by H. G. Wells
CHAPTER THE FIRST
SETTLING DOWN
Sec. 1
It was in a boat among reeds upon the lake of Orta that Trafford firstbecame 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 fora time. But there were various debts to Oxbridge tradespeople. How much?Well, rather a lot. Of course, the tradespeople were rather enticingwhen 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 slowthey are."
"These things _will_ happen," said Trafford, though, as a matter offact, nothing of the sort had happened in his case. "However, you'll beable 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 herlong-established total, "if you'll let me have that."
"Oh, we don't do things like that," said Trafford. "I'm arranging thatmy current account will be a sort of joint account, and your signaturewill be as good as mine--for the purpose of drawing, at least. You'llhave 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? Fatheralways used to allowance mother."
"It's the only decent way according to my ideas," said Trafford. "A manshouldn't marry when he can't trust."
"Of course not," said Marjorie. Something between fear and compunctionwrung 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 thereeds with something of the shy awkwardness of a boy who becomesapprehensive of thanks. He stole a glance at her presently and caughther expression--there was something very solemn and intent in hereyes--and he thought what a grave, fine thing his Marjorie could be.
But, indeed, her state of mind was quite exceptionally confused. She wasdisconcerted--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 notfit for its responsibility. She just came short of a passionate refusalof his proposal. He was still so new to her, and things were sowonderful, 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 thelanguage of Shakspeare and Herrick, of the passion, the tenderness, thebeauty, and the delightful familiarizations of a happy honeymoon;suffice it now, in this delicate period, to record only how our twoyoung lovers found one day that neither had a name for the other. Hesaid she could be nothing better than Marjorie to him; and she, after anumber of unsuccessful experiments, settled down to the old school-boynickname 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 andRag--poor innocents! Old rag!"
"Mag," he said, "has its drawbacks! The street-boy in London says, 'Shutyour mag.' No, I think I shall stick to Marjorie...."
All honeymoons must end at last, so back they came to London, still verybright and happy. And then, Marjorie, whose eyes had changed fromflashing stones to darkly shining pools of blue, but whose soul hadstill perhaps to finds its depths, set herself to the business ofdecorating and furnishing the little house Mrs. Trafford had found forthem within ten minutes of her own. Meanwhile they lived in lodgings.
There can be no denying that Marjorie began her furnishing with severelyvirtuous intentions. She was very particular to ask Trafford severaltimes what he thought she might spend upon the enterprise. He hadalready a bedroom and a study equipped, and he threw out three hundredpounds as his conception of an acceptable figure. "Very well," saidMarjorie, with a note of great precision, "now I shall know," andstraightway that sum took a place in her imagination that was at oncedefinitive and protective, just as her estimate of fifty pounds for herOxbridge debts had always been. She assured herself she was going to dothings, and she assured herself she was doing things, on three hundredpounds. At times the astonishment of two or three school friends, whojoined her in her shopping, stirred her to a momentary surprise at theway she was managing to keep things within that limit, and following afinancial method that had, after all, in spite of some momentary andalready nearly forgotten distresses, worked very well at Oxbridge, sherefrained from any additions until all the accounts had come to hand.
It was an immense excitement shopping to make a home. There was in hercomposition a strain of constructive artistry with such concrete things,a strain that had hitherto famished. She was making a beautiful, securelittle home for Trafford, for herself, for possibilities--remoteperhaps, but already touching her imagination with the anticipation ofwarm, new, wonderful delights. There should be simplicity indeed in thishome, but no bareness, no harshness, never an ugliness nor a discord.She had always loved colour in the skies, in the landscapes, in thetexture of stuffs and garments; now out of the chaotic skein ofcountless shops she could choose and pick and mingle her threads in aglow 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 rathersmall; it was partly to its lack of bedroom accommodation, but much moreto the invasion of the street by the back premises of Messrs. Siddons &Thrale, the great Chelsea outfitters, that the lowness of the rent wasdue, a lowness which brought it within the means of Trafford. Marjorieknew very clearly that her father would say her husband had taken her tolive in a noisy slum, and that made her all the keener to ensure thatevery good point in the interior told to its utmost, and that whateverwas to be accessible to her family should glow with a refined but warmprosperity. The room downstairs was shapely, and by ripping off thepapered canvas of the previous occupier, some very dilapidated butadmirably proportioned panelling was brought to light. The dining-roomand study door on the ground floor, by a happy accident, were ofmahogany, with really very beautiful brass furnishings; and thedining-room window upon the minute but by no means offensive pavedgarden behind, was curved and had a little shallow balcony of ironwork,half covered by a devitalized but leafy grapevine. Moreover, theprevious occupier had equipped the place with electric light and abathroom 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 littleestablishment. The panelling must be done and done well, anyhow; thatwould be no more than a wise economy, seeing it might at any time helpthem to re-let; it would be painted white, of course, and thus set thekey for a clean brightness of colour throughout. The furniture wouldstand out against the softly shining white, and its line andproportions must be therefore the primary qualities to consider as shebought it. The study was much narrower than the dining-room, and so thepassage, which the agent called the hall, was much broader and morecommodious behind the happily wide staircase than in front, and she wasable to banish out of the sight of the chance visitor all that litter ofhat-stand and umbrella-stand, letters, boxes arriving and parcels topost, which had always offended her eye at home. At home there had beenoften the most unsightly things visible, one of Theo's awful caps, orhis school books, and not infrequently her father's well-worn and alltoo fatally comfortable house slippers.
A good effect at first is halfthe victory of a well done house, and Marjorie accomplished another ofher real economies here by carpeting hall and staircase with afine-toned, rich-feeling and rather high-priced blue carpet, held downby very thick brass stair-rods. She hung up four well-chosen steelengravings, put a single Chippendale chair in the hall, and a dark oldDutch clock that had turned out to be only five pounds when she hadexpected the shopman to say eleven or twelve, on the half-landing. Thatwas all. Round the corner by the study door was a mahogany slab, and thelitter all went upon a capacious but very simple dark-stained hat-standand table that were out of the picture entirely until you reached thestairs.
Her dining-room was difficult for some time. She had equipped that witha dark oak Welsh dresser made very bright with a dessert service thatwas, in view of its extremely decorative quality, remarkably cheap, andwith some very pretty silver-topped glass bottles and flasks. Thisdresser and a number of simple but shapely facsimiles of old chairs,stood out against a nearly primrose paper, very faintly patterned, and adark blue carpet with a margin of dead black-stained wood. Over themantel was a German colour-print of waves full of sunlight breakingunder cliffs, and between this and the window were dark bookshelves anda few bright-coloured books. On the wall, black-framed, were four verygood Japanese prints, rich in greenish-blues and blueish-greys thatanswered the floor, and the window curtains took up some of the coloursof the German print. But something was needed towards the window, shefelt, to balance the warmly shining plates upon the dresser. The deeprose-red of the cherries that adorned them was too isolated, usurped toodominating a value. And while this was weighing upon her mind she saw ina window in Regent Street a number of Bokhara hangings very noblydisplayed. They were splendid pieces of needlework, particularlyglorious in their crimsons and reds, and suddenly it came to her that itwas just one of these, one that had great ruby flowers upon it withdead-blue interlacings, that was needed to weld her gay-coloured schemetogether. She hesitated, went half-way to Piccadilly Circus, turnedback and asked the prices. The prices were towering prices, ten,fifteen, eighteen guineas, and when at last the shopman produced onewith all the charm of colour she sought at eight, it seemed like tenguineas snatched back as they dropped from her hands. And stillhesitating, she had three that pleased her most sent home, "onapproval," before she decided finally to purchase one of them. But thetrial was conclusive. And then, struck with a sudden idea, she carriedoff a long narrow one she had had no idea of buying before into thelittle study behind. Suppose, she thought, instead of hanging twocurtains as anybody else would do in that window, she ran this glory ofrich colour across from one side on a great rod of brass.
She was giving the study the very best of her attention. After she hadlapsed in some other part of the house from the standards of rigideconomy she had set up, she would as it were restore the balance byadding something to the gracefully dignified arrangement of this den hewas to use. And the brass rod of the Bokhara hanging that was to doinstead of curtains released her mind somehow to the purchase of certainold candlesticks she had hitherto resisted. They were to stand, bored tocarry candle electric lights, on either corner of the low bookcase thatfaced the window. They were very heavy, very shapely candlesticks, andthey cost thirty-five shillings. They looked remarkably well when theywere put up, except that a sort of hollowness appeared between them andclamoured for a delightful old brass-footed workbox she had seen in ashop in Baker Street. Enquiry confirmed her quick impression that thiswas a genuine piece (of quite exceptional genuineness) and that theprice--they asked five pounds ten and came down to five guineas--was inaccordance with this. It was a little difficult (in spite of the silenthunger between the candlesticks) to reconcile this particular articlewith her dominating idea of an austerely restrained expenditure, untilshe hit upon the device of calling it a _hors d'oeuvre_, and regardingit not as furniture but as a present from herself to Trafford thathappened to fall in very agreeably with the process of house furnishing.She decided she would some day economise its cost out of her dressallowance. The bookcase on which it stood was a happy discovery inKensington, just five feet high, and with beautiful oval glass fronts,and its capacity was supplemented and any excess in its price at leastmorally compensated by a very tall, narrow, distinguished-looking set ofopen shelves that had been made for some special corner in anotherhouse, and which anyhow were really and truly dirt cheap. The deskcombined grace and good proportions to an admirable extent, the fenderof pierced brass looked as if it had always lived in immediate contactwith the shapely old white marble fireplace, and the two arm-chairs weremarvels of dignified comfort. By the fireplace were a banner-shapedneedlework firescreen, a white sheepskin hearthrug, a little patch andpowder table adapted to carry books, and a green-shaded lamp, grouped ina common inaudible demand for a reader in slippers. Trafford, when atlast the apartment was ready for his inspection, surveyed thesearrangements 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 showMrs. Trafford next day how prettily at least her son was going to live.The good lady came and admired everything, and particularly the Bokharahangings. She did not seem to appraise, but something set Marjorietalking rather nervously of a bargain-hunter's good fortune. Mrs.Trafford glanced at the candlesticks and the low bookcase, and returnedto the glowing piece of needlework that formed the symmetrical windowcurtain 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. Theorchestral accompaniment of the world at large began to mingle withtheir hitherto unsustained duet. It had been inaudible in Italy. InChelsea it had sounded, faintly perhaps but distinctly, from their veryfirst inspection of the little house. A drawing-room speaks of callers,a dining-room of lunch-parties and dinners. It had swayed Marjorie fromthe 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 ascore of personalities, and very anxious to show just how completelysuccessful in every sense her romantic disobedience had been. She knewshe had been approved of, admired, condemned, sneered at, thoroughlydiscussed. She felt it her first duty to Trafford, to all who hadapproved of her flight, to every one, herself included, to make thismarriage obviously, indisputably, a success, a success not only by herown standards but by the standards of anyonesoever who chose to sit injudgment on her.
There was Trafford. She felt she had to extort the admission from everyone that he was the handsomest, finest, ablest, most promising and mostdelightful man a prominent humorist was ever jilted for. She wanted themto understand clearly just all that Trafford was--and that involved, shespeedily found in practice, making them believe a very great deal thatas yet Trafford wasn't. She found it practically impossible not toanticipate his election to the Royal Society and the probability of amore important professorship. She felt that anyhow he was an F.R.S. inthe sight of God....
It was almost equally difficult not to indicate a larger income thanfacts justified.
It was entirely in Marjorie's vein in those early days that she wouldwant to win on every score and by every standard of reckoning. IfMarjorie had been a general she would have counted no victory completeif the struggle was not sustained and desperate, and if it left theenemy with a single gun or flag, or herself with so much as a man killedor wounded. The people she wanted to impress varied very widely. Shewanted to impress the Carmel girls, and the Carmel girls, she knew, withtheir racial trick of acute appraisement, were only to be won by thevery highest quality all round. They had, she knew, two standards ofquality, cost and distinction. As far as possible, she would give themdistinction. But whenever she hesitated over something o
n the verge ofcheapness 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 collegefriends. 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 looksand witty manner and easy temper. They might perhaps fall in love withhim and become slavish to her after the way of their kind, and anyhowthey would be provided for, but there were plenty of others of a hardertexture whose tests would be more difficult to satisfy. There were girlswho were the daughters of prominent men, who must be made to understandthat Trafford was prominent, girls who were well connected, who must bemade to realize the subtle excellence of Trafford's blood. As shethought of Constance Graham, for example, or Ottiline Winchelsea, shefelt the strongest disposition to thicken the by no means wellauthenticated strands that linked Trafford with the Traffords ofTrafford-over-Lea. She went about the house dreaming a littleapprehensively of these coming calls, and the pitiless light ofcriticism they would bring to bear, not indeed upon her happiness--thatwas assured--but upon her success.
The social side of the position would have to be strained to theutmost, Marjorie felt, with Aunt Plessington. The thought of AuntPlessington made her peculiarly apprehensive. Aunt Plessington had tothe fullest extent that contempt for merely artistic or scientificpeople which sits so gracefully upon the administrative English. Yousee people of that sort do not get on in the sense that a young lawyeror barrister gets on. They do not make steps; they boast and quarreland are jealous perhaps, but that steady patient shove upward seemsbeyond their intelligence. The energies God manifestly gave them forshoving, they dissipate in the creation of weak beautiful things andunremunerative theories, or in the establishment of views sometimesdiametrically opposed to the ideas of influential people. And they are"queer"--socially. They just moon about doing this so-called "work" oftheirs, and even when the judgment of eccentric people forces a kindof reputation upon them--Heaven knows why?--they make no public orsocial use of it. It seemed to Aunt Plessington that the artist andthe scientific man were dealt with very neatly and justly in theParable of the Buried Talent. Moreover their private lives were oftenscandalous, they married for love instead of interest, often quitedisadvantageously, and their relationships had all the instabilitythat is natural upon such a foundation. And, after all, what good werethey? She had never met an artist or a prominent imaginative writer orscientific man that she had not been able to subdue in a minute or soby flat contradiction, and if necessary slightly raising her voice.They had little or no influence even upon their own publicappointments....
The thought of the invasion of her agreeable little back streetestablishment by this Britannic system of judgments filled Marjorie'sheart with secret terrors. She felt she had to grapple with and overcomeAunt Plessington, or be for ever fallen--at least, so far as thatamiable lady's report went, and she knew it went pretty far. Shewandered about the house trying to imagine herself Aunt Plessington.
Immediately she felt the gravest doubts whether the whole thing wasn'ttoo graceful and pretty. A rich and rather massive ugliness, of course,would have been the thing to fetch Aunt Plessington. Happily, it wasAunt Plessington's habit to veil her eyes with her voice. She might notsee very much.
The subjugation of Aunt Plessington was difficult, but not altogetherhopeless, Marjorie felt, provided her rejection of Magnet had not beentaken as an act of personal ingratitude. There was a case on her side.She was discovering, for example, that Trafford had a really veryconsiderable range of acquaintance among quite distinguished people; bigfigures like Evesham and MacHaldo, for example, were intelligentlyinterested in the trend of his work. She felt this gave her a basis forPlessingtonian justifications. She could produce those people--as oneshows 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 andgood luck, and a word here and there in edgeways, she believed she mightbe able to represent the whole adventure as the well-calculated openingof a campaign on soundly Plessingtonian lines. Her marriage to Trafford,she tried to persuade herself, might be presented as something almostas brilliant and startling as her aunt's swoop upon her undistinguisheduncle.
She might pretend that all along she had seen her way to things, tocoveted dinner-tables and the familiarity of coveted guests, to bringingpeople together and contriving arrangements, to influence andprominence, to culminations and intrigues impossible in thecomparatively specialized world of a successful humorist and playwright,and so at last to those high freedoms of authoritative and if necessaryoffensive utterance in a strangulated contralto, and from a position ofsecure eminence, which is the goal of all virtuously ambitiousEnglishwomen of the governing classes--that is to say, of all virtuouslyambitious Englishwomen....
Sec. 4
And while such turbid solicitudes as these were flowing in again fromthe London world to which she had returned, and fouling the bright,romantic clearness of Marjorie's life, Trafford, in his ampler, lessdetailed 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 ofhis mother upon Marjorie's circle of school and college friends, whom hegathered from Marjorie's talk were destined to play a large part in thisnew phase of his life. She had given him very ample particulars of someof them; and he found them interesting rather than richly attractivepersonalities. It is to be noted that while he thought always ofMarjorie as a beautiful, grown-up woman, and his mate and equal, he wasstill disposed to regard her intimate friends as schoolgirls of anadvanced and aggressive type....
Then that large circle of distinguished acquaintances which Marjorie sawso easily and amply utilized for the subjugation of Aunt Plessingtondidn't present itself quite in that service to Trafford's privatethoughts. He hadn't that certitude of command over them, nor thatconfidence in their unhesitating approval of all he said and did. Justas Marjorie wished him to shine in the heavens over all her people, so,in regard to his associates, he was extraordinarily anxious that theyshould realize, and realize from the outset without qualification orhesitation, how beautiful, brave and delightful she was. And you know hehad already begun to be aware of an evasive feeling in his mind that attimes she did not altogether do herself justice--he scarcely knew as yethow or why....
She was very young....
One or two individuals stood out in his imagination, representatives andsymbols of the rest. Particularly there was that old giant, Sir RoderickDover, who had been, until recently, the Professor of Physics in thegreat Oxford laboratories. Dover and Trafford had one of those warmfriendships which spring up at times between a rich-minded man whosegreatness is assured and a young man of brilliant promise. It was allthe more affectionate because Dover had been a friend of Trafford'sfather. These two and a group of other careless-minded, able,distinguished, and uninfluential men at the Winton Club affected the endof the smoking-room near the conservatory in the hours after lunch, andshared the joys of good talk and fine jesting about the big fireplacethere. Under Dover's broad influence they talked more ideas and lessgossip than is usual with English club men. Twaddle about appointments,about reputations, topics from the morning's papers, Londonarchitecture, and the commerce in "good stories" took refuge at theother end in the window bays or by the further fireplace. Trafford onlybegan to realize on his return to London how large a share thisintermittent perennial conversation had contributed to the atmosphere ofhis existence. Amidst the romantic circumstances of his flight withMarjorie he had forgotten the part these men played in his life andthoughts. Now he was enormously exercised in the search for areconciliation between these, he felt, incommensurable factors.
He was afraid of what might be Sir Roderick's unspoken judgment onMarjorie and the house she had made--though what was there to be afraidof? He was still mo
re afraid--and this was even more remarkable--of theclear little judgments--hard as loose, small diamonds in a bed--that hethought Marjorie might pronounce on Sir Roderick. He had never disguisedfrom himself that Sir Roderick was fat--nobody who came within a hundredyards of him could be under any illusion about that--and that he drank agood deal, ate with a cosmic spaciousness, loved a cigar, and talked andlaughed with a freedom that sometimes drove delicate-minded new membersinto the corners remotest from the historical fireplace. Trafford knewhimself quite definitely that there was a joy in Dover's laugh andvoice, a beauty in his face (that was somehow mixed up with his healthycorpulence), and a breadth, a charity, a leonine courage in his mind(that was somehow mixed up with his careless freedom of speech) thatmade 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 atthe club one day postponed that introduction of the two extremes ofTrafford's existence for quite a considerable time.
Those were the days of the first enthusiasms of the militant suffragemovement, and the occasional smashing of a Downing Street window or anassault upon a minister kept the question of woman's distinctiveintelligence and character persistently before the public. GodleyBuzard, the feminist novelist, had been the guest of some member tolunch, and the occasion was too provocative for any one about Dover'sfireplace to avoid the topic. Buzard's presence, perhaps, drove Doverinto an extreme position on the other side; he forgot Trafford'snew-wedded condition, and handled this great argument, an argument whichhas scarcely progressed since its beginning in the days of Plato andAristophanes, with the freedoms of an ancient Greek and the explicitnessof a modern scientific man.
He opened almost apropos of nothing. "Women," he said, "areinferior--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'reseveral inches shorter, several pounds lighter; they've less physicalstrength in footpounds."
"More endurance," said Buzard.
"Less sensitiveness merely. All those are demonstrable things--amenableto figures and apparatus. Then they stand nervous tensions worse, thebreaking-point comes sooner. They have weaker inhibitions, andinhibition is the test of a creature's position in the mental scale."
He maintained that in the face of Buzard's animated protest. Buzardglanced at their moral qualities. "More moral!" cried Dover, "moreself-restraint! Not a bit of it! Their desires and passions are weakereven than their controls; that's all. Weaken restraints and they showtheir quality. A drunken woman is far worse than a drunken man. And asfor 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 arethe stem and we are the fruits. Surely it's better to exist than justtransmit existence. And that's a woman's business, though we've fooledand petted most of 'em into forgetting it...."
He proceeded to an attack on the intellectual quality of women. Hescoffed at the woman artist, at feminine research, at what he called thejoke of feminine philosophy. Buzard broke in with some sentences ofreply. He alleged the lack of feminine opportunity, inferior education.
"You don't or won't understand me," said Dover. "It isn't a matter ofeducation or opportunity, or simply that they're of inferior capacity;it lies deeper than that. They don't _want_ to do these things. They'redifferent."
"Precisely," ejaculated Buzard, as if he claimed a score.
"They don't care for these things. They don't care for art orphilosophy, or literature or anything except the things that touch themdirectly. That's their peculiar difference. Hunger they understand, andcomfort, and personal vanity and desire, furs and chocolate andhusbands, and the extreme importance conferred upon them by havingbabies at infrequent intervals. But philosophy or beauty for its ownsake, or dreams! Lord! no! The Mahometans know they haven't souls, andthey say it. We know, and keep it up that they have. Haven't all wescientific men had 'em in our laboratories working; don't we know thepapers they turn out? Every sane man of five and forty knows somethingof the disillusionment of the feminine dream, but we who've had thebeautiful creatures under us, weighing rather badly, handling ratherweakly, invariably missing every fine detail and all the implications ofour researches, never flashing, never leaping, never being eventhoroughly bad,--we're specialists in the subject. At the present timethere are far more educated young women than educated young menavailable for research work--and who wants them? Oh, the youngprofessors who've still got ideals perhaps. And in they come, and ifthey're dull, they just voluminously do nothing, and if they're bright,they either marry your demonstrator or get him into a mess. And thework----? It's nothing to them. No woman ever painted for the love ofpainting, or sang for the sounds she made, or philosophized for the sakeof wisdom as men do----"
Buzard intervened with instances. Dover would have none of them. Hedisplayed astonishing and distinctive knowledge. "Madame Curie,"clamoured Buzard, "Madame Curie."
"There was Curie," said Dover. "No woman alone has done such things. Idon't say women aren't clever," he insisted. "They're too clever. Givethem a man's track or a man's intention marked and defined, they'll apehim to the life----"
Buzard renewed his protests, talking at the same time as Dover, and wasunderstood to say that women had to care for something greater than artor philosophy. They were custodians of life, the future of the race----
"And that's my crowning disappointment," cried Dover. "If there was onething in which you might think women would show a sense of some divinepurpose in life, it is in the matter of children--and they show aboutas much care in that matter, oh!--as rabbits. Yes, rabbits! I stick toit. Look at the things a nice girl will marry; look at the men'schildren she'll consent to bring into the world. Cheerfully! Proudly!For the sake of the home and the clothes. Nasty little beasts they'llbreed without turning a hair. All about us we see girls and womenmarrying 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 thevote.
"If ever we get a decent care for Eugenics, it will come from men," saida white-faced little man on the sofa beside Trafford, in theconfidential 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 hitit smartly. He nipped his sentence in the bud. He left the case forwomen to Buzard....
He revived that memory again on his way home. It had been in his mindoverlaid by a multitude of newer, fresher things, but now he took it outand looked at it. It was queer, it was really very queer, to think thatonce upon a time, not so very long ago, Marjorie had been prepared tomarry Magnet. Of course she had hated it, but still----....
There is much to be discovered about life, even by a brilliant andrising young Professor of Physics....
Presently Dover, fingering the little glass of yellow chartreuse he hadhitherto forgotten in the heat of controversy, took a more personalturn.
"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 tokeep 'em and stand the racket of their misbehaviour? Don't our instinctstell us? Doesn't something tell us all that if we let a woman loose withour honour and trust, some other man will get hold of her? We've triedit 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 totake 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. Youseem always to want to force decisions on them, make them answerable forthings that
you ought to decide and answer for.... If one could, if onecould! If!... But they're not helps--that's a dream--they'redistractions, gratifications, anxieties, dangers, undertakings...."
Buzard got in his one effective blow at this point. "That's why you'venever married, Sir Roderick?" he threw out.
The big man was checked for a moment. Trafford wondered what memory litthat 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 asit was open to inspection. She arrived, looking very bright and neat ina new bonnet and some new black furs that suited her, bearing up bravelybut 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 mostexpensive child of her family, and her cessation had led to incrementsboth of Mrs. Pope's and Daphne's all too restricted allowances. Mrs.Pope had been able therefore to relapse from the orthodox Anglicanisminto which poverty had driven her, and indulge for an hour weekly in theconsolations of Higher Thought. These exercises in emancipatedreligiosity occurred at the house of Mr. Silas Root, and were greatlyvalued by a large circle of clients. Essentially they were orgies ofvacuity, and they cost six guineas for seven hours. They did her no endof good. All through the precious weekly hour she sat with him in asilent twilight, very, very still and feeling--oh! "higher" thananything, and when she came out she wore an inane smile on her face andwas prepared not to worry, to lie with facility, and to take the easiestway in every eventuality in an entirely satisfactory and exalted manner.Moreover he was "treating" her investments. Acting upon his advice, anddoing the whole thing quietly with the idea of preparing a pleasantsurprise for her husband, she had sold out of certain Home Railwaydebentures and invested in a company for working the auriferous wastewhich is so abundant in the drainage of Philadelphia, a company whoseshareholders were chiefly higher thought disciples and whose profitstherefore would inevitably be greatly enhanced by their concerted mentalaction. It was to the prospective profits in this that she owed the newblack 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 anddifficult situation, and to carry her through the first tensions of hercall. She was so much to pieces as it was that she could not helpfeeling how much more to pieces she might have been--but for the graceof Silas Root. She knew she ought to have very strong feelings aboutTrafford, though it was not really clear to her what feelings she oughtto have. On the whole she was inclined to believe she was experiencingmoral disapproval mixed up with a pathetic and rather hopeless appealfor the welfare of the tender life that had entrusted itself sorecklessly to these brutal and discreditable hands, though indeed if shehad really dared to look inside her mind her chief discovery would havebeen a keenly jealous appreciation of Trafford's good looks and generoustemper, and a feeling of injustice as between her own lot andMarjorie's. However, going on her assumed basis she managed to be verypale, concise and tight-lipped at any mention of her son-in-law, and toput a fervour of helpless devotion into her embraces of her daughter.She surveyed the house with a pained constrained expression, as thoughshe tried in vain to conceal from herself that it was all slightlyimproper, and even such objects as the Bokhara hangings failed to extortmore than an insincere, "Oh, very nice, dear--_very_ nice."
In the bedroom, she spoke about Mr. Pope. "He was dreadfully upset," shesaid. "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 hercheeks, did not urge her to conclude her explanation.
"He's _wounded_," said Mrs. Pope. "Some day perhaps he'll comeround--you were always his favourite daughter."
"I know," said Marjorie concisely, with a faint flavour of cynicism inher 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 unrealserenity; "_ever_."
"For a time I'm afraid he'll refuse to see you. He just wants toforget----. Everything."
"Poor old Dad! I wish he wouldn't put himself out like this. Still, Iwon't bother him, Mummy, if you mean that."
Then suddenly into Mrs. Pope's unsystematic, unstable mind, startedperhaps by the ring in her daughter's voice, there came a wave ofaffectionate feeling. That she had somehow to be hostile andunsympathetic to Marjorie, that she had to pretend that Trafford waswicked and disgusting, and not be happy in the jolly hope and happinessof this bright little house, cut her with a keen swift pain. She didn'tknow clearly why she was taking this coldly hostile attitude, or why shewent on doing so, but the sense of that necessity hurt her none theless. 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 andtears.
Marjorie passed through a flash of amazement to a sudden understandingof 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 keephold of this elusive thing that had somehow both wounded her and won herdaughter back. But her poor grasp slipped again. "I knew you'd come tosee it," she said, dabbing with her handkerchief at her eyes. "I knewyou would." And then with the habitual loyalty of years resuming itssway: "He's always been so good to you."...
But Mrs. Pope had something more definite to say to Marjorie, and cameto it at last with a tactful offhandedness. Marjorie communicated it toTrafford 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 hervoice: "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 onthe rebound."...
Sec. 6
Mrs. Pope was only a day or so ahead of a cloud of callers. The Carmelgirls followed close upon her, tall figures of black fur, withcostly-looking muffs and a rich glitter at neck and wrist. Marjoriedisplayed her house, talking fluently about other things, and watchingfor effects. The Carmel girls ran their swift dark eyes over herappointments, glanced quickly from side to side of her rooms, saw onlytoo certainly that the house was narrow and small----. But did they seethat it was clever? They saw at any rate that she meant it to be clever,and with true Oriental politeness said as much urgently andextravagantly. Then there were the Rambord girls and their mother, anunobservant lot who chattered about the ice at Prince's; then ConstanceGraham came with a thoroughbred but very dirty aunt, and then OttilineWinchelsea with an American minor poet, who wanted a view of mountainsfrom the windows at the back, and said the bathroom ought to be done inpink. Then Lady Solomonson came; an extremely expensive-looking fairlady with an affectation of cynicism, a keen intelligence, acutely aptconversation, and a queer effect of thinking of something else all thetime she was talking. She missed nothing....
Hardly anybody failed to appreciate the charm and decision of Marjorie'suse 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-partiestogether. They began with Trafford's rich friend Solomonson, who hadplayed so large and so passive a part in their first meeting. He hadbehaved with a sort of magnanimous triumph over the marriage. He made italmost his personal affair, as though he had brought it about. "I knewthere 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 achap that doctor was for spilling stuff!--for six blessed days!..."
Marjorie achieved a dress at once simple and good with great facility bynot asking the price until it was all over. (There is no half-successwith dinner-dresses, either the thing is a success and inestimable, ornot worth having at any price at all.) It was blue with a thread ofgold, and she had a necklace of blueish moonstones, gold-set, and herhair ceased to be copper and became golden, and her eyes unfathomableblue. She was radiant with health and happiness, no one else there hadher clear freshness, and her manner was as restrained and dignified andready as a proud young wife's can be. Everyone seemed to like her andrespect her and be interested in her, and Trafford kissed her flushedcheek in the hansom as they came home again and crowned her happiness.It had been quite a large party, and really much more splendid andbrilliant than anything she had ever seen before. There had been one oldgentleman with a coloured button and another with a ribbon; there hadbeen a countess with historical pearls, and half-a-dozen other peopleone might fairly call distinguished. The house was tremendous in itsway, spacious, rich, glowing with lights, abounding in vistas and fineremote backgrounds. In the midst of it all she had a sudden thrill atthe memory that less than a year ago she had been ignominiouslydismissed from the dinner-table by her father for a hiccup....
A few days after Aunt Plessington suddenly asked the Traffords to one ofher less important but still interesting gatherings; not one of thosethat swayed the world perhaps, but one which Marjorie was given tounderstand achieved important subordinate wagging. Aunt Plessington hadnot called, she explained in her note, because of the urgent demands theMovement made upon her time; it was her wonderful hard-breathing waynever to call on anyone, and it added tremendously to her reputation;none the less it appeared--though here the scrawl became illegible--shemeant 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 makeTrafford's acquaintance.
The dress was duly admired, and then Aunt Plessington--assuming thehearthrug and forgetting the little matter of their career--explainedquite Napoleonic and wonderful things she was going to do with herMovement, fresh principles, fresh applications, a big committee of allthe "names"--they were easy to get if you didn't bother them to dothings--a new and more attractive title, "Payment in Kind" was to giveway to "Reality of Reward," and she herself was going to have her hairbleached bright white (which would set off her eyes and colour and thegeneral geniality of appearance due to her projecting teeth), and sogreatly increase her "platform efficiency." Hubert, she said, wastoiling away hard at the detail of these new endeavours. He would bedown in a few minutes' time. Marjorie, she said, ought to speak at theirmeetings. It would help both the Traffords to get on if Marjorie cut adash at the outset, and there was no such dash to be cut as speaking atAunt Plessington's meetings. It was catching on; all next season it wassure to be the thing. So many promising girls allowed themselves to besubmerged altogether in marriage for a time, and when they emergedeveryone had forgotten the promise of their debut. She had an air ofrescuing Marjorie from an impending fate by disabusing Trafford frominjurious prepossessions....
Presently the guests began to drop in, a vegetarian health specialist, arising young woman factory inspector, a phrenologist who was beinginduced to put great talents to better uses under Aunt Plessington'sinfluence, his dumb, obscure, but inevitable wife, a colonial bishop, abaroness with a taste rather than a capacity for intellectual society, awealthy jam and pickle manufacturer and his wife, who had subscribedlargely to the funds of the Movement and wanted to meet the lady oftitle, and the editor of the Movement's organ, _Upward and On_, a younggentleman of abundant hair and cadaverous silences, whom AuntPlessington patted on the shoulder and spoke of as "one of ourdiscoveries." And then Uncle Hubert came down, looking ruffled andoverworked, with his ready-made dress-tie--he was one of those men whocan never master the art of tying a bow--very much askew. Theconversation turned chiefly on the Movement; if it strayed AuntPlessington reached out her voice after it and brought it back in amasterful manner.
Through soup and fish Marjorie occupied herself with the inflexiblerigour of the young editor, who had brought her down. When she couldgive her attention to the general conversation she discovered herhusband a little flushed and tackling her aunt with an expression ofquiet determination. The phrenologist and the vegetarian healthspecialist were regarding him with amazement, the jam and picklemanufacturer's wife was evidently deeply shocked. He was refusing tobelieve in the value of the Movement, and Aunt Plessington wasmanifestly losing her temper.
"I don't see, Mrs. Plessington," he was saying, "that all this amountsto 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 youwant them to do instead of trying to make them want to do it. Now, Ithink your business is to make them want to do it. You may perhapsincrease the amount of milk in babies, and the amount of whitewash incottages and slums by your methods--I don't dispute the promise of yourstatistics--but you're going to do it at a cost of human self-respectthat's out of all proportion----"
Uncle Hubert's voice, with that thick utterance that always suggested amouthful 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 theanswers."
"It's ridiculous," said Aunt Plessington, "to talk of the self-respectof the kind of people--oh! the very dregs!"
"It's just because the plant is delicate that you've got to handle itcarefully," said Trafford.
"Here's Miss Gant," said Aunt Plessington, "_she_ knows the strata weare discussing. She'll tell you they have positively _no_self-respect--none at all."
"_My_ people," said Miss Gant, as if in conclusive testimony, "actuallyconspire 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 soonas the ladies were in the drawing-room, Aunt Plessington, a littleflushed from the conflict, turned on Marjorie and said, "I _like_ yourhusband. 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 hisresearches?"
"He lectures in the spring term," said Marjorie.
"Ah!" said Aunt Plessington with a triumphant note, "you must alter allthat. You must interest him in wider things. You must bring him out ofhis shell, and let him see what it is to deal with Affairs. Then hewouldn't talk such nonsense about our Work."
Marjory was at a momentary loss for a reply, and in the instant'srespite Aunt Plessington turned to the jam and pickle lady and asked ina bright, encouraging note: "Well! And how's the Village Club gettingon?"...
She had another lunge at Trafford as he took his leave. "You must comeagain soon," she said. "I _love_ a good wrangle, and Hubert and I neverwant to talk about our Movement to any one but unbelievers. You don'tknow the beginnings of it yet. Only I warn you they have a way ofgetting converted. I warn you."...
On this occasion there was no kissing in the cab. Trafford wasexasperated.
"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 ofEnglish 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, andpoliticians really have to attend to it, and silly, ineffective,irritating bills really get drafted and messed about with and passed onthe strength of it. Public affairs are still in the Dark Ages. Nobodynow would think of getting toge
ther a scratch committee of rich oldwomen and miscellaneous conspicuous people to design an electric tram,and jabbering and jabbering and jabbering, and if any one objects"--anote of personal bitterness came into his voice--"jabbering faster; butnobody thinks it ridiculous to attempt the organization of poor people'saffairs in that sort of way. This project of the supersession of Wagesby Payment in Kind--oh! it's childish. If it wasn't it would beoutrageous and indecent. Your uncle and aunt haven't thought for amoment of any single one of the necessary consequences of these thingsthey say their confounded Movement aims at, effects upon the race, uponpublic spirit, upon people's habits and motives. They've just a queercraving to feel powerful and influential, which they think they can bestsatisfy by upsetting the lives of no end of harmless poor people--theonly people they dare upset--and that's about as far as they go.... Youraunt'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. Hesulked for a space, and then broke out again.
"That confounded woman talks of my physical science," he said, "as ifresearch were an amiable weakness, like collecting postage stamps. Andit's changed human conditions more in the last ten years than all theparliamentary wire-pullers and legislators and administrative expertshave done in two centuries. And for all that, there's more clerks inWhitehall 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 thesepeople burble about with their movements and jobs, and lectures andstuff--and _things happen_. Like some one getting squashed to death in acrowd. Nobody did it, but anybody in the muddle can claim to have doneit--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 AuntPlessington don't even know where the handle is. If they ventured tolook for it, they'd give the whole show away! Done, indeed!"
"Here we are!" said Marjorie, a little relieved to find the hansomturning out of King's Road into their own side street....
And then Marjorie wore the blue dress with great success at theCarmels'. The girls came and looked at it and admired it--it was no merepoliteness. They admitted there was style about it, a quality--there wasno explaining. "You're _wonderful_, Madge!" cried the younger Carmelgirl.
The Carmel boy, seizing the opportunity of a momentary seclusion in acorner, ended a short but rather portentous silence with "I say, you_do_ look ripping," in a voice that implied the keenest regret for theslacknesses of a summer that was now infinitely remote to Marjorie. Itwas ridiculous that the Carmel boy should have such emotions--he was sixyears younger than Trafford and only a year older than Marjorie, and yetshe was pleased by his manifest wound....
There was only one little thing at the back of her mind that alloyed hersense of happy and complete living that night, and that was the ghost ofan addition sum. At home, in her pretty bureau, a little gathering pileof bills, as yet unpaid, and an empty cheque-book with appealingcounterfoils, awaited her attention.
Marjorie had still to master the fact that all the fine braveries andinterests and delights of life that offer themselves so amply to thefavoured children of civilization, trail and, since the fall of man atany rate, have trailed after them something--something, thejustification of morality, the despair of all easy, happy souls, theunavoidable drop of bitterness in the cup of pleasure--the Reckoning.