorie had
+to admire the spending of another woman, and admit to herself that even
+she could not have done better with the money.
+
+There were clever little desks for the elder children to work at,
+adjustable desks scientifically lit so that they benefited hands and
+shoulders and eyes; there were artistically coloured and artistically
+arranged pictures, and a little library held all the best of Lang and
+Lucas, rare good things like "Uncle Lubin," Maurice Baring's story of
+"Forget-me-not," "Johnny Crow's Garden," "The Bad Child's Book of
+Beasts," animal books and bird books, costume books and story books,
+colour books and rhyme books, abundant, yet every one intelligently
+chosen, no costly meretricious printed rubbish such as silly Gentile
+mothers buy. Then in the great nursery, with its cork carpet on which
+any toy would stand or run, was an abundance of admirable possessions
+and shelving for everything, and great fat cloth elephants to ride, and
+go-carts, and hooks for a swing. Marjorie's quick eye saw, and she
+admired effusively and envied secretly, and Mrs. Lee appreciated her
+appreciation. A skirmishing romp of the middle children and Lee went on
+about the two of them, and Trafford was led off by his admirer into a
+cubby-house in one corner (with real glass windows made to open) and the
+muslin curtains were drawn while he was shown a secret under vows. Lady
+Solomonson discovered some soldiers, and was presently on her knees in a
+corner with the five-year old boy.
+
+"These are like my Teddy's," she was saying. "My Billy has some of
+these."
+
+Trafford emerged from the cubby-house, which was perhaps a little
+cramped for him, and surveyed the room, with his admirer lugging at his
+arm unheeded, and whispering: "Come back with me."
+
+Of course this was the clue to Lee and Solomonson. How extremely happy
+Lee appeared to be! Enormous vistas of dark philoprogenitive parents and
+healthy little Jews and Jewesses seemed to open out to Trafford,
+hygienically reared, exquisitely trained and educated. And he and
+Marjorie had just one little daughter--with a much poorer educational
+outlook. She had no cloth elephant to ride, no elaborate cubby-house to
+get into, only a half-dozen picture books or so, and later she wouldn't
+when she needed it get that linguistic Swiss.
+
+He wasn't above the normal human vanity of esteeming his own race and
+type the best, and certain vulgar aspects of what nowadays one calls
+Eugenics crossed his mind.
+
+
+Sec. 13
+
+During those few crowded days of unfamiliar living Trafford accumulated
+a vast confused mass of thoughts and impressions. He realized acutely
+the enormous gulf between his attitudes towards women and those of his
+host and Solomonson--and indeed of all the other men. It had never
+occurred to him before that there was any other relationship possible
+between a modern woman and a modern man but a frank comradeship and
+perfect knowledge, helpfulness, and honesty. That had been the continual
+implication of his mother's life, and of all that he had respected in
+the thought and writing of his time. But not one of these men in their
+place--with the possible exception of Minter, who remained brilliant but
+ambiguous--believed anything of the sort. It necessarily involved in
+practice a share of hardship for women, and it seemed fundamental to
+them that women should have no hardship. He sought for a word, and hung
+between chivalry and orientalism. He inclined towards chivalry. Their
+women were lifted a little off the cold ground of responsibility. Charm
+was their obligation. "A beautiful woman should be beautifully dressed,"
+said Radlett Barns in the course of the discussion of a contemporary
+portrait painter. Lee nodded to endorse an obvious truth. "But she ought
+to dress herself," said Barns. "It ought to be herself to the points of
+the old lace--chosen and assimilated. It's just through not being that,
+that so many rich women are--detestable. Heaps of acquisition.
+Caddis-women...."
+
+Trafford ceased to listen, he helped himself to a cigar and pinched its
+end and lit it, while his mind went off to gnaw at: "A beautiful woman
+should be beautifully dressed," as a dog retires with a bone. He
+couldn't escape from its shining truth, and withal it was devastating to
+all the purposes of his life.
+
+He rejected the word orientalism; what he was dealing with here was
+chivalry. "All this," was indeed, under the thinnest of disguises, the
+castle and the pavilion, and Lee and Solomonson were valiant knights,
+who entered the lists not indeed with spear and shield but with
+prospectus and ingenious enterprise, who drew cheques instead of swords
+for their ladies' honour, who held "all that" in fee and subjection that
+these exquisite and wonderful beings should flower in rich perfection.
+All these women lived in a magic security and abundance, far above the
+mire and adventure of the world; their knights went upon quests for them
+and returned with villas and pictures and diamonds and historical
+pearls. And not one of them all was so beautiful a being as his
+Marjorie, whom he made his squaw, whom he expected to aid and follow
+him, and suffer uncomplainingly the rough services of the common life.
+Not one was half so beautiful as Marjorie, nor half so sweet and
+wonderful....
+
+If such thoughts came in Lee's villa, they returned with redoubled force
+when Trafford found himself packed painfully with Marjorie in the night
+train to Paris. His head ached with the rattle and suffocation of the
+train, and he knew hers must ache more. The windows of the compartment
+and the door were all closed, the litigious little commercial traveller
+in shiny grey had insisted upon that, there was no corner seat either
+for Marjorie or himself, the dim big package over her head swayed
+threateningly. The green shade over the light kept opening with the
+vibration of the train, the pallid old gentleman with the beard had
+twisted himself into a ghastly resemblance to a broken-necked corpse,
+and pressed his knees hard and stiffly against Trafford, and the small,
+sniffing, bow-legged little boy beside the rusty widow woman in the
+corner smelt mysteriously and penetratingly of Roquefort cheese. For the
+seventeenth time the little commercial traveller jumped up with an
+unbecoming expletive, and pulled the shade over the light, and the
+silent young man in the fourth corner stirred and readjusted his legs.
+
+For a time until the crack of light overhead had widened again every one
+became a dark head-dangling outline....
+
+He watched the dim shape before him and noted the weary droop of her
+pose. He wished he had brought water. He was intolerably thirsty, and
+his thirst gave him the measure of hers. This jolting foetid
+compartment was a horrible place for her, an intolerably horrible place.
+And she was standing it, for all her manifest suffering, with infinite
+gallantry and patience. What a gallant soul indeed she was! Whatever
+else she did she never failed to rise to a challenge. Her very
+extravagance that had tried their lives so sorely was perhaps just one
+aspect of that same quality. It is so easy to be saving if one is timid;
+so hard if one is unaccustomed to fear. How beautiful she had shone at
+times in the lights and glitter of that house behind there, and now she
+was back in her weather-stained tweeds again, like a shining sword
+thrust back into a rusty old sheath.
+
+Was it fair that she should come back into the sheath because of this
+passion of his for a vast inexhaustible research?
+
+He had never asked himself before if it was fair to assume she would
+follow his purpose and his fortunes. He had taken that for granted. And
+she too had taken that for granted, which was so generously splendid of
+her. All her disloyalties had been unintentional, indeed almost
+instinctive, breaches of her subordination to this aim which was his
+alone. These breaches he realized had been the reality of her nature
+fighting against her profoundest resolutions.
+
+He wondered what Lee must think of this sort of married life. How ugly
+and selfish it must seem from that point of view.
+
+He perceived for the first time the fundamental incongruity of
+Marjorie's position, she was made to shine, elaborately prepared and
+trained to shine, desiring keenly to shine, and then imprisoned and
+hidden in the faded obscurity of a small, poor home. How conspicuously,
+how extremely he must be wanting in just that sort of chivalry in which
+Lee excelled! Those business men lived for their women to an extent he
+had hitherto scarcely dreamt of doing....
+
+His want of chivalry was beyond dispute. And was there not also an
+extraordinary egotism in this concentration upon his own purposes, a
+self-esteem, a vanity? Had her life no rights? Suppose now he were to
+give her--two years, three years perhaps of his life--altogether. Or
+even four. Was it too much to grudge her four? Solomonson had been at
+his old theme with him, a theme the little man had never relinquished
+since their friendship first began years ago, possibilities of a
+business alliance and the application of a mind of exceptional freshness
+and penetration to industrial development. Why shouldn't that be tried?
+Why not "make money" for a brief strenuous time, and then come back,
+when Marjorie's pride and comfort were secure?...
+
+(Poor dear, how weary she looked!)
+
+He wondered how much more remained of this appalling night. It would
+have made so little difference if they had taken the day train and
+travelled first-class. Wasn't she indeed entitled to travel first-class?
+Pictures of the immense spaciousness, the softness, cleanliness and
+dignity of first-class compartments appeared in his mind....
+
+He would have looked at his watch, but to get at it would mean
+disturbing the silent young man on his left.
+
+Outside in the corridor there broke out a noisy dispute about a missing
+coupon, a dispute in that wonderful language that is known to the
+facetious as _entente cordiale_, between an Englishman and the conductor
+of the train....
+
+
+Sec. 14
+
+In Paris there was a dispute with an extortionate cabman, and the
+crossing from Dieppe to Newhaven was rough and bitterly cold. They were
+both ill. They reached home very dirty and weary, and among the pile of
+letters and papers on Trafford's desk was a big bundle of Science Note
+proofs, and two letters from Croydon and Pinner to alter the hours of
+his lectures for various plausible and irritating reasons.
+
+The little passage looked very small and rather bare as the door shut
+behind them, and the worn places that had begun to be conspicuous during
+the last six months, and which they had forgotten during the Swiss
+holiday, reasserted themselves. The dining-room, after spacious rooms
+flooded with sunshine, betrayed how dark it was, and how small. Those
+Bokhara embroideries that had once shone so splendid, now, after Mrs.
+Lee's rich and unlimited harmonies, seemed skimpy and insufficient, mere
+loin-cloths for the artistic nakedness of the home. They felt, too, they
+were beginning to find out their post-impressionist picture. They had
+not remembered it as nearly so crude as it now appeared. The hole a
+flying coal had burnt in the unevenly faded dark-blue carpet looked
+larger than it had ever done before, and was indeed the only thing that
+didn't appear faded and shrunken.
+
+
+Sec. 15
+
+The atmosphere of the Lees' villa had disturbed Marjorie's feelings and
+ideas even more than it had Trafford's. She came back struggling to
+recover those high resolves that had seemed so secure when they had
+walked down to Les Avantes. There was a curiously tormenting memory of
+that vast, admirable nursery, and the princely procession of children
+that would not leave her mind. No effort of her reason could reconcile
+her to the inferiority of Margharita's equipment. She had a detestable
+craving for a uniform for May. But May was going....
+
+But indeed she was not so sure that May was going.
+
+She was no longer buoyantly well, she was full of indefinable
+apprehensions of weakness and failure. She struggled to control an
+insurgence of emotions that rose out of the deeps of her being. She had
+now, she knew, to take on her share of the burden, to become one of the
+Samurai, to show her love no longer as a demand but as a service. Yet
+from day to day she procrastinated under the shadow of apprehended
+things; she forebore to dismiss May, to buy that second-hand typewriter
+she needed, to take any irrevocable step towards the realization of the
+new way of living. She tried to think away her fears, but they would not
+leave her. She felt that Trafford watched her pale face with a furtive
+solicitude and wondered at her hesitations; she tried in vain to seem
+cheerful and careless in his presence, with an anxiety, with
+premonitions that grew daily.
+
+There was no need to worry him unduly....
+
+But soon the matter was beyond all doubting. One night she gathered her
+courage together suddenly and came down into his study in her
+dressing-gown with her hair about her shoulders. She opened the door
+and her heart failed her.
+
+"Rag," she whispered.
+
+"Yes," he said busily from his desk, without looking round.
+
+"I want to speak to you," she answered, and came slowly, and stood
+beside him silently.
+
+"Well, old Marjorie?" he said presently, drawing a little intricate
+pattern in the corner of his blotting paper, and wondering whether this
+was a matter of five pounds or ten.
+
+"I meant so well," she said and caught herself back into silence again.
+
+He started at the thought, at a depth and meaning in her voice, turned
+his chair about to look at her, and discovered she was weeping and
+choking noiselessly. He stood up close to her, moving very slowly and
+silently, his eyes full of this new surmise, and now without word or
+gesture from her he knew his thought was right. "My dear," he whispered.
+
+She turned her face from him. "I meant so well," she sobbed. "My dear! I
+meant so well." Still with an averted face her arms came out to him in a
+desperate, unreasoning appeal for love. He took her and held her close
+to him. "Never mind, dear," he said. "Don't mind." Her passion now was
+unconstrained. "I thought--" he began, and left the thing unsaid.
+
+"But your work," she said; "your research?"
+
+"I must give up research," he said.
+
+"Oh, my dearest!"
+
+"I must give up research," he repeated. "I've been seeing it for days.
+Clearer and clearer. _This_ dear, just settles things. Even--as we were
+coming home in the train--I was making up my mind. At Vevey I was
+talking to Solomonson."
+
+"My dear," she whispered, clinging to him.
+
+"I talked to Solomonson. He had ideas--a proposal."
+
+"No," she said.
+
+"Yes," he said. "I've left the thing too long."
+
+He repeated. "I must give up research--for years. I ought to have done
+it long before."
+
+"I had meant so well," she said. "I meant to work. I meant to deny
+myself...."
+
+"I'm glad," he whispered. "Glad! Why should you weep?" It seemed nothing
+to him then, that so he should take a long farewell to the rare, sweet
+air of that wonderland his mind had loved so dearly. All he remembered
+was that Marjorie was very dear to him, very dear to him, and that all
+her being was now calling out for him and his strength. "I had thought
+anyhow of giving up research," he repeated. "This merely decides. It
+happens to decide. I love you, dear. I put my research at your feet.
+Gladly. This is the end, and I do not care, my dear, at all. I do not
+care at all--seeing I have you...."
+
+He stood beside her for a moment, and then sat down again, sideways,
+upon his chair.
+
+"It isn't you, my dear, or me," he said, "but life that beats us--that
+beautiful, irrational mother.... Life does not care for research or
+knowledge, but only for life. Oh! the world has to go on yet for tens of
+thousands of years before--before we are free for that. I've got to
+fight--as other men fight...."
+
+He thought in silence for a time, oddly regardless of her. "But if it
+was not you," he said, staring at the fireplace with knitted brows, "if
+I did not love you.... Thank God, I love you, dear! Thank God, our
+children are love children! I want to live--to my finger-tips, but if I
+didn't love you--oh! love you! then I think now--I'd be glad--I'd be
+glad, I think, to cheat life of her victory."
+
+"Oh, my dear!" she cried, and clung weeping to him, and caught at him
+and sat herself upon his knees, and put her arms about his head, and
+kissed him passionately with tear-salt lips, with her hair falling upon
+his face.
+
+"My dear," she whispered....
+
+
+Sec. 16
+
+So soon as Trafford could spare an afternoon amidst his crowded
+engagements he went to talk to Solomonson, who was now back in London.
+"Solomonson," he said, "you were talking about rubber at Vevey."
+
+"I remember," said Solomonson with a note of welcome.
+
+"I've thought it over."
+
+"I _thought_ you would."
+
+"I've thought things over. I'm going to give up my professorship--and
+science generally, and come into business--if that is what you are
+meaning."
+
+Solomonson turned his paper-weight round very carefully before replying.
+Then he said: "You mustn't give up your professorship yet, Trafford. For
+the rest--I'm glad."
+
+He reflected, and then his bright eyes glanced up at Trafford. "I knew,"
+he said, "you would."
+
+"I didn't," said Trafford. "Things have happened since."
+
+"Something was bound to happen. You're too good--for what it gave you. I
+didn't talk to you out there for nothing. I saw things.... Let's go
+into the other room, and smoke and talk it over." He stood up as he
+spoke.
+
+"I thought you would," he repeated, leading the way. "I knew you would.
+You see,--one _has_ to. You can't get out of it."
+
+"It was all very well before you were married," said Solomonson,
+stopping short to say it, "but when a man's married he's got to think.
+He can't go on devoting himself to his art and his science and all
+that--not if he's married anything worth having. No. Oh, I understand.
+He's got to look about him, and forget the distant prospect for a bit. I
+saw you'd come to it. _I_ came to it. Had to. I had ambitions--just as
+you have. I've always had an inclination to do a bit of research on my
+own. I _like_ it, you know. Oh! I could have done things. I'm sure I
+could have done things. I'm not a born money-maker. But----." He became
+very close and confidential. "It's----_them_. You said good-bye to
+science for a bit when you flopped me down on that old croquet-lawn,
+Trafford." He went off to reminiscences. "Lord, how we went over! No
+more aviation for me, Trafford!"
+
+He arranged chairs, and produced cigars. "After all--this of
+course--it's interesting. Once you get into the movement of it, it takes
+hold of you. It's a game."
+
+"I've thought over all you said," Trafford began, using premeditated
+phrases. "Bluntly--I want three thousand a year, and I don't make eight
+hundred. It's come home to me. I'm going to have another child."
+
+Solomonson gesticulated a congratulation.
+
+"All the same, I hate dropping research. It's stuff I'm made to do.
+About that, Solomonson, I'm almost superstitious. I could say I had a
+call.... It's the maddest state of affairs! Now that I'm doing
+absolutely my best work for mankind, work I firmly believe no one else
+can do, I just manage to get six hundred--nearly two hundred of my eight
+hundred is my own. What does the world think I could do better--that
+would be worth four times as much."
+
+"The world doesn't think anything at all about it," said Solomonson.
+
+"Suppose it did!"
+
+The thought struck Sir Rupert. He knitted his brows and looked hard
+obliquely at the smoke of his cigar. "Oh, it won't," he said, rejecting
+a disagreeable idea. "There isn't any world--not in that sense. That's
+the mistake you make, Trafford."
+
+"It's not what your work is worth," he explained. "It's what your
+advantages can get for you. People are always going about
+supposing--just what you suppose--that people ought to get paid in
+proportion to the good they do. It's forgetting what the world is, to do
+that. Very likely some day civilization will get to that, but it hasn't
+got to it yet. It isn't going to get to it for hundreds and hundreds of
+years."
+
+His manner became confidential. "Civilization's just a fight,
+Trafford--just as savagery is a fight, and being a wild beast is a
+fight,--only you have paddeder gloves on and there's more rules. We
+aren't out for everybody, we're out for ourselves--and a few friends
+perhaps--within limits. It's no good hurrying ahead and pretending
+civilization's something else, when it isn't. That's where all these
+socialists and people come a howler. Oh, _I_ know the Socialists. I see
+'em at my wife's At Homes. They come along with the literary people and
+the artists' wives and the actors and actresses, and none of them take
+much account of me because I'm just a business man and rather dark and
+short, and so I get a chance of looking at them from the side that isn't
+on show while the other's turned to the women, and they're just as
+fighting as the rest of us, only they humbug more and they don't seem to
+me to have a decent respect for any of the common rules. And that's
+about what it all comes to, Trafford."
+
+Sir Rupert paused, and Trafford was about to speak when the former
+resumed again, his voice very earnest, his eyes shining with purpose. He
+liked Trafford, and he was doing his utmost to make a convincing
+confession of the faith that was in him. "It's when it comes to the
+women," said Sir Rupert, "that one finds it out. That's where _you've_
+found it out. You say, I'm going to devote my life to the service of
+Humanity in general. You'll find Humanity in particular, in the shape of
+all the fine, beautiful, delightful and desirable women you come across,
+preferring a narrower turn of devotion. See? That's all. _Caeteris
+paribus_, of course. That's what I found out, and that's what you've
+found out, and that's what everybody with any sense in his head finds
+out, and there you are."
+
+"You put it--graphically," said Trafford.
+
+"I feel it graphically. I may be all sorts of things, but I do know a
+fact when I see it. I'm here with a few things I want and a woman or so
+I have and want to keep, and the kids upstairs, bless 'em! and I'm in
+league with all the others who want the same sort of things. Against any
+one or anything that upsets us. We stand by the law and each other, and
+that's what it all amounts to. That's as far as my patch of Humanity
+goes. Humanity at large! Humanity be blowed! _Look_ at it! It isn't that
+I'm hostile to Humanity, mind you, but that I'm not disposed to go
+under as I should do if I didn't say that. So I say it. And that's about
+all it is, and there you are."
+
+He regarded Trafford over his cigar, drawing fiercely at it for some
+moments. Then seeing Trafford on the point of speaking, he snatched it
+from his lips, demanded silence by waving it at his hearer, and went on.
+
+"I say all this in order to dispose of any idea that you can keep up the
+open-minded tell-everybody-every-thing scientific attitude if you come
+into business. You can't. Put business in two words and what is it?
+Keeping something from somebody else, and making him pay for it--"
+
+"Oh, look here!" protested Trafford. "That's not the whole of business."
+
+"There's making him want it, of course, advertisement and all that, but
+that falls under making him pay for it, really."
+
+"But a business man organizes public services, consolidates,
+economizes."
+
+Sir Rupert made his mouth look very wide by sucking in the corners.
+"Incidentally," he said, and added after a judicious pause:
+"Sometimes ... I thought we were talking of making money."
+
+"Go on," said Trafford.
+
+"You set me thinking," said Solomonson. "It's the thing I always like
+about you. I tell you, Trafford, I don't believe that the majority of
+people who make money help civilization forward any more than the smoke
+that comes out of the engine helps the train forward. If you put it to
+me, I don't. I've got no illusions of that sort. They're about as much
+help as--fat. They accumulate because things happen to be arranged so."
+
+"Things will be arranged better some day."
+
+"They aren't arranged better now. Grip that! _Now_, it's a sort of
+paradox. If you've got big gifts and you choose to help forward the
+world, if you choose to tell all you know and give away everything you
+can do in the way of work, you've got to give up the ideas of wealth and
+security, and that means fine women and children. You've got to be a
+_deprived_ sort of man. 'All right,' you say, 'That's me!' But how about
+your wife being a deprived sort of woman? Eh? That's where it gets you!
+And meanwhile, you know, while _you_ make your sacrifices and do your
+researches, there'll be little mean sharp active beasts making money all
+over you like maggots on a cheese. And if everybody who'd got gifts and
+altruistic ideas gave themselves up to it, then evidently only the mean
+and greedy lot would breed and have the glory. They'd get everything.
+Every blessed thing. There wouldn't be an option they didn't hold. And
+the other chaps would produce the art and the science and the
+literature, as far as the men who'd got hold of things would let 'em,
+and perish out of the earth altogether.... There you are! Still, that's
+how things are made...."
+
+"But it isn't worth it. It isn't worth extinguishing oneself in order to
+make a world for those others, anyhow. Them and their children. Is it?
+Eh? It's like building a temple for flies to buzz in.... There is such a
+thing as a personal side to Eugenics, you know."
+
+Solomonson reflected over the end of his cigar. "It isn't good enough,"
+he concluded.
+
+"You're infernally right," said Trafford.
+
+"Very well," said Solomonson, "and now we can get to business."
+
+
+Sec. 17
+
+The immediate business was the systematic exploitation of the fact that
+Trafford had worked out the problem of synthesizing indiarubber. He had
+done so with an entire indifference to the commercial possibilities of
+the case, because he had been irritated by the enormous publicity given
+to Behrens' assertion that he had achieved this long-sought end. Of
+course the production of artificial rubbers and rubber-like substances
+had been one of the activities of the synthetic chemist for many years,
+from the appearance of Tilden's isoprene rubber onward, and there was
+already a formidable list of collaterals, dimethybutadiene, and so
+forth, by which the coveted goal could be approached. Behrens had boldly
+added to this list as his own a number of variations upon a theme of
+Trafford's, originally designed to settle certain curiosities about
+elasticity. Behrens' products were not only more massively rubber-like
+than anything that had gone before them, but also extremely cheap to
+produce, and his bold announcement of success had produced a check in
+rubber sales and widespread depression in the quiveringly sensitive
+market of plantation shares. Solomonson had consulted Trafford about
+this matter at Vevey, and had heard with infinite astonishment that
+Trafford had already roughly prepared and was proposing to complete and
+publish, unpatented and absolutely unprotected, first a smashing
+demonstration of the unsoundness of Behrens' claim and then a lucid
+exposition of just what had to be done and what could be done to make an
+indiarubber absolutely indistinguishable from the natural product. The
+business man could not believe his ears.
+
+"My dear chap, positively--you mustn't," Solomonson had screamed, and
+he had opened his fingers and humped his shoulders and for all his
+public school and university training lapsed undisguisedly into the
+Oriental. "Don't you _see_ all you are throwing away?" he squealed.
+
+"I suppose it's our quality to throw such things away," said Trafford,
+when at last Solomonson's point of view became clear to him. They had
+embarked upon a long rambling discussion of that issue of publication, a
+discussion they were now taking up again. "When men dropped that idea of
+concealing knowledge, alchemist gave place to chemist," said Trafford,
+"and all that is worth having in modern life, all that makes it better
+and safer and more hopeful than the ancient life, began."
+
+"My dear fellow," said Solomonson, "I know, I know. But to give away the
+synthesis of rubber! To just shove it out of the window into the street!
+_Gare l'eau!_ O! And when you could do with so much too!"....
+
+Now they resumed the divergent threads of that Vevey talk.
+
+Solomonson had always entertained the warmest friendship and admiration
+for Trafford, and it was no new thing that he should desire a business
+co-operation. He had been working for that in the old days at Riplings;
+he had never altogether let the possibility drop out of sight between
+them in spite of Trafford's repudiations. He believed himself to be a
+scientific man turned to business, but indeed his whole passion was for
+organization and finance. He knew he could do everything but originate,
+and in Trafford he recognized just that rare combination of an obstinate
+and penetrating simplicity with constructive power which is the
+essential blend in the making of great intellectual initiatives. To
+Trafford belonged the secret of novel and unsuspected solutions; what
+were fixed barriers and unsurmountable conditions to trained
+investigators and commonplace minds, would yield to his gift of magic
+inquiry. He could startle the accepted error into self-betrayal. Other
+men might play the game of business infinitely better than
+he--Solomonson knew, indeed, quite well that he himself could play the
+game infinitely better than Trafford--but it rested with Trafford by
+right divine of genius to alter the rules. If only he could be induced
+to alter the rules secretly, unostentatiously, on a business footing,
+instead of making catastrophic plunges into publicity! And everything
+that had made Trafford up to the day of his marriage was antagonistic to
+such strategic reservations. The servant of science has as such no
+concern with personal consequences; his business is the steady,
+relentless clarification of knowledge. The human affairs he changes, the
+wealth he makes or destroys, are no concern of his; once these things
+weigh with him, become primary, he has lost his honour as a scientific
+man.
+
+"But you _must_ think of consequences," Solomonson had cried during
+those intermittent talks at Vevey. "Here you are, shying this cheap
+synthetic rubber of yours into the world--for it's bound to be cheap!
+any one can see that--like a bomb into a market-place. What's the good
+of saying you don't care about the market-place, that _your_ business is
+just to make bombs and drop them out of the window? You smash up things
+just the same. Why! you'll ruin hundreds and thousands of people, people
+living on rubber shares, people working in plantations, old, inadaptable
+workers in rubber works...."
+
+Sir Rupert was now still a little incredulous of Trafford's change of
+purpose, and for a time argued conceded points. Then slowly he came to
+the conditions and methods of the new relationship. He sketched out a
+scheme of co-operation and understandings between his firm and Trafford,
+between them both and his associated group in the city.
+
+Behrens was to have rope and produce his slump in plantation shares,
+then Trafford was to publish his criticism of Behrens, reserving only
+that catalytic process which was his own originality, the process that
+was to convert the inert, theoretically correct synthetic rubber, with a
+mysterious difference in the quality of its phases, into the real right
+thing. With Behrens exploded, plantation shares would recover, and while
+their friends in the city manipulated that, Trafford would resign his
+professorship and engage himself to an ostentatious promotion syndicate
+for the investigation of synthetic rubber. His discovery would follow
+immediately the group had cleared itself of plantation shares; indeed he
+could begin planning the necessary works forthwith; the large scale
+operations in the process were to be protected as far as possible by
+patents, but its essential feature, the addition of a specific catalytic
+agent, could be safely dealt with as a secret process.
+
+"I hate secrecy," said Trafford.
+
+"Business," interjected Solomonson, and went on with his exposition of
+the relative advantages of secrecy and patent rights. It was all a
+matter of just how many people you had to trust. As that number
+increased, the more and more advisable did it become to put your cards
+on the table and risk the complex uncertain protection of the patent
+law. They went into elaborate calculations, clerks were called upon to
+hunt up facts and prices, and the table was presently littered with
+waste arithmetic.
+
+"I believe we can do the stuff at tenpence a pound," said Solomonson,
+leaning back in his chair at last, and rattling his fountain pen between
+his teeth, "so soon, that is, as we deal in quantity. Tenpence! We can
+lower the price and spread the market, sixpence by sixpence. In the
+end--there won't be any more plantations. Have to grow tea.... I say,
+let's have an invalid dinner of chicken and champagne, and go on with
+this. It's fascinating. You can telephone."
+
+They dined together, and Solomonson on champagne rather than chicken.
+His mind, which had never shown an instant's fatigue, began to glow and
+sparkle. This enterprise, he declared, was to be only the first of a
+series of vigorous exploitations. The whole thing warmed him. He would
+rather make ten thousand by such developments, than a hundred thousand
+by mere speculation. Trafford had but scratched the surface of his mine
+of knowledge. "Let's think of other things," said Sir Rupert Solomonson.
+"Diamonds! No! They've got too many tons stowed away already. A diamond
+now--it's an absolutely artificial value. At any time a new discovery
+and one wild proprietor might bust that show. Lord!--diamonds! Metals?
+Of course you've worked the colloids chiefly. I suppose there's been
+more done in metals and alloys than anywhere. There's a lot of other
+substances. Business has hardly begun to touch substances yet, you know,
+Trafford--flexible glass, for example, and things like that. So far
+we've always taken substances for granted. On our side, I mean. It's
+extraordinary how narrow the outlook of business and finance is--still.
+It never seems to lead to things, never thinks ahead. In this case of
+rubber, for example----"
+
+"When men fight for their own hands and for profit and position in the
+next ten years or so, I suppose they tend to become narrow."
+
+"I suppose they must." Sir Rupert's face glowed with a new idea, and his
+voice dropped a little lower. "But what a pull they get, Trafford, if
+perhaps--they don't, eh?"
+
+"No," said Trafford with a smile and a sigh, "the other sort gets the
+pull."
+
+"Not _this_ time," said Solomonson; "not with you to spot processes and
+me to figure out the cost--" he waved his hands to the litter that had
+been removed to a side table--"and generally see how the business end of
+things is going...."
+
+
+
+
+    BOOK THE THIRD
+    MARJORIE AT LONELY HUT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIRST
+
+SUCCESSES
+
+
+Sec. 1
+
+I find it hard to trace the accumulation of moods and feelings that led
+Trafford and Marjorie at last to make their extraordinary raid upon
+Labrador. In a week more things happen in the thoughts of such a man as
+Trafford, changes, revocations, deflections, than one can chronicle in
+the longest of novels. I have already in an earlier passage of this
+story sought to give an image of the confused content of a modern human
+mind, but that pool was to represent a girl of twenty, and Trafford now
+was a man of nearly thirty-five, and touching life at a hundred points
+for one of the undergraduate Marjorie's. Perhaps that made him less
+confused, but it certainly made him fuller. Let me attempt therefore
+only the broad outline of his changes of purpose and activity until I
+come to the crucial mood that made these two lives a little worth
+telling about, amidst the many thousands of such lives that people are
+living to-day....
+
+It took him seven years from his conclusive agreement with Solomonson to
+become a rich and influential man. It took him only seven years, because
+already by the mere accidents of intellectual interest he was in
+possession of knowledge of the very greatest economic importance, and
+because Solomonson was full of that practical loyalty and honesty that
+distinguishes his race. I think that in any case Trafford's vigor and
+subtlety of mind would have achieved the prosperity he had found
+necessary to himself, but it might have been, under less favorable
+auspices, a much longer and more tortuous struggle. Success and security
+were never so abundant nor so easily attained by men with capacity and a
+sense of proportion as they are in the varied and flexible world of
+to-day. We live in an affluent age with a nearly incredible continuous
+fresh increment of power pouring in from mechanical invention, and
+compared with our own, most other periods have been meagre and anxious
+and hard-up times. Our problems are constantly less the problems of
+submission and consolation and continually more problems of
+opportunity....
+
+Trafford found the opening campaign, the operation with the plantation
+shares and his explosion of Behrens' pretensions extremely uncongenial.
+It left upon his mind a confused series of memories of interviews and
+talks in offices for the most part dingy and slovenly, of bales of
+press-cuttings and blue-pencilled financial publications, of unpleasing
+encounters with a number of bright-eyed, flushed, excitable and
+extremely cunning men, of having to be reserved and limited in his talk
+upon all occasions, and of all the worst aspects of Solomonson. All that
+part of the new treatment of life that was to make him rich gave him
+sensations as though he had ceased to wash himself mentally, until he
+regretted his old life in his laboratory as a traveller in a crowded
+night train among filthy people might regret the bathroom he had left
+behind him....
+
+But the development of his manufacture of rubber was an entirely
+different business, and for a time profoundly interesting. It took him
+into a new astonishing world, the world of large-scale manufacture and
+industrial organization. The actual planning of the works was not in
+itself anything essentially new to him. So far as all that went it was
+scarcely more than the problem of arranging an experiment upon a huge
+and permanent scale, and all that quick ingenuity, that freshness and
+directness of mind that had made his purely scientific work so admirable
+had ample and agreeable scope. Even the importance of cost and economy
+at every point in the process involved no system of considerations that
+was altogether novel to him. The British investigator knows only too
+well the necessity for husbanded material and inexpensive substitutes.
+But strange factors came in, a new region of interest was opened with
+the fact that instead of one experimenter working with the alert
+responsive assistance of Durgan, a multitude of human beings--even in
+the first drafts of his project they numbered already two hundred,
+before the handling and packing could be considered--had to watch,
+control, assist or perform every stage in a long elaborate synthesis.
+For the first time in his life Trafford encountered the reality of
+Labour, as it is known to the modern producer.
+
+It will be difficult in the future, when things now subtly or widely
+separated have been brought together by the receding perspectives of
+time, for the historian to realize just how completely out of the
+thoughts of such a young man as Trafford the millions of people who live
+and die in organized productive industry had been. That vast world of
+toil and weekly anxiety, ill-trained and stupidly directed effort and
+mental and moral feebleness, had been as much beyond the living circle
+of his experience as the hosts of Genghis Khan or the social life of the
+Forbidden City. Consider the limitations of his world. In all his life
+hitherto he had never been beyond a certain prescribed area of London's
+immensities, except by the most casual and uninstructive straying. He
+knew Chelsea and Kensington and the north bank and (as a boy) Battersea
+Park, and all the strip between Kensington and Charing Cross, with some
+scraps of the Strand as far as the Law Courts, a shop or so in Tottenham
+Court Road and fragments about the British Museum and Holborn and
+Regent's Park, a range up Edgware Road to Maida Vale, the routes west
+and south-west through Uxbridge and Putney to the country, and Wimbledon
+Common and Putney Heath. He had never been on Hampstead Heath nor
+visited the Botanical Gardens nor gone down the Thames below London
+Bridge, nor seen Sydenham nor Epping Forest nor the Victoria Park. Take
+a map and blot all he knew and see how vast is the area left untouched.
+All industrial London, all wholesale London, great oceans of human
+beings fall into that excluded area. The homes he knew were comfortable
+homes, the poor he knew were the parasitic and dependent poor of the
+West, the shops, good retail shops, the factories for the most part
+engaged in dressmaking.
+
+Of course he had been informed about this vast rest of London. He knew
+that as a matter of fact it existed, was populous, portentous, puzzling.
+He had heard of "slums," read "Tales of Mean Streets," and marvelled in
+a shallow transitory way at such wide wildernesses of life, apparently
+supported by nothing at all in a state of grey, darkling but prolific
+discomfort. Like the princess who wondered why the people having no
+bread did not eat cake, he could never clearly understand why the
+population remained there, did not migrate to more attractive
+surroundings. He had discussed the problems of those wildernesses as
+young men do, rather confidently, very ignorantly, had dismissed them,
+recurred to them, and forgotten them amidst a press of other interests,
+but now it all suddenly became real to him with the intensity of a
+startling and intimate contact. He discovered this limitless, unknown,
+greater London, this London of the majority, as if he had never thought
+of it before. He went out to inspect favourable sites in regions whose
+very names were unfamiliar to him, travelled on dirty little intraurban
+railway lines to hitherto unimagined railway stations, found parks,
+churches, workhouses, institutions, public-houses, canals, factories,
+gas-works, warehouses, foundries and sidings, amidst a multitudinous
+dinginess of mean houses, shabby back-yards, and ill-kept streets. There
+seemed to be no limits to this thread-bare side of London, it went on
+northward, eastward, and over the Thames southward, for mile after
+mile--endlessly. The factories and so forth clustered in lines and banks
+upon the means of communication, the homes stretched between, and
+infinitude of parallelograms of grimy boxes with public-houses at the
+corners and churches and chapels in odd places, towering over which rose
+the council schools, big, blunt, truncated-looking masses, the means to
+an education as blunt and truncated, born of tradition and confused
+purposes, achieving by accident what they achieve at all.
+
+And about this sordid-looking wilderness went a population that seemed
+at first as sordid. It was in no sense a tragic population. But it saw
+little of the sun, felt the wind but rarely, and so had a white, dull
+skin that looked degenerate and ominous to a West-end eye. It was not
+naked nor barefooted, but it wore cheap clothes that were tawdry when
+new, and speedily became faded, discoloured, dusty, and draggled. It was
+slovenly and almost wilfully ugly in its speech and gestures. And the
+food it ate was rough and coarse if abundant, the eggs it consumed
+"tasted"--everything "tasted"; its milk, its beer, its bread was
+degraded by base adulterations, its meat was hacked red stuff that hung
+in the dusty air until it was sold; east of the city Trafford could find
+no place where by his standards he could get a tolerable meal tolerably
+served. The entertainment of this eastern London was jingle, its
+religion clap-trap, its reading feeble and sensational rubbish without
+kindliness or breadth. And if this great industrial multitude was
+neither tortured nor driven nor cruelly treated--as the slaves and
+common people of other days have been--yet it was universally anxious,
+perpetually anxious about urgent small necessities and petty
+dissatisfying things....
+
+That was the general effect of this new region in which he had sought
+out and found the fortunate site for his manufacture of rubber, and
+against this background it was that he had now to encounter a crowd of
+selected individuals, and weld them into a harmonious and successful
+"process." They came out from their millions to him, dingy, clumsy, and
+at first it seemed without any individuality. Insensibly they took on
+character, rounded off by unaccustomed methods into persons as marked
+and distinctive as any he had known.
+
+There was Dowd, for instance, the technical assistant, whom he came to
+call in his private thoughts Dowd the Disinherited. Dowd had seemed a
+rather awkward, potentially insubordinate young man of unaccountably
+extensive and curiously limited attainments. He had begun his career in
+a crowded home behind and above a baker's shop in Hoxton, he had gone as
+a boy into the works of a Clerkenwell electric engineer, and there he
+had developed that craving for knowledge which is so common in poor men
+of the energetic type. He had gone to classes, read with a sort of
+fury, feeding his mind on the cheap and adulterated instruction of
+grant-earning crammers and on stale, meretricious and ill-chosen books;
+his mental food indeed was the exact parallel of the rough, abundant,
+cheap and nasty groceries and meat that gave the East-ender his spots
+and dyspeptic complexion, the cheap text-books were like canned meat and
+dangerous with intellectual ptomaines, the rascally encyclopaedias like
+weak and whitened bread, and Dowd's mental complexion, too, was leaden
+and spotted. Yet essentially he wasn't, Trafford found, by any means bad
+stuff; where his knowledge had had a chance of touching reality it
+became admirable, and he was full of energy in his work and a sort of
+honest zeal about the things of the mind. The two men grew from an acute
+mutual criticism into a mutual respect.
+
+At first it seemed to Trafford that when he met Dowd he was only meeting
+Dowd, but a time came when it seemed to him that in meeting Dowd he was
+meeting all that vast new England outside the range of ruling-class
+dreams, that multitudinous greater England, cheaply treated, rather out
+of health, angry, energetic and now becoming intelligent and critical,
+that England which organized industrialism has created. There were
+nights when he thought for hours about Dowd. Other figures grouped
+themselves round him--Markham, the head clerk, the quintessence of
+East-end respectability, who saw to the packing; Miss Peckover, an
+ex-telegraph operator, a woman so entirely reliable and unobservant that
+the most betraying phase of the secret process could be confidently
+entrusted to her hands. Behind them were clerks, workmen, motor-van men,
+work-girls, a crowd of wage-earners, from amidst which some individual
+would assume temporary importance and interest by doing something
+wrong, getting into trouble, becoming insubordinate, and having
+contributed a little vivid story to Trafford's gathering impressions of
+life, drop back again into undistinguished subordination.
+
+Dowd became at last entirely representative.
+
+When first Trafford looked Dowd in the eye, he met something of the
+hostile interest one might encounter in a swordsman ready to begin a
+duel. There was a watchfulness, an immense reserve. They discussed the
+work and the terms of their relationship, and all the while Trafford
+felt there was something almost threateningly not mentioned.
+
+Presently he learnt from a Silvertown employer what that concealed
+aspect was. Dowd was "that sort of man who makes trouble," disposed to
+strike rather than not upon a grievance, with a taste for open-air
+meetings, a member, obstinately adherent in spite of friendly
+remonstrance, of the Social Democratic Party. This in spite of his clear
+duty to a wife and two small white knobby children. For a time he would
+not talk to Trafford of anything but business--Trafford was so
+manifestly the enemy, not to be trusted, the adventurous plutocrat, the
+exploiter--when at last Dowd did open out he did so defiantly, throwing
+opinions at Trafford as a mob might hurl bricks at windows. At last they
+achieved a sort of friendship and understanding, an amiability as it
+were, in hostility, but never from first to last would he talk to
+Trafford as one gentleman to another; between them, and crossed only by
+flimsy, temporary bridges, was his sense of incurable grievances and
+fundamental injustice. He seemed incapable of forgetting the
+disadvantages of his birth and upbringing, the inferiority and disorder
+of the house that sheltered him, the poor food that nourished him, the
+deadened air he breathed, the limited leisure, the inadequate books.
+Implicit in his every word and act was the assurance that but for this
+handicap he could have filled Trafford's place, while Trafford would
+certainly have failed in his.
+
+For all these things Dowd made Trafford responsible; he held him to that
+inexorably.
+
+"_You_ sweat us," he said, speaking between his teeth; "_you_ limit us,
+_you_ stifle us, and away there in the West-end, _you_ and the women you
+keep waste the plunder."
+
+Trafford attempted palliation. "After all," he said, "it's not me so
+particularly----"
+
+"But it is," said Dowd.
+
+"It's the system things go upon."
+
+"You're the responsible part of it. _You_ have freedom, _you_ have power
+and endless opportunity--"
+
+Trafford shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It's because your sort wants too much," said Dowd, "that my sort hasn't
+enough."
+
+"Tell me how to organize things better."
+
+"Much you'd care. They'll organize themselves. Everything is drifting to
+class separation, the growing discontent, the growing hardship of the
+masses.... Then you'll see."
+
+"Then what's going to happen?"
+
+"Overthrow. And social democracy."
+
+"How is that going to work?"
+
+Dowd had been cornered by that before. "I don't care if it _doesn't_
+work," he snarled, "so long as we smash up this. We're getting too sick
+to care what comes after."
+
+"Dowd," said Trafford abruptly, "_I'm_ not so satisfied with things."
+
+Dowd looked at him askance. "You'll get reconciled to it," he said. "It's
+ugly here--but it's all right there--at the spending end.... Your sort
+has got to grab, your sort has got to spend--until the thing works out
+and the social revolution makes an end of you."
+
+"And then?"
+
+Dowd became busy with his work.
+
+Trafford stuck his hands in his pockets and stared out of the dingy
+factory window.
+
+"I don't object so much to your diagnosis," he said, "as to your remedy.
+It doesn't strike me as a remedy."
+
+"It's an end," said Dowd, "anyhow. My God! When I think of all the women
+and shirkers flaunting and frittering away there in the West, while here
+men and women toil and worry and starve...." He stopped short like one
+who feels too full for controlled speech.
+
+"Dowd," said Trafford after a fair pause, "What would you do if you were
+me?"
+
+"Do?" said Dowd.
+
+"Yes," said Trafford as one who reconsiders it, "what would you do?"
+
+"Now that's a curious question, Mr. Trafford," said Dowd, turning to
+regard him. "Meaning--if I were in your place?"
+
+"Yes," said Trafford. "What would you do in my place?"
+
+"I should sell out of this place jolly quick," he said.
+
+"_Sell!_" said Trafford softly.
+
+"Yes--sell. And start a socialist daily right off. An absolutely
+independent, unbiassed socialist daily."
+
+"And what would that do?"
+
+"It would stir people up. Every day it would stir people up."
+
+"But you see I can't edit. I haven't the money for half a year of a
+socialist daily.... And meanwhile people want rubber."
+
+Dowd shook his head. "You mean that you and your wife want to have the
+spending of six or eight thousand a year," he said.
+
+"I don't make half of that," said Trafford.
+
+"Well--half of that," pressed Dowd. "It's all the same to me."
+
+Trafford reflected. "The point where I don't agree with you," he said,
+"is in supposing that my scale of living--over there, is directly
+connected with the scale of living--about here."
+
+"Well, isn't it?"
+
+"'Directly,' I said. No. If we just stopped it--over there--there'd be
+no improvement here. In fact, for a time it would mean dislocations. It
+might mean permanent, hopeless, catastrophic dislocation. You know that
+as well as I do. Suppose the West-end became--Tolstoyan; the East would
+become chaos."
+
+"Not much likelihood," sneered Dowd.
+
+"That's another question. That we earn together here and that I spend
+alone over there, it's unjust and bad, but it isn't a thing that admits
+of any simple remedy. Where we differ, Dowd, is about that remedy. I
+admit the disease as fully as you do. I, as much as you, want to see the
+dawn of a great change in the ways of human living. But I don't think
+the diagnosis is complete and satisfactory; our problem is an intricate
+muddle of disorders, not one simple disorder, and I don't see what
+treatment is indicated."
+
+"Socialism," said Dowd, "is indicated."
+
+"You might as well say that health is indicated," said Trafford with a
+note of impatience in his voice. "Does any one question that if we
+could have this socialist state in which every one is devoted and every
+one is free, in which there is no waste and no want, and beauty and
+brotherhood prevail universally, we wouldn't? But----. You socialists
+have no scheme of government, no scheme of economic organization, no
+intelligible guarantees of personal liberty, no method of progress, no
+ideas about marriage, no plan--except those little pickpocket plans of
+the Fabians that you despise as much as I do--for making this order into
+that other order you've never yet taken the trouble to work out even in
+principle. Really you know, Dowd, what is the good of pointing at my
+wife's dresses and waving the red flag at me, and talking of human
+miseries----"
+
+"It seems to wake you up a bit," said Dowd with characteristic
+irrelevance.
+
+
+Sec. 2
+
+The accusing finger of Dowd followed Trafford into his dreams.
+
+Behind it was his grey-toned, intelligent, resentful face, his
+smouldering eyes, his slightly frayed collar and vivid, ill-chosen tie.
+At times Trafford could almost hear his flat insistent voice, his
+measured h-less speech. Dowd was so penetratingly right,--and so
+ignorant of certain essentials, so wrong in his forecasts and ultimates.
+It was true beyond disputing that Trafford as compared with Dowd had
+opportunity, power of a sort, the prospect and possibility of leisure.
+He admitted the liability that followed on that advantage. It expressed
+so entirely the spirit of his training that with Trafford the noble
+maxim of the older socialists; "from each according to his ability, to
+each according to his need," received an intuitive acquiescence. He had
+no more doubt than Dowd that Dowd was the victim of a subtle evasive
+injustice, innocently and helplessly underbred, underfed, cramped and
+crippled, and that all his own surplus made him in a sense Dowd's
+debtor.
+
+But Dowd's remedies!
+
+Trafford made himself familiar with the socialist and labor newspapers,
+and he was as much impressed by their honest resentments and their
+enthusiastic hopefulness as he was repelled by their haste and
+ignorance, their cocksure confidence in untried reforms and impudent
+teachers, their indiscriminating progressiveness, their impulsive lapses
+into hatred, misrepresentation and vehement personal abuse. He was in no
+mood for the humours of human character, and he found the ill-masked
+feuds and jealousies of the leaders, the sham statecraft of G. B.
+Magdeberg, M.P., the sham Machiavellism of Dorvil, the sham persistent
+good-heartedness of Will Pipes, discouraging and irritating. Altogether
+it seemed to him the conscious popular movement in politics, both in and
+out of Parliament, was a mere formless and indeterminate aspiration. It
+was a confused part of the general confusion, symptomatic perhaps, but
+exercising no controls and no direction.
+
+His attention passed from the consideration of this completely
+revolutionary party to the general field of social reform. With the
+naive directness of a scientific man, he got together the published
+literature of half a dozen flourishing agitations and philanthropies,
+interviewed prominent and rather embarrassed personages, attended
+meetings, and when he found the speeches too tiresome to follow watched
+the audience about him. He even looked up Aunt Plessington's Movement,
+and filled her with wild hopes and premature boastings about a
+promising convert. "Marjorie's brought him round at last!" said Aunt
+Plessington. "I knew I could trust my little Madge!" His impression was
+not the cynic's impression of these wide shallows of activity. Progress
+and social reform are not, he saw, mere cloaks of hypocrisy; a wealth of
+good intention lies behind them in spite of their manifest futility.
+There is much dishonesty due to the blundering desire for consistency in
+people of hasty intention, much artless and a little calculated
+self-seeking, but far more vanity and amiable feebleness of mind in
+their general attainment of failure. The Plessingtons struck him as
+being after all very typical of the publicist at large, quite devoted,
+very industrious, extremely presumptuous and essentially thin-witted.
+They would cheat like ill-bred children for example, on some petty point
+of reputation, but they could be trusted to expend, ineffectually
+indeed, but with the extremest technical integrity, whatever sums of
+money their adherents could get together....
+
+He emerged from this inquiry into the proposed remedies and palliatives
+for Dowd's wrongs with a better opinion of people's hearts and a worse
+one of their heads than he had hitherto entertained.
+
+Pursuing this line of thought he passed from the politicians and
+practical workers to the economists and sociologists. He spent the
+entire leisure of the second summer after the establishment of the
+factory upon sociological and economic literature. At the end of that
+bout of reading he attained a vivid realization of the garrulous badness
+that rules in this field of work, and the prevailing slovenliness and
+negligence in regard to it. He chanced one day to look up the article on
+Socialism in the new Encyclopaedia Britannica, and found in its entire
+failure to state the case for or against modern Socialism, to trace its
+origins, or to indicate any rational development in the movement, a
+symptom of the universal laxity of interest in these matters. Indeed,
+the writer did not appear to have heard of modern Socialism at all; he
+discussed collective and individualist methods very much as a rather
+ill-read schoolgirl in a hurry for her college debating society might
+have done. Compared with the treatment of engineering or biological
+science in the same compilation, this article became almost symbolical
+of the prevailing habitual incompetence with which all this system of
+questions is still handled. The sciences were done scantily and
+carelessly enough, but they admitted at any rate the possibility of
+completeness; this did not even pretend to thoroughness.
+
+One might think such things had no practical significance. And at the
+back of it all was Dowd, remarkably more impatient each year, confessing
+the failure of parliamentary methods, of trades unionism, hinting more
+and more plainly at the advent of a permanent guerilla war against
+capital, at the general strike and sabotage.
+
+"It's coming to that," said Dowd; "it's coming to that."
+
+"_What's the good of it?_" he said, echoing Trafford's words. "It's a
+sort of relief to the feelings. Why shouldn't we?"
+
+
+Sec. 3
+
+But you must not suppose that at any time these huge grey problems of
+our social foundations and the riddle of intellectual confusion one
+reaches through them, and the yet broader riddles of human purpose that
+open beyond, constitute the whole of Trafford's life during this time.
+When he came back to Marjorie and his home, a curtain of unreality fell
+between him and all these things. It was as if he stepped through such
+boundaries as Alice passed to reach her Wonderland; the other world
+became a dream again; as if he closed the pages of a vivid book and
+turned to things about him. Or again it was as if he drew down the blind
+of a window that gave upon a landscape, grave, darkling, ominous, and
+faced the warm realities of a brightly illuminated room....
+
+In a year or so he had the works so smoothly organized and Dowd so
+reconciled, trained and encouraged that his own daily presence was
+unnecessary, and he would go only three and then only two mornings a
+week to conduct those secret phases in the preparation of his catalytic
+that even Dowd could not be trusted to know. He reverted more and more
+completely to his own proper world.
+
+And the first shock of discovering that greater London which "isn't in
+it" passed away by imperceptible degrees. Things that had been as vivid
+and startling as new wounds became unstimulating and ineffective with
+repetition. He got used to the change from Belgravia to East Ham, from
+East Ham to Belgravia. He fell in with the unusual persuasion in
+Belgravia, that, given a firm and prompt Home Secretary, East Ham could
+be trusted to go on--for quite a long time anyhow. One cannot sit down
+for all one's life in the face of insoluble problems. He had a motor-car
+now that far outshone Magnet's, and he made the transit from west to
+east in the minimum of time and with the minimum of friction. It ceased
+to be more disconcerting that he should have workers whom he could
+dismiss at a week's notice to want or prostitution than that he should
+have a servant waiting behind his chair. Things were so. The main
+current of his life--and the main current of his life flowed through
+Marjorie and his home--carried him on. Rubber was his, but there were
+still limitless worlds to conquer. He began to take up, working under
+circumstances of considerable secrecy at Solomonson's laboratories at
+Riplings, to which he would now go by motor-car for two or three days at
+a time, the possibility of a cheap, resilient and very tough substance,
+rubber glass, that was to be, Solomonson was assured, the road surface
+of the future.
+
+
+Sec. 4
+
+The confidence of Solomonson had made it impossible for Trafford to
+alter his style of living almost directly upon the conclusion of their
+agreement. He went back to Marjorie to broach a financially emancipated
+phase. They took a furnished house at Shackleford, near Godalming in
+Surrey, and there they lived for nearly a year--using their Chelsea home
+only as a town apartment for Trafford when business held him in London.
+And there it was, in the pretty Surrey country, with the sweet air of
+pine and heather in Marjorie's blood, that their second child was born.
+It was a sturdy little boy, whose only danger in life seemed to be the
+superfluous energy with which he resented its slightest disrespect of
+his small but important requirements.
+
+When it was time for Marjorie to return to London, spring had come round
+again, and Trafford's conceptions of life were adapting themselves to
+the new scale upon which they were now to do things. While he was busy
+creating his factory in the East End, Marjorie was displaying an equal
+if a less original constructive energy in Sussex Square, near Lancaster
+Gate, for there it was the new home was to be established. She set
+herself to furnish and arrange it so as to produce the maximum of
+surprise and chagrin in Daphne, and she succeeded admirably. The Magnets
+now occupied a flat in Whitehall Court, the furniture Magnet had
+insisted upon buying himself with all the occult cunning of the humorist
+in these matters, and not even Daphne could blind herself to the
+superiority both in arrangement and detail of Marjorie's home. That was
+very satisfactory, and so too was the inevitable exaggeration of
+Trafford's financial importance. "He can do what he likes in the rubber
+world," said Marjorie. "In Mincing Lane, where they deal in rubber
+shares, they used to call him and Sir Rupert the invaders; now they call
+them the Conquering Heroes.... Of course, it's mere child's play to
+Godwin, but, as he said, 'We want money.' It won't really interfere with
+his more important interests...."
+
+I do not know why both those sisters were more vulgarly competitive with
+each other than with any one else; I have merely to record the fact that
+they were so.
+
+The effect upon the rest of Marjorie's family was equally gratifying.
+Mr. Pope came to the house-warming as though he had never had the
+slightest objection to Trafford's antecedents, and told him casually
+after dinner that Marjorie had always been his favourite daughter, and
+that from the first he had expected great things of her. He told Magnet,
+who was the third man of the party, that he only hoped Syd and Rom would
+do as well as their elder sisters. Afterwards, in the drawing-room, he
+whacked Marjorie suddenly and very startlingly on the shoulder-blade--it
+was the first bruise he had given her since Buryhamstreet days. "You've
+made a man of him, Maggots," he said.
+
+The quiet smile of the Christian Scientist was becoming now the fixed
+expression of Mrs. Pope's face, and it scarcely relaxed for a moment as
+she surveyed her daughter's splendours. She had triumphantly refused to
+worry over a rather serious speculative disappointment, but her faith in
+her prophet's spiritual power had been strengthened rather than weakened
+by the manifest insufficiency of his financial prestidigitations, and
+she was getting through life quite radiantly now, smiling at (but not,
+of course, giving way to) beggars, smiling at toothaches and headaches,
+both her own and other people's, smiling away doubts, smiling away
+everything that bows the spirit of those who are still in the bonds of
+the flesh....
+
+Afterwards the children came round, Syd and Rom now with skirts down and
+hair up, and rather stiff in the fine big rooms, and Theodore in a high
+collar and very anxious to get Trafford on his side in his ambition to
+chuck a proposed bank clerkship and go in for professional aviation....
+
+It was pleasant to be respected by her family again, but the mind of
+Marjorie was soon reaching out to the more novel possibilities of her
+changed position. She need no longer confine herself to teas and
+afternoons. She could now, delightful thought! give dinners. Dinners are
+mere vulgarities for the vulgar, but in the measure of your brains does
+a dinner become a work of art. There is the happy blending of a modern
+and distinguished simplicity with a choice of items essentially good and
+delightful and just a little bit not what was expected. There is the
+still more interesting and difficult blending and arrangement of the
+diners. From the first Marjorie resolved on a round table, and the
+achievement of that rare and wonderful thing, general conversation. She
+had a clear centre, with a circle of silver bowls filled with short cut
+flowers and low shaded, old silver candlesticks adapted to the electric
+light. The first dinner was a nervous experience for her, but happily
+Trafford seemed unconscious of the importance of the occasion and talked
+very easily and well; at last she attained her old ambition to see Sir
+Roderick Dover in her house, and there was Remington, the editor of the
+_Blue Weekly_ and his silent gracious wife; Edward Crampton, the
+historian, full of surprising new facts about Kosciusko; the Solomonsons
+and Mrs. Millingham, and Mary Gasthorne the novelist. It was a good
+talking lot. Remington sparred agreeably with the old Toryism of Dover,
+flank attacks upon them both were delivered by Mrs. Millingham and
+Trafford, Crampton instanced Hungarian parallels, and was happily
+averted by Mary Gasthorne with travel experiences in the Carpathians;
+the diamonds of Lady Solomonson and Mrs. Remington flashed and winked
+across the shining table, as their wearers listened with unmistakable
+intelligence, and when the ladies had gone upstairs Sir Rupert
+Solomonson told all the men exactly what he thought of the policy of the
+_Blue Weekly_, a balanced, common-sense judgment. Upstairs Lady
+Solomonson betrayed a passion of admiration for Mrs. Remington, and Mrs.
+Millingham mumbled depreciation of the same lady's intelligence in Mary
+Gasthorne's unwilling ear. "She's _passive_," said Mrs. Millingham. "She
+bores him...."
+
+For a time Marjorie found dinner-giving delightful--it is like picking
+and arranging posies of human flowers--and fruits--and perhaps a little
+dried grass, and it was not long before she learnt that she was esteemed
+a success as a hostess. She gathered her earlier bunches in the Carmel
+and Solomonson circle, with a stiffening from among the literary and
+scientific friends of Trafford and his mother, and one or two casual and
+undervalued blossoms from Aunt Plessington's active promiscuities. She
+had soon a gaily flowering garden of her own to pick from. Its strength
+and finest display lay in its increasing proportion of political
+intellectuals, men in and about the House who relaxed their minds from
+the tense detailed alertness needed in political intrigues by
+conversation that rose at times to the level of the smarter sort of
+article in the half-crown reviews. The women were more difficult than
+the men, and Marjorie found herself wishing at times that girl novelists
+and playwrights were more abundant, or women writers on the average
+younger. These talked generally well, and one or two capable women of
+her own type talked and listened with an effect of talking; so many
+other women either chattered disturbingly, or else did not listen, with
+an effect of not talking at all, and so made gaps about the table. Many
+of these latter had to be asked because they belonged to the class of
+inevitable wives, _sine-qua-nons_, and through them she learnt the value
+of that priceless variety of kindly unselfish men who can create the
+illusion of attentive conversation in the most uncomfortable and
+suspicious natures without producing backwater and eddy in the general
+flow of talk.
+
+Indisputably Marjorie's dinners were successful. Of course, the
+abundance and aesthetic achievements of Mrs. Lee still seemed to her
+immeasurably out of reach, but it was already possible to show Aunt
+Plessington how the thing ought really to be done, Aunt Plessington with
+her narrow, lank, austerely served table, with a sort of quarter-deck at
+her own end and a subjugated forecastle round Hubert. And accordingly
+the Plessingtons were invited and shown, and to a party, too, that
+restrained Aunt Plessington from her usual conversational prominence....
+
+These opening years of Trafford's commercial phase were full of an
+engaging activity for Marjorie as for him, and for her far more
+completely than for him were the profounder solicitudes of life lost
+sight of in the bright succession of immediate events.
+
+Marjorie did not let her social development interfere with her duty to
+society in the larger sense. Two years after the vigorous and resentful
+Godwin came a second son, and a year and a half later a third. "That's
+enough," said Marjorie, "now we've got to rear them." The nursery at
+Sussex Square had always been a show part of the house, but it became
+her crowning achievement. She had never forgotten the Lee display at
+Vevey, the shining splendours of modern maternity, the books, the
+apparatus, the space and light and air. The whole second floor was
+altered to accommodate these four triumphant beings, who absorbed the
+services of two nurses, a Swiss nursery governess and two
+housemaids--not to mention those several hundred obscure individuals who
+were yielding a sustaining profit in the East End. At any rate, they
+were very handsome and promising children, and little Margharita could
+talk three languages with a childish fluency, and invent and write a
+short fable in either French or German--with only as much misspelling as
+any child of eight may be permitted....
+
+Then there sprang up a competition between Marjorie and the able, pretty
+wife of Halford Wallace, most promising of under-secretaries. They gave
+dinners against each other, they discovered young artists against each
+other, they went to first-nights and dressed against each other.
+Marjorie was ruddy and tall, Mrs. Halford Wallace dark and animated;
+Halford Wallace admired Marjorie, Trafford was insensible to Mrs.
+Halford Wallace. They played for points so vague that it was impossible
+for any one to say which was winning, but none the less they played like
+artists, for all they were worth....
+
+Trafford's rapid prosperity and his implicit promise of still wider
+activities and successes brought him innumerable acquaintances and many
+friends. He joined two or three distinguished clubs, he derived an
+uncertain interest from a series of week-end visits to ample,
+good-mannered households, and for a time he found a distraction in
+little flashes of travel to countries that caught at his imagination,
+Morocco, Montenegro, Southern Russia.
+
+I do not know whether Marjorie might not have been altogether happy
+during this early Sussex Square period, if it had not been for an
+unconquerable uncertainty about Trafford. But ever and again she became
+vaguely apprehensive of some perplexing unreality in her position. She
+had never had any such profundity of discontent as he experienced. It
+was nothing clear, nothing that actually penetrated, distressing her. It
+was at most an uneasiness. For him the whole fabric of life was, as it
+were, torn and pieced by a provocative sense of depths unplumbed that
+robbed it of all its satisfactions. For her these glimpses were as yet
+rare, mere moments of doubt that passed again and left her active and
+assured.
+
+
+Sec. 5
+
+It was only after they had been married six or seven years that Trafford
+began to realize how widely his attitudes to Marjorie varied. He emerged
+slowly from a naive unconsciousness of his fluctuations,--a naive
+unconsciousness of inconsistency that for most men and women remains
+throughout life. His ruling idea that she and he were friends, equals,
+confederates, knowing everything about each other, co-operating in
+everything, was very fixed and firm. But indeed that had become the
+remotest rendering of their relationship. Their lives were lives of
+intimate disengagement. They came nearest to fellowship in relation to
+their children; there they shared an immense common pride. Beyond that
+was a less confident appreciation of their common house and their joint
+effect. And then they liked and loved each other tremendously. They
+could play upon each other and please each other in a hundred different
+ways, and they did so, quite consciously, observing each other with the
+completest externality. She was still in many ways for him the bright
+girl he had admired in the examination, still the mysterious dignified
+transfiguration of that delightful creature on the tragically tender
+verge of motherhood; these memories were of more power with him than the
+present realities of her full-grown strength and capacity. He petted and
+played with the girl still; he was still tender and solicitous for that
+early woman. He admired and co-operated also with the capable, narrowly
+ambitious, beautiful lady into which Marjorie had developed, but those
+remoter experiences it was that gave the deeper emotions to their
+relationship.
+
+The conflict of aims that had at last brought Trafford from scientific
+investigation into business, had left behind it a little scar of
+hostility. He felt his sacrifice. He felt that he had given something
+for her that she had had no right to exact, that he had gone beyond the
+free mutualities of honest love and paid a price for her; he had
+deflected the whole course of his life for her and he was entitled to
+repayments. Unconsciously he had become a slightly jealous husband. He
+resented inattentions and absences. He felt she ought to be with him and
+orient all her proceedings towards him. He did not like other people to
+show too marked an appreciation of her. She had a healthy love of
+admiration, and in addition her social ambitions made it almost
+inevitable that at times she should use her great personal charm to
+secure and retain adherents. He was ashamed to betray the resentments
+thus occasioned, and his silence widened the separation more than any
+protest could have done....
+
+For his own part he gave her no cause for a reciprocal jealousy. Other
+women did not excite his imagination very greatly, and he had none of
+the ready disposition to lapse to other comforters which is so frequent
+a characteristic of the husband out of touch with his life's companion.
+He was perhaps an exceptional man in his steadfast loyalty to his wife.
+He had come to her as new to love as she had been. He had never in his
+life taken that one decisive illicit step which changes all the aspects
+of sexual life for a man even more than for a woman. Love for him was a
+thing solemn, simple, and unspoilt. He perceived that it was not so for
+most other men, but that did little to modify his own private attitude.
+In his curious scrutiny of the people about him, he did not fail to note
+the drift of adventures and infidelities that glimmers along beneath the
+even surface of our social life. One or two of his intimate friends,
+Solomonson was one of them, passed through "affairs." Once or twice
+those dim proceedings splashed upward to the surface in an open scandal.
+There came Remington's startling elopement with Isabel Rivers, the
+writer, which took two brilliant and inspiring contemporaries suddenly
+and distressingly out of Trafford's world. Trafford felt none of that
+rage and forced and jealous contempt for the delinquents in these
+matters which is common in the ill-regulated, virtuous mind. Indeed, he
+was far more sympathetic with than hostile to the offenders. He had
+brains and imagination to appreciate the grim pathos of a process that
+begins as a hopeful quest, full of the suggestion of noble
+possibilities, full of the craving for missed intensities of fellowship
+and realization, that loiters involuntarily towards beauties and
+delights, and ends at last too often after gratification of an appetite,
+in artificially hideous exposures, and the pelting misrepresentations of
+the timidly well-behaved vile. But the general effect of pitiful
+evasions, of unavoidable meannesses, of draggled heroics and tortuously
+insincere explanations confirmed him in his aversion from this
+labyrinthine trouble of extraneous love....
+
+But if Trafford was a faithful husband, he ceased to be a happy and
+confident one. There grew up in him a vast hinterland of thoughts and
+feelings, an accumulation of unspoken and largely of unformulated things
+in which his wife had no share. And it was in that hinterland that his
+essential self had its abiding place....
+
+It came as a discovery; it remained for ever after a profoundly
+disturbing perplexity that he had talked to Marjorie most carelessly,
+easily and seriously, during their courtship and their honeymoon. He
+remembered their early intercourse now as an immense happy freedom in
+love. Then afterwards a curtain had fallen. That almost delirious sense
+of escaping from oneself, of having at last found some one from whom
+there need be no concealment, some one before whom one could stand
+naked-souled and assured of love as one stands before one's God, faded
+so that he scarce observed its passing, but only discovered at last
+that it had gone. He misunderstood and met misunderstanding. He found he
+could hurt her by the things he said, and be exquisitely hurt by her
+failure to apprehend the spirit of some ill-expressed intention. And it
+was so vitally important not to hurt, not to be hurt. At first he only
+perceived that he reserved himself; then there came the intimation of
+the question, was she also perhaps in such another hinterland as his,
+keeping herself from him?
+
+He had perceived the cessation of that first bright outbreak of
+self-revelation, this relapse into the secrecies of individuality, quite
+early in their married life. I have already told of his first efforts to
+bridge their widening separation by walks and talks in the country, and
+by the long pilgrimage among the Alps that had ended so unexpectedly at
+Vevey. In the retrospect the years seemed punctuated with phases when
+"we must talk" dominated their intercourse, and each time the impulse of
+that recognized need passed away by insensible degrees again--with
+nothing said.
+
+
+Sec. 6
+
+Marjorie cherished an obstinate hope that Trafford would take up
+political questions and go into Parliament. It seemed to her that there
+was something about him altogether graver and wider than most of the
+active politicians she knew. She liked to think of those gravities
+assuming a practical form, of Trafford very rapidly and easily coming
+forward into a position of cardinal significance. It gave her general
+expenditure a quality of concentration without involving any uncongenial
+limitation to suppose it aimed at the preparation of a statesman's
+circle whenever Trafford chose to adopt that assumption. Little men in
+great positions came to her house and talked with opaque
+self-confidence at her table; she measured them against her husband
+while she played the admiring female disciple to their half-confidential
+talk. She felt that he could take up these questions and measures that
+they reduced to trite twaddle, open the wide relevancies behind them,
+and make them magically significant, sweep away the encrusting
+pettiness, the personalities and arbitrary prejudices. But why didn't he
+begin to do it? She threw out hints he seemed blind towards, she
+exercised miracles of patience while he ignored her baits. She came near
+intrigue in her endeavor to entangle him in political affairs. For a
+time it seemed to her that she was succeeding--I have already told of
+his phase of inquiry and interest in socio-political work--and then he
+relapsed into a scornful restlessness, and her hopes weakened again.
+
+But he could not concentrate his mind, he could not think where to
+begin. Day followed day, each with its attacks upon his intention, its
+petty just claims, its attractive novelties of aspect. The telephone
+bell rang, the letters flopped into the hall, Malcom the butler seemed
+always at hand with some distracting oblong on his salver. Dowd was
+developing ideas for a reconstructed organization of the factory,
+Solomonson growing enthusiastic about rubber-glass, his house seemed
+full of women, Marjorie had an engagement for him to keep or the
+children were coming in to say good-night. To his irritated brain the
+whole scheme of his life presented itself at last as a tissue of
+interruptions which prevented his looking clearly at reality. More and
+more definitely he realized he wanted to get away and think. His former
+life of research became invested with an effect of immense dignity and
+of a steadfast singleness of purpose....
+
+But Trafford was following his own lights, upon his own lines. He was
+returning to that faith in the supreme importance of thought and
+knowledge, upon which he had turned his back when he left pure research
+behind him. To that familiar end he came by an unfamiliar route, after
+his long, unsatisfying examination of social reform movements and social
+and political theories. Immaturity, haste and presumption vitiated all
+that region, and it seemed to him less and less disputable that the only
+escape for mankind from a continuing extravagant futility lay through
+the attainment of a quite unprecedented starkness and thoroughness of
+thinking about all these questions. This conception of a needed
+Renascence obsessed him more and more, and the persuasion, deeply felt
+if indistinctly apprehended, that somewhere in such an effort there was
+a part for him to play....
+
+Life is too great for us or too petty. It gives us no tolerable middle
+way between baseness and greatness. We must die daily on the levels of
+ignoble compromise or perish tragically among the precipices. On the one
+hand is a life--unsatisfying and secure, a plane of dulled
+gratifications, mean advantages, petty triumphs, adaptations,
+acquiescences and submissions, and on the other a steep and terrible
+climb, set with sharp stones and bramble thickets and the possibilities
+of grotesque dislocations, and the snares of such temptation as comes
+only to those whose minds have been quickened by high desire, and the
+challenge of insoluble problems and the intimations of issues so complex
+and great, demanding such a nobility of purpose, such a steadfastness,
+alertness and openness of mind, that they fill the heart of man with
+despair....
+
+There were moods when Trafford would, as people say, pull himself
+together, and struggle with his gnawing discontent. He would compare his
+lot with that of other men, reproach himself for a monstrous greed and
+ingratitude. He remonstrated with himself as one might remonstrate with
+a pampered child refusing to be entertained by a whole handsome nursery
+full of toys. Other men did their work in the world methodically and
+decently, did their duty by their friends and belongings, were
+manifestly patient through dullness, steadfastly cheerful, ready to meet
+vexations with a humorous smile, and grateful for orderly pleasures. Was
+he abnormal? Or was he in some unsuspected way unhealthy? Trafford
+neglected no possible explanations. Did he want this great Renascence of
+the human mind because he was suffering from some subtle form of
+indigestion? He invoked, independently of each other, the aid of two
+distinguished specialists. They both told him in exactly the same voice
+and with exactly the same air of guineas well earned: "What you want,
+Mr. Trafford, is a change."
+
+Trafford brought his mind to bear upon the instances of contentment
+about him. He developed an opinion that all men and many women were
+potentially at least as restless as himself. A huge proportion of the
+usage and education in modern life struck upon him now as being a
+training in contentment. Or rather in keeping quiet and not upsetting
+things. The serious and responsible life of an ordinary prosperous man
+fulfilling the requirements of our social organization fatigues and
+neither completely satisfies nor completely occupies. Still less does
+the responsible part of the life of a woman of the prosperous classes
+engage all her energies or hold her imagination. And there has grown up
+a great informal organization of employments, games, ceremonies, social
+routines, travel, to consume these surplus powers and excessive
+cravings, which might otherwise change or shatter the whole order of
+human living. He began to understand the forced preoccupation with
+cricket and golf, the shooting, visiting, and so forth, to which the
+young people of the economically free classes in the community are
+trained. He discovered a theory for hobbies and specialized interests.
+He began to see why people go to Scotland to get away from London, and
+come to London to get away from Scotland, why they crowd to and fro
+along the Riviera, swarm over Switzerland, shoot, yacht, hunt, and
+maintain an immense apparatus of racing and motoring. Because so they
+are able to remain reasonably contented with the world as it is. He
+perceived, too, that a man who has missed or broken through the training
+to this kind of life, does not again very readily subdue himself to the
+security of these systematized distractions. His own upbringing had been
+antipathetic to any such adaptations; his years of research had given
+him the habit of naked intimacy with truth, filled him with a craving
+for reality and the destructive acids of a relentless critical method.
+
+He began to understand something of the psychology of vice, to
+comprehend how small a part mere sensuality, how large a part the spirit
+of adventure and the craving for illegality, may play, in the career of
+those who are called evil livers. Mere animal impulses and curiosities
+it had always seemed possible to him to control, but now he was
+beginning to apprehend the power of that passion for escape, at any
+cost, in any way, from the petty, weakly stimulating, competitive
+motives of low-grade and law-abiding prosperity....
+
+For a time Trafford made an earnest effort to adjust himself to the
+position in which he found himself, and make a working compromise with
+his disturbing forces. He tried to pick up the scientific preoccupation
+of his earlier years. He made extensive schemes, to Solomonson's great
+concern, whereby he might to a large extent disentangle himself from
+business. He began to hunt out forgotten note-books and yellowing sheets
+of memoranda. He found the resumption of research much more difficult
+than he had ever supposed possible. He went so far as to plan a
+laboratory, and to make some inquiries as to site and the cost of
+building, to the great satisfaction not only of Marjorie but of his
+mother. Old Mrs. Trafford had never expressed her concern at his
+abandonment of molecular physics for money-making, but now in her
+appreciation of his return to pure investigation she betrayed her sense
+of his departure.
+
+But in his heart he felt that this methodical establishment of virtue by
+limitation would not suffice for him. He said no word of this scepticism
+as it grew in his mind. Marjorie was still under the impression that he
+was returning to research, and that she was free to contrive the steady
+preparation for that happier day when he should assume his political
+inheritance. And then presently a queer little dispute sprang up between
+them. Suddenly, for the first time since he took to business, Trafford
+found himself limiting her again. She was disposed, partly through the
+natural growth of her circle and her setting and partly through a
+movement on the part of Mrs. Halford Wallace, to move from Sussex Square
+into a larger, more picturesquely built house in a more central
+position. She particularly desired a good staircase. He met her
+intimations of this development with a curious and unusual irritation.
+The idea of moving bothered him. He felt that exaggerated annoyance
+which is so often a concomitant of overwrought nerves. They had a
+dispute that was almost a quarrel, and though Marjorie dropped the
+matter for a time, he could feel she was still at work upon it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE SECOND
+
+TRAFFORD DECIDES TO GO
+
+
+Sec. 1
+
+A haunting desire to go away into solitude grew upon Trafford very
+steadily. He wanted intensely to think, and London and Marjorie would
+not let him think. He wanted therefore to go away out of London and
+Marjorie's world. He wanted, he felt, to go away alone and face God, and
+clear things up in his mind. By imperceptible degrees this desire
+anticipated its realization. His activities were affected more and more
+by intimations of a determined crisis. One eventful day it seemed to him
+that his mind passed quite suddenly from desire to resolve. He found
+himself with a project, already broadly definite. Hitherto he hadn't
+been at all clear where he could go. From the first almost he had felt
+that this change he needed, the change by which he was to get out of the
+thickets of work and perplexity and distraction that held him captive,
+must be a physical as well as a mental removal; he must go somewhere,
+still and isolated, where sustained detached thinking was possible....
+His preference, if he had one, inclined him to some solitude among the
+Himalaya Mountains. That came perhaps from Kim and the precedent of the
+Hindoo's religious retreat from the world. But this retreat he
+contemplated was a retreat that aimed at a return, a clarified and
+strengthened resumption of the world. And then suddenly, as if he had
+always intended it, Labrador flashed through his thoughts, like a
+familiar name that had been for a time quite unaccountably forgotten.
+
+The word "Labrador" drifted to him one day from an adjacent table as he
+sat alone at lunch in the Liberal Union Club. Some bore was reciting the
+substance of a lecture to a fellow-member. "Seems to be a remarkable
+country," said the speaker. "Mineral wealth hardly glanced at, you know.
+Furs and a few score Indians. And at our doors. Practically--at our
+doors."
+
+Trafford ceased to listen. His mind was taking up this idea of Labrador.
+He wondered why he had not thought of Labrador before.
+
+He had two or three streams of thought flowing in his mind, as a man who
+muses alone is apt to do. Marjorie's desire to move had reappeared; a
+particular group of houses between Berkeley Square and Park Lane had
+taken hold of her fancy, she had urged the acquisition of one upon him
+that morning, and this kept coming up into consciousness like a wrong
+thread in a tapestry. Moreover, he was watching his fellow-members with
+a critical rather than a friendly eye. A half-speculative, half-hostile
+contemplation of his habitual associates was one of the queer aspects of
+this period of unsettlement. They exasperated him by their massive
+contentment with the surface of things. They came in one after another
+patting their ties, or pulling at the lapels of their coats, and looked
+about them for vacant places with a conscious ease of manner that
+irritated his nerves. No doubt they were all more or less successful and
+distinguished men, matter for conversation and food for anecdotes, but
+why did they trouble to give themselves the air of it? They halted or
+sat down by friends, enunciated vapid remarks in sonorous voices, and
+opened conversations in trite phrases, about London architecture, about
+the political situation or the morning's newspaper, conversations that
+ought, he felt, to have been thrown away unopened, so stale and needless
+they seemed to him. They were judges, lawyers of all sorts, bankers,
+company promoters, railway managers, stockbrokers, pressmen,
+politicians, men of leisure. He wondered if indeed they were as opaque
+as they seemed, wondered with the helpless wonder of a man of
+exceptional mental gifts whether any of them at any stage had had such
+thoughts as his, had wanted as acutely as he did now to get right out of
+the world. Did old Booch over there, for example, guzzling oysters, cry
+at times upon the unknown God in the vast silences of the night? But
+Booch, of course, was a member or something of the House of Laymen, and
+very sound on the thirty-nine articles--a man who ate oysters like that
+could swallow anything--and in the vast silences of the night he was
+probably heavily and noisily asleep....
+
+Blenkins, the gentlemanly colleague of Denton in the control of the _Old
+Country Gazette_, appeared on his way to the pay-desk, gesticulating
+amiably _en-route_ to any possible friend. Trafford returned his
+salutation, and pulled himself together immediately after in fear that
+he had scowled, for he hated to be churlish to any human being.
+Blenkins, too, it might be, had sorrow and remorse and periods of
+passionate self-distrust and self-examination; maybe Blenkins could weep
+salt tears, as Blenkins no doubt under suitable sword-play would reveal
+heart and viscera as quivering and oozy as any man's.
+
+But to Trafford's jaundiced eyes just then, it seemed that if you
+slashed Blenkins across he would probably cut like a cheese....
+
+Now, in Labrador----....
+
+So soon as Blenkins had cleared, Trafford followed him to the pay-desk,
+and went on upstairs to the smoking-room, thinking of Labrador. Long
+ago he had read the story of Wallace and Hubbard in that wilderness.
+
+There was much to be said for a winter in Labrador. It was cold, it was
+clear, infinitely lonely, with a keen edge of danger and hardship and
+never a letter or a paper.
+
+One could provision a hut and sit wrapped in fur, watching the Northern
+Lights....
+
+"I'm off to Labrador," said Trafford, and entered the smoking-room.
+
+It was, after all, perfectly easy to go to Labrador. One had just to
+go....
+
+As he pinched the end of his cigar, he became aware of Blenkins, with a
+gleam of golden glasses and a flapping white cuff, beckoning across the
+room to him. With that probable scowl on his conscience Trafford was
+moved to respond with an unreal warmth, and strolled across to Blenkins
+and a group of three or four other people, including that vigorous young
+politician, Weston Massinghay, and Hart, K.C., about the further
+fireplace. "We were talking of you," said Blenkins. "Come and sit down
+with us. Why don't you come into Parliament?"
+
+"I've just arranged to go for some months to Labrador."
+
+"Industrial development?" asked Blenkins, all alive.
+
+"No. Holiday."
+
+No Blenkins believes that sort of thing, but of course, if Trafford
+chose to keep his own counsel----
+
+"Well, come into Parliament as soon as you get back."
+
+Trafford had had that old conversation before. He pretended
+insensibility when Blenkins gestured to a vacant chair. "No," he said,
+still standing, "we settled all that. And now I'm up to my neck
+in--detail about Labrador. I shall be starting--before the month is
+out."
+
+Blenkins and Hart simulated interest. "It's immoral," said Blenkins,
+"for a man of your standing to keep out of politics."
+
+"It's more than immoral," said Hart; "it's American."
+
+"Solomonson comes in to represent the firm," smiled Trafford, signalled
+the waiter for coffee, and presently disentangled himself from their
+company.
+
+For Blenkins Trafford concealed an exquisite dislike and contempt; and
+Blenkins had a considerable admiration for Trafford, based on extensive
+misunderstandings. Blenkins admired Trafford because he was good-looking
+and well-dressed, with a beautiful and successful wife, because he had
+become reasonably rich very quickly and easily, was young and a Fellow
+of the Royal Society with a reputation that echoed in Berlin, and very
+perceptibly did not return Blenkins' admiration. All these things filled
+Blenkins with a desire for Trafford's intimacy, and to become the
+associate of the very promising political career that it seemed to him,
+in spite of Trafford's repudiations, was the natural next step in a
+deliberately and honourably planned life. He mistook Trafford's silences
+and detachment for the marks of a strong, silent man, who was scheming
+the immense, vulgar, distinguished-looking achievements that appeal to
+the Blenkins mind. Blenkins was a sentimentally loyal party Liberal, and
+as he said at times to Hart and Weston Massinghay: "If those other
+fellows get hold of him----!"
+
+Blenkins was the fine flower of Oxford Liberalism and the Tennysonian
+days. He wanted to be like King Arthur and Sir Galahad, with the merest
+touch of Launcelot, and to be perfectly upright and splendid and very,
+very successful. He was a fair, tenoring sort of person with an
+Arthurian moustache and a disposition to long frock coats. It had been
+said of him that he didn't dress like a gentleman, but that he dressed
+more like a gentleman than a gentleman ought to dress. It might have
+been added that he didn't behave like a gentleman, but that he behaved
+more like a gentleman than a gentleman ought to behave. He didn't think,
+but he talked and he wrote more thoughtfully in his leaders, and in the
+little dialogues he wrote in imitation of Sir Arthur Helps, than any
+other person who didn't think could possibly do. He was an orthodox
+Churchman, but very, very broad; he held all the doctrines, a
+distinguished sort of thing to do in an age of doubt, but there was a
+quality about them as he held them--as though they had been run over by
+something rather heavy. It was a flattened and slightly obliterated
+breadth--nothing was assertive, but nothing, under examination, proved
+to be altogether gone. His profuse thoughtfulness was not confined to
+his journalistic and literary work, it overflowed into Talks. He was a
+man for Great Talks, interminable rambling floods of boyish observation,
+emotional appreciation, and silly, sapient comment. He loved to discuss
+"Who are the Best Talkers now Alive?" He had written an essay, _Talk in
+the Past_. He boasted of week-ends when the Talk had gone on from the
+moment of meeting in the train to the moment of parting at Euston, or
+Paddington, or Waterloo; and one or two hostesses with embittered
+memories could verify his boasting. He did his best to make the club a
+Talking Club, and loved to summon men to a growing circle of chairs....
+
+Trafford had been involved in Talks on one or two occasions, and now, as
+he sat alone in the corridor and smoked and drank his coffee, he could
+imagine the Talk he had escaped, the Talk that was going on in the
+smoking room--the platitudes, the sagacities, the digressions, the
+sudden revelation of deep, irrational convictions. He reflected upon the
+various Talks at which he had assisted. His chief impression of them all
+was of an intolerable fluidity. Never once had he known a Talk thicken
+to adequate discussion; never had a new idea or a new view come to him
+in a Talk. He wondered why Blenkins and his like talked at all.
+Essentially they lived for pose, not for expression; they did not
+greatly desire to discover, make, or be; they wanted to seem and
+succeed. Talking perhaps was part of their pose of great intellectual
+activity, and Blenkins was fortunate to have an easy, unforced running
+of mind....
+
+Over his cigar Trafford became profoundly philosophical about Talk. And
+after the manner of those who become profoundly philosophical he spread
+out the word beyond its original and proper intentions to all sorts of
+kindred and parallel things. Blenkins and his miscellany of friends in
+their circle of chairs were, after all, only a crude rendering of very
+much of intellectual activity of mankind. Men talked so often as dogs
+bark. Those Talkers never came to grips, fell away from topic to topic,
+pretended depth and evaded the devastating horrors of sincerity.
+Listening was a politeness amongst them that was presently rewarded with
+utterance. Tremendously like dogs they were, in a dog-fancying
+neighborhood on a summer week-day afternoon. Fluidity, excessive
+abundance, inconsecutiveness; these were the things that made Talk
+hateful to Trafford.
+
+Wasn't most literature in the same class? Wasn't nearly all present
+philosophical and sociological discussion in the world merely a Blenkins
+circle on a colossal scale, with every one looming forward to get in a
+deeply thoughtful word edgeways at the first opportunity? Imagine any
+one in distress about his soul or about mankind, going to a professor of
+economics or sociology or philosophy! He thought of the endless, big,
+expensive, fruitless books, the windy expansions of industrious pedantry
+that mocked the spirit of inquiry. The fields of physical and biological
+science alone had been partially rescued from the floods of human
+inconsecutiveness. There at least a man must, on the whole, join on to
+the work of other men, stand a searching criticism, justify himself.
+Philosophically this was an age of relaxed schoolmen. He thought of
+Doctor Codger at Cambridge, bubbling away with his iridescent
+Hegelianism like a salted snail; of Doctor Quiller at Oxford, ignoring
+Bergson and fulminating a preposterous insular Pragmatism. Each
+contradicted the other fundamentally upon matters of universal concern;
+neither ever joined issue with the other. Why in the name of humanity
+didn't some one take hold of those two excellent gentlemen, and bang
+their busy heads together hard and frequently until they either
+compromised or cracked?
+
+
+Sec. 2
+
+He forgot these rambling speculations as he came out into the spring
+sunshine of Pall Mall, and halting for a moment on the topmost step,
+regarded the tidy pavements, the rare dignified shops, the waiting
+taxicabs, the pleasant, prosperous passers-by. His mind lapsed back to
+the thought that he meant to leave all this and go to Labrador. His mind
+went a step further, and reflected that he would not only go to
+Labrador, but--it was highly probable--come back again.
+
+And then?
+
+Why, after all, should he go to Labrador at all? Why shouldn't he make a
+supreme effort here?
+
+Something entirely irrational within him told him with conclusive
+emphasis that he had to go to Labrador....
+
+He remembered there was this confounded business of the proposed house
+in Mayfair to consider....
+
+
+Sec. 3
+
+It occurred to him that he would go a little out of his way, and look at
+the new great laboratories at the Romeike College, of which his old
+bottle-washer Durgan was, he knew, extravagantly proud. Romeike's widow
+was dead now and her will executed, and her substance half turned
+already to bricks and stone and glazed tiles and all those excesses of
+space and appliance which the rich and authoritative imagine must needs
+give us Science, however ill-selected and underpaid and slighted the
+users of those opportunities may be. The architects had had great fun
+with the bequest; a quarter of the site was devoted to a huge square
+surrounded by dignified, if functionless, colonnades, and adorned with
+those stone seats of honour which are always so chill and unsatisfactory
+as resting places in our island climate. The Laboratories, except that
+they were a little shaded by the colonnades, were everything a
+laboratory should be; the benches were miracles of convenience, there
+wasn't anything the industrious investigator might want, steam, high
+pressures, electric power, that he couldn't get by pressing a button or
+turning a switch, unless perhaps it was inspiring ideas. And the new
+library at the end, with its greys and greens, its logarithmic
+computators at every table, was a miracle of mental convenience.
+
+Durgan showed his old professor the marvels.
+
+"If he _chooses_ to do something here," said Durgan not too hopefully,
+"a man can...."
+
+"What's become of the little old room where we two used to work?" asked
+Trafford.
+
+"They'll turn 'em all out presently," said Durgan, "when this part is
+ready, but just at present it's very much as you left it. There's been
+precious little research done there since you went away--not what _I_
+call research. Females chiefly--and boys. Playing at it. Making
+themselves into D.Sc.'s by a baby research instead of a man's
+examination. It's like broaching a thirty-two gallon cask full of Pap to
+think of it. Lord, sir, the swill! Research! Counting and weighing
+things! Professor Lake's all right, I suppose, but his work was mostly
+mathematical; he didn't do much of it here. No, the old days ended, sir,
+when you...."
+
+He arrested himself, and obviously changed his words. "Got busy with
+other things."
+
+Trafford surveyed the place; it seemed to him to have shrunken a little
+in the course of the three years that had intervened since he resigned
+his position. On the wall at the back there still hung, fly-blown and a
+little crumpled, an old table of constants he had made for his
+elasticity researches. Lake had kept it there, for Lake was a man of
+generous appreciations, and rather proud to follow in the footsteps of
+an investigator of Trafford's subtlety and vigor. The old sink in the
+corner where Trafford had once swilled his watch glasses and filled his
+beakers had been replaced by one of a more modern construction, and the
+combustion cupboard was unfamiliar, until Durgan pointed out that it had
+been enlarged. The ground-glass window at the east end showed still the
+marks of an explosion that had banished a clumsy student from this
+sanctuary at the very beginning of Trafford's career.
+
+"By Jove!" he said after a silence, "but I did some good work here."
+
+"You did, sir," said Durgan.
+
+"I wonder--I may take it up again presently."
+
+"I doubt it, sir," said Durgan.
+
+"Oh! But suppose I come back?"
+
+"I don't think you would find yourself coming back, sir," said Durgan
+after judicious consideration.
+
+He adduced no shadow of a reason for his doubt, but some mysterious
+quality in his words carried conviction to Trafford's mind. He knew that
+he would never do anything worth doing in molecular physics again. He
+knew it now conclusively for the first time.
+
+
+Sec. 4
+
+He found himself presently in Bond Street. The bright May day had
+brought out great quantities of people, so that he had to come down from
+altitudes of abstraction to pick his way among them.
+
+He was struck by the prevailing interest and contentment in the faces he
+passed. There was no sense of insecurity betrayed, no sense of the deeps
+and mysteries upon which our being floats like a film. They looked
+solid, they looked satisfied; surely never before in the history of the
+world has there been so great a multitude of secure-feeling,
+satisfied-looking, uninquiring people as there is to-day. All the tragic
+great things of life seem stupendously remote from them; pain is rare,
+death is out of sight, religion has shrunken to an inconsiderable,
+comfortable, reassuring appendage of the daily life. And with the
+bright small things of immediacy they are so active and alert. Never
+before has the world seen such multitudes, and a day must come when it
+will cease to see them for evermore.
+
+As he shouldered his way through the throng before the Oxford Street
+shop windows he appreciated a queer effect, almost as it were of
+insanity, about all this rich and abundant and ultimately aimless life,
+this tremendous spawning and proliferation of uneventful humanity. These
+individual lives signified no doubt enormously to the individuals, but
+did all the shining, reflecting, changing existence that went by like
+bubbles in a stream, signify collectively anything more than the
+leaping, glittering confusion of shoaling mackerel on a sunlit
+afternoon? The pretty girl looking into the window schemed picturesque
+achievements with lace and ribbon, the beggar at the curb was alert for
+any sympathetic eye, the chauffeur on the waiting taxi-cab watched the
+twopences ticking on with a quiet satisfaction; each followed a keenly
+sought immediate end, but altogether? Where were they going altogether?
+Until he knew that, where was the sanity of statecraft, the excuse of
+any impersonal effort, the significance of anything beyond a life of
+appetites and self-seeking instincts?
+
+He found that perplexing suspicion of priggishness affecting him again.
+Why couldn't he take the gift of life as it seemed these people took it?
+Why was he continually lapsing into these sombre, dimly religious
+questionings and doubts? Why after all should he concern himself with
+these riddles of some collective and ultimate meaning in things? Was he
+for all his ability and security so afraid of the accidents of life that
+on that account he clung to this conception of a larger impersonal issue
+which the world in general seemed to have abandoned so cheerfully? At
+any rate he did cling to it--and his sense of it made the abounding
+active life of this stirring, bristling thoroughfare an almost
+unendurable perplexity....
+
+By the Marble Arch a little crowd had gathered at the pavement edge. He
+remarked other little knots towards Paddington, and then still others,
+and inquiring, found the King was presently to pass. They promised
+themselves the gratification of seeing the King go by. They would see a
+carriage, they would see horses and coachmen, perhaps even they might
+catch sight of a raised hat and a bowing figure. And this would be a
+gratification to them, it would irradiate the day with a sense of
+experiences, exceptional and precious. For that some of them had already
+been standing about for two or three hours.
+
+He thought of these waiting people for a time, and then he fell into a
+speculation about the King. He wondered if the King ever lay awake at
+three o'clock in the morning and faced the riddle of the eternities or
+whether he did really take himself seriously and contentedly as being in
+himself the vital function of the State, performed his ceremonies, went
+hither and thither through a wilderness of gaping watchers, slept well
+on it. Was the man satisfied? Was he satisfied with his empire as it was
+and himself as he was, or did some vision, some high, ironical
+intimation of the latent and lost possibilities of his empire and of the
+world of Things Conceivable that lies beyond the poor tawdry splendours
+of our present loyalties, ever dawn upon him?
+
+Trafford's imagination conjured up a sleepless King Emperor agonizing
+for humanity....
+
+He turned to his right out of Lancaster Gate into Sussex Square, and
+came to a stop at the pavement edge.
+
+From across the road he surveyed the wide white front and portals of the
+house that wasn't big enough for Marjorie.
+
+
+Sec. 5
+
+He let himself in with his latchkey.
+
+Malcolm, his man, hovered at the foot of the staircase, and came forward
+for his hat and gloves and stick.
+
+"Mrs. Trafford in?" asked Trafford.
+
+"She said she would be in by four, sir."
+
+Trafford glanced at his watch and went slowly upstairs.
+
+On the landing there had been a rearrangement of the furniture, and he
+paused to survey it. The alterations had been made to accommodate a big
+cloisonne jar, that now glowed a wonder of white and tinted whites and
+luminous blues upon a dark, deep-shining stand. He noted now the curtain
+of the window had been changed from something--surely it had been a
+reddish curtain!--to a sharp clear blue with a black border, that
+reflected upon and sustained and encouraged the jar tremendously. And
+the wall behind--? Yes. Its deep brown was darkened to an absolute black
+behind the jar, and shaded up between the lacquer cabinets on either
+hand by insensible degrees to the general hue. It was wonderful,
+perfectly harmonious, and so subtly planned that it seemed it all might
+have grown, as flowers grow....
+
+He entered the drawing-room and surveyed its long and handsome spaces.
+Post-impressionism was over and gone; three long pictures by young
+Rogerson and one of Redwood's gallant bronzes faced the tall windows
+between the white marble fireplaces at either end. There were two lean
+jars from India, a young boy's head from Florence, and in a great bowl
+in the remotest corner a radiant mass of azaleas....
+
+His mood of wondering at familiar things was still upon him. It came to
+him as a thing absurd and incongruous that this should be his home. It
+was all wonderfully arranged into one dignified harmony, but he felt now
+that at a touch of social earthquake, with a mere momentary lapse
+towards disorder, it would degenerate altogether into litter, lie heaped
+together confessed the loot it was. He came to a stop opposite one of
+the Rogersons, a stiffly self-conscious shop girl in her Sunday clothes,
+a not unsuccessful emulation of Nicholson's wonderful Mrs. Stafford of
+Paradise Row. Regarded as so much brown and grey and amber-gold, it was
+coherent in Marjorie's design, but regarded as a work of art, as a piece
+of expression, how madly irrelevant was its humour and implications to
+that room and the purposes of that room! Rogerson wasn't perhaps trying
+to say much, but at any rate he was trying to say something, and Redwood
+too was asserting freedom and adventure, and the thought of that
+Florentine of the bust, and the patient, careful Indian potter, and
+every maker of all the little casual articles about him, produced an
+effect of muffled, stifled assertions. Against this subdued and
+disciplined background of muted, inarticulate cries,--cries for beauty,
+for delight, for freedom, Marjorie and her world moved and rustled and
+chattered and competed--wearing the skins of beasts, the love-plumage of
+birds, the woven cocoon cases of little silkworms....
+
+"Preposterous," he whispered.
+
+He went to the window and stared out; turned about and regarded the
+gracious variety of that long, well-lit room again, then strolled
+thoughtfully upstairs. He reached the door of his study, and a sound of
+voices from the schoolroom--it had recently been promoted from the rank
+of day nursery to this level--caught his mood. He changed his mind,
+crossed the landing, and was welcomed with shouts.
+
+The rogues had been dressing up. Margharita, that child of the dreadful
+dawn, was now a sturdy and domineering girl of eight, and she was
+attired in a gilt paper mitre and her governess's white muslin blouse so
+tied at the wrists as to suggest long sleeves, a broad crimson band
+doing duty as a stole. She was Becket prepared for martyrdom at the foot
+of the altar. Godwin, his eldest son, was a hot-tempered,
+pretty-featured pleasantly self-conscious boy of nearly seven and very
+happy now in a white dragoon's helmet and rude but effective brown paper
+breastplate and greaves, as the party of assassin knights. A small
+acolyte in what was in all human probably one of the governess's more
+intimate linen garments assisted Becket, while the general congregation
+of Canterbury was represented by Edward, aged two, and the governess,
+disguised with a Union Jack tied over her head after the well-known
+fashion of the middle ages. After the children had welcomed their father
+and explained the bloody work in hand, they returned to it with solemn
+earnestness, while Trafford surveyed the tragedy. Godwin slew with
+admirable gusto, and I doubt if the actual Thomas of Canterbury showed
+half the stately dignity of Margharita.
+
+The scene finished, they went on to the penance of Henry the Second; and
+there was a tremendous readjustment of costumes, with much consultation
+and secrecy. Trafford's eyes went from his offspring to the long,
+white-painted room, with its gay frieze of ships and gulls and its
+rug-variegated cork carpet of plain brick red. Everywhere it showed his
+wife's quick cleverness, the clean serviceable decorativeness of it
+all, the pretty patterned window curtains, the writing desks, the little
+library of books, the flowers and bulbs in glasses, the counting blocks
+and bricks and jolly toys, the blackboard on which the children learnt
+to draw in bold wide strokes, the big, well-chosen German colour prints
+upon the walls. And the children did credit to their casket; they were
+not only full of vitality but full of ideas, even Edward was already a
+person of conversation. They were good stuff anyhow....
+
+It was fine in a sense, Trafford thought, to have given up his own
+motives and curiosities to afford this airy pleasantness of upbringing
+for them, and then came a qualifying thought. Would they in their turn
+for the sake of another generation have to give up fine occupations for
+mean occupations, deep thoughts for shallow? Would the world get them in
+turn? Would the girls be hustled and flattered into advantageous
+marriages, that dinners and drawing-rooms might still prevail? Would the
+boys, after this gracious beginning, presently have to swim submerged in
+another generation of Blenkinses and their Talk, toil in arduous
+self-seeking, observe, respect and manipulate shams, succeed or fail,
+and succeeding, beget amidst hope and beautiful emotions yet another
+generation doomed to insincerities and accommodations, and so die at
+last--as he must die?...
+
+He heard his wife's clear voice in the hall below, and went down to meet
+her. She had gone into the drawing-room, and he followed her in and
+through the folding doors to the hinder part of the room, where she
+stood ready to open a small bureau. She turned at his approach, and
+smiled a pleasant, habitual smile....
+
+She was no longer the slim, quick-moving girl who had come out of the
+world to him when he crawled from beneath the wreckage of Solomonson's
+plane, no longer the half-barbaric young beauty who had been revealed to
+him on the staircase of the Vevey villa. She was now a dignified,
+self-possessed woman, controlling her house and her life with a skilful,
+subtle appreciation of her every point and possibility. She was wearing
+now a simple walking dress of brownish fawn colour, and her hat was
+touched with a steely blue that made her blue eyes seem handsome and
+hard, and toned her hair to a merely warm brown. She had, as it were,
+subdued her fine colours into a sheath in order that she might presently
+draw them again with more effect.
+
+"Hullo, old man!" she said, "you home?"
+
+He nodded. "The club bored me--and I couldn't work."
+
+Her voice had something of a challenge and defiance in it. "I've been
+looking at a house," she said. "Alice Carmel told me of it. It isn't in
+Berkeley Square, but it's near it. It's rather good."
+
+He met her eye. "That's--premature," he said.
+
+"We can't go on living in this one."
+
+"I won't go to another."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"I just won't."
+
+"It isn't the money?"
+
+"No," said Trafford, with sudden fierce resentment. "I've overtaken you
+and beaten you there, Marjorie."
+
+She stared at the harsh bitterness of his voice. She was about to speak
+when the door opened, and Malcom ushered in Aunt Plessington and Uncle
+Hubert. Husband and wife hung for a moment, and then realized their talk
+was at an end....
+
+Marjorie went forward to greet her aunt, careless now of all that once
+stupendous Influence might think of her. She had long ceased to feel
+even the triumph of victory in her big house, her costly, dignified
+clothes, her assured and growing social importance. For five years Aunt
+Plessington had not even ventured to advise; had once or twice admired.
+All that business of Magnet was--even elaborately--forgotten....
+
+Seven years of feverish self-assertion had left their mark upon both the
+Plessingtons. She was leaner, more gauntly untidy, more aggressively
+ill-dressed. She no longer dressed carelessly, she defied the world with
+her clothes, waved her tattered and dingy banners in its face. Uncle
+Hubert was no fatter, but in some queer way he had ceased to be thin.
+Like so many people whose peripheries defy the manifest quaint purpose
+of Providence, he was in a state of thwarted adiposity, and with all the
+disconnectedness and weak irritability characteristic of his condition.
+He had developed a number of nervous movements, chin-strokings,
+cheek-scratchings, and incredulous pawings at his more salient features.
+
+"Isn't it a lark?" began Aunt Plessington, with something like a note of
+apprehension in her highpitched voice, and speaking almost from the
+doorway, "we're making a call together. I and Hubert! It's an attack in
+force."
+
+Uncle Hubert goggled in the rear and stroked his chin, and tried to get
+together a sort of facial expression.
+
+The Traffords made welcoming noises, and Marjorie advanced to meet her
+aunt.
+
+"We want you to do something for us," said Aunt Plessington, taking two
+hands with two hands....
+
+In the intervening years the Movement had had ups and downs; it had had
+a boom, which had ended abruptly in a complete loss of voice for Aunt
+Plessington--she had tried to run it on a patent non-stimulating food,
+and then it had entangled itself with a new cult of philanthropic
+theosophy from which it had been extracted with difficulty and in a
+damaged condition. It had never completely recovered from that unhappy
+association. Latterly Aunt Plessington had lost her nerve, and she had
+taken to making calls upon people with considerable and sometimes
+embarrassing demand for support, urging them to join committees, take
+chairs, stake reputations, speak and act as foils for her. If they
+refused she lost her temper very openly and frankly, and became
+industriously vindictive. She circulated scandals or created them. Her
+old assurance had deserted her; the strangulated contralto was losing
+its magic power, she felt, in this degenerating England it had ruled so
+long. In the last year or so she had become extremely snappy with Uncle
+Hubert. She ascribed much of the Movement's futility to the decline of
+his administrative powers and the increasing awkwardness of his
+gestures, and she did her utmost to keep him up to the mark. Her only
+method of keeping him up to the mark was to jerk the bit. She had now
+come to compel Marjorie to address a meeting that was to inaugurate a
+new phase in the Movement's history, and she wanted Marjorie because she
+particularly wanted a daring, liberal, and spiritually amorous bishop,
+who had once told her with a note of profound conviction that Marjorie
+was a very beautiful woman. She was so intent upon her purpose that she
+scarcely noticed Trafford. He slipped from the room unobserved under
+cover of her playful preliminaries, and went to the untidy little
+apartment overhead which served in that house as his study. He sat down
+at the big desk, pushed his methodically arranged papers back, and
+drummed on the edge with his fingers.
+
+"I'm damned if we have that bigger house," said Trafford.
+
+
+Sec. 6
+
+He felt he wanted to confirm and establish this new resolution, to go
+right away to Labrador for a year. He wanted to tell someone the thing
+definitely. He would have gone downstairs again to Marjorie, but she was
+submerged and swimming desperately against the voluble rapids of Aunt
+Plessington's purpose. It might be an hour before that attack withdrew.
+Presently there would be other callers. He decided to have tea with his
+mother and talk to her about this new break in the course of his life.
+
+Except that her hair was now grey and her brown eyes by so much contrast
+brighter, Mrs. Trafford's appearance had altered very little in the ten
+years of her only son's marriage. Whatever fresh realizations of the
+inevitably widening separation between parent and child these years had
+brought her, she had kept to herself. She had watched her
+daughter-in-law sometimes with sympathy, sometimes with perplexity,
+always with a jealous resolve to let no shadow of jealousy fall between
+them. Marjorie had been sweet and friendly to her, but after the first
+outburst of enthusiastic affection, she had neither offered nor invited
+confidences. Old Mrs. Trafford had talked of Marjorie to her son
+guardedly, and had marked and respected a growing indisposition on his
+part to discuss his wife. For a year or so after his marriage she had
+ached at times with a sense of nearly intolerable loneliness, and then
+the new interests she had found for herself had won their way against
+this depression. The new insurrectionary movement of women that had
+distinguished those years had attacked her by its emotion and repelled
+her by its crudity, and she had resolved, quite in the spirit of the
+man who had shaped her life, to make a systematic study of all the
+contributory strands that met in this difficult tangle. She tried to
+write, but she found that the poetic gift, the gift of the creative and
+illuminating phrase which alone justifies writing, was denied to her,
+and so she sought to make herself wise, to read and hear, and discuss
+and think over these things, and perhaps at last inspire and encourage
+writing in others.
+
+Her circle of intimates grew, and she presently remarked with a curious
+interest that while she had lost the confidences of her own son and his
+wife, she was becoming the confidant of an increasing number of other
+people. They came to her, she perceived, because she was receptive and
+sympathetic and without a claim upon them or any interest to complicate
+the freedoms of their speech with her. They came to her, because she did
+not belong to them nor they to her. It is, indeed, the defect of all
+formal and established relationship, that it embarrasses speech, and
+taints each phase in intercourse with the flavour of diplomacy. One can
+be far more easily outspoken to a casual stranger one may never see
+again than to that inseparable other, who may misinterpret, who may
+disapprove or misunderstand, and who will certainly in the measure of
+that discord remember....
+
+It became at last a matter of rejoicing to Mrs. Trafford that the ties
+of the old instinctive tenderness between herself and her son, the
+memories of pain and tears and the passionate conflict of childhood,
+were growing so thin and lax and inconsiderable, that she could even
+hope some day to talk to him again--almost as she talked to the young
+men and young women who drifted out of the unknown to her and sat in
+her little room and sought to express their perplexities and listened to
+her advice....
+
+It seemed to her that afternoon the wished-for day had come.
+
+Trafford found her just returned from a walk in Kensington Gardens and
+writing a note at her desk under the narrow sunlit window that looked
+upon the High Street. "Finish your letter, little mother," he said, and
+took possession of the hearthrug.
+
+When she had sealed and addressed her letter, she turned her head and
+found him looking at his father's portrait.
+
+"Done?" he asked, becoming aware of her eyes.
+
+She took her letter into the hall and returned to him, closing the door
+behind her.
+
+"I'm going away, little mother," he said with an unconvincing
+off-handedness. "I'm going to take a holiday."
+
+"Alone?"
+
+"Yes. I want a change. I'm going off somewhere--untrodden ground as near
+as one can get it nowadays--Labrador."
+
+Their eyes met for a moment.
+
+"Is it for long?"
+
+"The best part of a year."
+
+"I thought you were going on with your research work again."
+
+"No." He paused. "I'm going to Labrador."
+
+"Why?" she asked.
+
+"I'm going to think."
+
+She found nothing to say for a moment. "It's good," she remarked, "to
+think." Then, lest she herself should seem to be thinking too
+enormously, she rang the bell to order the tea that was already on its
+way.
+
+"It surprises a mother," she said, when the maid had come and gone,
+"when her son surprises her."
+
+"You see," he repeated, as though it explained everything, "I want to
+think."
+
+Then after a pause she asked some questions about Labrador; wasn't it
+very cold, very desert, very dangerous and bitter, and he answered
+informingly. How was he going to stay there? He would go up the country
+with an expedition, build a hut and remain behind. Alone? Yes--thinking.
+Her eyes rested on his face for a time. "It will be--lonely," she said
+after a pause.
+
+She saw him as a little still speck against immense backgrounds of snowy
+wilderness.
+
+The tea-things came before mother and son were back at essentials again.
+Then she asked abruptly: "Why are you going away like this?"
+
+"I'm tired of all this business and finance," he said after a pause.
+
+"I thought you would be," she answered as deliberately.
+
+"Yes. I've had enough of things. I want to get clear. And begin again
+somehow."
+
+She felt they both hung away from the essential aspect. Either he or she
+must approach it. She decided that she would, that it was a less
+difficult thing for her than for him.
+
+"And Marjorie?" she asked.
+
+He looked into his mother's eyes very quietly. "You see," he went on
+deliberately disregarding her question, "I'm beached. I'm aground. I'm
+spoilt now for the old researches--spoilt altogether. And I don't like
+this life I'm leading. I detest it. While I was struggling it had a kind
+of interest. There was an excitement in piling up the first twenty
+thousand. But _now_--! It's empty, it's aimless, it's incessant...."
+
+He paused. She turned to the tea-things, and lit the spirit lamp under
+the kettle. It seemed a little difficult to do, and her hand trembled.
+When she turned on him again it was with an effort.
+
+"Does Marjorie like the life you are leading?" she asked, and pressed
+her lips together tightly.
+
+He spoke with a bitterness in his voice that astonished her. "Oh, _she_
+likes it."
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"She won't like it without you."
+
+"Oh, that's too much! It's her world. It's what she's done--what she's
+made. She can have it; she can keep it. I've played my part and got it
+for her. But now--now I'm free to go. I will go. She's got everything
+else. I've done my half of the bargain. But my soul's my own. If I want
+to go away and think, I will. Not even Marjorie shall stand in the way
+of that."
+
+She made no answer to this outburst for a couple of seconds. Then she
+threw out, "Why shouldn't Marjorie think, too?"
+
+He considered that for some moments. "She doesn't," he said, as though
+the words came from the roots of his being.
+
+"But you two----"
+
+"We don't talk. It's astonishing--how we don't. We don't. We can't. We
+try to, and we can't. And she goes her way, and now--I will go mine."
+
+"And leave her?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"In London?"
+
+"With all the things she cares for."
+
+"Except yourself."
+
+"I'm only a means----"
+
+She turned her quiet face to him. "You know," she said, "that isn't
+true."...
+
+"No," she repeated, to his silent contradiction.
+
+"I've watched her," she went on. "You're _not_ a means. I'd have spoken
+long ago if I had thought that. Haven't I watched? Haven't I lain awake
+through long nights thinking about her and you, thinking over every
+casual mood, every little sign--longing to help--helpless." ... She
+struggled with herself, for she was weeping. "_It has come to this_,"
+she said in a whisper, and choked back a flood of tears.
+
+Trafford stood motionless, watching her. She became active. She moved
+round the table. She looked at the kettle, moved the cups needlessly,
+made tea, and stood waiting for a moment before she poured it out. "It's
+so hard to talk to you," she said, "and about all this.... I care so
+much. For her. And for you.... Words don't come, dear.... One says
+stupid things."
+
+She poured out the tea, and left the cups steaming, and came and stood
+before him.
+
+"You see," she said, "you're ill. You aren't just. You've come to an
+end. You don't know where you are and what you want to do. Neither does
+she, my dear. She's as aimless as you--and less able to help it. Ever so
+much less able."
+
+"But she doesn't show it. She goes on. She wants things and wants
+things----"
+
+"And you want to go away. It's the same thing. It's exactly the same
+thing. It's dissatisfaction. Life leaves you empty and craving--leaves
+you with nothing to do but little immediate things that turn to dust as
+you do them. It's her trouble, just as it's your trouble."
+
+"But she doesn't show it."
+
+"Women don't. Not so much. Perhaps even she doesn't know it. Half the
+women in our world don't know--and for a woman it's so much easier to go
+on--so many little things."...
+
+Trafford tried to grasp the intention of this. "Mother," he said, "I
+mean to go away."
+
+"But think of her!"
+
+"I've thought. Now I've got to think of myself."
+
+"You can't--without her."
+
+"I will. It's what I'm resolved to do."
+
+"Go right away?"
+
+"Right away."
+
+"And think?"
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Find out--what it all means, my boy?"
+
+"Yes. So far as I'm concerned."
+
+"And then----?"
+
+"Come back, I suppose. I haven't thought."
+
+"To her?"
+
+He didn't answer. She went and stood beside him, leaning upon the
+mantel. "Godwin," she said, "she'd only be further behind.... You've got
+to take her with you."
+
+He stood still and silent.
+
+"You've got to think things out with her. If you don't----"
+
+"I can't."
+
+"Then you ought to go away with her----" She stopped.
+
+"For good?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+They were both silent for a space. Then Mrs. Trafford gave her mind to
+the tea that was cooling in the cups, and added milk and sugar. She
+spoke again with the table between them.
+
+"I've thought so much of these things," she said with the milk-jug in
+her hand. "It's not only you two, but others. And all the movement about
+us.... Marriage isn't what it was. It's become a different thing because
+women have become human beings. Only----You know, Godwin, all these
+things are so difficult to express. Woman's come out of being a slave,
+and yet she isn't an equal.... We've had a sort of sham emancipation,
+and we haven't yet come to the real one."
+
+She put down the milk-jug on the tray with an air of grave deliberation.
+"If you go away from her and make the most wonderful discoveries about
+life and yourself, it's no good--unless she makes them too. It's no good
+at all.... You can't live without her in the end, any more than she can
+live without you. You may think you can, but I've watched you. You don't
+want to go away from her, you want to go away from the world that's got
+hold of her, from the dresses and parties and the competition and all
+this complicated flatness we have to live in.... It wouldn't worry you a
+bit, if it hadn't got hold of her. You don't want to get out of it for
+your own sake. You _are_ out of it. You are as much out of it as any one
+can be. Only she holds you in it, because she isn't out of it. Your
+going away will do nothing. She'll still be in it--and still have her
+hold on you.... You've got to take her away. Or else--if you go away--in
+the end it will be just like a ship, Godwin, coming back to its
+moorings."
+
+She watched his thoughtful face for some moments, then arrested herself
+just in time in the act of putting a second portion of sugar into each
+of the cups. She handed her son his tea, and he took it mechanically.
+"You're a wise little mother," he said. "I didn't see things in that
+light.... I wonder if you're right."
+
+"I know I am," she said.
+
+"I've thought more and more,--it was Marjorie."
+
+"It's the world."
+
+"Women made the world. All the dress and display and competition."
+
+Mrs. Trafford thought. "Sex made the world. Neither men nor women. But
+the world has got hold of the women tighter than it has the men. They're
+deeper in." She looked up into his face. "Take her with you," she said,
+simply.
+
+"She won't come," said Trafford, after considering it.
+
+Mrs. Trafford reflected. "She'll come--if you make her," she said.
+
+"She'll want to bring two housemaids."
+
+"I don't think you know Marjorie as well as I do."
+
+"But she can't----"
+
+"She can. It's you--you'll want to take two housemaids for her. Even
+you.... Men are not fair to women."
+
+Trafford put his untasted tea upon the mantelshelf, and confronted his
+mother with a question point blank. "Does Marjorie care for me?" he
+asked.
+
+"You're the sun of her world."
+
+"But she goes her way."
+
+"She's clever, she's full of life, full of activities, eager to make and
+arrange and order; but there's nothing she is, nothing she makes, that
+doesn't centre on you."
+
+"But if she cared, she'd understand!"
+
+"My dear, do _you_ understand?"
+
+He stood musing. "I had everything clear," he said. "I saw my way to
+Labrador...."
+
+Her little clock pinged the hour. "Good God!" he said, "I'm to be at
+dinner somewhere at seven. We're going to a first night. With the
+Bernards, I think. Then I suppose we'll have a supper. Always life is
+being slashed to tatters by these things. Always. One thinks in snatches
+of fifty minutes. It's dementia...."
+
+
+Sec. 7
+
+They dined at the Loretto Restaurant with the Bernards and Richard
+Hampden and Mrs. Godwin Capes, the dark-eyed, quiet-mannered wife of the
+dramatist, a woman of impulsive speech and long silences, who had
+subsided from an early romance (Capes had been divorced for her while
+she was still a mere girl) into a markedly correct and exclusive mother
+of daughters. Through the dinner Marjorie was watching Trafford and
+noting the deep preoccupation of his manner. He talked a little to Mrs.
+Bernard until it was time for Hampden to entertain her, then finding
+Mrs. Capes was interested in Bernard, he lapsed into thought. Presently
+Marjorie discovered his eyes scrutinizing herself.
+
+She hoped the play would catch his mind, but the play seemed devised to
+intensify his sense of the tawdry unreality of contemporary life.
+Bernard filled the intervals with a conventional enthusiasm. Capes
+didn't appear.
+
+"He doesn't seem to care to see his things," his wife explained.
+
+"It's so brilliant," said Bernard.
+
+"He has to do it," said Mrs. Capes slowly, her sombre eyes estimating
+the crowded stalls below. "It isn't what he cares to do."
+
+The play was in fact an admirable piece of English stagecraft, and it
+dealt exclusively with that unreal other world of beings the English
+theatre has for its own purposes developed. Just as Greece through the
+ages evolved and polished and perfected the idealized life of its
+Homeric poems, so the British mind has evolved their Stage Land to
+embody its more honourable dreams, full of heroic virtues, incredible
+honour, genial worldliness, childish villainies, profound but amiable
+waiters and domestics, pathetic shepherds and preposterous crimes.
+Capes, needing an income, had mastered the habits and customs of this
+imagined world as one learns a language; success endorsed his mastery;
+he knew exactly how deeply to underline an irony and just when it is fit
+and proper for a good man to call upon "God!" or cry out "Damn!" In this
+play he had invented a situation in which a charming and sympathetic
+lady had killed a gross and drunken husband in self-defence, almost but
+not quite accidentally, and had then appealed to the prodigious hero for
+assistance in the resulting complications. At a great cost of mental
+suffering to himself he had told his First and Only Lie to shield her.
+Then years after he had returned to England--the first act happened, of
+course in India--to find her on the eve of marrying, without any of the
+preliminary confidences common among human beings, an old school friend
+of his. (In plays all Gentlemen have been at school together, and one
+has been the other's fag.) The audience had to be interested in the
+problem of what the prodigious hero was to do in this prodigious
+situation. Should he maintain a colossal silence, continue his
+shielding, and let his friend marry the murderess saved by his perjury,
+or----?... The dreadful quandary! Indeed, the absolute--inconvenience!
+
+Marjorie watched Trafford in the corner of the box, as he listened
+rather contemptuously to the statement of the evening's Problem and then
+lapsed again into a brooding quiet. She wished she understood his moods
+better. She felt there was more in this than a mere resentment at her
+persistence about the new house....
+
+Why didn't he go on with things?...
+
+This darkling mood of his had only become manifest to her during the
+last three or four years of their life. Previously, of course, he had
+been irritable at times.
+
+Were they less happy now than they had been in the little house in
+Chelsea? It had really been a horrible little house. And yet there had
+been a brightness then--a nearness....
+
+She found her mind wandering away upon a sort of stock-taking
+expedition. How much of real happiness had she and Trafford had
+together? They ought by every standard to be so happy....
+
+She declined the Bernard's invitation to a chafing-dish supper, and
+began to talk so soon as she and Trafford had settled into the car.
+
+"Rag," she said, "something's the matter?"
+
+"Well--yes."
+
+"The house?"
+
+"Yes--the house."
+
+Marjorie considered through a little interval.
+
+"Old man, why are you so prejudiced against a bigger house?"
+
+"Oh, because the one we have bores me, and the next one will bore me
+more."
+
+"But try it."
+
+"I don't want to."
+
+"Well," she said and lapsed into silence.
+
+"And then," he asked, "what are we going to do?"
+
+"Going to do--when?"
+
+"After the new house----"
+
+"I'm going to open out," she said.
+
+He made no answer.
+
+"I want to open out. I want you to take your place in the world, the
+place you deserve."
+
+"A four-footman place?"
+
+"Oh! the house is only a means."
+
+He thought upon that. "A means," he asked, "to what? Look here,
+Marjorie, what do you think you are up to with me and yourself? What do
+you see me doing--in the years ahead?"
+
+She gave him a silent and thoughtful profile for a second or so.
+
+"At first I suppose you are going on with your researches."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Then----I must tell you what I think of you, Rag. Politics----"
+
+"Good Lord!"
+
+"You've a sort of power. You could make things noble."
+
+"And then? Office?"
+
+"Why not? Look at the little men they are."
+
+"And then perhaps a still bigger house?"
+
+"You're not fair to me."
+
+He pulled up the bearskin over his knees.
+
+"Marjorie!" he said. "You see----We aren't going to do any of those
+things at all.... _No!_..."
+
+"I can't go on with my researches," he explained. "That's what you don't
+understand. I'm not able to get back to work. I shall never do any good
+research again. That's the real trouble, Marjorie, and it makes all the
+difference. As for politics----I can't touch politics. I despise
+politics. I think this empire and the monarchy and Lords and Commons and
+patriotism and social reform and all the rest of it, silly, _silly_
+beyond words; temporary, accidental, foolish, a mere stop-gap--like a
+gipsey's roundabout in a place where one will presently build a
+house.... You don't help make the house by riding on the roundabout....
+There's no clear knowledge--no clear purpose.... Only research
+matters--and expression perhaps--I suppose expression is a sort of
+research--until we get that--that sufficient knowledge. And you see, I
+can't take up my work again. I've lost something...."
+
+She waited.
+
+"I've got into this stupid struggle for winning money," he went on, "and
+I feel like a woman must feel who's made a success of prostitution. I've
+been prostituted. I feel like some one fallen and diseased.... Business
+and prostitution; they're the same thing. All business is a sort of
+prostitution, all prostitution is a sort of business. Why should one
+sell one's brains any more than one sells one's body?... It's so easy to
+succeed if one has good brains and cares to do it, and doesn't let one's
+attention or imagination wander--and it's so degrading. Hopelessly
+degrading.... I'm sick of this life, Marjorie. _I_ don't want to buy
+things. I'm sick of buying. I'm at an end. I'm clean at an end. It's
+exactly as though suddenly in walking through a great house one came on
+a passage that ended abruptly in a door, which opened--on nothing!
+Nothing!"
+
+"This is a mood," she whispered to his pause.
+
+"It isn't a mood, it's a fact.... I've got nothing ahead, and I don't
+know how to get back. My life's no good to me any more. I've spent
+myself."
+
+She looked at him with dismayed eyes. "But," she said, "this _is_ a
+mood."
+
+"No," he said, "no mood, but conviction. I _know_...."
+
+He started. The car had stopped at their house, and Malcolm was opening
+the door of the car. They descended silently, and went upstairs in
+silence.
+
+He came into her room presently and sat down by her fireside. She had
+gone to her dressing-table and unfastened a necklace; now with this
+winking and glittering in her hand she came and stood beside him.
+
+"Rag," she said, "I don't know what to say. This isn't so much of a
+surprise.... I _felt_ that somehow life was disappointing you, that I
+was disappointing you. I've felt it endless times, but more so lately. I
+haven't perhaps dared to let myself know just how much.... But isn't it
+what life is? Doesn't every wife disappoint her husband? We're none of
+us inexhaustible. After all, we've had a good time; isn't it a little
+ungrateful to forget?..."
+
+"Look here, Rag," she said. "I don't know what to do. If I did know, I
+would do it.... What are we to do?"
+
+"Think," he suggested.
+
+"We've got to live as well as think."
+
+"It's the immense troublesome futility of--everything," he said.
+
+"Well--let us cease to be futile. Let us _do_. You say there is no grip
+for you in research, that you despise politics.... There's no end of
+trouble and suffering. Cannot we do social work, social reform, change
+the lives of others less fortunate than ourselves...."
+
+"Who are we that we should tamper with the lives of others?"
+
+"But one must do something."
+
+He thought that over.
+
+"No," he said "that's the universal blunder nowadays. One must do the
+right thing. And we don't know the right thing, Marjorie. That's the
+very heart of the trouble.... Does this life satisfy _you?_ If it did
+would you always be so restless?..."
+
+"But," she said, "think of the good things in life?"
+
+"It's just the good, the exquisite things in life, that make me rebel
+against this life we are leading. It's because I've seen the streaks of
+gold that I know the rest for dirt. When I go cheating and scheming to
+my office, and come back to find you squandering yourself upon a horde
+of chattering, overdressed women, when I think that that is our
+substance and everyday and what we are, then it is I remember most the
+deep and beautiful things.... It is impossible, dear, it is intolerable
+that life was made beautiful for us--just for these vulgarities."
+
+"Isn't there----" She hesitated. "Love--still?"
+
+"But----Has it been love? Love is a thing that grows. But we took it--as
+people take flowers out of a garden, cut them off, put them in water....
+How much of our daily life has been love? How much of it mere
+consequences of the love we've left behind us?... We've just cohabited
+and 'made love'--you and I--and thought of a thousand other things...."
+
+He looked up at her. "Oh, I love a thousand things about you," he said.
+"But do I love _you_, Marjorie? Have I got you? Haven't I lost
+you--haven't we both lost something, the very heart of it all? Do you
+think that we were just cheated by instinct, that there wasn't something
+in it we felt and thought was there? And where is it now? Where is that
+brightness and wonder, Marjorie, and the pride and the immense unlimited
+hope?"
+
+She was still for a moment, then knelt very swiftly before him and held
+out her arms.
+
+"Oh Rag!" she said, with a face of tender beauty. He took her finger
+tips in his, dropped them and stood up above her.
+
+"My dear," he cried, "my dear! why do you always want to turn love
+into--touches?... Stand up again. Stand up there, my dear; don't think
+I've ceased to love you, but stand up there and let me talk to you as
+one man to another. If we let this occasion slide to embraces...."
+
+He stopped short.
+
+She crouched before the fire at his feet. "Go on," she said, "go on."
+
+"I feel now that all our lives now, Marjorie----We have come to a
+crisis. I feel that now----_now_ is the time. Either we shall save
+ourselves now or we shall never save ourselves. It is as if something
+had gathered and accumulated and could wait no longer. If we do not
+seize this opportunity----Then our lives will go on as they have gone
+on, will become more and more a matter of small excitements and
+elaborate comforts and distraction...."
+
+He stopped this halting speech and then broke out again.
+
+"Oh! why _should_ the life of every day conquer us? Why should
+generation after generation of men have these fine beginnings, these
+splendid dreams of youth, attempt so much, achieve so much and then,
+then become--_this!_ Look at this room, this litter of little
+satisfactions! Look at your pretty books there, a hundred minds you have
+pecked at, bright things of the spirit that attracted you as jewels
+attract a jackdaw. Look at the glass and silver, and that silk from
+China! And we are in the full tide of our years, Marjorie. Now is the
+very crown and best of our lives. And this is what we do, we sample, we
+accumulate. For this we loved, for this we hoped. Do you remember when
+we were young--that life seemed so splendid--it was intolerable we
+should ever die?... The splendid dream! The intimations of greatness!...
+The miserable failure!"
+
+He raised clenched fists. "I won't stand it, Marjorie. I won't endure
+it. Somehow, in some way, I will get out of this life--and you with me.
+I have been brooding upon this and brooding, but now I know...."
+
+"But how?" asked Marjorie, with her bare arms about her knees, staring
+into the fire. "_How?_"
+
+"We must get out of its constant interruptions, its incessant vivid,
+petty appeals...."
+
+"We might go away--to Switzerland."
+
+"We _went_ to Switzerland. Didn't we agree--it was our second honeymoon.
+It isn't a honeymoon we need. No, we'll have to go further than that."
+
+A sudden light broke upon Marjorie's mind. She realized he had a plan.
+She lifted a fire-lit face to him and looked at him with steady eyes and
+asked----
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Ever so much further."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"You do. You've planned something."
+
+"I don't know, Marjorie. At least--I haven't made up my mind. Where it
+is very lonely. Cold and remote. Away from all this----" His mind
+stopped short, and he ended with a cry: "Oh! God! how I want to get out
+of all this!"
+
+He sat down in her arm-chair, and bowed his face on his hands.
+
+Then abruptly he stood up and went out of the room.
+
+
+Sec. 8
+
+When in five minutes' time he came back into her room she was still upon
+her hearthrug before the fire, with her necklace in her hand, the red
+reflections of the flames glowing and winking in her jewels and in her
+eyes. He came and sat again in her chair.
+
+"I have been ranting," he said. "I feel I've been--eloquent. You make me
+feel like an actor-manager, in a play by Capes.... You are the most
+difficult person for me to talk to in all the world--because you mean so
+much to me."
+
+She moved impulsively and checked herself and crouched away from him. "I
+mustn't touch your hand," she whispered.
+
+"I want to explain."
+
+"You've got to explain."
+
+"I've got quite a definite plan.... But a sort of terror seized me. It
+was like--shyness."
+
+"I know. I knew you had a plan."
+
+"You see.... I mean to go to Labrador."
+
+He leant forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands extended,
+explanatory. He wanted intensely that she should understand and agree
+and his desire made him clumsy, now slow and awkward, now glibly and
+unsatisfyingly eloquent. But she comprehended his quality better than he
+knew. They were to go away to Labrador, this snowy desert of which she
+had scarcely heard, to camp in the very heart of the wilderness, two
+hundred miles or more from any human habitation----
+
+"But how long?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"The better part of a year."
+
+"And we are to talk?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "talk and think ourselves together--oh!--the old phrases
+carry it all--find God...."
+
+"It is what I dreamt of, Rag, years ago."
+
+"Will you come," he cried, "out of all this?"
+
+She leant across the hearthrug, and seized and kissed his hand....
+
+Then, with one of those swift changes of hers, she was in revolt. "But,
+Rag," she exclaimed, "this is dreaming. We are not free. There are the
+children! Rag! We cannot leave the children!"
+
+"We can," he said. "We must."
+
+"But, my dear!--our duty!"
+
+"_Is_ it a mother's duty always to keep with her children? They will be
+looked after, their lives are organized, there is my mother close at
+hand.... What is the good of having children at all--unless their world
+is to be better than our world?... What are we doing to save them from
+the same bathos as this--to which we have come? We give them food and
+health and pictures and lessons, that's all very well while they are
+just little children; but we've got no religion to give them, no aim, no
+sense of a general purpose. What is the good of bread and health--and no
+worship?... What can we say to them when they ask us why we brought them
+into the world?--_We_ happened--_you_ happened. What are we to tell them
+when they demand the purpose of all this training, all these lessons?
+When they ask what we are preparing them for? Just that _you_, too, may
+have children! Is that any answer? Marjorie, it's common-sense to try
+this over--to make this last supreme effort--just as it will be
+common-sense to separate if we can't get the puzzle solved together."
+
+"Separate!"
+
+"Separate. Why not? We can afford it. Of course, we shall separate."
+
+"But Rag!--separate!"
+
+He faced her protest squarely. "Life is not worth living," he said,
+"unless it has more to hold it together than ours has now. If we cannot
+escape together, then--_I will go alone_."...
+
+
+Sec. 9
+
+They parted that night resolved to go to Labrador together, with the
+broad outline of their subsequent journey already drawn. Each lay awake
+far into the small hours thinking of this purpose and of one another,
+with a strange sense of renewed association. Each woke to a morning of
+sunshine heavy-eyed. Each found that overnight decision remote and
+incredible. It was like something in a book or a play that had moved
+them very deeply. They came down to breakfast, and helped themselves
+after the wonted fashion of several years, Marjorie with a skilful eye
+to the large order of her household; the _Times_ had one or two
+characteristic letters which interested them both; there was the usual
+picturesque irruption of the children and a distribution of early
+strawberries among them. Trafford had two notes in his correspondence
+which threw a new light upon the reconstruction of the Norton-Batsford
+company in which he was interested; he formed a definite conclusion upon
+the situation, and went quite normally to his study and the telephone to
+act upon that.
+
+It was only as the morning wore on that it became real to him that he
+and Marjorie had decided to leave the world. Then, with the
+Norton-Batsford business settled, he sat at his desk and mused. His
+apathy passed. His imagination began to present first one picture and
+then another of his retreat. He walked along Oxford Street to his Club
+thinking--"soon we shall be out of all this." By the time he was at
+lunch in his Club, Labrador had become again the magic refuge it had
+seemed the day before. After lunch he went to work in the library,
+finding out books about Labrador, and looking up the details of the
+journey.
+
+But his sense of futility and hopeless oppression had vanished. He
+walked along the corridor and down the great staircase, and without a
+trace of the despairful hostility of the previous day, passed Blenkins,
+talking grey bosh with infinite thoughtfulness. He nodded easily to
+Blenkins. He was going out of it all, as a man might do who discovers
+after years of weary incarceration that the walls of his cell are made
+of thin paper. The time when Blenkins seemed part of a prison-house of
+routine and invincible stupidity seemed ten ages ago.
+
+In Pall Mall Trafford remarked Lady Grampians and the Countess of
+Claridge, two women of great influence, in a big green car, on the way
+no doubt to create or sustain or destroy; and it seemed to him that it
+was limitless ages since these poor old dears with their ridiculous hats
+and their ridiculous airs, their luncheons and dinners and dirty
+aggressive old minds, had sent tidal waves of competitive anxiety into
+his home....
+
+He found himself jostling through the shopping crowd on the sunny side
+of Regent Street. He felt now that he looked over the swarming,
+preoccupied heads at distant things. He and Marjorie were going out of
+it all, going clean out of it all. They were going to escape from
+society and shopping, and petty engagements and incessant triviality--as
+a bird flies up out of weeds.
+
+
+Sec. 10
+
+But Marjorie fluctuated more than he did.
+
+There were times when the expedition for which he was now preparing
+rapidly and methodically seemed to her the most adventurously-beautiful
+thing that had ever come to her, and times when it seemed the maddest
+and most hopeless of eccentricities. There were times when she had
+devastating premonitions of filth, hunger, strain and fatigue, damp and
+cold, when her whole being recoiled from the project, when she could
+even think of staying secure in London and letting him go alone. She
+developed complicated anxieties for the children; she found reasons for
+further inquiries, for delay. "Why not," she suggested, "wait a year?"
+
+"No," he said, "I won't. I mean we are to do this, and do it now, and
+nothing but sheer physical inability to do it will prevent my carrying
+it out.... And you? Of course you are to come. I can't drag you
+shrieking all the way to Labrador; short of that I'm going to _make_ you
+come with me."
+
+She sat and looked up at him with dark lights in her upturned eyes, and
+a little added warmth in her cheek. "You've never forced my will like
+this before," she said, in a low voice. "Never."
+
+He was too intent upon his own resolve to heed her tones.
+
+"It hasn't seemed necessary somehow," he said, considering her
+statement. "Now it does."
+
+"This is something final," she said.
+
+"It is final."
+
+She found an old familiar phrasing running through her head, as she sat
+crouched together, looking up at his rather gaunt, very intent face, the
+speech of another woman echoing to her across a vast space of years:
+"Whither thou goest I will go----"
+
+"In Labrador," he began....
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE THIRD
+
+THE PILGRIMAGE TO LONELY HUT
+
+
+Sec. 1
+
+Marjorie was surprised to find how easy it was at last to part from her
+children and go with Trafford.
+
+"I am not sorry," she said, "not a bit sorry--but I am fearfully afraid.
+I shall dream they are ill.... Apart from that, it's strange how you
+grip me and they don't...."
+
+In the train to Liverpool she watched Trafford with the queer feeling
+which comes to all husbands and wives at times that that other partner
+is indeed an undiscovered stranger, just beginning to show perplexing
+traits,--full of inconceivable possibilities.
+
+For some reason his tearing her up by the roots in this fashion had
+fascinated her imagination. She felt a strange new wonder at him that
+had in it just a pleasant faint flavour of fear. Always before she had
+felt a curious aversion and contempt for those servile women who are
+said to seek a master, to want to be mastered, to be eager even for the
+physical subjugations of brute force. Now she could at least understand,
+sympathize even with them. Not only Trafford surprised her but herself.
+She found she was in an unwonted perplexing series of moods. All her
+feelings struck her now as being incorrect as well as unexpected; not
+only had life become suddenly full of novelty but she was making novel
+responses. She felt that she ought to be resentful and tragically sorry
+for her home and children. She felt this departure ought to have the
+quality of an immense sacrifice, a desperate and heroic undertaking for
+Trafford's sake. Instead she could detect little beyond an adventurous
+exhilaration when presently she walked the deck of the steamer that was
+to take her to St. John's. She had visited her cabin, seen her luggage
+stowed away, and now she surveyed the Mersey and its shipping with a
+renewed freshness of mind. She was reminded of the day, now nearly nine
+years ago, when she had crossed the sea for the first time--to Italy.
+Then, too, Trafford had seemed a being of infinitely wonderful
+possibilities.... What were the children doing?--that ought to have been
+her preoccupation. She didn't know; she didn't care! Trafford came and
+stood beside her, pointed out this and that upon the landing stage, no
+longer heavily sullen, but alert, interested, almost gay....
+
+Neither of them could find any way to the great discussion they had set
+out upon, in this voyage to St. John's. But there was plenty of time
+before them. Plenty of time! They were both the prey of that uneasy
+distraction which seems the inevitable quality of a passenger steamship.
+They surveyed and criticized their fellow travellers, and prowled up and
+down through the long swaying days and the cold dark nights. They slept
+uneasily amidst fog-horn hootings and the startling sounds of waves
+swirling against the ports. Marjorie had never had a long sea voyage
+before; for the first time in her life she saw all the world, through a
+succession of days, as a circle of endless blue waters, with the stars
+and planets and sun and moon rising sharply from its rim. Until one has
+had a voyage no one really understands that old Earth is a watery
+globe.... They ran into thirty hours of storm, which subsided, and then
+came a slow time among icebergs, and a hooting, dreary passage through
+fog. The first three icebergs were marvels, the rest bores; a passing
+collier out of her course and pitching heavily, a lonely black and dirty
+ship with a manner almost derelict, filled their thoughts for half a
+day. Their minds were in a state of tedious inactivity, eager for such
+small interests and only capable of such small interests. There was no
+hurry to talk, they agreed, no hurry at all, until they were settled
+away ahead there among the snows. "There we shall have plenty of time
+for everything...."
+
+Came the landfall and then St. John's, and they found themselves side by
+side watching the town draw near. The thought of landing and
+transference to another ship refreshed them both....
+
+They were going, Trafford said, in search of God, but it was far more
+like two children starting out upon a holiday.
+
+
+Sec. 2
+
+There was trouble and procrastination about the half-breed guides that
+Trafford had arranged should meet them at St. John's, and it was three
+weeks from their reaching Newfoundland before they got themselves and
+their guides and equipment and general stores aboard the boat for Port
+Dupre. Thence he had planned they should go in the Gibson schooner to
+Manivikovik, the Marconi station at the mouth of the Green River, and
+thence past the new pulp-mills up river to the wilderness. There were
+delays and a few trivial, troublesome complications in carrying out this
+scheme, but at last a day came when Trafford could wave good-bye to the
+seven people and eleven dogs which constituted the population of Peter
+Hammond's, that last rude outpost of civilization twenty miles above the
+pulp-mill, and turn his face in good earnest towards the wilderness.
+
+Neither he nor Marjorie looked back at the headland for a last glimpse
+of the little settlement they were leaving. Each stared ahead over the
+broad, smooth sweep of water, broken by one transverse bar of foaming
+shallows, and scanned the low, tree-clad hills beyond that drew together
+at last in the distant gorge out of which the river came. The morning
+was warm and full of the promise of a hot noon, so that the veils they
+wore against the assaults of sand-flies and mosquitoes were already a
+little inconvenient. It seemed incredible in this morning glow that the
+wooded slopes along the shore of the lake were the border of a land in
+which nearly half the inhabitants die of starvation. The deep-laden
+canoes swept almost noiselessly through the water with a rhythmic
+alternation of rush and pause as the dripping paddles drove and
+returned. Altogether there were four long canoes and five Indian breeds
+in their party, and when they came to pass through shallows both
+Marjorie and Trafford took a paddle.
+
+They came to the throat of the gorge towards noon, and found strong
+flowing deep water between its high purple cliffs. All hands had to
+paddle again, and it was only when they came to rest in a pool to eat a
+mid-day meal and afterwards to land upon a mossy corner for a stretch and
+a smoke, that Marjorie discovered the peculiar beauty of the rock about
+them. On the dull purplish-grey surfaces played the most extraordinary
+mist of luminous iridescence. It fascinated her. Here was a land whose
+common substance had this gemlike opalescence. But her attention was
+very soon withdrawn from these glancing splendours.
+
+She had had to put aside her veil to eat, and presently she felt the
+vividly painful stabs of the black-fly and discovered blood upon her
+face. A bigger fly, the size and something of the appearance of a small
+wasp, with an evil buzz, also assailed her and Trafford. It was a bad
+corner for flies; the breeds even were slapping their wrists and
+swearing under the torment, and every one was glad to embark and push on
+up the winding gorge. It opened out for a time, and then the wooded
+shores crept in again, and in another half-hour they saw ahead of them a
+long rush of foaming waters among tumbled rocks that poured down from a
+brimming, splashing line of light against the sky. They crossed the
+river, ran the canoes into an eddy under the shelter of a big stone and
+began to unload. They had reached their first portage.
+
+The rest of the first day was spent in packing and lugging first the
+cargoes and then the canoes up through thickets and over boulders and
+across stretches of reindeer moss for the better part of two miles to a
+camping ground about half-way up the rapids. Marjorie and Trafford tried
+to help with the carrying, but this evidently shocked and distressed the
+men too much, so they desisted and set to work cutting wood and
+gathering moss for the fires and bedding for the camp. When the iron
+stove was brought up the man who had carried it showed them how to put
+it up on stakes and start a fire in it, and then Trafford went to the
+river to get water, and Marjorie made a kind of flour cake in the
+frying-pan in the manner an American woman from the wilderness had once
+shown her, and boiled water for tea. The twilight had deepened to night
+while the men were still stumbling up the trail with the last two
+canoes.
+
+It gave Marjorie a curiously homeless feeling to stand there in the open
+with the sunset dying away below the black scrubby outlines of the
+treetops uphill to the northwest, and to realize the nearest roof was
+already a day's toilsome journey away. The cool night breeze blew upon
+her bare face and arms--for now the insects had ceased from troubling
+and she had cast aside gloves and veil and turned up her sleeves to
+cook--and the air was full of the tumult of the rapids tearing seaward
+over the rocks below. Struggling through the bushes towards her was an
+immense, headless quadruped with unsteady legs and hesitating paces, two
+of the men carrying the last canoe. Two others were now assisting
+Trafford to put up the little tent that was to shelter her, and the
+fifth was kneeling beside her very solemnly and respectfully cutting
+slices of bacon for her to fry. The air was very sweet, and she wished
+she could sleep not in the tent but under the open sky.
+
+It was queer, she thought, how much of the wrappings of civilization had
+slipped from them already. Every day of the journey from London had
+released them or deprived them--she hardly knew which--of a multitude of
+petty comforts and easy accessibilities. The afternoon toil uphill
+intensified the effect of having clambered up out of things--to this
+loneliness, this twilight openness, this simplicity.
+
+The men ate apart at a fire they made for themselves, and after Trafford
+and Marjorie had supped on damper, bacon and tea, he smoked. They were
+both too healthily tired to talk very much. There was no moon but a
+frosty brilliance of stars, the air which had been hot and sultry at
+mid-day grew keen and penetrating, and after she had made him tell her
+the names of constellations she had forgotten, she suddenly perceived
+the wisdom of the tent, went into it--it was sweet and wonderful with
+sprigs of the Labrador tea-shrub--undressed, and had hardly rolled
+herself up into a cocoon of blankets before she was fast asleep.
+
+She was awakened by a blaze of sunshine pouring into the tent, a smell
+of fried bacon and Trafford's voice telling her to get up. "They've gone
+on with the first loads," he said. "Get up, wrap yourself in a blanket,
+and come and bathe in the river. It's as cold as ice."
+
+She blinked at him. "Aren't you stiff?" she asked.
+
+"I was stiffer before I bathed," he said.
+
+She took the tin he offered her. (They weren't to see china cups again
+for a year.) "It's woman's work getting tea," she said as she drank.
+
+"You can't be a squaw all at once," said Trafford.
+
+
+Sec. 3
+
+After Marjorie had taken her dip, dried roughly behind a bush, twisted
+her hair into a pigtail and coiled it under her hat, she amused herself
+and Trafford as they clambered up through rocks and willows to the tent
+again by cataloguing her apparatus of bath and toilette at Sussex Square
+and tracing just when and how she had parted from each item on the way
+to this place.
+
+"But I _say!_" she cried, with a sudden, sharp note of dismay, "we
+haven't soap! This is our last cake almost. I never thought of soap."
+
+"Nor I," said Trafford.
+
+He spoke again presently. "We don't turn back for soap," he said.
+
+"We don't turn back for anything," said Marjorie. "Still--I didn't count
+on a soapless winter."
+
+"I'll manage something," said Trafford, a little doubtfully. "Trust a
+chemist...."
+
+That day they finished the portage and came out upon a wide lake with
+sloping shores and a distant view of snow-topped mountains, a lake so
+shallow that at times their loaded canoes scraped on the glaciated rock
+below and they had to alter their course. They camped in a lurid sunset;
+the night was warm and mosquitoes were troublesome, and towards morning
+came a thunderstorm and wind and rain.
+
+The dawn broke upon a tearing race of waves and a wild drift of slanting
+rain sweeping across the lake before a gale. Marjorie peered out at this
+as one peers out under the edge of an umbrella. It was manifestly
+impossible to go on, and they did nothing that day but run up a canvas
+shelter for the men and shift the tent behind a thicket of trees out of
+the full force of the wind. The men squatted stoically, and smoked and
+yarned. Everything got coldly wet, and for the most part the Traffords
+sat under the tent and stared blankly at this summer day in Labrador.
+
+"Now," said Trafford, "we ought to begin talking."
+
+"There's nothing much to do else," said Marjorie.
+
+"Only one can't begin," said Trafford.
+
+He was silent for a time. "We're getting out of things," he said....
+
+The next day began with a fine drizzle through which the sun broke
+suddenly about ten o'clock. They made a start at once, and got a good
+dozen miles up the lake before it was necessary to camp again. Both
+Marjorie and Trafford felt stiff and weary and uncomfortable all day,
+and secretly a little doubtful now of their own endurance. They camped
+on an island on turf amidst slippery rocks, and the next day were in a
+foaming difficult river again, with glittering shallows that obliged
+every one to get out at times to wade and push. All through the
+afternoon they were greatly beset by flies. And so they worked their
+way on through a third days' journey towards the silent inland of
+Labrador.
+
+Day followed day of toilsome and often tedious travel; they fought
+rapids, they waited while the men stumbled up long portages under vast
+loads, going and returning, they camped and discussed difficulties and
+alternatives. The flies sustained an unrelenting persecution, until
+faces were scarred in spite of veils and smoke fires, until wrists and
+necks were swollen and the blood in a fever. As they got higher and
+higher towards the central plateau, the mid-day heat increased and the
+nights grew colder, until they would find themselves toiling, wet with
+perspiration, over rocks that sheltered a fringe of ice beneath their
+shadows. The first fatigues and lassitudes, the shrinking from cold
+water, the ache of muscular effort, gave place to a tougher and tougher
+endurance; skin seemed to have lost half its capacity for pain without
+losing a tithe of its discrimination, muscles attained a steely
+resilience; they were getting seasoned. "I don't feel philosophical,"
+said Trafford, "but I feel well."
+
+"We're getting out of things."
+
+"Suppose we are getting out of our problems!..."
+
+One day as they paddled across a mile-long pool, they saw three bears
+prowling in single file high up on the hillside. "Look," said the man,
+and pointed with his paddle at the big, soft, furry black shapes,
+magnified and startling in the clear air. All the canoes rippled to a
+stop, the men, at first still, whispered softly. One passed a gun to
+Trafford, who hesitated and looked at Marjorie.
+
+The air of tranquil assurance about these three huge loafing monsters
+had a queer effect on Marjorie's mind. They made her feel that they were
+at home and that she was an intruder. She had never in her life seen
+any big wild animals except in a menagerie. She had developed a sort of
+unconscious belief that all big wild animals were in menageries
+nowadays, and this spectacle of beasts entirely at large startled her.
+There was never a bar between these creatures, she felt, and her
+sleeping self. They might, she thought, do any desperate thing to feeble
+men and women who came their way.
+
+"Shall I take a shot?" asked Trafford.
+
+"No," said Marjorie, pervaded by the desire for mutual toleration. "Let
+them be."
+
+The big brutes disappeared in a gully, reappeared, came out against the
+skyline one by one and vanished.
+
+"Too long a shot," said Trafford, handing back the gun....
+
+Their journey lasted altogether a month. Never once did they come upon
+any human being save themselves, though in one place they passed the
+poles--for the most part overthrown--of an old Indian encampment. But
+this desolation was by no means lifeless. They saw great quantities of
+waterbirds, geese, divers, Arctic partridge and the like, they became
+familiar with the banshee cry of the loon. They lived very largely on
+geese and partridge. Then for a time about a string of lakes, the
+country was alive with migrating deer going south, and the men found
+traces of a wolf. They killed six caribou, and stayed to skin and cut
+them up and dry the meat to replace the bacon they had consumed, caught,
+fried and ate great quantities of trout, and became accustomed to the
+mysterious dance of the northern lights as the sunset afterglow faded.
+
+Everywhere, except in the river gorges, the country displayed the low
+hummocky lines and tarn-like pools of intensely glaciated land;
+everywhere it was carpeted with reindeer moss growing upon peat and
+variegated by bushes of flowering, sweet-smelling Labrador tea. In
+places this was starred with little harebells and diversified by
+tussocks of heather and rough grass, and over the rocks trailed delicate
+dwarf shrubs and a very pretty and fragrant pink-flowered plant of which
+neither she nor Trafford knew the name. There was an astonishing amount
+of wild fruit, raspberries, cranberries, and a white kind of strawberry
+that was very delightful. The weather, after its first outbreak,
+remained brightly serene....
+
+And at last it seemed fit to Trafford to halt and choose his winter
+quarters. He chose a place on the side of a low, razor-hacked rocky
+mountain ridge, about fifty feet above the river--which had now dwindled
+to a thirty-foot stream. His site was near a tributary rivulet that gave
+convenient water, in a kind of lap that sheltered between two rocky
+knees, each bearing thickets of willow and balsam. Not a dozen miles
+away from them now they reckoned was the Height of Land, the low
+watershed between the waters that go to the Atlantic and those that go
+to Hudson's Bay. Close beside the site he had chosen a shelf of rock ran
+out and gave a glimpse up the narrow rocky valley of the Green River's
+upper waters and a broad prospect of hill and tarn towards the
+south-east. North and north-east of them the country rose to a line of
+low crests, with here and there a yellowing patch of last year's snow,
+and across the valley were slopes covered in places by woods of stunted
+pine. It had an empty spaciousness of effect; the one continually living
+thing seemed to be the Green River, hurrying headlong, noisily,
+perpetually, in an eternal flight from this high desolation. Birds were
+rare here, and the insects that buzzed and shrilled and tormented among
+the rocks and willows in the gorge came but sparingly up the slopes to
+them.
+
+"Here presently," said Trafford, "we shall be in peace."
+
+"It is very lonely," said Marjorie.
+
+"The nearer to God."
+
+"Think! Not one of these hills has ever had a name."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It might be in some other planet."
+
+"Oh!--we'll christen them. That shall be Marjorie Ridge, and that Rag
+Valley. This space shall be--oh! Bayswater! Before we've done with it,
+this place and every feature of it will be as familiar as Sussex Square.
+More so,--for half the houses there would be stranger to us, if we could
+see inside them, than anything in this wilderness.... As familiar,
+say--as your drawing-room. That's better."
+
+Marjorie made no answer, but her eyes went from the reindeer moss and
+scrub and thickets of the foreground to the low rocky ridges that
+bounded the view north and east of them. The scattered boulders, the
+tangles of wood, the barren upper slopes, the dust-soiled survivals of
+the winter's snowfall, all contributed to an effect at once carelessly
+desert and hopelessly untidy. She looked westward, and her memory was
+full of interminable streaming rapids, wastes of ice-striated rocks,
+tiresome struggles through woods and wild, wide stretches of tundra and
+tarn, trackless and treeless, infinitely desolate. It seemed to her that
+the sea coast was but a step from London and ten thousand miles away
+from her.
+
+
+Sec. 4
+
+The men had engaged to build the framework of hut and store shed before
+returning, and to this under Trafford's direction they now set
+themselves. They were all half-breeds, mingling with Indian with
+Scottish or French blood, sober and experienced men. Three were named
+Mackenzie, two brothers and a cousin, and another, Raymond Noyes, was a
+relation and acquaintance of that George Elson who was with Wallace and
+Leonidas Hubbard, and afterwards guided Mrs. Hubbard in her crossing of
+Labrador. The fifth was a boy of eighteen named Lean. They were all
+familiar with the idea of summer travel in this country; quite a number,
+a score or so that is to say, of adventurous people, including three or
+four women, had ventured far in the wake of the Hubbards into these
+great wildernesses during the decade that followed that first tragic
+experiment in which Hubbard died. But that any one not of Indian or
+Esquimaux blood should propose to face out the Labrador winter was a new
+thing to them. They were really very sceptical at the outset whether
+these two highly civilized-looking people would ever get up to the
+Height of Land at all, and it was still with manifest incredulity that
+they set about the building of the hut and the construction of the
+sleeping bunks for which they had brought up planking. A stream of
+speculative talk had flowed along beside Marjorie and Trafford ever
+since they had entered the Green River; and it didn't so much come to an
+end as get cut off at last by the necessity of their departure.
+
+Noyes would stand, holding a hammer and staring at the narrow little
+berth he was fixing together.
+
+"You'll not sleep in this," he said.
+
+"I will," replied Marjorie.
+
+"You'll come back with us."
+
+"Not me."
+
+"There'll be wolves come and howl."
+
+"Let 'em."
+
+"They'll come right up to the door here. Winter makes 'em hidjus bold."
+
+Marjorie shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"It's that cold I've known a man have his nose froze while he lay in
+bed," said Noyes.
+
+"Up here?"
+
+"Down the coast. But they say it's 'most as cold up here. Many's the man
+it's starved and froze."...
+
+He and his companions told stories,--very circumstantial and pitiful
+stories, of Indian disasters. They were all tales of weariness and
+starvation, of the cessation of food, because the fishing gave out,
+because the caribou did not migrate by the customary route, because the
+man of a family group broke his wrist, and then of the start of all or
+some of the party to the coast to get help and provisions, of the
+straining, starving fugitives caught by blizzards, losing the track,
+devouring small vermin raw, gnawing their own skin garments until they
+toiled half-naked in the snow,--becoming cannibals, becoming delirious,
+lying down to die. Once there was an epidemic of influenza, and three
+families of seven and twenty people just gave up and starved and died in
+their lodges, and were found, still partly frozen, a patient, pitiful
+company, by trappers in the spring....
+
+Such they said, were the common things that happened in a Labrador
+winter. Did the Traffords wish to run such risks?
+
+A sort of propagandist enthusiasm grew up in the men. They felt it
+incumbent upon them to persuade the Traffords to return. They reasoned
+with them rather as one does with wilful children. They tried to remind
+them of the delights and securities of the world they were deserting.
+Noyes drew fancy pictures of the pleasures of London by way of contrast
+to the bitter days before them. "You've got everything there,
+everything. Suppose you feel a bit ill, you go out, and every block
+there's a drug store got everything--all the new rem'dies--p'raps
+twenty, thirty sorts of rem'dy. Lit up, nice. And chaps in collars--like
+gentlemen. Or you feel a bit dully and you go into the streets and
+there's people. Why! when I was in New York I used to spend hours
+looking at the people. Hours! And everything lit up, too. Sky signs!
+Readin' everywhere. You can spend hours and hours in New York----"
+
+"London," said Marjorie.
+
+"Well, London--just going about and reading the things they stick up.
+Every blamed sort of thing. Or you say, let's go somewhere. Let's go out
+and be a bit lively. See? Up you get on a car and there you are! Great
+big restaurants, blazing with lights, and you can't think of a thing to
+eat they haven't got. Waiters all round you, dressed tremendous, fair
+asking you to have more. Or you say, let's go to a theatre. Very
+likely," said Noyes, letting his imagination soar, "you order up one of
+these automobillies."
+
+"By telephone," helped Trafford.
+
+"By telephone," confirmed Noyes. "When I was in New York there was a
+telephone in each room in the hotel. Each room. I didn't use it ever,
+except once when they didn't answer--but there it was. I know about
+telephones all right...."
+
+Why had they come here? None of the men were clear about that. Marjorie
+and Trafford would overhear them discussing this question at their fire
+night after night; they seemed to talk of nothing else. They indulged in
+the boldest hypotheses, even in the theory that Trafford knew of
+deposits of diamonds and gold, and would trust no one but his wife with
+the secret. They seemed also attracted by the idea that our two young
+people had "done something." Lean, with memories of some tattered
+sixpenny novel that had drifted into his hands from England, had even
+some notion of an elopement, of a pursuing husband or a vindictive wife.
+He was young and romantic, but it seemed incredible he should suggest
+that Marjorie was a royal princess. Yet there were moments when his
+manner betrayed a more than personal respect....
+
+One night after a hard day's portage Mackenzie was inspired by a
+brilliant idea. "They got no children," he said, in a hoarse,
+exceptionally audible whisper. "It worries them. Them as is Catholics
+goes pilgrimages, but these ain't Catholics. See?"
+
+"I can't stand that," said Marjorie. "It touches my pride. I've stood a
+good deal. Mr. Mackenzie!... Mr.... Mackenzie."
+
+The voice at the men's fire stopped and a black head turned around.
+"What is it, Mrs. Trafford?" asked Mackenzie.
+
+She held up four fingers. "Four!" she said.
+
+"Eh?"
+
+"Three sons and a daughter," said Marjorie.
+
+Mackenzie did not take it in until his younger brother had repeated her
+words.
+
+"And you've come from them to _this_.... Sir, what _have_ you come for?"
+
+"We want to be here," shouted Trafford to their listening pause. Their
+silence was incredulous.
+
+"We wanted to be alone together. There was too much--over there--too
+much everything."
+
+Mackenzie, in silhouette against the fire, shook his head, entirely
+dissatisfied. He could not understand how there could be too much of
+anything. It was beyond a trapper's philosophy.
+
+"Come back with us sir," said Noyes. "You'll weary of it...."
+
+Noyes clung to the idea of dissuasion to the end. "I don't care to leave
+ye," he said, and made a sort of byword of it that served when there was
+nothing else to say.
+
+He made it almost his last words. He turned back for another handclasp
+as the others under their light returning packs were filing down the
+hill.
+
+"I don't care to leave ye," he said.
+
+"Good luck!" said Trafford.
+
+"You'll need it," said Noyes, and looked at Marjorie very gravely and
+intently before he turned about and marched off after his fellows....
+
+Both Marjorie and Trafford felt a queer emotion, a sense of loss and
+desertion, a swelling in the throat, as that file of men receded over
+the rocky slopes, went down into a dip, reappeared presently small and
+remote cresting another spur, going on towards the little wood that hid
+the head of the rapids. They halted for a moment on the edge of the wood
+and looked back, then turned again one by one and melted stride by
+stride into the trees. Noyes was the last to go. He stood, in an
+attitude that spoke as plainly as words, "I don't care to leave ye."
+Something white waved and flickered; he had whipped out the letters they
+had given him for England, and he was waving them. Then, as if by an
+effort, he set himself to follow the others, and the two still watchers
+on the height above saw him no more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FOURTH
+
+LONELY HUT
+
+
+Sec. 1
+
+Marjorie and Trafford walked slowly back to the hut. "There is much to
+do before the weather breaks," he said, ending a thoughtful silence.
+"Then we can sit inside there and talk about the things we need to talk
+about."
+
+He added awkwardly: "Since we started, there has been so much to hold
+the attention. I remember a mood--an immense despair. I feel it's still
+somewhere at the back of things, waiting to be dealt with. It's our
+essential fact. But meanwhile we've been busy, looking at fresh things."
+
+He paused. "Now it will be different perhaps...."
+
+For nearly four weeks indeed they were occupied very closely, and crept
+into their bunks at night as tired as wholesome animals who drop to
+sleep. At any time the weather might break; already there had been two
+overcast days and a frowning conference of clouds in the north. When at
+last storms began they knew there would be nothing for it but to keep in
+the hut until the world froze up.
+
+There was much to do to the hut. The absence of anything but stunted and
+impoverished timber and the limitation of time, had forbidden a log hut,
+and their home was really only a double framework, rammed tight between
+inner and outer frame with a mixture of earth and boughs and twigs of
+willow, pine and balsam. The floor was hammered earth carpeted with
+balsam twigs and a caribou skin. Outside and within wall and roof were
+faced with coarse canvas--that was Trafford's idea--and their bunks
+occupied two sides of the hut. Heating was done by the sheet-iron stove
+they had brought with them, and the smoke was carried out to the roof by
+a thin sheet-iron pipe which had come up outside a roll of canvas. They
+had made the roof with about the pitch of a Swiss chalet, and it was
+covered with nailed waterproof canvas, held down by a large number of
+big lumps of stone. Much of the canvassing still remained to do when the
+men went down, and then the Traffords used every scrap of packing-paper
+and newspaper that had come up with them and was not needed for lining
+the bunks in covering any crack or join in the canvas wall.
+
+Two decadent luxuries, a rubber bath and two rubber hot-water bottles,
+hung behind the door. They were almost the only luxuries. Kettles and
+pans and some provisions stood on a shelf over the stove; there was also
+a sort of recess cupboard in the opposite corner, reserve clothes were
+in canvas trunks under the bunks, they kept their immediate supply of
+wood under the eaves just outside the door, and there was a big can of
+water between stove and door. When the winter came they would have to
+bring in ice from the stream.
+
+This was their home. The tent that had sheltered Marjorie on the way up
+was erected close to this hut to serve as a rude scullery and outhouse,
+and they also made a long, roughly thatched roof with a canvas cover,
+supported on stakes, to shelter the rest of the stores. The stuff in
+tins and cases and jars they left on the ground under this; the
+rest--the flour, candles, bacon, dried caribou beef, and so forth, they
+hung, as they hoped, out of the reach of any prowling beast. And finally
+and most important was the wood pile. This they accumulated to the
+north and east of the hut, and all day long with a sort of ant-like
+perseverance Trafford added to it from the thickets below. Once or
+twice, however, tempted by the appearance of birds, he went shooting,
+and one day he got five geese that they spent a day upon, plucking,
+cleaning, boiling and putting up in all their store of empty cans,
+letting the fat float and solidify on the top to preserve this addition
+to their provision until the advent of the frost rendered all other
+preservatives unnecessary. They also tried to catch trout down in the
+river below, but though they saw many fish the catch was less than a
+dozen.
+
+It was a discovery to both of them to find how companionable these
+occupations were, how much more side by side they could be amateurishly
+cleaning out a goose and disputing about its cooking, than they had ever
+contrived to be in Sussex Square.
+
+"These things are so infernally interesting," said Trafford, surveying
+the row of miscellaneous cans upon the stove he had packed with
+disarticulated goose. "But we didn't come here to picnic. All this is
+eating us up. I have a memory of some immense tragic purpose----"
+
+"That tin's _boiling!_" screamed Marjorie sharply.
+
+He resumed his thread after an active interlude.
+
+"We'll keep the wolf from the door," he said.
+
+"Don't talk of wolves!" said Marjorie.
+
+"It is only when men have driven away the wolf from the door--oh!
+altogether away, that they find despair in the sky? I wonder----"
+
+"What?" asked Marjorie in his pause.
+
+"I wonder if there is nothing really in life but this, the food hunt and
+the love hunt. Is life just all hunger and need, and are we left with
+nothing--nothing at all--when these things are done?... We're
+infernally uncomfortable here."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" cried Marjorie.
+
+"Think of your carpets at home! Think of the great, warm, beautiful
+house that wasn't big enough!--And yet here, we're happy."
+
+"We _are_ happy," said Marjorie, struck by the thought. "Only----"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I'm afraid. And I long for the children. And the wind _nips_."
+
+"It may be those are good things for us. No! This is just a lark as yet,
+Marjorie. It's still fresh and full of distractions. The discomforts are
+amusing. Presently we'll get used to it. Then we'll talk out--what we
+have to talk out.... I say, wouldn't it keep and improve this goose of
+ours if we put in a little brandy?"
+
+
+Sec. 2
+
+The weather broke at last. One might say it smashed itself over their
+heads. There came an afternoon darkness swift and sudden, a wild gale
+and an icy sleet that gave place in the night to snow, so that Trafford
+looked out next morning to see a maddening chaos of small white flakes,
+incredibly swift, against something that was neither darkness nor light.
+Even with the door but partly ajar a cruelty of cold put its claw
+within, set everything that was moveable swaying and clattering, and
+made Marjorie hasten shuddering to heap fresh logs upon the fire. Once
+or twice Trafford went out to inspect tent and roof and store-shed,
+several times wrapped to the nose he battled his way for fresh wood, and
+for the rest of the blizzard they kept to the hut. It was slumberously
+stuffy, but comfortingly full of flavours of tobacco and food. There
+were two days of intermission and a day of gusts and icy sleet again,
+turning with one extraordinary clap of thunder to a wild downpour of
+dancing lumps of ice, and then a night when it seemed all Labrador,
+earth and sky together, was in hysterical protest against inconceivable
+wrongs.
+
+And then the break was over; the annual freezing-up was accomplished,
+winter had established itself, the snowfall moderated and ceased, and an
+ice-bound world shone white and sunlit under a cloudless sky.
+
+
+Sec. 3
+
+Through all that time they got no further with the great discussion for
+which they had faced that solitude. They attempted beginnings.
+
+"Where had we got to when we left England?" cried Marjorie. "You
+couldn't work, you couldn't rest--you hated our life."
+
+"Yes, I know. I had a violent hatred of the lives we were leading. I
+thought--we had to get away. To think.... But things don't leave us
+alone here."
+
+He covered his face with his hands.
+
+"Why did we come here?" he asked.
+
+"You wanted--to get out of things."
+
+"Yes. But with you.... Have we, after all, got out of things at all? I
+said coming up, perhaps we were leaving our own problem behind. In
+exchange for other problems--old problems men have had before. We've got
+nearer necessity; that's all. Things press on us just as much. There's
+nothing more fundamental in wild nature, nothing profounder--only
+something earlier. One doesn't get out of life by going here or
+there.... But I wanted to get you away--from all things that had such a
+hold on you....
+
+"When one lies awake at nights, then one seems to get down into
+things...."
+
+He went to the door, opened it, and stood looking out. Against a wan
+daylight the snow was falling noiselessly and steadily.
+
+"Everything goes on," he said.... "Relentlessly...."
+
+
+Sec. 4
+
+That was as far as they had got when the storms ceased and they came out
+again into an air inexpressibly fresh and sharp and sweet, and into a
+world blindingly clean and golden white under the rays of the morning
+sun.
+
+"We will build a fire out here," said Marjorie; "make a great pile.
+There is no reason at all why we shouldn't live outside all through the
+day in such weather as this."
+
+
+Sec. 5
+
+One morning Trafford found the footmarks of some catlike creature in the
+snow near the bushes where he was accustomed to get firewood; they led
+away very plainly up the hill, and after breakfast he took his knife and
+rifle and snowshoes and went after the lynx--for that he decided the
+animal must be. There was no urgent reason why he should want to kill a
+lynx, unless perhaps that killing it made the store shed a trifle safer;
+but it was the first trail of any living thing for many days; it
+promised excitement; some primordial instinct perhaps urged him.
+
+The morning was a little overcast, and very cold between the gleams of
+wintry sunshine. "Good-bye, dear wife!" he said, and then as she
+remembered afterwards came back a dozen yards to kiss her. "I'll not be
+long," he said. "The beast's prowling, and if it doesn't get wind of me
+I ought to find it in an hour." He hesitated for a moment. "I'll not be
+long," he repeated, and she had an instant's wonder whether he hid from
+her the same dread of loneliness that she concealed. Or perhaps he only
+knew her secret. Up among the tumbled rocks he turned, and she was still
+watching him. "Good-bye!" he cried and waved, and the willow thickets
+closed about him.
+
+She forced herself to the petty duties of the day, made up the fire from
+the pile he had left for her, set water to boil, put the hut in order,
+brought out sheets and blankets to air and set herself to wash up. She
+wished she had been able to go with him. The sky cleared presently, and
+the low December sun lit all the world about her, but it left her spirit
+desolate.
+
+She did not expect him to return until mid-day, and she sat herself down
+on a log before the fire to darn a pair of socks as well as she could.
+For a time this unusual occupation held her attention and then her hands
+became slow and at last inactive, and she fell into reverie. She thought
+at first of her children and what they might be doing, in England across
+there to the east it would be about five hours later, four o'clock in
+the afternoon, and the children would be coming home through the warm
+muggy London sunshine with Fraulein Otto to tea. She wondered if they
+had the proper clothes, if they were well; were they perhaps quarrelling
+or being naughty or skylarking gaily across the Park. Of course Fraulein
+Otto was all right, quite to be trusted, absolutely trustworthy, and
+their grandmother would watch for a flushed face or an irrational
+petulance or any of the little signs that herald trouble with more than
+a mother's instinctive alertness. No need to worry about the children,
+no need whatever.... The world of London opened out behind these
+thoughts; it was so queer to think that she was in almost the same
+latitude as the busy bright traffic of the autumn season in Kensington
+Gore; that away there in ten thousand cleverly furnished drawing-rooms
+the ringing tea things were being set out for the rustling advent of
+smart callers and the quick leaping gossip. And there would be all sorts
+of cakes and little things; for a while her mind ran on cakes and little
+things, and she thought in particular whether it wasn't time to begin
+cooking.... Not yet. What was it she had been thinking about? Ah! the
+Solomonsons and the Capeses and the Bernards and the Carmels and the
+Lees. Would they talk of her and Trafford? It would be strange to go
+back to it all. Would they go back to it all? She found herself thinking
+intently of Trafford.
+
+What a fine human being he was! And how touchingly human! The thoughts
+of his moments of irritation, his baffled silences, filled her with a
+wild passion of tenderness. She had disappointed him; all that life
+failed to satisfy him. Dear master of her life! what was it he needed?
+She too wasn't satisfied with life, but while she had been able to
+assuage herself with a perpetual series of petty excitements, theatres,
+new books and new people, meetings, movements, dinners, shows, he had
+grown to an immense discontent. He had most of the things men sought,
+wealth, respect, love, children.... So many men might have blunted their
+heart-ache with--adventures. There were pretty women, clever women,
+unoccupied women. She felt she wouldn't have minded--_much_--if it made
+him happy.... It was so wonderful he loved her still.... It wasn't that
+he lacked occupation; on the whole he overworked. His business
+interests were big and wide. Ought he to go into politics? Why was it
+that the researches that had held him once, could hold him now no more?
+That was the real pity of it. Was she to blame for that? She couldn't
+state a case against herself, and yet she felt she was to blame. She had
+taken him away from those things, forced him to make money....
+
+She sat chin on hand staring into the fire, the sock forgotten on her
+knee.
+
+She could not weigh justice between herself and him. If he was unhappy
+it was her fault. She knew if he was unhappy it was no excuse that she
+had not known, had been misled, had a right to her own instincts and
+purposes. She had got to make him happy. But what was she to do, what
+was there for her to do?...
+
+Only he could work out his own salvation, and until he had light, all
+she could do was to stand by him, help him, cease to irritate him,
+watch, wait. Anyhow she could at least mend his socks as well as
+possible, so that the threads would not chafe him....
+
+She flashed to her feet. What was that?
+
+It seemed to her she had heard the sound of a shot, and a quick brief
+wake of echoes. She looked across the icy waste of the river, and then
+up the tangled slopes of the mountain. Her heart was beating very fast.
+It must have been up there, and no doubt he had killed his beast. Some
+shadow of doubt she would not admit crossed that obvious suggestion.
+
+This wilderness was making her as nervously responsive as a creature of
+the wild.
+
+Came a second shot; this time there was no doubt of it. Then the
+desolate silence closed about her again.
+
+She stood for a long time staring at the shrubby slopes that rose to the
+barren rock wilderness of the purple mountain crest. She sighed deeply
+at last, and set herself to make up the fire and prepare for the mid-day
+meal. Once far away across the river she heard the howl of a wolf.
+
+Time seemed to pass very slowly that day. She found herself going
+repeatedly to the space between the day tent and the sleeping hut from
+which she could see the stunted wood that had swallowed him up, and
+after what seemed a long hour her watch told her it was still only
+half-past twelve. And the fourth or fifth time that she went to look out
+she was set atremble again by the sound of a third shot. And then at
+regular intervals out of that distant brown purple jumble of thickets
+against the snow came two more shots. "Something has happened," she
+said, "something has happened," and stood rigid. Then she became active,
+seized the rifle that was always at hand when she was alone, fired into
+the sky and stood listening.
+
+Prompt come an answering shot.
+
+"He wants me," said Marjorie. "Something----Perhaps he has killed
+something too big to bring!"
+
+She was for starting at once, and then remembered this was not the way
+of the wilderness.
+
+She thought and moved very rapidly. Her mind catalogued possible
+requirements, rifle, hunting knife, the oilskin bag with matches, and
+some chunks of dry paper, the rucksack--and he would be hungry. She took
+a saucepan and a huge chunk of cheese and biscuit. Then a brandy flask
+is sometimes handy--one never knows. Though nothing was wrong, of
+course. Needles and stout thread, and some cord. Snowshoes. A waterproof
+cloak could be easily carried. Her light hatchet for wood. She cast
+about to see if there was anything else. She had almost forgotten
+cartridges--and a revolver. Nothing more. She kicked a stray brand or so
+into the fire, put on some more wood, damped the fire with an armful of
+snow to make it last longer, and set out towards the willows into which
+he had vanished.
+
+There was a rustling and snapping of branches as she pushed her way
+through the bushes, a little stir that died insensibly into quiet again;
+and then the camping place became very still....
+
+Scarcely a sound occurred, except for the little shuddering and stirring
+of the fire, and the reluctant, infrequent drip from the icicles along
+the sunny edge of the log hut roof. About one o'clock the amber sunshine
+faded out altogether, a veil of clouds thickened and became greyly
+ominous, and a little after two the first flakes of a snowstorm fell
+hissing into the fire. A wind rose and drove the multiplying snowflakes
+in whirls and eddies before it. The icicles ceased to drip, but one or
+two broke and fell with a weak tinkling. A deep soughing, a shuddering
+groaning of trees and shrubs, came ever and again out of the ravine, and
+the powdery snow blew like puffs of smoke from the branches.
+
+By four the fire was out, and the snow was piling high in the darkling
+twilight against tent and hut....
+
+
+Sec. 6
+
+Trafford's trail led Marjorie through the thicket of dwarf willows and
+down to the gully of the rivulet which they had called Marjorie Trickle;
+it had long since become a trough of snow-covered rotten ice; the trail
+crossed this and, turning sharply uphill, went on until it was clear of
+shrubs and trees, and in the windy open of the upper slopes it crossed a
+ridge and came over the lip of a large desolate valley with slopes of
+ice and icy snow. Here she spent some time in following his loops back
+on the homeward trail before she saw what was manifestly the final trail
+running far away out across the snow, with the spoor of the lynx, a
+lightly-dotted line, to the right of it. She followed this suggestion of
+the trail, put on her snowshoes, and shuffled her way across this
+valley, which opened as she proceeded. She hoped that over the ridge she
+would find Trafford, and scanned the sky for the faintest discolouration
+of a fire, but there was none. That seemed odd to her, but the wind was
+in her face, and perhaps it beat the smoke down. Then as her eyes
+scanned the hummocky ridge ahead, she saw something, something very
+intent and still, that brought her heart into her mouth. It was a big,
+grey wolf, standing with back haunched and head down, watching and
+winding something beyond there, out of sight.
+
+Marjorie had an instinctive fear of wild animals, and it still seemed
+dreadful to her that they should go at large, uncaged. She suddenly
+wanted Trafford violently, wanted him by her side. Also she thought of
+leaving the trail, going back to the bushes. She had to take herself in
+hand. In the wastes one did not fear wild beasts. One had no fear of
+them. But why not fire a shot to let him know she was near?
+
+The beast flashed round with an animal's instantaneous change of pose,
+and looked at her. For a couple of seconds, perhaps, woman and brute
+regarded one another across a quarter of a mile of snowy desolation.
+
+Suppose it came towards her!
+
+She would fire--and she would fire at it. She made a guess at the range
+and aimed very carefully. She saw the snow fly two yards ahead of the
+grisly shape, and then in an instant it had vanished over the crest.
+
+She reloaded, and stood for a moment waiting for Trafford's answer. No
+answer came. "Queer!" she whispered, "queer!"--and suddenly such a
+horror of anticipation assailed her that she started running and
+floundering through the snow to escape it. Twice she called his name,
+and once she just stopped herself from firing a shot.
+
+Over the ridge she would find him. Surely she would find him over the
+ridge.
+
+She found herself among rocks, and there was a beaten and trampled place
+where Trafford must have waited and crouched. Then on and down a slope
+of tumbled boulders. There came a patch where he had either thrown
+himself down or fallen.
+
+It seemed to her he must have been running....
+
+Suddenly, a hundred feet or so away, she saw a patch of violently
+disturbed snow--snow stained a dreadful colour, a snow of scarlet
+crystals! Three strides and Trafford was in sight.
+
+She had a swift conviction he was dead. He was lying in a crumpled
+attitude on a patch of snow between convergent rocks, and the lynx, a
+mass of blood smeared silvery fur, was in some way mixed up with him.
+She saw as she came nearer that the snow was disturbed round about them,
+and discoloured copiously, yellow widely, and in places bright red, with
+congealed and frozen blood. She felt no fear now, and no emotion; all
+her mind was engaged with the clear, bleak perception of the fact before
+her. She did not care to call to him again. His head was hidden by the
+lynx's body, it was as if he was burrowing underneath the creature; his
+legs were twisted about each other in a queer, unnatural attitude.
+
+Then, as she dropped off a boulder, and came nearer, Trafford moved. A
+hand came out and gripped the rifle beside him; he suddenly lifted a
+dreadful face, horribly scarred and torn, and crimson with frozen blood;
+he pushed the grey beast aside, rose on an elbow, wiped his sleeve
+across his eyes, stared at her, grunted, and flopped forward. He had
+fainted.
+
+She was now as clear-minded and as self-possessed as a woman in a shop.
+In another moment she was kneeling by his side. She saw, by the position
+of his knife and the huge rip in the beast's body, that he had stabbed
+the lynx to death as it clawed his head; he must have shot and wounded
+it and then fallen upon it. His knitted cap was torn to ribbons, and
+hung upon his neck. Also his leg was manifestly injured; how, she could
+not tell. It was chiefly evident he must freeze if he lay here. It
+seemed to her that perhaps he had pulled the dead brute over him to
+protect his torn skin from the extremity of cold. The lynx was already
+rigid, its clumsy paws asprawl--the torn skin and clot upon Trafford's
+face was stiff as she put her hands about his head to raise him. She
+turned him over on his back--how heavy he seemed!--and forced brandy
+between his teeth. Then, after a moment's hesitation, she poured a
+little brandy on his wounds.
+
+She glanced at his leg, which was surely broken, and back at his face.
+Then she gave him more brandy and his eyelids flickered. He moved his
+hand weakly. "The blood," he said, "kept getting in my eyes."
+
+She gave him brandy once again, wiped his face and glanced at his leg.
+Something ought to be done to that she thought. But things must be done
+in order.
+
+She stared up at the darkling sky with its grey promise of snow, and
+down the slopes of the mountain. Clearly they must stay the night here.
+They were too high for wood among these rocks, but three or four
+hundred yards below there were a number of dwarfed fir trees. She had
+brought an axe, so that a fire was possible. Should she go back to camp
+and get the tent?
+
+Trafford was trying to speak again. "I got----" he said.
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"Got my leg in that crack. Damn--damned nuisance."
+
+Was he able to advise her? She looked at him, and then perceived she
+must bind up his head and face. She knelt behind him and raised his head
+on her knee. She had a thick silk neck muffler, and this she
+supplemented by a band she cut and tore from her inner vest. She bound
+this, still warm from her body, about him, wrapped her cloak round him.
+The next thing was a fire. Five yards away, perhaps, a great mass of
+purple gabbro hung over a patch of nearly snowless moss. A hummock to
+the westward offered shelter from the weakly bitter wind, the icy
+draught, that was soughing down the valley. Always in Labrador, if you
+can, you camp against a rock surface; it shelters you from the wind,
+reflects your fire, guards your back.
+
+"Rag!" she said.
+
+"Rotten hole," said Trafford.
+
+"What?" she cried sharply.
+
+"Got you in a rotten hole," he said. "Eh?"
+
+"Listen," she said, and shook his shoulder. "Look! I want to get you up
+against that rock."
+
+"Won't make much difference," said Trafford, and opened his eyes.
+"Where?" he asked.
+
+"There."
+
+He remained quite quiet for a second perhaps. "Listen to me," he said.
+"Go back to camp."
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"Go back to camp. Make a pack of all the strongest
+food--strenthin'--strengthrin' food--you know?" He seemed troubled to
+express himself.
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"Down the river. Down--down. Till you meet help."
+
+"Leave you?"
+
+He nodded his head and winced.
+
+"You're always plucky," he said. "Look facts in the face. Kiddies.
+Thought it over while you were coming." A tear oozed from his eye. "Not
+be a fool, Madge. Kiss me good-bye. Not be a fool. I'm done. Kids."
+
+She stared at him and her spirit was a luminous mist of tears. "You old
+_coward_," she said in his ear, and kissed the little patch of rough and
+bloody cheek beneath his eye. Then she knelt up beside him. "_I'm_ boss
+now, old man," she said. "I want to get you to that place there under
+the rock. If I drag, can you help?"
+
+He answered obstinately: "You'd better go."
+
+"I'll make you comfortable first," she answered, "anyhow."
+
+He made an enormous effort, and then with her quick help and with his
+back to her knee, had raised himself on his elbows.
+
+"And afterwards?" he asked.
+
+"Build a fire."
+
+"Wood?"
+
+"Down there."
+
+"Two bits of wood tied on my leg--splints. Then I can drag myself. See?
+Like a blessed old walrus."
+
+He smiled, and she kissed his bandaged face again.
+
+"Else it hurts," he apologized, "more than I can stand."
+
+She stood up again, thought, put his rifle and knife to his hand for
+fear of that lurking wolf, abandoning her own rifle with an effort, and
+went striding and leaping from rock to rock towards the trees below. She
+made the chips fly, and was presently towing three venerable pine
+dwarfs, bumping over rock and crevice, back to Trafford. She flung them
+down, stood for a moment bright and breathless, then set herself to hack
+off the splints he needed from the biggest stem. "Now," she said, coming
+to him.
+
+"A fool," he remarked, "would have made the splints down there.
+You're--_good_, Marjorie."
+
+She lugged his leg out straight, put it into the natural and least
+painful pose, padded it with moss and her torn handkerchief, and bound
+it up. As she did so a handful of snowflakes came whirling about them.
+She was now braced up to every possibility. "It never rains," she said
+grimly, "but it pours," and went on with her bone-setting. He was badly
+weakened by pain and shock, and once he swore at her sharply. "Sorry,"
+he said.
+
+She rolled him over on his chest, and left him to struggle to the
+shelter of the rock while she went for more wood.
+
+The sky alarmed her. The mountains up the valley were already hidden by
+driven rags of slaty snowstorms. This time she found a longer but easier
+path for dragging her boughs and trees; she determined she would not
+start the fire until nightfall, nor waste any time in preparing food
+until then. There were dead boughs for kindling--more than enough. It
+was snowing quite fast by the time she got up to him with her second
+load, and a premature twilight already obscured and exaggerated the
+rocks and mounds about her. She gave some of her cheese to Trafford, and
+gnawed some herself on her way down to the wood again. She regretted
+that she had brought neither candles nor lantern, because then she might
+have kept on until the cold of night stopped her, and she reproached
+herself bitterly because she had brought no tea. She could forgive
+herself the lantern, she had never expected to be out after dark, but
+the tea was inexcusable. She muttered self-reproaches while she worked
+like two men among the trees, panting puffs of mist that froze upon her
+lips and iced the knitted wool that covered her chin. Why don't they
+teach a girl to handle an axe?...
+
+When at last the wolfish cold of the Labrador night had come, it found
+Trafford and Marjorie seated almost warmly on a bed of pine boughs
+between the sheltering dark rock behind and a big but well husbanded
+fire in front, drinking a queer-tasting but not unsavory soup of
+lynx-flesh, that she had fortified with the remainder of the brandy.
+Then they tried roast lynx and ate a little, and finished with some
+scraps of cheese and deep draughts of hot water. Then--oh Tyburnia and
+Chelsea and all that is becoming!--they smoked Trafford's pipe for
+alternate minutes, and Marjorie found great comfort in it.
+
+The snowstorm poured incessantly out of the darkness to become flakes of
+burning fire in the light of the flames, flakes that vanished magically,
+but it only reached them and wetted them in occasional gusts. What did
+it matter for the moment if the dim snow-heaps rose and rose about them?
+A glorious fatigue, an immense self-satisfaction possessed Marjorie; she
+felt that they had both done well.
+
+"I am not afraid of to-morrow now," she said at last--a thought matured.
+"_No!_"
+
+Trafford had the pipe and did not speak for a moment. "Nor I," he said
+at last. "Very likely we'll get through with it." He added after a
+pause: "I thought I was done for. A man--loses heart. After a loss of
+blood."
+
+"The leg's better?"
+
+"Hot as fire." His humour hadn't left him. "It's a treat," he said. "The
+hottest thing in Labrador."
+
+"I've been a good squaw this time, old man?" she asked suddenly.
+
+He seemed not to hear her; then his lips twitched and he made a feeble
+movement for her hand. "I cursed you," he said....
+
+She slept, but on a spring as it were, lest the fire should fall. She
+replenished it with boughs, tucked in the half-burnt logs, and went to
+sleep again. Then it seemed to her that some invisible hand was pouring
+a thin spirit on the flames that made them leap and crackle and spread
+north and south until they filled the heavens. Her eyes were open and
+the snowstorm overpast, leaving the sky clear, and all the westward
+heaven alight with the trailing, crackling, leaping curtains of the
+Aurora, brighter than she had ever seen them before. Quite clearly
+visible beyond the smoulder of the fire, a wintry waste of rock and
+snow, boulder beyond boulder, passed into a dun obscurity. The mountain
+to the right of them lay long and white and stiff, a shrouded death. All
+earth was dead and waste and nothing, and the sky alive and coldly
+marvellous, signalling and astir. She watched the changing, shifting
+colours, and they made her think of the gathering banners of inhuman
+hosts, the stir and marshalling of icy giants for ends stupendous and
+indifferent to all the trivial impertinence of man's existence....
+
+That night the whole world of man seemed small and shallow and insecure
+to her, beyond comparison. One came, she thought, but just a little way
+out of its warm and sociable cities hither, and found this homeless
+wilderness; one pricked the thin appearances of life with microscope or
+telescope and came to an equal strangeness. All the pride and hope of
+human life goes to and fro in a little shell of air between this ancient
+globe of rusty nickel-steel and the void of space; faint specks we are
+within a film; we quiver between the atom and the infinite, being hardly
+more substantial than the glow within an oily skin that drifts upon the
+water. The wonder and the riddle of it! Here she and Trafford were!
+Phantasmal shapes of unsubstantial fluid thinly skinned against
+evaporation and wrapped about with woven wool and the skins of beasts,
+that yet reflected and perceived, suffered and sought to understand;
+that held a million memories, framed thoughts that plumbed the deeps of
+space and time,--and another day of snow or icy wind might leave them
+just scattered bones and torn rags gnawed by a famishing wolf!...
+
+She felt a passionate desire to pray....
+
+She glanced at Trafford beside her, and found him awake and staring. His
+face was very pale and strange in that livid, flickering light. She
+would have spoken, and then she saw his lips were moving, and something,
+something she did not understand, held her back from doing so.
+
+
+Sec. 7
+
+The bleak, slow dawn found Marjorie intently busy. She had made up the
+fire, boiled water and washed and dressed Trafford's wounds, and made
+another soup of lynx. But Trafford had weakened in the night, the stuff
+nauseated him, he refused it and tried to smoke and was sick, and then
+sat back rather despairfully after a second attempt to persuade her to
+leave him there to die. This failure of his spirit distressed her and a
+little astonished her, but it only made her more resolute to go through
+with her work. She had awakened cold, stiff and weary, but her fatigue
+vanished with movement; she toiled for an hour replenishing her pile of
+fuel, made up the fire, put his gun ready to his hand, kissed him,
+abused him lovingly for the trouble he gave her until his poor torn face
+lit in response, and then parting on a note of cheerful confidence set
+out to return to the hut. She found the way not altogether easy to make
+out, wind and snow had left scarcely a trace of their tracks, and her
+mind was full of the stores she must bring and the possibility of moving
+him nearer to the hut. She was startled to see by the fresh, deep spoor
+along the ridge how near the wolf had dared approach them in the
+darkness....
+
+Ever and again Marjorie had to halt and look back to get her direction
+right. As it was she came through the willow scrub nearly half a mile
+above the hut, and had to follow the steep bank of the frozen river
+down. At one place she nearly slipped upon an icy slope of rock.
+
+One possibility she did not dare to think of during that time; a
+blizzard now would cut her off absolutely from any return to Trafford.
+Short of that she believed she could get through.
+
+Her quick mind was full of all she had to do. At first she had thought
+chiefly of his immediate necessities, of food and some sort of shelter.
+She had got a list of things in her head--meat extract, bandages,
+corrosive sublimate by way of antiseptic, brandy, a tin of beef, some
+bread and so forth; she went over that several times to be sure of it,
+and then for a time she puzzled about a tent. She thought she could
+manage a bale of blankets on her back, and that she could rig a sleeping
+tent for herself and Trafford with one and some bent sticks. The big
+tent would be too much to strike and shift. And then her mind went on to
+a bolder enterprise, which was to get him home. The nearer she could
+bring him to the log hut, the nearer they would be to supplies. She cast
+about for some sort of sledge. The snow was too soft and broken for
+runners, especially among the trees, but if she could get a flat of
+smooth wood she thought she might be able to drag him. She decided to
+try the side of her bunk. She could easily get that off. She would have,
+of course, to run it edgewise through the thickets and across the
+ravine, but after that she would have almost clear going until she
+reached the steep place of broken rocks within two hundred yards of him.
+The idea of a sledge grew upon her, and she planned to nail a rope along
+the edge and make a kind of harness for herself.
+
+She found the camping-place piled high with drifted snow, which had
+invaded tent and hut, and that some beast, a wolverine she guessed, had
+been into the hut, devoured every candle-end and the uppers of
+Trafford's well-greased second boots, and had then gone to the corner of
+the store shed and clambered up to the stores. She made no account of
+its depredations there, but set herself to make a sledge and get her
+supplies together. There was a gleam of sunshine, but she did not like
+the look of the sky, and she was horribly afraid of what might be
+happening to Trafford. She carried her stuff through the wood and across
+the ravine, and returned for her improvised sledge. She was still
+struggling with that among the trees when it began to snow again.
+
+It was hard then not to be frantic in her efforts. As it was, she packed
+her stuff so loosely on the planking that she had to repack it, and she
+started without putting on her snowshoes, and floundered fifty yards
+before she discovered that omission. The snow was now falling fast,
+darkling the sky and hiding everything but objects close at hand, and
+she had to use all her wits to determine her direction; she knew she
+must go down a long slope and then up to the ridge, and it came to her
+as a happy inspiration that if she bore to the left she might strike
+some recognizable vestige of her morning's trail. She had read of people
+walking in circles when they have no light or guidance, and that
+troubled her until she bethought herself of the little compass on her
+watch chain. By that she kept her direction. She wished very much she
+had timed herself across the waste, so that she could tell when she
+approached the ridge.
+
+Soon her back and shoulders were aching violently, and the rope across
+her chest was tugging like some evil-tempered thing. But she did not
+dare to rest. The snow was now falling thick and fast, the flakes traced
+white spirals and made her head spin, so that she was constantly falling
+away to the south-westward and then correcting herself by the compass.
+She tried to think how this zig-zagging might affect her course, but the
+snow whirls confused her mind and a growing anxiety would not let her
+pause to think. She felt blinded; it seemed to be snowing inside her
+eyes so that she wanted to rub them. Soon the ground must rise to the
+ridge, she told herself; it must surely rise. Then the sledge came
+bumping at her heels and she perceived she was going down hill. She
+consulted the compass, and she found she was facing south. She turned
+sharply to the right again. The snowfall became a noiseless, pitiless
+torture to sight and mind.
+
+The sledge behind her struggled to hold her back, and the snow balled
+under her snowshoes. She wanted to stop and rest, take thought, sit for
+a moment. She struggled with herself and kept on. She tried walking
+with shut eyes, and tripped and came near sprawling. "Oh God!" she
+cried, "oh God!" too stupefied for more articulate prayers.
+
+Would the rise of the ground to the ribs of rock never come?
+
+A figure, black and erect, stood in front of her suddenly, and beyond
+appeared a group of black, straight antagonists. She staggered on
+towards them, gripping her rifle with some muddled idea of defence, and
+in another moment she was brushing against the branches of a stunted
+fir, which shed thick lumps of snow upon her feet. What trees were
+these? Had she ever passed any trees? No! There were no trees on her way
+to Trafford....
+
+She began whimpering like a tormented child. But even as she wept she
+turned her sledge about to follow the edge of the wood. She was too much
+downhill, she thought and she must bear up again.
+
+She left the trees behind, made an angle uphill to the right, and was
+presently among trees again. Again she left them and again came back to
+them. She screamed with anger at them and twitched her sledge away. She
+wiped at the snowstorm with her arm as though she would wipe it away.
+She wanted to stamp on the universe....
+
+And she ached, she ached....
+
+Something caught her eye ahead, something that gleamed; it was exactly
+like a long, bare rather pinkish bone standing erect on the ground. Just
+because it was strange and queer she ran forward to it. Then as she came
+nearer she perceived it was a streak of barked trunk; a branch had been
+torn off a pine tree and the bark stripped down to the root. And then
+her foot hit against a freshly hewn stump, and then came another, poking
+its pinkish wounds above the snow. And there were chips! This filled
+her with wonder. Some one had been cutting wood! There must be Indians
+or trappers near, she thought, and then realized the wood-cutter could
+be none other than herself.
+
+She turned to the right and saw the rocks rising steeply close at hand.
+"Oh Rag!" she cried, and fired her rifle in the air.
+
+Ten seconds, twenty seconds, and then so loud and near it amazed her,
+came his answering shot. It sounded like the hillside bursting.
+
+In another moment she had discovered the trail she had made overnight
+and that morning by dragging firewood. It was now a shallow soft white
+trench. Instantly her despair and fatigue had gone from her. Should she
+take a load of wood with her? she asked herself, in addition to the
+weight behind her, and had a better idea. She would unload and pile her
+stuff here, and bring him down on the sledge closer to the wood. She
+looked about and saw two rocks that diverged with a space between. She
+flashed schemes. She would trample the snow hard and flat, put her
+sledge on it, pile boughs and make a canopy of blanket overhead and
+behind. Then a fire in front.
+
+She saw her camp admirable. She tossed her provisions down and ran up
+the broad windings of her pine-tree trail to Trafford, with the unloaded
+sledge bumping behind her. She ran as lightly as though she had done
+nothing that day.
+
+She found him markedly recovered, weak and quiet, with snow drifting
+over his feet, his rifle across his knees, and his pipe alight. "Back
+already," he said, "but----"
+
+He hesitated. "No grub?"
+
+She knelt over him, gave his rough unshaven cheek a swift kiss, and very
+rapidly explained her plan.
+
+
+Sec. 8
+
+In three days' time they were back at the hut, and the last two days
+they wore blue spectacles because of the mid-day glare of the sunlit
+snow.
+
+It amazed Marjorie to discover as she lay awake in the camp on the edge
+of the ravine close to the hut to which she had lugged Trafford during
+the second day, that she was deeply happy. It was preposterous that she
+should be so, but those days of almost despairful stress were irradiated
+now by a new courage. She was doing this thing, against all Labrador and
+the snow-driving wind that blew from the polar wilderness, she was
+winning. It was a great discovery to her that hardship and effort almost
+to the breaking-point could ensue in so deep a satisfaction. She lay and
+thought how deep and rich life had become for her, as though in all this
+effort and struggle some unsuspected veil had been torn away. She
+perceived again, but now with no sense of desolation, that same infinite
+fragility of life which she had first perceived when she had watched the
+Aurora Borealis flickering up the sky. Beneath that realization and
+carrying it, as a river flood may carry scum, was a sense of herself as
+something deeper, greater, more enduring than mountain or wilderness or
+sky, or any of those monstrous forms of nature that had dwarfed her
+physical self to nothingness.
+
+She had a persuasion of self detachment and illumination, and withal of
+self-discovery. She saw her life of time and space for what it was. Away
+in London the children, with the coldest of noses and the gayest of
+spirits, would be scampering about their bedrooms in the mild morning
+sunlight of a London winter; Elsie, the parlourmaid, would be whisking
+dexterous about the dining-room, the bacon would be cooking and the
+coffee-mill at work, the letters of the morning delivery perhaps just
+pattering into the letter-box, and all the bright little household she
+had made, with all the furniture she had arranged, all the
+characteristic decoration she had given it, all the clever convenient
+arrangements, would be getting itself into action for another day--and
+_it wasn't herself!_ It was the extremest of her superficiality.
+
+She had come out of all that, and even so it seemed she had come out of
+herself; this weary woman lying awake on the balsam boughs with a brain
+cleared by underfeeding and this continuous arduous bath of toil in
+snow-washed, frost cleansed, starry air, this, too, was no more than a
+momentarily clarified window for her unknown and indefinable reality.
+What was that reality? what was she herself? She became interested in
+framing an answer to that, and slipped down from the peace of soul she
+had attained. Her serenity gave way to a reiteration of this question,
+reiterations increasing and at last oppressing like the snowflakes of a
+storm, perpetual whirling repetitions that at last confused her and hid
+the sky....
+
+She fell asleep....
+
+
+Sec. 9
+
+With their return to the hut, Marjorie had found herself encountering a
+new set of urgencies. In their absence that wretched little wolverine
+had found great plenty and happiness in the tent and store-shed; its
+traces were manifest nearly everywhere, and it had particularly assailed
+the candles, after a destructive time among the frozen caribou beef. It
+had clambered up on the packages of sardines and jumped thence on to a
+sloping pole that it could claw along into the frame of the roof. She
+rearranged the packages, but that was no good. She could not leave
+Trafford in order to track the brute down, and for a night or so she
+could not think of any way of checking its depredations. It came each
+night.... Trafford kept her close at home. She had expected that when he
+was back in his bunk, secure and warm, he would heal rapidly, but
+instead he suddenly developed all the symptoms of a severe feverish
+cold, and his scars, which had seemed healing, became flushed and
+ugly-looking. Moreover, there was something wrong with his leg, an
+ominous ache that troubled her mind. Every woman, she decided, ought to
+know how to set a bone. He was unable to sleep by reason of these
+miseries, though very desirous of doing so. He became distressingly weak
+and inert, he ceased to care for food, and presently he began ta talk to
+himself with a complete disregard of her presence. Hourly she regretted
+her ignorance of medicine that left her with no conceivable remedy for
+all the aching and gnawing that worried and weakened him, except bathing
+with antiseptics and a liberal use of quinine.
+
+And his face became strange to her, for over his flushed and sunken
+cheeks, under the raw spaces of the scar a blond beard bristled and
+grew. Presently, Trafford was a bearded man.
+
+Incidentally, however, she killed the wolverine by means of a trap of
+her own contrivance, a loaded rifle with a bait of what was nearly her
+last candles, rigged to the trigger.
+
+But this loss of the candles brought home to them the steady lengthening
+of the nights. Scarcely seven hours of day remained now in the black,
+cold grip of the darkness. And through those seventeen hours of chill
+aggression they had no light but the red glow of the stove. She had to
+close the door of the hut and bar every chink and cranny against the icy
+air, that became at last a murderous, freezing wind. Not only did she
+line the hut with every scrap of skin and paper she could obtain, but
+she went out with the spade toiling for three laborious afternoons in
+piling and beating snow against the outer frame. And now it was that
+Trafford talked at last, talked with something of the persistence of
+delirium, and she sat and listened hour by hour, silently, for he gave
+no heed to her or to anything she might say. He talked, it seemed, to
+God....
+
+
+Sec. 10
+
+Darkness about a sullen glow of red, and a voice speaking.
+
+The voice of a man, fevered and in pain, wounded and amidst hardship and
+danger, struggling with the unrelenting riddle of his being. Ever and
+again when a flame leapt she would see his face, haggard, bearded,
+changed, and yet infinitely familiar.
+
+His voice varied, now high and clear, now mumbling, now vexed and
+expostulating, now rich with deep feeling, now fagged and slow; his
+matter varied, too; now he talked like one who is inspired, and now like
+one lost and confused, stupidly repeating phrases, going back upon a
+misleading argument, painfully, laboriously beginning over and over
+again. Marjorie sat before the stove watching it burn and sink,
+replenishing it, preparing food, and outside the bitter wind moaned and
+blew the powdery snow before it, and the shortening interludes of
+pallid, diffused daylight which pass for days in such weather, came and
+went. Intense cold had come now with leaden snowy days and starless
+nights.
+
+Sometimes his speech filled her mind, seemed to fill all her world;
+sometimes she ceased to listen, following thoughts of her own.
+Sometimes she dozed; sometimes she awakened from sleep to find him
+talking. But slowly she realized a thread in his discourse, a progress
+and development.
+
+Sometimes he talked of his early researches, and then he would trace
+computations with his hands as if he were using a blackboard, and became
+distressed to remember what he had written. Sometimes he would be under
+the claws of the lynx again, and fighting for his eyes. "Ugh!" he said,
+"keep those hind legs still. Keep your hind legs still! Knife? Knife?
+Ah! got it. Gu--u--u, you _Beast!_"
+
+But the gist of his speech was determined by the purpose of his journey
+to Labrador. At last he was reviewing his life and hers, and all that
+their life might signify, even as he determined to do. She began to
+perceive that whatever else drifted into his mind and talk, this
+recurred and grew, that he returned to the conclusion he had reached,
+and not to the beginning of the matter, and went on from that....
+
+"You see," he said, "our lives are nothing--nothing in themselves. I
+know that; I've never had any doubts of that. We individuals just pick
+up a mixed lot of things out of the powers that begat us, and lay them
+down again presently a little altered, that's all--heredities,
+traditions, the finger nails of my grandfather, a great-aunt's lips, the
+faith of a sect, the ideas of one's time. We live and then we die, and
+the threads run, dispersing this way and that. To make other people
+again. Whatever's immortal isn't that, our looks or our habits, our
+thoughts or our memories--just the shapes, these are, of one immortal
+stuff.... One immortal stuff."...
+
+The voice died away as if he was baffled. Then it resumed.
+
+"But we ought to _partake_ of immortality; that's my point. We ought to
+partake of immortality.
+
+"I mean we're like the little elements in a magnet; ought not to lie
+higgledy-piggledy, ought to point the same way, bepolarized----Something
+microcosmic, you know, ought to be found in a man.
+
+"Analogies run away with one. Suppose the bar isn't magnetized yet!
+Suppose purpose has to come; suppose the immortal stuff isn't yet, isn't
+being but struggling to be. Struggling to be.... Gods! that morning! When
+the child was born! And afterwards she was there--with a smile on her
+lips, and a little flushed and proud--as if nothing had happened so very
+much out of the way. Nothing so wonderful. And we had another life
+besides our own!..."
+
+Afterwards he came back to that. "That was a good image," he said,
+"something trying to exist, which isn't substance, doesn't belong to
+space or time, something stifled and enclosed, struggling to get
+through. Just confused birth cries, eyes that hardly see, deaf ears,
+poor little thrusting hands. A thing altogether blind at first, a
+twitching and thrusting of protoplasm under the waters, and then the
+plants creeping up the beaches, the insects and reptiles on the margins
+of the rivers, beasts with a flicker of light in their eyes answering
+the sun. And at last, out of the long interplay of desire and fear, an
+ape, an ape that stared and wondered, and scratched queer pictures on a
+bone...."
+
+He lapsed into silent thought for a time, and Marjorie glanced at his
+dim face in the shadows.
+
+"I say nothing of ultimates," he said at last.
+
+He repeated that twice before his thoughts would flow again.
+
+"This is as much as I see, in time as I know it and space as I know
+it--_something struggling to exist_. It's true to the end of my limits.
+What can I say beyond that? It struggles to exist, becomes conscious,
+becomes now conscious of itself. That is where I come in, as a part of
+it. Above the beast in me is that--the desire to know better, to
+know--beautifully, and to transmit my knowledge. That's all there is in
+life for me beyond food and shelter and tidying up. This Being--opening
+its eyes, listening, trying to comprehend. Every good thing in man is
+that;--looking and making pictures, listening and making songs, making
+philosophies and sciences, trying new powers, bridge and engine, spark
+and gun. At the bottom of my soul, _that_. We began with
+bone-scratching. We're still--near it. I am just a part of this
+beginning--mixed with other things. Every book, every art, every
+religion is that, the attempt to understand and express--mixed with
+other things. Nothing else matters, nothing whatever. I tell
+you----Nothing whatever!
+
+"I've always believed that. All my life I've believed that.
+
+"Only I've forgotten."
+
+"Every man with any brains believes that at the bottom of his heart.
+Only he gets busy and forgets. He goes shooting lynxes and breaks his
+leg. Odd, instinctive, brutal thing to do--to go tracking down a lynx to
+kill it! I grant you that, Marjorie. I grant you that."
+
+"Grant me what?" she cried, startled beyond measure to hear herself
+addressed.
+
+"Grant you that it is rather absurd to go hunting a lynx. And what big
+paws it has--disproportionately big! I wonder if that's an adaptation to
+snow. Tremendous paws they are.... But the real thing, I was saying, the
+real thing is to get knowledge, and express it. All things lead up to
+that. Civilization, social order, just for that. Except for that, all
+the life of man, all his affairs, his laws and police, his morals and
+manners--nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Lynx hunts! Just ways of getting
+themselves mauled and clawed perhaps--into a state of understanding. Who
+knows?..."
+
+His voice became low and clear.
+
+"Understanding spreading like a dawn....
+
+"Logic and language, clumsy implements, but rising to our needs, rising
+to our needs, thought clarified, enriched, reaching out to every man
+alive--some day--presently--touching every man alive, harmonizing acts
+and plans, drawing men into gigantic co-operations, tremendous
+co-operations....
+
+"Until man shall stand upon this earth as upon a footstool and reach out
+his hand among the stars....
+
+"And then I went into the rubber market, and spent seven years of my
+life driving shares up and down and into a net!... Queer game indeed!
+Stupid ass Behrens was--at bottom....
+
+"There's a flaw in it somewhere...."
+
+He came back to that several times before he seemed able to go on from
+it.
+
+"There _is_ a collective mind," he said, "a growing general
+consciousness--growing clearer. Something put me away from that, but I
+know it. My work, my thinking, was a part of it. That's why I was so mad
+about Behrens."
+
+"Behrens?"
+
+"Of course. He'd got a twist, a wrong twist. It makes me angry now. It
+will take years, it will eat up some brilliant man to clean up after
+Behrens----"
+
+"Yes, but the point is"--his voice became acute--"why did I go making
+money and let Behrens in? Why generally and in all sorts of things does
+Behrens come in?..."
+
+He was silent for a long time, and then he began to answer himself. "Of
+course," he said, "I said it--or somebody said it--about this collective
+mind being mixed with other things. It's something arising out of
+life--not the common stuff of life. An exhalation.... It's like the
+little tongues of fire that came at Pentecost.... Queer how one comes
+drifting back to these images. Perhaps I shall die a Christian yet....
+The other Christians won't like me if I do. What was I saying?... It's
+what I reach up to, what I desire shall pervade me, not what I am. Just
+as far as I give myself purely to knowledge, to making feeling and
+thought clear in my mind and words, to the understanding and expression
+of the realities and relations of life, just so far do I achieve
+Salvation.... Salvation!...
+
+"I wonder, is Salvation the same for every one? Perhaps for one man
+Salvation is research and thought, and for another expression in art,
+and for another nursing lepers. Provided he does it in the spirit. He
+has to do it in the spirit...."
+
+There came a silence as though some difficulty baffled him, and he was
+feeling back to get his argument again.
+
+"This flame that arises out of life, that redeems life from purposeless
+triviality, _isn't_ life. Let me get hold of that. That's a point.
+That's a very important point."
+
+Something had come to him.
+
+"I've never talked of this to Marjorie. I've lived with her nine years
+and more, and never talked of religion. Not once. That's so queer of us.
+Any other couple in any other time would have talked religion no end....
+People ought to."
+
+Then he stuck out an argumentative hand. "You see, Marjorie _is_ life,"
+he said.
+
+"She took me."
+
+He spoke slowly, as though he traced things carefully. "Before I met her
+I suppose I wasn't half alive. No! Yet I don't remember I felt
+particularly incomplete. Women were interesting, of course; they excited
+me at times, that girl at Yonkers!--H'm. I stuck to my work. It was fine
+work, I forget half of it now, the half-concealed intimations I
+mean--queer how one forgets!--but I know I felt my way to wide, deep
+things. It was like exploring caves--monstrous, limitless caves. Such
+caves!... Very still--underground. Wonderful and beautiful.... They're
+lying there now for other men to seek. Other men will find them.... Then
+_she_ came, as though she was taking possession. The beauty of her, oh!
+the life and bright eagerness, and the incompatibility! That's the
+riddle! I've loved her always. When she came to my arms it seemed to me
+the crown of life. Caves indeed! Old caves! Nothing else seemed to
+matter. But something did. All sorts of things did. I found that out
+soon enough. And when that first child was born. That for a time was
+supreme.... Yes--she's the quintessence of life, the dear greed of her,
+the appetite, the clever appetite for things. She grabs. She's so damned
+clever! The light in her eyes! Her quick sure hands!... Only my work was
+crowded out of my life and ended, and she didn't seem to feel it, she
+didn't seem to mind it. There was a sort of disregard. Disregard. As
+though all that didn't really matter...."
+
+"_My dear!_" whispered Marjorie unheeded. She wanted to tell him it
+mattered now, mattered supremely, but she knew he had no ears for her.
+
+His voice flattened. "It's perplexing," he said. "The two different
+things."
+
+Then suddenly he cried out harshly: "I ought never to have married
+her--never, never! I had my task. I gave myself to her. Oh! the high
+immensities, the great and terrible things open to the mind of man! And
+we breed children and live in littered houses and play with our food and
+chatter, chatter, chatter. Oh, the chatter of my life! The folly! The
+women with their clothes. I can hear them rustle now, whiff the scent of
+it! The scandals--as though the things they did with themselves and each
+other mattered a rap; the little sham impromptu clever things, the
+trying to keep young--and underneath it all that continual cheating,
+cheating, cheating, damning struggle for money!...
+
+"Marjorie, Marjorie, Marjorie! Why is she so good and no better! Why
+wasn't she worth it altogether?...
+
+"No! I don't want to go on with it any more--ever. I want to go back.
+
+"I want my life over again, and to go back.
+
+"I want research, and the spirit of research that has died in me, and
+that still, silent room of mine again, that room, as quiet as a cell,
+and the toil that led to light. Oh! the coming of that light, the uprush
+of discovery, the solemn joy as the generalization rises like a sun upon
+the facts--floods them with a common meaning. That is what I want. That
+is what I have always wanted....
+
+"Give me my time oh God! again; I am sick of this life I have chosen. I
+am sick of it! This--busy death! Give me my time again.... Why did you
+make me, and then waste me like this? Why are we made for folly upon
+folly? Folly! and brains made to scale high heaven, smeared into the
+dust! Into the dust, into the dust. Dust!..."
+
+He passed into weak, wandering repetitions of disconnected sentences,
+that died into whispers and silence, and Marjorie watched him and
+listened to him, and waited with a noiseless dexterity upon his every
+need.
+
+
+Sec. 11
+
+One day, she did not know what day, for she had lost count of the days,
+Marjorie set the kettle to boil and opened the door of the hut to look
+out, and the snow was ablaze with diamonds, and the air was sweet and
+still. It occurred to her that it would be well to take Trafford out
+into that brief brightness. She looked at him and found his eyes upon
+the sunlight quiet and rather wondering eyes.
+
+"Would you like to get out into that?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"Yes," he said, and seemed disposed to get up.
+
+"You've got a broken leg," she cried, to arrest his movement, and he
+looked at her and answered: "Of course--I forgot."
+
+She was all atremble that he should recognize her and speak to her. She
+pulled her rude old sledge alongside his bunk, and kissed him, and
+showed him how to shift and drop himself upon the plank. She took him in
+her arms and lowered him. He helped weakly but understandingly, and she
+wrapped him up warmly on the planks and lugged him out and built up a
+big fire at his feet, wondering, but as yet too fearful to rejoice, at
+the change that had come to him.
+
+He said no more, but his eyes watched her move about with a kind of
+tired curiosity. He smiled for a time at the sun, and shut his eyes, and
+still faintly smiling, lay still. She had a curious fear that if she
+tried to talk to him this new lucidity would vanish again. She went
+about the business of the morning, glancing at him ever and again, until
+suddenly the calm of his upturned face smote her, and she ran to him
+and crouched down to him between hope and a terrible fear, and found
+that he was sleeping, and breathing very lightly, sleeping with the deep
+unconsciousness of a child....
+
+When he awakened the sun was red in the west. His eyes met hers, and he
+seemed a little puzzled.
+
+"I've been sleeping, Madge?" he said.
+
+She nodded.
+
+"And dreaming? I've a vague sort of memory of preaching and preaching in
+a kind of black, empty place, where there wasn't anything.... A fury of
+exposition ... a kind of argument.... I say!--Is there such a thing in
+the world as a new-laid egg--and some bread-and-butter?"
+
+He seemed to reflect. "Of course," he said, "I broke my leg. Gollys! I
+thought that beast was going to claw my eyes out. Lucky, Madge, it
+didn't get my eyes. It was just a chance it didn't."
+
+He stared at her.
+
+"I say," he said, "you've had a pretty rough time! How long has this
+been going on?"
+
+He amazed her by rising himself on his elbow and sitting up.
+
+"Your leg!" she cried.
+
+He put his hand down and felt it. "Pretty stiff," he said. "You get me
+some food--there _were_ some eggs, Madge, frozen new-laid, anyhow--and
+then we'll take these splints off and feel about a bit. Eh! why not? How
+did you get me out of that scrape, Madge? I thought I'd got to be froze
+as safe as eggs. (Those eggs ought to be all right, you know. If you put
+them on in a saucepan and wait until they boil.) I've a sort of muddled
+impression.... By Jove, Madge, you've had a time! I say you _have_ had a
+time!"
+
+His eyes, full of a warmth of kindliness she had not seen for long
+weeks, scrutinized her face. "I say!" he repeated, very softly.
+
+All her strength went from her at his tenderness. "Oh, my dear," she
+wailed, kneeling at his side, "my dear, dear!" and still regardful of
+his leg, she yet contrived to get herself weeping into his coveted arms.
+
+He regarded her, he held her, he patted her back! The infinite luxury to
+her! He'd come back. He'd come back to her.
+
+"How long has it been?" he asked. "Poor dear! Poor dear! How long can it
+have been?"
+
+
+Sec. 12
+
+From that hour Trafford mended. He remained clear-minded, helpful,
+sustaining. His face healed daily. Marjorie had had to cut away great
+fragments of gangrenous frozen flesh, and he was clearly destined to
+have a huge scar over forehead and cheek, but in that pure, clear air,
+once the healing had begun it progressed swiftly. His leg had set, a
+little shorter than its fellow and with a lump in the middle of the
+shin, but it promised to be a good serviceable leg none the less. They
+examined it by the light of the stove with their heads together, and
+discussed when it would be wise to try it. How do doctors tell when a
+man may stand on his broken leg? She had a vague impression you must
+wait six weeks, but she could not remember why she fixed upon that time.
+
+"It seems a decent interval," said Trafford. "We'll try it."
+
+She had contrived a crutch for him against that momentous experiment,
+and he sat up in his bunk, pillowed up by a sack and her rugs, and
+whittled it smooth, and padded the fork with the skin of that
+slaughtered wolverine, poor victim of hunger!--while she knelt by the
+stove feeding it with logs, and gave him an account of their position.
+
+"We're somewhere in the middle of December," she said, "somewhere
+between the twelfth and the fourteenth,--yes! I'm as out as that!--and
+I've handled the stores pretty freely. So did that little beast until I
+got him." She nodded at the skin in his hand. "I don't see myself
+shooting much now, and so far I've not been able to break the ice to
+fish. It's too much for me. Even if it isn't too late to fish. This book
+we've got describes barks and mosses, and that will help, but if we
+stick here until the birds and things come, we're going to be precious
+short. We may have to last right into July. I've plans--but it may come
+to that. We ought to ration all the regular stuff, and trust to luck for
+a feast. The rations!--I don't know what they'll come to."
+
+"Right O," said Trafford admiring her capable gravity. "Let's ration."
+
+"Marjorie," he asked abruptly, "are you sorry we came?"
+
+Her answer came unhesitatingly. "_No!_"
+
+"Nor I."
+
+He paused. "I've found you out," he said. "Dear dirty living thing!...
+You _are_ dirty, you know."
+
+"I've found myself," she answered, thinking. "I feel as if I've never
+loved you until this hut. I suppose I have in my way----"
+
+"Lugano," he suggested. "Don't let's forget good things, Marjorie. Oh!
+And endless times!"
+
+"Oh, of course! As for _that_----! But now--now you're in my bones. We
+were just two shallow, pretty, young things--loving. It was sweet,
+dear--sweet as youth--but not this. Unkempt and weary--then one
+understands love. I suppose I _am_ dirty. Think of it! I've lugged you
+through the snow till my shoulders chafed and bled. I cried with pain,
+and kept on lugging----Oh, my dear! my dear!" He kissed her hair. "I've
+held you in my arms to keep you from freezing. (I'd have frozen myself
+first.) We've got to starve together perhaps before the end.... Dear, if
+I could make you, you should eat me.... I'm--I'm beginning to
+understand. I've had a light. I've begun to understand. I've begun to
+see what life has been for you, and how I've wasted--wasted."
+
+"_We've_ wasted!"
+
+"No," she said, "it was I."
+
+She sat back on the floor and regarded him. "You don't remember things
+you said--when you were delirious?"
+
+"No," he answered. "What did I say?"
+
+"Nothing?"
+
+"Nothing clearly. What did I say?"
+
+"It doesn't matter. No, indeed. Only you made me understand. You'd never
+have told me. You've always been a little weak with me there. But it's
+plain to me why we didn't keep our happiness, why we were estranged. If
+we go back alive, we go back--all that settled for good and all."
+
+"What?"
+
+"That discord. My dear, I've been a fool, selfish, ill-trained and
+greedy. We've both been floundering about, but I've been the mischief of
+it. Yes, I've been the trouble. Oh, it's had to be so. What are we
+women--half savages, half pets, unemployed things of greed and
+desire--and suddenly we want all the rights and respect of souls! I've
+had your life in my hands from the moment we met together. If I had
+known.... It isn't that we can make you or guide you--I'm not pretending
+to be an inspiration--but--but we can release you. We needn't press upon
+you; we can save you from the instincts and passions that try to waste
+you altogether on us.... Yes, I'm beginning to understand. Oh, my child,
+my husband, my man! You talked of your wasted life!... I've been
+thinking--since first we left the Mersey. I've begun to see what it is
+to be a woman. For the first time in my life. We're the responsible sex.
+And we've forgotten it. We think we've done a wonder if we've borne men
+into the world and smiled a little, but indeed we've got to bear them
+all our lives.... A woman has to be steadier than a man and more
+self-sacrificing than a man, because when she plunges she does more harm
+than a man.... And what does she achieve if she does plunge?
+Nothing--nothing worth counting. Dresses and carpets and hangings and
+pretty arrangements, excitements and satisfactions and competition and
+more excitements. We can't _do_ things. We don't bring things off! And
+you, you Monster! you Dream! you want to stick your hand out of all that
+is and make something that isn't, begin to be! That's the man----"
+
+"Dear old Madge!" he said, "there's all sorts of women and all sorts of
+men."
+
+"Well, our sort of women, then, and our sort of men."
+
+"I doubt even that."
+
+"I don't. I've found my place. I've been making my master my servant. We
+women--we've been looting all the good things in the world, and helping
+nothing. You've carried me on your back until you are loathing life.
+I've been making you fetch and carry for me, love me, dress me, keep me
+and my children, minister to my vanities and greeds.... No; let me go
+on. I'm so penitent, my dear, so penitent I want to kneel down here and
+marry you all over again, heal up your broken life and begin again."...
+
+She paused.
+
+"One doesn't begin again," she said. "But I want to take a new turn.
+Dear, you're still only a young man; we've thirty or forty years before
+us--forty years perhaps or more.... What shall we do with our years?
+We've loved, we've got children. What remains? Here we can plan it out,
+work it out, day after day. What shall we do with our lives and life?
+Tell me, make me your partner; it's you who know, what are we doing with
+life?"
+
+
+Sec. 13
+
+What are we doing with life?
+
+That question overtakes a reluctant and fugitive humanity. The Traffords
+were but two of a great scattered host of people, who, obeying all the
+urgencies of need and desire, struggling, loving, begetting, enjoying,
+do nevertheless find themselves at last unsatisfied. They have lived the
+round of experience, achieved all that living creatures have sought
+since the beginning of the world--security and gratification and
+offspring--and they find themselves still strong, unsatiated, with power
+in their hands and years before them, empty of purpose. What are they to
+do?
+
+The world presents such a spectacle of evasion as it has never seen
+before. Never was there such a boiling over and waste of vital energy.
+The Sphinx of our opportunity calls for the uttermost powers of heart
+and brain to read its riddle--the new, astonishing riddle of excessive
+power. A few give themselves to those honourable adventures that extend
+the range of man, they explore untravelled countries, climb remote
+mountains, conduct researches, risk life and limb in the fantastic
+experiments of flight, and a monstrous outpouring of labour and material
+goes on in the strenuous preparation for needless and improbable wars.
+The rest divert themselves with the dwarfish satisfactions of recognized
+vice, the meagre routine of pleasure, or still more timidly with sport
+and games--those new unscheduled perversions of the soul.
+
+We are afraid of our new selves. The dawn of human opportunity appals
+us. Few of us dare look upon this strange light of freedom and limitless
+resources that breaks upon our world.
+
+"Think," said Trafford, "while we sit here in this dark hut--think of
+the surplus life that wastes itself in the world for sheer lack of
+direction. Away there in England--I suppose that is westward"--he
+pointed--"there are thousands of men going out to-day to shoot. Think of
+the beautifully made guns, the perfected ammunition, the excellent
+clothes, the army of beaters, the carefully preserved woodland, the
+admirable science of it--all for that idiot massacre of half-tame birds!
+Just because man once had need to be a hunter! Think of the others
+again--golfing. Think of the big, elaborate houses from which they come,
+the furnishings, the service. And the women--dressing! Perpetually
+dressing. _You_, Marjorie--you've done nothing but dress since we
+married. No, let me abuse you, dear! It's insane, you know! You dress
+your minds a little to talk amusingly, you spread your minds out to
+backgrounds, to households, picturesque and delightful gardens,
+nurseries. Those nurseries! Think of our tremendously cherished and
+educated children! And when they grow up, what have we got for them? A
+feast of futility...."
+
+
+Sec. 14
+
+On the evening of the day when Trafford first tried to stand upon his
+leg, they talked far into the night. It had been a great and eventful
+day for them, full of laughter and exultation. He had been at first
+ridiculously afraid; he had clung to her almost childishly, and she had
+held him about the body with his weight on her strong right arm and his
+right arm in her left hand, concealing her own dread of a collapse under
+a mask of taunting courage. The crutch had proved admirable. "It's my
+silly knees!" Trafford kept on saying. "The leg's all right, but I get
+put out by my silly knees."
+
+They made the day a feast, a dinner of two whole day's rations and a
+special soup instead of supper. "The birds will come," they explained to
+each other, "ducks and geese, long before May. May, you know, is the
+latest."
+
+Marjorie confessed the habit of sharing his pipe was growing on her.
+"What shall we do in Tyburnia!" she said, and left it to the
+imagination.
+
+"If ever we get back there," he said.
+
+"I don't much fancy kicking a skirt before my shins again--and I'll be a
+black, coarse woman down to my neck at dinner for years to come!..."
+
+Then, as he lay back in his bunk and she crammed the stove with fresh
+boughs and twigs of balsam that filled the little space about them with
+warmth and with a faint, sweet smell of burning and with flitting red
+reflections, he took up a talk about religion they had begun some days
+before.
+
+"You see," he said, "I've always believed in Salvation. I suppose a
+man's shy of saying so--even to his wife. But I've always believed more
+or less distinctly that there was something up to which a life
+worked--always. It's been rather vague, I'll admit. I don't think I've
+ever believed in individual salvation. You see, I feel these are deep
+things, and the deeper one gets the less individual one becomes. That's
+why one thinks of those things in darkness and loneliness--and finds
+them hard to tell. One has an individual voice, or an individual
+birthmark, or an individualized old hat, but the soul--the soul's
+different.... It isn't me talking to you when it comes to that.... This
+question of what we are doing with life isn't a question to begin with
+for you and me as ourselves, but for you and me as mankind. Am I
+spinning it too fine, Madge?"
+
+"No," she said, intent; "go on."
+
+"You see, when we talk rations here, Marjorie, it's ourselves, but when
+we talk religion--it's mankind. You've either got to be Everyman in
+religion or leave it alone. That's my idea. It's no more presumptuous to
+think for the race than it is for a beggar to pray--though that means
+going right up to God and talking to Him. Salvation's a collective thing
+and a mystical thing--or there isn't any. Fancy the Almighty and me
+sitting up and keeping Eternity together! God and R. A. G. Trafford,
+F.R.S.--that's silly. Fancy a man in number seven boots, and a
+tailor-made suit in the nineteen-fourteen fashion, sitting before God!
+That's caricature. But God and Man! That's sense, Marjorie."...
+
+He stopped and stared at her.
+
+Marjorie sat red-lit, regarding him. "Queer things you say!" she said.
+"So much of this I've never thought out. I wonder why I've never done
+so.... Too busy with many things, I suppose. But go on and tell me more
+of these secrets you've kept from me!"
+
+"Well, we've got to talk of these things as mankind--or just leave them
+alone, and shoot pheasants."...
+
+"If I could shoot a pheasant now!" whispered Marjorie, involuntarily.
+
+"And where do we stand? What do we need--I mean the whole race of
+us--kings and beggars together? You know, Marjorie, it's this,--it's
+Understanding. That's what mankind has got to, the realization that it
+doesn't understand, that it can't express, that it's purblind. We
+haven't got eyes for those greater things, but we've got the
+promise--the intimation of eyes. We've come out of an unsuspecting
+darkness, brute animal darkness, not into sight, that's been the
+mistake, but into a feeling of illumination, into a feeling of light
+shining through our opacity....
+
+"I feel that man has now before all things to know. That's his supreme
+duty, to feel, realize, see, understand, express himself to the utmost
+limits of his power."
+
+He sat up, speaking very earnestly to her, and in that flickering light
+she realized for the first time how thin he had become, how bright and
+hollow his eyes, his hair was long over his eyes, and a rough beard
+flowed down to his chest. "All the religions," he said, "all the
+philosophies, have pretended to achieve too much. We've no language yet
+for religious truth or metaphysical truth; we've no basis yet broad
+enough and strong enough on which to build. Religion and philosophy have
+been impudent and quackish--quackish! They've been like the doctors, who
+have always pretended they could cure since the beginning of things,
+cure everything, and to this day even they haven't got more than the
+beginnings of knowledge on which to base a cure. They've lacked
+humility, they've lacked the honour to say they didn't know; the
+priests took things of wood and stone, the philosophers took little odd
+arrangements of poor battered words, metaphors, analogies, abstractions,
+and said: "That's it! Think of their silly old Absolute,--ab-solutus, an
+untied parcel. I heard Haldane at the Aristotelian once, go on for an
+hour--no! it was longer than an hour--as glib and slick as a well-oiled
+sausage-machine, about the different sorts of Absolute, and not a soul
+of us laughed out at him! The vanity of such profundities! They've no
+faith, faith in patience, faith to wait for the coming of God. And since
+we don't know God, since we don't know His will with us, isn't it plain
+that all our lives should be a search for Him and it? Can anything else
+matter,--after we are free from necessity? That is the work now that is
+before all mankind, to attempt understanding--by the perpetual finding
+of thought and the means of expression, by perpetual extension and
+refinement of science, by the research that every artist makes for
+beauty and significance in his art, by the perpetual testing and
+destruction and rebirth under criticism of all these things, and by a
+perpetual extension of this intensifying wisdom to more minds and more
+minds and more, till all men share in it, and share in the making of
+it.... There you have my creed, Marjorie; there you have the very marrow
+of me."...
+
+He became silent.
+
+"Will you go back to your work?" she said, abruptly. "Go back to your
+laboratory?"
+
+He stared at her for a moment without speaking. "Never," he said at
+last.
+
+"But," she said, and the word dropped from her like a stone that falls
+down a well....
+
+"My dear," he said, at last, "I've thought of that. But since I left
+that dear, dusty little laboratory, and all those exquisite subtle
+things--I've lived. I've left that man seven long years behind me. Some
+other man must go on--I think some younger man--with the riddles I found
+to work on then. I've grown--into something different. It isn't how
+atoms swing with one another, or why they build themselves up so and not
+so, that matters any more to me. I've got you and all the world in which
+we live, and a new set of riddles filling my mind, how thought swings
+about thought, how one man attracts his fellows, how the waves of motive
+and conviction sweep through a crowd and all the little drifting
+crystallizations of spirit with spirit and all the repulsions and eddies
+and difficulties, that one can catch in that turbulent confusion. I want
+to do a new sort of work now altogether.... Life has swamped me once,
+but I don't think it will get me under again;--I want to study men."
+
+He paused and she waited, with a face aglow.
+
+"I want to go back to watch and think--and I suppose write. I believe I
+shall write criticism. But everything that matters is criticism!... I
+want to get into contact with the men who are thinking. I don't mean to
+meet them necessarily, but to get into the souls of their books. Every
+writer who has anything to say, every artist who matters, is the
+stronger for every man or woman who responds to him. That's the great
+work--the Reality. I want to become a part of this stuttering attempt to
+express, I want at least to resonate, even if I do not help.... And you
+with me, Marjorie--you with me! Everything I write I want you to see and
+think about. I want you to read as I read.... Now after so long, now
+that, now that we've begun to talk, you know, talk again----"
+
+Something stopped his voice. Something choked them both into silence. He
+held out a lean hand, and she shuffled on her knees to take it....
+
+"Don't please make me," she stumbled through her thoughts, "one of those
+little parasitic, parroting wives--don't pretend too much about
+me--because you want me with you----. Don't forget a woman isn't a man."
+
+"Old Madge," he said, "you and I have got to march together. Didn't I
+love you from the first, from that time when I was a boy examiner and
+you were a candidate girl--because your mind was clear?"
+
+"And we will go back," she whispered, "with a work----"
+
+"With a purpose," he said.
+
+She disengaged herself from his arm, and sat close to him upon the
+floor. "I think I can see what you will do," she said. She mused. "For
+the first time I begin to see things as they may be for us. I begin to
+see a life ahead. For the very first time."
+
+Queer ideas came drifting into her head. Suddenly she cried out sharply
+in that high note he loved. "Good heavens!" she said. "The absurdity!
+The infinite absurdity!"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"I might have married Will Magnet----. That's all."
+
+She sprang to her feet. There came a sound of wind outside, a shifting
+of snow on the roof, and the door creaked. "Half-past eleven," she
+exclaimed looking at the watch that hung in the light of the stove door.
+"I don't want to sleep yet; do you? I'm going to brew some tea--make a
+convivial drink. And then we will go on talking. It's so good talking to
+you. So good!... I've an idea! Don't you think on this special day, it
+might run to a biscuit?" Her face was keenly anxious. He nodded. "One
+biscuit each," she said, trying to rob her voice of any note of
+criminality. "Just one, you know, won't matter."
+
+She hovered for some moments close to the stove before she went into the
+arctic corner that contained the tin of tea. "If we can really live like
+that!" she said. "When we are home again."
+
+"Why not?" he answered.
+
+She made no answer, but went across for the tea....
+
+He turned his head at the sound of the biscuit tin and watched her put
+out the precious discs.
+
+"I shall have another pipe," he proclaimed, with an agreeable note of
+excess. "Thank heaven for unstinted tobacco...."
+
+And now Marjorie's mind was teaming with thoughts of this new conception
+of a life lived for understanding. As she went about the preparation of
+the tea, her vividly concrete imagination was active with the
+realization of the life they would lead on their return. She could not
+see it otherwise than framed in a tall, fine room, a study, a study in
+sombre tones, with high, narrow, tall, dignified bookshelves and rich
+deep green curtains veiling its windows. There should be a fireplace of
+white marble, very plain and well proportioned, with furnishings of old
+brass, and a big desk towards the window beautifully lit by electric
+light, with abundant space for papers to lie. And she wanted some touch
+of the wilderness about it; a skin perhaps....
+
+The tea was still infusing when she had determined upon an enormous
+paper-weight of that iridescent Labradorite that had been so astonishing
+a feature of the Green River Valley. She would have it polished on one
+side only--the other should be rough to show the felspar in its natural
+state....
+
+It wasn't that she didn't feel and understand quite fully the intention
+and significance of all he had said, but that in these symbols of
+texture and equipment her mind quite naturally clothed itself. And
+while this room was coming into anticipatory being in her mind, she was
+making the tea very deftly and listening to Trafford's every word.
+
+
+Sec. 15
+
+That talk marked an epoch to Marjorie. From that day forth her
+imagination began to shape a new, ordered and purposeful life for
+Trafford and herself in London, a life not altogether divorced from
+their former life, but with a faith sustaining it and aims controlling
+it. She had always known of the breadth and power of his mind, but now
+as he talked of what he might do, what interests might converge and give
+results through him, it seemed she really knew him for the first time.
+In his former researches, so technical and withdrawn, she had seen
+little of his mind in action: now he was dealing in his own fashion with
+things she could clearly understand. There were times when his talk
+affected her like that joy of light one has in emerging into sunshine
+from a long and tedious cave. He swept things together, flashed
+unsuspected correlations upon her intelligence, smashed and scattered
+absurd yet venerated conventions of thought, made undreamt-of courses of
+action visible in a flare of luminous necessity. And she could follow
+him and help him. Just as she had hampered him and crippled him, so now
+she could release him--she fondled that word. She found a preposterous
+image in her mind that she hid like a disgraceful secret, that she tried
+to forget, and yet its stupendous, its dreamlike absurdity had something
+in it that shaped her delight as nothing else could do; she was, she
+told herself--hawking with an archangel!...
+
+These were her moods of exaltation. And she was sure she had never loved
+her man before, that this was indeed her beginning. It was as if she had
+just found him....
+
+Perhaps, she thought, true lovers keep on finding each other all through
+their lives.
+
+And he too had discovered her. All the host of Marjories he had known,
+the shining, delightful, seductive, wilful, perplexing aspects that had
+so filled her life, gave place altogether for a time to this steady-eyed
+woman, lean and warm-wrapped with the valiant heart and the
+frost-roughened skin. What a fine, strong, ruddy thing she was! How glad
+he was for this wild adventure in the wilderness, if only because it had
+made him lie among the rocks and think of her and wait for her and
+despair of her life and God, and at last see her coming back to him,
+flushed with effort and calling his name to him out of that whirlwind of
+snow.... And there was at least one old memory mixed up with all these
+new and overmastering impressions, the memory of her clear unhesitating
+voice as it had stabbed into his life again long years ago, minute and
+bright in the telephone: "_It's me, you know. It's Marjorie!_"
+
+Perhaps after all she had not wasted a moment of his life, perhaps every
+issue between them had been necessary, and it was good altogether to be
+turned from the study of crystals to the study of men and women....
+
+And now both their minds were Londonward, where all the tides and
+driftage and currents of human thought still meet and swirl together.
+They were full of what they would do when they got back. Marjorie
+sketched that study to him--in general terms and without the
+paper-weight--and began to shape the world she would have about it. She
+meant to be his squaw and body-servant first of all, and then--a
+mother. Children, she said, are none the worse for being kept a little
+out of focus. And he was rapidly planning out his approach to the new
+questions to which he was now to devote his life. "One wants something
+to hold the work together," he said, and projected a book. "One cannot
+struggle at large for plain statement and copious and free and
+courageous statement, one needs a positive attack."
+
+He designed a book, which he might write if only for the definition it
+would give him and with no ultimate publication, which was to be called:
+"The Limits of Language as a Means of Expression." ... It was to be a
+pragmatist essay, a sustained attempt to undermine the confidence of all
+that scholasticism and logic chopping which still lingers like the
+_sequelae_ of a disease in our University philosophy. "Those duffers sit
+in their studies and make a sort of tea of dry old words--and think
+they're distilling the spirit of wisdom," he said.
+
+He proliferated titles for a time, and settled at last on "From Realism
+to Reality." He wanted to get at that at once; it fretted him to have to
+hang in the air, day by day, for want of books to quote and opponents to
+lance and confute. And he wanted to see pictures, too and plays, read
+novels he had heard of and never read, in order to verify or correct the
+ideas that were seething in his mind about the qualities of artistic
+expression. His thought had come out to a conviction that the line to
+wider human understandings lies through a huge criticism and cleaning up
+of the existing methods of formulation, as a preliminary to the wider
+and freer discussion of those religious and social issues our generation
+still shrinks from. "It's grotesque," he said, "and utterly true that
+the sanity and happiness of all the world lies in its habits of
+generalization." There was not even paper for him to make notes or
+provisional drafts of the new work. He hobbled about the camp fretting
+at these deprivations.
+
+"Marjorie," he said, "we've done our job. Why should we wait here on
+this frosty shelf outside the world? My leg's getting sounder--if it
+wasn't for that feeling of ice in it. Why shouldn't we make another
+sledge from the other bunk and start down--"
+
+"To Hammond?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"But the way?"
+
+"The valley would guide us. We could do four hours a day before we had
+to camp. I'm not sure we couldn't try the river. We could drag and carry
+all our food...."
+
+She looked down the wide stretches of the valley. There was the hill
+they had christened Marjorie Ridge. At least it was familiar. Every
+night before nightfall if they started there would be a fresh camping
+place to seek among the snow-drifts, a great heap of wood to cut to last
+the night. Suppose his leg gave out--when they were already some days
+away, so that he could no longer go on or she drag him back to the
+stores. Plainly there would be nothing for it then but to lie down and
+die together....
+
+And a sort of weariness had come to her as a consequence of two months
+of half-starved days, not perhaps a failure so much as a reluctance of
+spirit.
+
+"Of course," she said, with a new aspect drifting before her mind,
+"then--we _could_ eat. We _could_ feed up before we started. We could
+feast almost!"
+
+
+Sec. 16
+
+"While you were asleep the other night," Trafford began one day as they
+sat spinning out their mid-day meal, "I was thinking how badly I had
+expressed myself when I talked to you the other day, and what a queer,
+thin affair I made of the plans I wanted to carry out. As a matter of
+fact, they're neither queer nor thin, but they are unreal in comparison
+with the common things of everyday life, hunger, anger, all the
+immediate desires. They must be. They only begin when those others are
+at peace. It's hard to set out these things; they're complicated and
+subtle, and one cannot simplify without falsehood. I don't want to
+simplify. The world has gone out of its way time after time through
+simplifications and short cuts. Save us from epigrams! And when one
+thinks over what one has said, at a little distance,--one wants to go
+back to it, and say it all again. I seem to be not so much thinking
+things out as reviving and developing things I've had growing in my mind
+ever since we met. It's as though an immense reservoir of thought had
+filled up in my mind at last and was beginning to trickle over and break
+down the embankment between us. This conflict that has been going on
+between our life together and my--my intellectual life; it's only just
+growing clear in my own mind. Yet it's just as if one turned up a light
+on something that had always been there....
+
+"It's a most extraordinary thing to think out, Marjorie, that
+antagonism. Our love has kept us so close together and always our
+purposes have been--like that." He spread divergent hands. "I've
+speculated again and again whether there isn't something incurably
+antagonistic between women (that's _you_ generalized, Marjorie) and men
+(that's me) directly we pass beyond the conditions of the
+individualistic struggle. I believe every couple of lovers who've ever
+married have felt that strain. Yet it's not a difference in kind between
+us but degree. The big conflict between us has a parallel in a little
+internal conflict that goes on; there's something of man in every woman
+and a touch of the feminine in every man. But you're nearer as woman to
+the immediate personal life of sense and reality than I am as man. It's
+been so ever since the men went hunting and fighting and the women kept
+hut, tended the children and gathered roots in the little cultivation
+close at hand. It's been so perhaps since the female carried and suckled
+her child and distinguished one male from another. It may be it will
+always be so. Men were released from that close, continuous touch with
+physical necessities long before women were. It's only now that women
+begin to be released. For ages now men have been wandering from field
+and home and city, over the hills and far away, in search of adventures
+and fresh ideas and the wells of mystery beyond the edge of the world,
+but it's only now that the woman comes with them too. Our difference
+isn't a difference in kind, old Marjorie; it's the difference between
+the old adventurer and the new feet upon the trail."
+
+"We've got to come," said Marjorie.
+
+"Oh! you've got to come. No good to be pioneers if the race does not
+follow. The women are the backbone of the race; the men are just the
+individuals. Into this Labrador and into all the wild and desolate
+places of thought and desire, if men come you women have to come
+too--and bring the race with you. Some day."
+
+"A long day, mate of my heart."
+
+"Who knows how long or how far? Aren't you at any rate here, dear woman
+of mine.... (_Surely you are here_)."
+
+He went off at a tangent. "There's all those words that seem to mean
+something and then don't seem to mean anything, that keep shifting to
+and fro from the deepest significance to the shallowest of claptrap,
+Socialism, Christianity.... You know,--they aren't anything really, as
+yet; they are something trying to be.... Haven't I said that before,
+Marjorie?"
+
+She looked round at him. "You said something like that when you were
+delirious," she answered, after a little pause. "It's one of the ideas
+that you're struggling with. You go on, old man, and _talk_. We've
+months--for repetitions."
+
+"Well, I mean that all these things are seeking after a sort of
+co-operation that's greater than our power even of imaginative
+realization; that's what I mean. The kingdom of Heaven, the communion of
+saints, the fellowship of men; these are things like high peaks far out
+of the common life of every day, shining things that madden certain
+sorts of men to climb. Certain sorts of us! I'm a religious man, I'm a
+socialistic man. These calls are more to me than my daily bread. I've
+got something in me more generalizing than most men. I'm more so than
+many other men and most other women, I'm more socialistic than you...."
+
+"You know, Marjorie, I've always felt you're a finer individual than me,
+I've never had a doubt of it. You're more beautiful by far than I, woman
+for my man. You've a keener appetite for things, a firmer grip on the
+substance of life. I love to see you do things, love to see you move,
+love to watch your hands; you've cleverer hands than mine by far.... And
+yet--I'm a deeper and bigger thing than you. I reach up to something you
+don't reach up to.... You're in life--and I'm a little out of it, I'm
+like one of those fish that began to be amphibian, I go out into
+something where you don't follow--where you hardly begin to follow.
+
+"That's the real perplexity between thousands of men and women....
+
+"It seems to me that the primitive socialism of Christianity and all the
+stuff of modern socialism that matters is really aiming--almost
+unconsciously, I admit at times--at one simple end, at the release of
+the human spirit from the individualistic struggle----
+
+"You used 'release' the other day, Marjorie? Of course, I remember. It's
+queer how I go on talking after you have understood."
+
+"It was just a flash," said Marjorie. "We have intimations. Neither of
+us really understands. We're like people climbing a mountain in a mist,
+that thins out for a moment and shows valleys and cities, and then
+closes in again, before we can recognize them or make out where we are."
+
+Trafford thought. "When I talk to you, I've always felt I mustn't be too
+vague. And the very essence of all this is a vague thing, something we
+shall never come nearer to it in all our lives than to see it as a
+shadow and a glittering that escapes again into a mist.... And yet it's
+everything that matters, everything, the only thing that matters truly
+and for ever through the whole range of life. And we have to serve it
+with the keenest thought, the utmost patience, inordinate veracity....
+
+"The practical trouble between your sort and my sort, Marjorie, is the
+trouble between faith and realization. You demand the outcome. Oh! and I
+hate to turn aside and realize. I've had to do it for seven years.
+Damnable years! Men of my sort want to understand. We want to
+understand, and you ask us to make. We want to understand atoms, ions,
+molecules, refractions. You ask us to make rubber and diamonds. I
+suppose it's right that incidentally we should make rubber and
+diamonds. Finally, I warn you, we will make rubber unnecessary and
+diamonds valueless. And again we want to understand how people react
+upon one another to produce social consequences, and you ask us to put
+it at once into a draft bill for the reform of something or other. I
+suppose life lies between us somewhere, we're the two poles of truth
+seeking and truth getting; with me alone it would be nothing but a
+luminous dream, with you nothing but a scramble in which sooner or later
+all the lamps would be upset.... But it's ever too much of a scramble
+yet, and ever too little of a dream. All our world over there is full of
+the confusion and wreckage of premature realizations. There's no real
+faith in thought and knowledge yet. Old necessity has driven men so hard
+that they still rush with a wild urgency--though she goads no more.
+Greed and haste, and if, indeed, we seem to have a moment's breathing
+space, then the Gawdsaker tramples us under."
+
+"My dear!" cried Marjorie, with a sharp note of amusement. "What _is_ a
+Gawdsaker?"
+
+"Oh," said Trafford, "haven't you heard that before? He's the person who
+gets excited by any deliberate discussion and gets up wringing his hands
+and screaming, 'For Gawd's sake, let's _do_ something _now!_' I think
+they used it first for Pethick Lawrence, that man who did so much to run
+the old militant suffragettes and burke the proper discussion of woman's
+future. You know. You used to have 'em in Chelsea--with their hats. Oh!
+'Gawdsaking' is the curse of all progress, the hectic consumption that
+kills a thousand good beginnings. You see it in small things and in
+great. You see it in my life; Gawdsaking turned my life-work to cash and
+promotions, Gawdsaking----Look at the way the aviators took to flying
+for prizes and gate-money, the way pure research is swamped by
+endowments for technical applications! Then that poor ghost-giant of an
+idea the socialists have;--it's been treated like one of those unborn
+lambs they kill for the fine skin of it, made into results before ever
+it was alive. Was there anything more pitiful? The first great dream and
+then the last phase! when your Aunt Plessington and the district
+visitors took and used it as a synonym for Payment in Kind.... It's
+natural, I suppose, for people to be eager for results, personal and
+immediate results--the last lesson of life is patience. Naturally they
+want reality, naturally! They want the individual life, something to
+handle and feel and use and live by, something of their very own before
+they die, and they want it now. But the thing that matters for the race,
+Marjorie, is a very different thing; it is to get the emerging thought
+process clear and to keep it clear--and to let those other hungers go.
+We've got to go back to England on the side of that delay, that arrest
+of interruption, that detached, observant, synthesizing process of the
+mind, that solvent of difficulties and obsolescent institutions, which
+is the reality of collective human life. We've got to go back on the
+side of pure science--literature untrammeled by the preconceptions of
+the social schemers--art free from the urgency of immediate utility--and
+a new, a regal, a god-like sincerity in philosophy. And, above all,
+we've got to stop this Jackdaw buying of yours, my dear, which is the
+essence of all that is wrong with the world, this snatching at
+everything, which loses everything worth having in life, this greedy
+confused realization of our accumulated resources! You're going to be a
+non-shopping woman now. You're to come out of Bond Street, you and your
+kind, like Israel leaving the Egyptian flesh-pots. You're going to be
+my wife and my mate.... Less of this service of things. Investments in
+comfort, in security, in experience, yes; but not just spending any
+more...."
+
+He broke off abruptly with: "I want to go back and begin."
+
+"Yes," said Marjorie, "we will go back," and saw minutely and distantly,
+and yet as clearly and brightly as if she looked into a concave mirror,
+that tall and dignified study, a very high room indeed, with a man
+writing before a fine, long-curtained window and a great lump of
+rich-glowing Labradorite upon his desk before him holding together an
+accumulation of written sheets....
+
+She knew exactly the shop in Oxford Street where the stuff for the
+curtains might be best obtained.
+
+
+Sec. 17
+
+One night Marjorie had been sitting musing before the stove for a long
+time, and suddenly she said: "I wonder if we shall fail. I wonder if we
+shall get into a mess again when we are back in London.... As big a mess
+and as utter a discontent as sent us here...."
+
+Trafford was scraping out his pipe, and did not answer for some moments.
+Then he remarked: "What nonsense!"
+
+"But we shall," she said. "Everybody fails. To some extent, we are bound
+to fail. Because indeed nothing is clear; nothing is a clear issue....
+You know--I'm just the old Marjorie really in spite of all these
+resolutions--the spendthrift, the restless, the eager. I'm a born
+snatcher and shopper. We're just the same people really."
+
+"No," he said, after thought. "You're all Labrador older."
+
+"I always _have_ failed," she considered, "when it came to any special
+temptations, Rag. I can't _stand_ not having a thing!"
+
+He made no answer.
+
+"And you're still the same old Rag, you know," she went on. "Who weakens
+into kindness if I cry. Who likes me well-dressed. Who couldn't endure
+to see me poor."
+
+"Not a bit of it. No! I'm a very different Rag with a very different
+Marjorie. Yes indeed! Things--are graver. Why!--I'm lame for life--and
+I've a scar. The very _look_ of things is changed...." He stared at her
+face and said: "You've hidden the looking-glass and you think I haven't
+noted it----"
+
+"It keeps on healing," she interrupted. "And if it comes to
+that--where's my complexion?" She laughed. "These are just the
+superficial aspects of the case."
+
+"Nothing ever heals completely," he said, answering her first sentence,
+"and nothing ever goes back to the exact place it held before. We _are_
+different, you sun-bitten, frost-bitten wife of mine."...
+
+"Character is character," said Marjorie, coming back to her point.
+"Don't exaggerate conversion, dear. It's not a bit of good pretending we
+shan't fall away, both of us. Each in our own manner. We shall. We
+shall, old man. London is still a tempting and confusing place, and you
+can't alter people fundamentally, not even by half-freezing and
+half-starving them. You only alter people fundamentally by killing them
+and replacing them. I shall be extravagant again and forget again, try
+as I may, and you will work again and fall away again and forgive me
+again. You know----It's just as though we were each of us not one
+person, but a lot of persons, who sometimes meet and shout all together,
+and then disperse and forget and plot against each other...."
+
+"Oh, things will happen again," said Trafford, in her pause. "But they
+will happen again with a difference--after this. With a difference.
+That's the good of it all.... We've found something here--that makes
+everything different.... We've found each other, too, dear wife."
+
+She thought intently.
+
+"I am afraid," she whispered.
+
+"But what is there to be afraid of?"
+
+"_Myself_."
+
+She spoke after a little pause that seemed to hesitate. "At times I
+wish--oh, passionately!--that I could pray."
+
+"Why don't you?"
+
+"I don't believe enough--in that. I wish I did."
+
+Trafford thought. "People are always so exacting about prayer," he said.
+
+"Exacting."
+
+"You want to pray--and you can't make terms for a thing you want. I used
+to think I could. I wanted God to come and demonstrate a bit.... It's no
+good, Madge.... If God chooses to be silent--you must pray to the
+silence. If he chooses to live in darkness, you must pray to the
+night...."
+
+"Yes," said Marjorie, "I suppose one must."
+
+She thought. "I suppose in the end one does," she said....
+
+
+Sec. 18
+
+Mixed up with this entirely characteristic theology of theirs and their
+elaborate planning-out of a new life in London were other strands of
+thought. Queer memories of London and old times together would flash
+with a peculiar brightness across their contemplation of the infinities
+and the needs of mankind. Out of nowhere, quite disconnectedly, would
+come the human, finite: "Do you remember----?"
+
+Two things particularly pressed into their minds. One was the thought of
+their children, and I do not care to tell how often in the day now they
+calculated the time in England, and tried to guess to a half mile or
+so where those young people might be and what they might be doing. "The
+shops are bright for Christmas now," said Marjorie. "This year Dick was
+to have had his first fireworks. I wonder if he did. I wonder if he
+burnt his dear little funny stumps of fingers. I hope not."
+
+"Oh, just a little," said Trafford. "I remember how a squib made my
+glove smoulder and singed me, and how my mother kissed me for taking it
+like a man. It was the best part of the adventure."
+
+"Dick shall burn his fingers when his mother's home to kiss him. But
+spare his fingers now, Dadda...."
+
+The other topic was food.
+
+It was only after they had been doing it for a week or so that they
+remarked how steadily they gravitated to reminiscences, suggestions,
+descriptions and long discussions of eatables--sound, solid eatables.
+They told over the particulars of dinners they had imagined altogether
+forgotten; neither hosts nor conversations seemed to matter now in the
+slightest degree, but every item in the menu had its place. They nearly
+quarrelled one day about _hors-d'oeuvre_. Trafford wanted to dwell on
+them when Marjorie was eager for the soup.
+
+"It's niggling with food," said Marjorie.
+
+"Oh, but there's no reason," said Trafford, "why you shouldn't take a
+lot of _hors-d'oeuvre_. Three or four sardines, and potato salad and
+a big piece of smoked salmon, and some of that Norwegian herring, and so
+on, and keep the olives by you to pick at. It's a beginning."
+
+"It's--it's immoral," said Marjorie, "that's what I feel. If one needs a
+whet to eat, one shouldn't eat. The proper beginning of a dinner is
+soup--good, hot, _rich_ soup. Thick soup--with things in it, vegetables
+and meat and things. Bits of oxtail."
+
+"Not peas."
+
+"No, not peas. Pea-soup is tiresome. I never knew anything one tired of
+so soon. I wish we hadn't relied on it so much."
+
+"Thick soup's all very well," said Trafford, "but how about that clear
+stuff they give you in the little pavement restaurants in Paris. You
+know--_Croute-au-pot_, with lovely great crusts and big leeks and
+lettuce leaves and so on! Tremendous aroma of onions, and beautiful
+little beads of fat! And being a clear soup, you see what there is.
+That's--interesting. Twenty-five centimes, Marjorie. Lord! I'd give a
+guinea a plate for it. I'd give five pounds for one of those jolly
+white-metal tureens full--you know, _full_, with little drops all over
+the outside of it, and the ladle sticking out under the lid."
+
+"Have you ever tasted turtle soup?"
+
+"Rather. They give it you in the City. The fat's--ripping. But they're
+rather precious with it, you know. For my own part, I don't think soup
+should be _doled_ out. I always liked the soup we used to get at the
+Harts'; but then they never give you enough, you know--not nearly
+enough."
+
+"About a tablespoonful," said Marjorie. "It's mocking an appetite."
+
+"Still there's things to follow," said Trafford....
+
+They discussed the proper order of a dinner very carefully. They
+decided that sorbets and ices were not only unwholesome, but nasty. "In
+London," said Trafford, "one's taste gets--vitiated."...
+
+They weighed the merits of French cookery, modern international cookery,
+and produced alternatives. Trafford became very eloquent about old
+English food. "Dinners," said Trafford, "should be feasting, not the
+mere satisfaction of a necessity. There should be--_amplitude_. I
+remember a recipe for a pie; I think it was in one of those books that
+man Lucas used to compile. If I remember rightly, it began with: 'Take a
+swine and hew it into gobbets.' Gobbets! That's something like a
+beginning. It was a big pie with tiers and tiers of things, and it kept
+it up all the way in that key.... And then what could be better than
+prime British-fed roast beef, reddish, just a shade on the side of
+underdone, and not too finely cut. Mutton can't touch it."
+
+"Beef is the best," she said.
+
+"Then our English cold meat again. What can equal it? Such stuff as they
+give in a good country inn, a huge joint of beef--you cut from it
+yourself, you know as much as you like--with mustard, pickles, celery, a
+tankard of stout, let us say. Pressed beef, such as they'll give you at
+the Reform, too, that's good eating for a man. With chutney, and then
+old cheese to follow. And boiled beef, with little carrots and turnips
+and a dumpling or so. Eh?"
+
+"Of course," said Marjorie, "one must do justice to a well-chosen
+turkey, a _fat_ turkey."
+
+"Or a good goose, for the matter of that--with honest, well-thought-out
+stuffing. I like the little sausages round the dish of a turkey, too;
+like cherubs they are, round the feet of a Madonna.... There's much to
+be said for sausage, Marjorie. It concentrates."
+
+Sausage led to Germany. "I'm not one of those patriots," he was saying
+presently, "who run down other countries by way of glorifying their own.
+While I was in Germany I tasted many good things. There's their
+Leberwurst; it's never bad, and, at its best, it's splendid. It's only a
+fool would reproach Germany with sausage. Devonshire black-pudding, of
+course, is the master of any Blutwurst, but there's all those others on
+the German side, Frankfurter, big reddish sausage stuff again with great
+crystalline lumps of white fat. And how well they cook their rich
+hashes, and the thick gravies they make. Curious, how much better the
+cooking of Teutonic peoples is than the cooking of the South Europeans!
+It's as if one needed a colder climate to brace a cook to his business.
+The Frenchman and the Italian trifle and stimulate. It's as if they'd
+never met a hungry man. No German would have thought of _souffle_. Ugh!
+it's vicious eating. There's much that's fine, though, in Austria and
+Hungary. I wish I had travelled in Hungary. Do you remember how once or
+twice we've lunched at that Viennese place in Regent Street, and how
+they've given us stuffed Paprika, eh?"
+
+"That was a good place. I remember there was stewed beef once with a lot
+of barley--such _good_ barley!"
+
+"Every country has its glories. One talks of the cookery of northern
+countries and then suddenly one thinks of curry, with lots of rice."
+
+"And lots of chicken!"
+
+"And lots of hot curry powder, _very_ hot. And look at America! Here's a
+people who haven't any of them been out of Europe for centuries, and yet
+they have as different a table as you could well imagine. There's a kind
+of fish, planked shad, that they cook on resinous wood--roast it, I
+suppose. It's substantial, like nothing else in the world. And how
+good, too, with turkey are sweet potatoes. Then they have such a
+multitude of cereal things; stuff like their buckwheat cakes, all
+swimming in golden syrup. And Indian corn, again!"
+
+"Of course, corn is being anglicized. I've often given you
+corn--latterly, before we came away."
+
+"That sort of separated grain--out of tins. Like chicken's food! It's
+not the real thing. You should eat corn on the cob--American fashion!
+It's fine. I had it when I was in the States. You know, you take it up
+in your hands by both ends--you've seen the cobs?--and gnaw."
+
+The craving air of Labrador at a temperature of -20 deg. Fahrenheit, and
+methodically stinted rations, make great changes in the outward
+qualities of the mind. "_I'd_ like to do that," said Marjorie.
+
+Her face flushed a little at a guilty thought, her eyes sparkled. She
+leant forward and spoke in a confidential undertone.
+
+"_I'd--I'd like to eat a mutton chop like that_," said Marjorie.
+
+
+Sec. 20
+
+One morning Marjorie broached something she had had on her mind for
+several days.
+
+"Old man," she said, "I can't stand it any longer. I'm going to thaw my
+scissors and cut your hair.... And then you'll have to trim that beard
+of yours."
+
+"You'll have to dig out that looking-glass."
+
+"I know," said Marjorie. She looked at him. "You'll never be a pretty
+man again," she said. "But there's a sort of wild splendour.... And I
+love every inch and scrap of you...."
+
+Their eyes met. "We're a thousand deeps now below the look of things,"
+said Trafford. "We'd love each other minced."
+
+She broke into that smiling laugh of hers. "Oh! it won't come to
+_that_," she said. "Trust my housekeeping!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE FIFTH
+
+THE TRAIL TO THE SEA
+
+
+Sec. 1
+
+One astonishing afternoon in January a man came out of the wilderness to
+Lonely Hut. He was a French-Indian half-breed, a trapper up and down the
+Green River and across the Height of Land to Sea Lake. He arrived in a
+sort of shy silence, and squatted amiably on a log to thaw. "Much snow,"
+he said, "and little fur."
+
+After he had sat at their fire for an hour and eaten and drunk, his
+purpose in coming thawed out. He explained he had just come on to them
+to see how they were. He was, he said, a planter furring; he had a line
+of traps, about a hundred and twenty miles in length. The nearest trap
+in his path before he turned northward over the divide was a good forty
+miles down the river. He had come on from there. Just to have a look.
+His name, he said, was Louis Napoleon Partington. He had carried a big
+pack, a rifle and a dead marten,--they lay beside him--and out of his
+shapeless mass of caribou skins and woolen clothing and wrappings,
+peeped a genial, oily, brown face, very dirty, with a strand of
+blue-black hair across one eye, irregular teeth in its friendly smile,
+and little, squeezed-up eyes.
+
+Conversation developed. There had been doubts of his linguistic range at
+first, but he had an understanding expression, and his English seemed
+guttural rather than really bad.
+
+He was told the tremendous story of Trafford's leg; was shown it, and
+felt it; he interpolated thick and whistling noises to show how
+completely he followed their explanations, and then suddenly he began a
+speech that made all his earlier taciturnity seem but the dam of a great
+reservoir of mixed and partly incomprehensible English. He complimented
+Marjorie so effusively and relentlessly and shamelessly as to produce a
+pause when he had done. "Yes," he said, and nodded to button up the
+whole. He sucked his pipe, well satisfied with his eloquence. Trafford
+spoke in his silence. "We are coming down," he said.
+
+("I thought, perhaps----" whispered Louis Napoleon.)
+
+"Yes," said Trafford, "we are coming down with you. Why not? We can get
+a sledge over the snow now? It's hard? I mean a flat sledge--like
+_this_. See? Like this." He got up and dragged Marjorie's old
+arrangement into view. "We shall bring all the stuff we can down with
+us, grub, blankets--not the tent, it's too bulky; we'll leave a lot of
+the heavy gear."
+
+"You'd have to leave the tent," said Louis Napoleon.
+
+"I _said_ leave the tent."
+
+"And you'd have to leave ... some of those tins."
+
+"Nearly all of them."
+
+"And the ammunition, there;--except just a little."
+
+"Just enough for the journey down."
+
+"Perhaps a gun?"
+
+"No, not a gun. Though, after all,--well, we'd return one of the guns.
+Give it you to bring back here."
+
+"Bring back here?"
+
+"If you liked."
+
+For some moments Louis Napoleon was intently silent. When he spoke his
+voice was guttural with emotion. "After," he said thoughtfully and
+paused, and then resolved to have it over forthwith, "all you leave will
+be mine? Eh?"
+
+Trafford said that was the idea.
+
+Louis Napoleon's eye brightened, but his face preserved its Indian calm.
+
+"I will take you right to Hammond's," he said, "Where they have dogs.
+And then I can come back here...."
+
+
+Sec. 2
+
+They had talked out nearly every particular of their return before they
+slept that night; they yarned away three hours over the first generous
+meal that any one of them had eaten for many weeks. Louis Napoleon
+stayed in the hut as a matter of course, and reposed with snores and
+choking upon Marjorie's sledge and within a yard of her. It struck her
+as she lay awake and listened that the housemaids in Sussex Square would
+have thought things a little congested for a lady's bedroom, and then
+she reflected that after all it wasn't much worse than a crowded
+carriage in an all-night train from Switzerland. She tried to count how
+many people there had been in that compartment, and failed. How stuffy
+that had been--the smell of cheese and all! And with that, after a dream
+that she was whaling and had harpooned a particularly short-winded whale
+she fell very peacefully into oblivion.
+
+Next day was spent in the careful preparation of the two sledges. They
+intended to take a full provision for six weeks, although they reckoned
+that with good weather they ought to be down at Hammond's in four.
+
+The day after was Sunday, and Louis Napoleon would not look at the
+sledges or packing. Instead he held a kind of religious service which
+consisted partly in making Trafford read aloud out of a very oily old
+New Testament he produced, a selected passage from the book of
+Corinthians, and partly in moaning rather than singing several hymns. He
+was rather disappointed that they did not join in with him. In the
+afternoon he heated some water, went into the tent with it and it would
+appear partially washed his face. In the evening, after they had supped,
+he discussed religion, being curious by this time about their beliefs
+and procedure.
+
+He spread his mental and spiritual equipment before them very artlessly.
+Their isolation and their immense concentration on each other had made
+them sensitive to personal quality, and they listened to the broken
+English and the queer tangential starts into new topics of this dirty
+mongrel creature with the keenest appreciation of its quality. It was
+inconsistent, miscellaneous, simple, honest, and human. It was as
+touching as the medley in the pocket of a dead schoolboy. He was
+superstitious and sceptical and sensual and spiritual, and very, very
+earnest. The things he believed, even if they were just beliefs about
+the weather or drying venison or filling pipes, he believed with
+emotion. He flushed as he told them. For all his intellectual muddle
+they felt he knew how to live honestly and die if need be very finely.
+
+He was more than a little distressed at their apparent ignorance of the
+truths of revealed religion as it is taught in the Moravian schools upon
+the coast, and indeed it was manifest that he had had far more careful
+and infinitely more sincere religious teaching than either Trafford or
+Marjorie. For a time the missionary spirit inspired him, and then he
+quite forgot his solicitude for their conversion in a number of
+increasingly tall anecdotes about hunters and fishermen, illustrating at
+first the extreme dangers of any departure from a rigid Sabbatarianism,
+but presently becoming just stories illustrating the uncertainty of
+life. Thence he branched off to the general topic of life upon the coast
+and the relative advantages of "planter" and fisherman.
+
+And then with a kindling eye he spoke of women, and how that some day he
+would marry. His voice softened, and he addressed himself more
+particularly to Marjorie. He didn't so much introduce the topic of the
+lady as allow the destined young woman suddenly to pervade his
+discourse. She was, it seemed, a servant, an Esquimaux girl at the
+Moravian Mission station at Manivikovik. He had been plighted to her for
+nine years. He described a gramophone he had purchased down at Port
+Dupre and brought back to her three hundred miles up the coast--it
+seemed to Marjorie an odd gift for an Esquimaux maiden--and he gave his
+views upon its mechanism. He said God was with the man who invented the
+gramophone "truly." They would have found one a very great relief to the
+tediums of their sojourn at Lonely Hut. The gramophone he had given his
+betrothed possessed records of the Rev. Capel Gumm's preaching and of
+Madame Melba's singing, a revival hymn called "Sowing the Seed," and a
+comic song--they could not make out his pronunciation of the title--that
+made you die with laughter. "It goes gobble, gobble, gobble," he said,
+with a solemn appreciative reflection of those distant joys.
+
+"It's good to be jolly at times," he said with his bright eyes scanning
+Marjorie's face a little doubtfully, as if such ideas were better left
+for week-day expression.
+
+
+Sec. 3
+
+Their return was a very different journey from the toilsome ascent of
+the summer. An immense abundance of snow masked the world, snow that
+made them regret acutely they had not equipped themselves with ski. With
+ski and a good circulation, a man may go about Labrador in winter, six
+times more easily than by the canoes and slow trudging of summer travel.
+As it was they were glad of their Canadian snow shoes. One needs only
+shelters after the Alpine Club hut fashion, and all that vast solitary
+country would be open in the wintertime. Its shortest day is no shorter
+than the shortest day in Cumberland or Dublin.
+
+This is no place to tell of the beauty and wonder of snow and ice, the
+soft contours of gentle slopes, the rippling of fine snow under a steady
+wind, the long shadow ridges of shining powder on the lee of trees and
+stones and rocks, the delicate wind streaks over broad surfaces like the
+marks of a chisel in marble, the crests and cornices, the vivid
+brightness of edges in the sun, the glowing yellowish light on sunlit
+surfaces, the long blue shadows, the flush of sunset and sunrise and the
+pallid unearthly desolation of snow beneath the moon. Nor need the
+broken snow in woods and amidst tumbled stony slopes be described, nor
+the vast soft overhanging crests on every outstanding rock beside the
+icebound river, nor the huge stalactites and stalagmites of green-blue
+ice below the cliffs, nor trees burdened and broken by frost and snow,
+nor snow upon ice, nor the blue pools at mid-day upon the surface of the
+ice-stream. Across the smooth wind-swept ice of the open tarns they
+would find a growth of ice flowers, six-rayed and complicated, more
+abundant and more beautiful than the Alpine summer flowers.
+
+But the wind was very bitter, and the sun had scarcely passed its zenith
+before the thought of fuel and shelter came back into their minds.
+
+As they approached Partington's tilt, at the point where his trapping
+ground turned out of the Green River gorge, he became greatly obsessed
+by the thought of his traps. He began to talk of all that he might find
+in them, all he hoped to find, and the "dallars" that might ensue. They
+slept the third night, Marjorie within and the two men under the lee of
+the little cabin, and Partington was up and away before dawn to a trap
+towards the ridge. He had infected Marjorie and Trafford with a
+sympathetic keenness, but when they saw his killing of a marten that was
+still alive in its trap, they suddenly conceived a distaste for
+trapping.
+
+They insisted they must witness no more. They would wait while he went
+to a trap....
+
+"Think what he's doing!" said Trafford, as they sat together under the
+lee of a rock waiting for him. "We imagined this was a free,
+simple-souled man leading an unsophisticated life on the very edge of
+humanity, and really he is as much a dependant of your woman's world,
+Marjorie, as any sweated seamstress in a Marylebone slum. Lord! how far
+those pretty wasteful hands of women reach! All these poor broken and
+starving beasts he finds and slaughters are, from the point of view of
+our world, just furs. Furs! Poor little snarling unfortunates! Their
+pelts will be dressed and prepared because women who have never dreamt
+of this bleak wilderness desire them. They will get at last into Regent
+Street shops, and Bond Street shops, and shops in Fifth Avenue and in
+Paris and Berlin, they will make delightful deep muffs, with scent and
+little bags and powder puffs and all sorts of things tucked away inside,
+and long wraps for tall women, and jolly little frames of soft fur for
+pretty faces, and dainty coats and rugs for expensive little babies in
+Kensington Gardens."...
+
+"I wonder," reflected Marjorie, "if I could buy one perhaps. As a
+memento."
+
+He looked at her with eyes of quiet amusement.
+
+"Oh!" she cried, "I didn't mean to! The old Eve!"
+
+"The old Adam is with her," said Trafford. "He's wanting to give it
+her.... We don't cease to be human, Madge, you know, because we've got
+an idea now of just where we are. I wonder, which would you like? I dare
+say we could arrange it."
+
+"No," said Marjorie, and thought. "It would be jolly," she said. "All
+the same, you know--and just to show you--I'm not going to let you buy
+me that fur."
+
+"I'd like to," said Trafford.
+
+"No," said Marjorie, with a decision that was almost fierce. "I mean it.
+I've got more to do than you in the way of reforming. It's just because
+always I've let my life be made up of such little things that I mustn't.
+Indeed I mustn't. Don't make things hard for me."
+
+He looked at her for a moment. "Very well," he said. "But I'd have liked
+to."...
+
+"You're right," he added, five seconds later.
+
+"Oh! I'm right."
+
+
+Sec. 4
+
+One day Louis Napoleon sent them on along the trail while he went up the
+mountain to a trap among the trees. He rejoined them--not as his custom
+was, shouting inaudible conversation for the last hundred yards or so,
+but in silence. They wondered at that, and at the one clumsy gesture
+that flourished something darkly grey at them. What had happened
+to the man? Whatever he had caught he was hugging it as one
+hugs a cat, and stroking it. "Ugh!" he said deeply, drawing near. "Oh!"
+A solemn joy irradiated his face, and almost religious ecstasy found
+expression.
+
+He had got a silver fox, a beautifully marked silver fox, the best luck
+of Labrador! One goes for years without one, in hope, and when it comes,
+it pays the trapper's debts, it clears his life--for years!
+
+They tried poor inadequate congratulation....
+
+As they sat about the fire that night a silence came upon Louis
+Napoleon. It was manifest that his mind was preoccupied. He got up,
+walked about, inspected the miracle of fur that had happened to him,
+returned, regarded them. "'M'm," he said, and stroked his chin with his
+forefinger. A certain diffidence and yet a certain dignity of assurance
+mingled in his manner. It wasn't so much a doubt of his own correctness
+as of some possible ignorance of the finer shades on their part that
+might embarrass him. He coughed a curt preface, and intimated he had a
+request to make. Behind the Indian calm of his face glowed tremendous
+feeling, like the light of a foundry furnace shining through chinks in
+the door. He spoke in a small flat voice, exercising great self-control.
+His wish, he said, in view of all that had happened, was a little
+thing.... This was nearly a perfect day for him, and one thing only
+remained.... "Well," he said, and hung. "Well," said Trafford. He
+plunged. Just simply this. Would they give him the brandy bottle and let
+him get drunk? Mr. Grenfell was a good man, a very good man, but he had
+made brandy dear--dear beyond the reach of common men altogether--along
+the coast....
+
+He explained, dear bundle of clothes and dirt! that he was always
+perfectly respectable when he was drunk.
+
+
+Sec. 5
+
+It seemed strange to Trafford that now that Marjorie was going home, a
+wild impatience to see her children should possess her. So long as it
+had been probable that they would stay out their year in Labrador, that
+separation had seemed mainly a sentimental trouble; now at times it was
+like an animal craving. She would talk of them for hours at a stretch,
+and when she was not talking he could see her eyes fixed ahead, and knew
+that she was anticipating a meeting. And for the first time it seemed
+the idea of possible misadventure troubled her....
+
+They reached Hammond's in one and twenty days from Lonely Hut, three
+days they had been forced to camp because of a blizzard, and three
+because Louis Napoleon was rigidly Sabbatarian. They parted from him
+reluctantly, and the next day Hammond's produced its dogs, twelve stout
+but extremely hungry dogs, and sent the Traffords on to the Green River
+pulp-mills, where there were good beds and a copious supply of hot
+water. Thence they went to Manivikovik, and thence the new Marconi
+station sent their inquiries home, inquiries that were answered next day
+with matter-of-fact brevity: "Everyone well, love from all."
+
+When the operator hurried with that to Marjorie she received it
+off-handedly, glanced at it carelessly, asked him to smoke, remarked
+that wireless telegraphy was a wonderful thing, and then, in the midst
+of some unfinished commonplace about the temperature, broke down and
+wept wildly and uncontrollably....
+
+
+Sec. 6
+
+Then came the long, wonderful ride southward day after day along the
+coast to Port Dupre, a ride from headland to headland across the frozen
+bays behind long teams of straining, furry dogs, that leapt and yelped
+as they ran. Sometimes over the land the brutes shirked and loitered and
+called for the whip; they were a quarrelsome crew to keep waiting; but
+across the sea-ice they went like the wind, and downhill the komatic
+chased their waving tails. The sledges swayed and leapt depressions, and
+shot athwart icy stretches. The Traffords, spectacled and wrapped to
+their noses, had all the sensations then of hunting an unknown quarry
+behind a pack of wolves. The snow blazed under the sun, out to sea
+beyond the ice the water glittered, and it wasn't so much air they
+breathed as a sort of joyous hunger.
+
+One day their teams insisted upon racing.
+
+Marjorie's team was the heavier, her driver more skillful, and her
+sledge the lighter, and she led in that wild chase from start to finish,
+but ever and again Trafford made wild spurts that brought him almost
+level. Once, as he came alongside, she heard him laughing joyously.
+
+"Marjorie," he shouted, "d'you remember? Old donkey cart?"
+
+Her team yawed away, and as he swept near again, behind his pack of
+whimpering, straining, furious dogs, she heard him shouting, "You know,
+that old cart! Under the overhanging trees! So thick and green they met
+overhead! You know! When you and I had our first talk together! In the
+lane. It wasn't so fast as this, eh?"...
+
+
+Sec. 7
+
+At Port Dupre they stayed ten days--days that Marjorie could only make
+tolerable by knitting absurd garments for the children (her knitting was
+atrocious), and then one afternoon they heard the gun of the _Grenfell_,
+the new winter steamer from St. John's, signalling as it came in through
+the fog, very slowly, from that great wasteful world of men and women
+beyond the seaward grey.
+
+
+THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation and hyphenation inconsistencies have been silently
+repaired. Words with variable spelling have been retained. The following
+spelling and typographical emendations have been made:
+
+  p. 22: broken text "were they living and moving realities" was
+  completed to "were they living and moving realities when those others
+  were at home again?"
+  p. 34: protruberant replaced with protuberant ("large protuberant")
+  p. 38: pay replaced with play ("what the play was")
+  p. 40: Majorie replaced with Marjorie ("Marjorie loved singing")
+  p. 40: feut replaced with felt ("that he felt")
+  p. 60: tete-a-tete replaced with tete-a-tete ("silent tete-a-tete")
+  p. 70: foundamental replaced with fundamental ("three fundamental
+  things")
+  p. 76: fina replaced with final ("working for her final")
+  p. 88: challenege replaced with challenge ("challenge inattentive
+  auditors")
+  p. 92: presumbly replaced with presumably ("presumably Billy's")
+  p. 115: ino replaced with into ("into the air")
+  p. 141: himse_f replaced with himself ("ask himself")
+  p. 147: contradication replaced with contradiction ("any sort of
+  contradiction")
+  p. 167: calcalculated replaced with calculated ("indeed calculated")
+  p. 223: hestitated replaced with hesitated ("She hesitated")
+  p. 230: intriques replaced with intrigues ("culminations and intrigues")
+  p. 242: America replaced with American ("American minor poet")
+  p. 265: acquiscent replaced with acquiescent ("by no means acquiescent")
+  p. 313: It's replaced with Its ("Its end was the Agenda Club")
+  p. 316: regime replaced with regime ("the new regime")
+  p. 341: number of section 15 replaced with 16
+  p. 342: gestulated replaced with gesticulated ("Solomonson
+  gesticulated")
+  p. 342: The paragraphs starting with: "It was all" and "You said
+  good-bye" were merged
+  p. 346: The paragraphs starting with: "They aren't arranged" and "They'd
+  get everything" were merged
+  p. 349: devine replaced with divine ("by right divine of genius")
+  p. 368: presumptious replaced with presumptuous ("extremely
+  presumptuous")
+  p. 376: mispelling replaced with misspelling ("as much misspelling as")
+  p. 376: The replaced with They ("They gave dinners")
+  p. 378: The replaced with They ("They could play")
+  p. 395: Docter replaced with Doctor ("Doctor Codger")
+  p. 396: authoritive replaced with authoritative ("authoritative
+  imagine")
+  p. 399: shuldered replaced with shouldered ("As he shouldered")
+  p. 403: wet replaced with went ("Trafford's eyes went from")
+  p. 405: subthe replaced with subtle ("skilful, subtle appreciation")
+  p. 426: fine replaced with find ("find God")
+  p. 427: chidren replaced with children ("of having children at all")
+  p. 441: serere replaced with serene ("brightly serene")
+  p. 442: tundura replaced with tundra ("wide stretches of tundra")
+  p. 457: rucksac replaced with rucksack ("chunks of dry paper,
+  the rucksack")
+  p. 481: realties replaced with realities ("expression of the realities")
+  p. 485: the duplicate phrase "He stared at her" was removed
+  p. 493: think replaced with thing ("salvation is a collective thing")
+  p. 504: realty replaced with reality ("of sense and reality")
+  p. 509: greal replaced with great ("a great lump")
+  p. 512: caluclated replaced with calculated ("now they calculated")
+  p. 515: travellel replaced with travelled ("I had travelled")
+  p. 518: gutteral replaced with guttural ("seemed guttural")
+  p. 520: gutteral replaced with guttural ("his voice was guttural")
+  p. 524: slaughers replaced with slaughters ("he finds and slaughters")
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Marriage, by H. G. Wells
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