Marriage

by H. G. Wells

  CHAPTER THE THIRD

  THE NEW PHASE

  Sec. 1

  In the course of the next six months the child of the ages became analmost ordinary healthy baby, and Trafford began to think consecutivelyabout his scientific work again--in the intervals of effort of a moreimmediately practical sort.

  The recall of molecular physics and particularly of the internalcondition of colloids to something like their old importance in his lifewas greatly accelerated by the fact that a young Oxford don namedBehrens was showing extraordinary energy in what had been for a timeTrafford's distinctive and undisputed field. Behrens was one of thosevividly clever energetic people who are the despair of originative men.He had begun as Trafford's pupil and sedulous ape; he had gone on towork that imitated Trafford's in everything except its continualfreshness, and now he was ransacking every scrap of suggestion to befound in Trafford's work, and developing it with an intensity ofuninspired intelligence that most marvellously simulated originality. Hewas already being noted as an authority; sometimes in an article hisname would be quoted and Trafford's omitted in relation to Trafford'sideas, and in every way his emergence and the manner of his emergencethreatened and stimulated his model and master. A great effort had to bemade. Trafford revived the drooping spirits of Durgan by a renewedpunctuality in the laboratory. He began to stay away from home at nightand work late again, now, however, under no imperative inspiration, butsimply because it was only by such an invasion of the evening and nightthat it would be possible to make headway against Behren's unremittingindustry. And this new demand upon Trafford's already strained mentaland nervous equipment began very speedily to have its effect upon hisdomestic life.

  It is only in romantic fiction that a man can work strenuously to thelimit of his power and come home to be sweet, sunny and entertaining.Trafford's preoccupation involved a certain negligence of Marjorie, acertain indisposition to be amused or interested by trifling things, acertain irritability....

  Sec. 2

  And now, indeed, the Traffords were coming to the most difficult andfatal phase in marriage. They had had that taste of defiant adventurewhich is the crown of a spirited love affair, they had known thesweetness of a maiden passion for a maid, and they had felt all thoserich and solemn emotions, those splendid fears and terrible hopes thatweave themselves about the great partnership in parentage. And now, sofar as sex was concerned, there might be much joy and delight still, butno more wonder, no fresh discoveries of incredible new worlds andunsuspected stars. Love, which had been a new garden, an unknown land, asunlit sea to launch upon, was now a rich treasure-house of memories.And memories, although they afford a perpetually increasing enrichmentto emotion, are not sufficient in themselves for the daily needs oflife.

  For this, indeed, is the truth of passionate love, that it works outsits purpose and comes to an end. A day arrives in every marriage whenthe lovers must face each other, disillusioned, stripped of the lastshred of excitement--undisguisedly themselves. And our two were married;they had bound themselves together under a penalty of scandalousdisgrace, to take the life-long consequences of their passionateassociation.

  It was upon Trafford that this exhaustion of the sustaining magic oflove pressed most severely, because it was he who had made the greatestadaptations to the exigencies of their union. He had crippled, heperceived more and more clearly, the research work upon which his wholebeing had once been set, and his hours were full of tiresome and trivialduties and his mind engaged and worried by growing financial anxieties.He had made these abandonments in a phase of exalted passion for the onewoman in the world and her unprecedented child, and now he saw, in spiteof all his desire not to see, that she was just a weak human being amonghuman beings, and neither she nor little Margharita so very marvellous.

  But while Marjorie shrank to the dimensions of reality, researchremained still a luminous and commanding dream. In love one fails or onewins home, but the lure of research is for ever beyond the hills, everyvictory is a new desire. Science has inexhaustibly fresh worlds toconquer....

  He was beginning now to realize the dilemma of his life, the reality ofthe opposition between Marjorie and child and home on the one hand andon the other this big wider thing, this remoter, severer demand upon hisbeing. He had long perceived these were distinct and different things,but now it appeared more and more inevitable that they should beantagonistic and mutually disregardful things. Each claimed himaltogether, it seemed, and suffered compromise impatiently. And this iswhere the particular stress of his situation came in. Hitherto he hadbelieved that nothing of any importance was secret or inexplicablebetween himself and Marjorie. His ideal of his relationship had assumeda complete sympathy of feeling, an almost instinctive identity ofoutlook. And now it was manifest they were living in a state ofinadequate understanding, that she knew only in the most general andopaque forms, the things that interested him so profoundly, and had butthe most superficial interest in his impassioned curiosities. Andmissing as she did the strength of his intellectual purpose she missedtoo, she had no inkling of, the way in which her careless expansivenesspressed upon him. She was unaware that she was destroying an essentialthing in his life.

  He could not tell how far this antagonism was due to inalterablediscords of character, how far it might not be an ineradicable sexdifference, a necessary aspect of marriage. The talk of old Sir RoderickDover at the Winton Club germinated in his mind, a branching andpermeating suggestion. And then would come a phase of keen sympathy withMarjorie; she would say brilliant and penetrating things, display aswift cleverness that drove all these intimations of incurabledivergence clean out of his head again. Then he would find explanationsin the differences between his and Marjorie's training and earlyassociations. He perceived his own upbringing had had a steadfastnessand consistency that had been altogether lacking in hers. He had had therare advantage of perfect honesty in the teaching and tradition of hishome. There had never been any shams or sentimentalities for him to findout and abandon. From boyhood his mother's hand had pointed steadily tothe search for truth as the supreme ennobling fact in life. She hadnever preached this to him, never delivered discourses upon his father'svirtues, but all her conversation and life was saturated with this idea.Compared with this atmosphere of high and sustained direction, theintellectual and moral quality of the Popes, he saw, was the quality ofan agitated rag bag. They had thought nothing out, joined nothingtogether, they seemed to believe everything and nothing, they wereneither religious nor irreligious, neither moral nor adventurous. In theplace of a religion, and tainting their entire atmosphere, they had thedecaying remains of a dead Anglicanism; it was clear they did notbelieve in its creed, and as clear that they did not want to get rid ofit; it afforded them no guidance, but only vague pretensions, and thedismal exercises of Silas Root flourished in its shadows, a fungus, apost-mortem activity of the soul. None of them had any idea of what theywere for or what their lives as a whole might mean; they had nostandards, but only instincts and an instinctive fear of instincts; Popewanted to be tremendously respected and complimented by everybody andget 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 norany of them had any test for a good time, and so they fluctuated intheir conceptions of what they wanted from day to day. Now it wasPlessingtonian standards, now Carmel standards, now the standards ofAgatha Alimony; now it was a stimulating novel, now a gleam of aestheticimaginativeness come, Heaven knows whence, that dominated her mood. Hewas beginning to understand all this at last, and to see the need ofcoherence in Marjorie's mood.

  He realized the unfairness of keeping his thoughts to himself, the needof putting his case before her, and making her realize their fatal andwidening divergence. He wanted to infect her with his scientificpassion, to give her his sense of the gravity of their practicaldifficulties. He would sit amidst his neglected work in his laboratoryframing explana
tory phrases. He would prepare the most lucid andcomplete statements, and go about with these in his mind for dayswaiting for an opportunity of saying what he felt so urgently had to besaid.

  But the things that seemed so luminous and effective in the laboratoryhad a curious way of fading and shrinking beside the bright colours ofMarjorie's Bokhara hangings, in the presence of little Margharita pinkand warm and entertaining in her bath, or amidst the fluttering rustleof the afternoon tea-parties that were now becoming frequent in hishouse. And when he was alone with her he discovered they didn't talk nowany more--except in terms of a constrained and formal affection.

  What had happened to them? What was the matter between himself andMarjorie that he couldn't even intimate his sense of their divergence?He would have liked to discuss the whole thing with his mother, butsomehow that seemed disloyal to Marjorie....

  One day they quarrelled.

  He came in about six in the afternoon, jaded from the delivery of asuburban lecture, and the consequent tedium of suburban travel, anddiscovered Marjorie examining the effect of a new picture which hadreplaced the German print of sunlit waves over the dining-roommantelpiece. It was a painting in the post-impressionist manner, and ithad arrived after the close of the exhibition in Weldon Street, atwhich Marjorie had bought it. She had bought it in obedience to a suddenimpulse, and its imminence had long weighed upon her conscience. She hadgone 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 possessingthis particular picture. Mrs. Flor had already bought three Herbins, andher daughter wanted to dissuade her from more. "But they're sodelightful," said Mrs. Flor. "You're overrunning your allowance," saidSydney. Disputing the point, they made inquiries for the price, andlearnt that this bright epigram in colour was going begging--was evenoffered at a reduction from the catalogue price. A reduced price alwayshad 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. Thennothing remained but to wait for the picture. She had dreaded a mistake,a blundering discord, but now with the thing hung she could see herquick 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 facingupon a Dutch canal, and it lit up the room and was echoed and reflectedby all the rest of her courageous colour scheme, like a coal-fire amidstmahogany and metal. It justified itself to her completely, and she facedher 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 heartenseverything."

  Trafford looked at the painting with a reluctant admiration.

  "It's brilliant--and impudent. He's an artist--whoever he is. He hitsthe 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 willbe worth thirty in ten years' time."

  Trafford's reply was to repeat: "Ten guineas!"

  Their eyes met, and there was singularly little tenderness in theireyes.

  "It was priced at thirteen," said Marjorie, ending a pause, and with asinking heart.

  Trafford had left her side. He walked to the window and sat down in achair.

  "I think this is too much," he said, and his voice had disagreeablenotes in it she had never heard before. "I have just been earning twoguineas at Croydon, of all places, administering comminuted science tofools--and here I find--this exploit! Ten guineas' worth of picture. Tosay we can't afford it is just to waste a mild expression. It's--madextravagance. It's waste of money--it's--oh!--monstrous disloyalty.Disloyalty!" He stared resentful at the cheerful, unhesitating daubs ofthe picture for a moment. Its affected carelessness goaded him to freshwords. He spoke in a tone of absolute hostility. "I think this winds meup 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 wereshining beautifully in her eyes. She mingled the quality of anindignant woman with the distress and unreasonable resentment of achild.

  "Because I've bought this picture?"

  "Can we go on like this?" he asked, and felt how miserably he hadbungled 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 theselong-premeditated expostulations. He was tired and dusty from histhird-class carriage, his spirit was tired and dusty, and he said whathe had to say without either breadth or power, an undignified statementof personal grievances, a mere complaint of the burthen of work thatfalls upon a man. That she missed the high aim in him, and all sense ofthe greatness they were losing had vanished from his thoughts. He hadtoo heavy a share of the common burthen, and she pressed upon himunthinkingly; that was all he could say. He girded at her with a bitterand loveless truth; it was none the less cruel that in her heart sheknew these things he said were true. But he went beyond justice--asevery quarrelling human being does; he called the things she had boughtand the harmonies she had created, "this litter and rubbish for which Iam wasting my life." That stabbed into her pride acutely and deeply. Sheknew anyhow that it wasn't so simple and crude as that. It was not merewitlessness she contributed to their trouble. She tried to indicate hersense of that. But she had no power of ordered reasoning, she madefutile interruptions, she was inexpressive of anything but emotion, shefelt gagged against his flow of indignant, hostile words. They blisteredher.

  Suddenly she went to her little desk in the corner, unlocked it withtrembling hands, snatched her cheque-book out of a heap of stillunsettled 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 aluminous 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 athwarted, overworked, and worried man, had revealed Marjorie with timeon her hands, superabundant imaginative energy, and no clear intimationof any occupation. With them, as with thousands of young couples inLondon to-day, the breadwinner was overworked, and the spendingpartner's duty was chiefly the negative one of not spending. You cannotconsume your energies merely in not spending money. Do what she could,Marjorie could not contrive to make house and child fill the wakinghours. She was far too active and irritable a being to be beneficialcompany all day for genial, bubble-blowing little Margharita; she couldplay with that young lady and lead her into ecstasies of excitement anddelight, and she could see with an almost instinctive certainty whenanything was going wrong; but for the rest that little life reposed farmore beneficially upon the passive acquiescence of May, her pink andwholesome nurse. And the household generally was in the hands of atrustworthy cook-general, who maintained a tolerable routine. Marjoriedid not dare to have an idea about food or domestic arrangements; if shetouched that routine so much as with her little finger it sent up thebills. She could knock off butcher and greengrocer and do every scrap ofhousehold work that she could touch, in a couple of hours a day. Shetried to find some work to fill her leisure; she suggested to Traffordthat she might help him by writing up his Science Notes from roughpencil memoranda, but when it became clear that the first step to herdoing this would be the purchase of a Remington typewriter and a special
low table to carry it, he became bluntly discouraging. She thought ofliterary work, and sat down one day to write a short story and earnguineas, and was surprised to find that she knew nothing of any sort ofhuman being about whom she could invent a story. She tried a cheapsubscription at Mudie's and novels, and they filled her with a thirstfor events; she tried needlework, and found her best effortsaesthetically feeble and despicable, and that her mind prowled above thesilks and colours like a hungry wolf.

  The early afternoons were the worst time, from two to four, beforecalling began. The devil was given great power over Marjorie's earlyafternoon. She could even envy her former home life then, and reflectthat there, at any rate, one had a chance of a game or a quarrel withDaffy or Syd or Rom or Theodore. She would pull herself together and goout for a walk, and whichever way she went there were shops and shopsand shops, a glittering array of tempting opportunities for spendingmoney. Sometimes she would give way to spending exactly as a strugglingdrunkard decides to tipple. She would fix on some object, some objecttrivial and a little rare and not too costly, as being needed--when sheknew perfectly well it wasn't needed--and choose the most remotest shopsand display the exactest insistence upon her requirements. Sometimes shewould get home from these raids without buying at all. After four theworst of the day was over; one could call on people or people mighttelephone and follow up with a call; and there was a chance of Traffordcoming home....

  One day at the Carmels' she found herself engaged in a vigorousflirtation with young Carmel. She hadn't noticed it coming on, but thereshe was in a windowseat talking quite closely to him. He said he waswriting a play, a wonderful passionate play about St. Francis, and onlyshe could inspire and advise him. Wasn't there some afternoon in theweek when she sat and sewed, so that he might come and sit by her andread to her and talk to her? He made his request with a certainconfidence, but it filled her with a righteous panic; she pulled him upwith an abruptness that was almost inartistic. On her way home she wasacutely ashamed of herself; this was the first time she had let any manbut Trafford think he might be interesting to her, but once or twice onformer occasions she had been on the verge of such provocativeintimations. This sort of thing anyhow mustn't happen.

  But if she didn't dress with any distinction--because of the cost--anddidn't flirt and trail men in her wake, what was she to do at theafternoon gatherings which were now her chief form of social contact?What was going to bring people to her house? She knew that she was morethan ordinarily beautiful and that she could talk well, but that doesnot count for much if you are rather dowdy, and quite uneventfullyvirtuous.

  It became the refrain of all her thoughts that she must find somethingto do.

  There remained "Movements."

  She might take up a movement. She was a rather exceptionally good publicspeaker. Only her elopement and marriage had prevented her beingpresident of her college Debating Society. If she devoted herself tosome movement she would be free to devise an ostentatiously simple dressfor herself and stick to it, and she would be able to give her littlehouse a significance of her own, and present herself publicly againstwhat is perhaps quite the best of all backgrounds for a good-looking,clear-voiced, self-possessed woman, a platform. Yes; she had to go infor a Movement.

  She reviewed the chief contemporary Movements much as she might haveturned over dress fabrics in a draper's shop, weighing the advantagesand disadvantages of each....

  London, of course, is always full of Movements. Essentially they areabsorbents of superfluous feminine energy. They have a common flavour ofprogress and revolutionary purpose, and common features in abundantmeetings, officials, and organization generally. Few are expensive, andstill fewer produce any tangible results in the world. They directthemselves at the most various ends; the Poor, that favourite butt,either as a whole or in such typical sections as the indigent invalid orthe indigent aged, the young, public health, the woman's cause, theprevention of animal food, anti-vivisection, the gratuitousadvertisement of Shakespear (that neglected poet), novel but genteelmodifications of medical or religious practice, dress reform, thepoliter aspects of socialism, the encouragement of aeronautics, universalmilitary service, garden suburbs, domestic arts, proportionalrepresentation, duodecimal arithmetic, and the liberation of the drama.They range in size and importance from campaigns on a Plessingtonianscale to sober little intellectual Beckingham things that arrange tomeet half-yearly, and die quietly before the second assembly. If Heavenby some miracle suddenly gave every Movement in London all it professedto want, our world would be standing on its head and everything would beextremely unfamiliar and disconcerting. But, as Mr. Roosevelt onceremarked, the justifying thing about life is the effort and not thegoal, and few Movements involve any real and impassioned struggle to getto the ostensible object. They exist as an occupation; they exercise theintellectual and moral activities without undue disturbance of thenormal routines of life. In the days when everybody was bicycling aningenious mechanism called Hacker's Home Bicycle used to be advertised.Hacker's Home Bicycle was a stand bearing small rubber wheels upon whichone placed one's bicycle (properly equipped with a cyclometer) in such away that it could be mounted and ridden without any sensible forwardmovement whatever. In bad weather, or when the state of the roads madecycling abroad disagreeable Hacker's Home Bicycle could be placed infront of an open window and ridden furiously for any length of time.Whenever the rider tired, he could descend--comfortably at homeagain--and examine the cyclometer to see how far he had been. In exactlythe same way the ordinary London Movement gives scope for the restlessand progressive impulse in human nature without the risk of personalentanglements or any inconvenient disturbance of the milieu.

  Marjorie considered the Movements about her. She surveyed the accessibleaspects of socialism, but that old treasure-house of constructivesuggestion had an effect like a rich chateau which had been stormed andlooted by a mob. For a time the proposition that "we are all Socialistsnowadays" had prevailed. The blackened and discredited frame remained,the contents were scattered; Aunt Plessington had a few pieces, the ToryDemocrats had taken freely, the Liberals were in possession of a hastilycompiled collection. There wasn't, she perceived, and there never hadbeen a Socialist Movement; the socialist idea which had now become partof the general consciousness, had always been too big for politedomestication. She weighed Aunt Plessington, too, in the balance, andfound her not so much wanting indeed as excessive. She felt that aMovement with Aunt Plessington in it couldn't possibly offer evenelbow-room for anybody else. Philanthropy generally she shunned. Themovements that aim at getting poor people into rooms and shouting atthem in an improving, authoritative way, aroused an instinctive dislikein her. Her sense of humour, again, would not let her patronizeShakespear or the stage, or raise the artistic level of the country bymeans of green-dyed deal, and the influence of Trafford on her minddebarred her from attempting the physical and moral regeneration ofhumanity by means of beans and nut butter. It was indeed rather by theelimination of competing movements than by any positive preference thatshe found herself declining at last towards Agatha Alimony's section ofthe suffrage movement.... It was one of the less militant sections, butit held more meetings and passed more resolutions than any two others.

  One day Trafford, returning from an afternoon of forced anddisappointing work in his laboratory,--his mind had been steadfastlysluggish and inelastic,--discovered Marjorie's dining room crowded withhats and all the rustle and colour which plays so large a part inconstituting contemporary feminine personality. Buzard, the feministwriter, and a young man just down from Cambridge who had written adecadent poem, were the only men present. The chairs were arrangedmeeting-fashion, but a little irregularly to suggest informality; thepost-impressionist picture was a rosy benediction on the gathering, andat a table in the window sat Mrs. Pope in the chair, looking quietlytactful in an unusually becoming bonnet, supported by her daughter andAgatha Alimony. Marjorie was in a simple gown of blueish-grey, hatlessamidst a froth of foolish bows and feat
hers, and she looked not onlybeautiful and dignified but deliberately and conscientiously patientuntil she perceived the new arrival. Then he noted she was a littleconcerned for him, and made some futile sign he did not comprehend. Themeeting was debating the behaviour of women at the approaching census,and a small, earnest, pale-faced lady with glasses was standing againstthe fireplace with a crumpled envelope covered with pencil notes in herhand, and making a speech. Trafford wanted his tea badly, but he had notthe wit to realize that his study had been converted into a refreshmentroom for the occasion; he hesitated, and seated himself near thedoorway, and so he was caught; he couldn't, he felt, get away and seemto 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 asort of inspired intimacy just how Mr. Asquith had hoped to "bully womendown," and just how their various attempts to bring home to him theeminent reasonableness of their sex by breaking his windows,interrupting his meetings, booing at him in the streets and threateninghis life, had time after time baffled this arrogant hope. There had beenmany signs lately that Mr. Asquith's heart was failing him. Now here wasa new thing to fill him with despair. When Mr. Asquith learnt that womenrefused to be counted in the census, then at least she was convinced hemust give in. When he gave in it would not be long--she had herinformation upon good authority--before they got the Vote. So what theyhad to do was not to be counted in the census. That was their paramountduty at the present time. The women of England had to say quietly butfirmly to the census man when he came round: "No, we don't count in anelection, and we won't count now. Thank you." No one could force a womanto fill in a census paper she didn't want to, and for her own part, saidthe little woman with the glasses, she'd starve first. (Applause.) Forher own part she was a householder with a census paper of her own, andacross that she was going to write quite plainly and simply what shethought of Mr. Asquith. Some of those present wouldn't have censuspapers to fill up; they would be sent to the man, the so-called Head ofthe House. But the W.S.P.U. had foreseen that. Each householder had towrite down the particulars of the people who slept in his house onSunday night, or who arrived home before mid-day on Monday; the reply ofthe women of England must be not to sleep in a house that night wherecensus papers were properly filled, and not to go home until thefollowing afternoon. All through that night the women of England must beabroad. She herself was prepared, and her house would be ready. Therewould be coffee and refreshments enough for an unlimited number ofrefugees, there would be twenty or thirty sofas and mattresses and pilesof blankets for those who chose to sleep safe from all counting. Inevery quarter of London there would be houses of refuge like hers. Andso they would make Mr. Asquith's census fail, as it deserved to fail, asevery census would fail until women managed these affairs in a sensibleway. For she supposed they were all agreed that only women could managethese things in a sensible way. That was _her_ contribution to thisgreat and important question. (Applause, amidst which the small ladywith the glasses resumed her seat.)

  Trafford glanced doorward, but before he could move another speaker wasin possession of the room. This was a very young, tall, fair,round-shouldered girl who held herself with an unnatural rigidity, fixedher eyes on the floor just in front of the chairwoman, and spoke withknitted brows and an effect of extreme strain. She remarked that somepeople did not approve of this proposed boycott of the census. She hungsilent for a moment, as if ransacking her mind for something mislaid,and then proceeded to remark that she proposed to occupy a few momentsin answering that objection--if it could be called an objection. Theysaid that spoiling the census was an illegitimate extension of the womanmovement. Well, she objected--she objected fiercely--to every word ofthat phrase. Nothing was an illegitimate extension of the womanmovement. Nothing could be. (Applause.) That was the very principlethey had been fighting for all along. So that, examined in this way,this so-called objection resolved itself into a mere question beggingphrase. Nothing more. And her reply therefore to those who made it wasthat they were begging the question, and however well that might do formen, 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 werenot so things might be different. She remained silent after that for thespace of twenty seconds perhaps, and then remarked that that seemed tobe all she had to say, and sat down amidst loud encouragement.

  Then with a certain dismay Trafford saw his wife upon her feet. He wasafraid of the effect upon himself of what she was going to say, but heneed have had no reason for his fear. Marjorie was a seasoned debater,self-possessed, with a voice very well controlled and a complete masteryof that elaborate appearance of reasonableness which is so essential togood public speaking. She could speak far better than she could talk.And she startled the meeting in her opening sentence by declaring thatshe meant to stay at home on the census night, and supply her husbandwith every scrap of information he hadn't got already that might beneeded to make the return an entirely perfect return. (Marked absence ofapplause.)

  She proceeded to avow her passionate interest in the feminist movementof 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 atthe present time than she was--she seemed to be speaking right acrossthe room to Trafford--they were neither pets nor partners, butsomething between the two; now indulged like spoilt children, nowblamed like defaulting partners; constantly provoked to use the arts oftheir sex, constantly mischievous because of that provocation. Shecaught her breath and stopped for a moment, as if she had suddenlyremembered the meeting intervening between herself and Trafford. No, shesaid, there was no more ardent feminist and suffragist than herself inthe room. She wanted the vote and everything it implied with all herheart. With all her heart. But every way to get a thing wasn't the rightway, and she felt with every fibre of her being that this petulanthostility to the census was a wrong way and an inconsistent way, andlikely to be an unsuccessful way--one that would lose them the sympathyand help of just that class of men they should look to for support, thecultivated and scientific men. (A voice: "_Do_ we want them?") What wasthe commonest charge made by the man in the street against women?--thatthey were unreasonable and unmanageable, that it was their way to getthings by crying and making an irrelevant fuss. And here they were, as abody, doing that very thing! Let them think what the census and all thatmodern organization of vital statistics of which it was the centralfeature stood for. It stood for order, for the replacement of guessesand emotional generalization by a clear knowledge of facts, for thereplacement of instinctive and violent methods, by which women hadeverything to lose (a voice: "No!") by reason and knowledge andself-restraint, by which women had everything to gain. To her theadvancement of science, the progress of civilization, and theemancipation of womanhood were nearly synonymous terms. At any rate,they were different phases of one thing. They were different aspects ofone wider purpose. When they struck at the census, she felt, theystruck at themselves. She glanced at Trafford as if she would convincehim that this was the real voice of the suffrage movement, and sat downamidst a brief, polite applause, that warmed to rapture as AgathaAlimony, the deep-voiced, stirring Agatha, rose to reply.

  Miss Alimony, who was wearing an enormous hat with three nodding ostrichfeathers, a purple bow, a gold buckle and numerous minor ornaments ofvarious origin and substance, said they had all of them listened withthe greatest appreciation and sympathy to the speech of their hostess.Their hostess was a newcomer to the movement, she knew she might saythis without offence, and was passing through a phase, an early phase,through which many of them had passed. This was the phase of trying totake a reasonable view of an unreasonable situation. (Applause.) Theirhostess had spoken of science, and no doubt science was a great thing;but there was something greater than science, and that was the idea
l. Itwas woman's place to idealize. Sooner or later their hostess woulddiscover, as they had all discovered, that it was not to science but theideal that women must look for freedom. Consider, she said, thescientific men of to-day. Consider, for example, Sir JamesCrichton-Browne, the physiologist. Was he on their side? On thecontrary, he said the most unpleasant things about them on everyoccasion. He went out of his way to say them. Or consider Sir AlmrothWright, did he speak well of women? Or Sir Ray Lankester, the biologist,who was the chief ornament of the Anti-Suffrage Society. Or Sir RoderickDover, the physicist, who--forgetting Madame Curie, a far morecelebrated physicist than himself, she ventured to say (Applause.) hadrecently gone outside his province altogether to abuse feminineresearch. There were your scientific men. Mrs. Trafford had said theiranti-census campaign would annoy scientific men; well, under thecircumstances, she wanted to annoy scientific men. (Applause.) Shewanted to annoy everybody. Until women got the vote (loud applause) themore annoying they were the better. When the whole world was impressedby the idea that voteless women were an intolerable nuisance, then therewould 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 ahypersensitive manner. He didn't so much speak as thrill with thoughtvibrations; he spoke like an entranced but still quite gentlemanlysibyl. After Agatha's deep trumpet calls, he sounded like a solo on thepiccolo. He picked out all his more important words with a little stressas though he gave them capitals. He said their hostess's remarks had sethim thinking. He thought it was possible to stew the Scientific Argumentin its own Juice. There was something he might call the FactuarialEstimate of Values. Well, it was a High Factuarial Value on their side,in his opinion at any rate, when Anthropologists came and told him thatthe Primitive Human Society was a Matriarchate. ("But it wasn't!" saidTrafford to himself.) It had a High Factuarial Value when they assuredhim that Every One of the Great Primitive Inventions was made by aWoman, and that it was to Women they owed Fire and the early Epics andSagas. ("Good Lord!" said Trafford.) It had a High Factuarial Value whenthey not only asserted but proved that for Thousands of Years, andperhaps for Hundreds of Thousands of Years, Women had been in possessionof Articulate Speech before men rose to that Level of Intelligence....

  It occurred suddenly to Trafford that he could go now; that it would bebetter to go; that indeed he _must_ go; it was no doubt necessary thathis mind should have to work in the same world as Buzard's mentalprocesses, but at any rate those two sets of unsympathetic functionsneed 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 violentupsetting of chairs, got himself out of the room and into the passage,and was at once rescued by the sympathetic cook-general, in her mostgeneralized form, and given fresh tea in his study--which impressed himas being catastrophically disarranged....

  Sec. 4

  When Marjorie was at last alone with him she found him in a state ofextreme mental stimulation. "Your speech," he said, "was all right. Ididn't know you could speak like that, Marjorie. But it soared like thedove above the waters. Waters! I never heard such a flood of rubbish....You know, it's a mistake to _mass_ women. It brings out somethingsilly.... It affected Buzard as badly as any one. The extraordinarything is they have a case, if only they'd be quiet. Why did you get themtogether?"

  "It's our local branch."

  "Yes, but _why?_"

  "Well, if they talk about things--Discussions like this clear up theirminds."

  "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. Iadmit Buzard, who's a man, talked the worst rubbish of all. ThatPrimitive Matriarchate of his! So it isn't sex. I've noticed before thatthe men in this movement of yours are worse than the women. It isn'tsex. It's something else. It's a foolishness. It's a sort ofirresponsible looseness." He turned on her gravely. "You ought not toget all these people here. It's contagious. Before you know it you'llfind 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 dosilly things!"

  "My dear! aren't I feminist? Don't I want women fine and sane andresponsible? Don't I want them to have education, to handle things, tovote like men and bear themselves with the gravity of men? And thesemeetings--all hat and flutter! These displays of weak, untrained,hysterical vehemence! These gatherings of open-mouthed impressionableyoung girls to be trained in incoherence! You can't go on with it!"

  Marjorie regarded him quietly for a moment. "I must go on withsomething," 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-classprison."

  "This house! It's your own!"

  "It doesn't give me an hour's mental occupation in the day. It's allvery well to say I might do more in it. I can't--without absurdity. Orexpenditure. I can't send the girl away and start scrubbing. I can'tmake jam or do ornamental needlework. The shops do it better andcheaper, and I haven't been trained to it. I've been trained _not_ to doit. I've been brought up on games and school-books, and fed on mixedideas. I can't sit down and pacify myself with a needle as women used todo. Besides, I not only detest doing needlework but I hate it--the sortof 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 inserious systematic reading, and after four or five novels--oh, thesemeetings are better than that! You see, you've got a life--too much ofit--_I_ haven't got enough. I wish almost I could sleep away half theday. Oh! I want something _real_, Rag; something more than I've got." Asudden inspiration came to her. "Will you let me come to your laboratoryand work with you?"

  She stopped abruptly. She caught up her own chance question and pointedit at him, a vitally important challenge. "Will you let me come to yourlaboratory 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'reabout.... And you're too much behind. Oh my dear! don't you see howyou're behind?" He paused. "I've been soaking in this stuff of mine forten long years."

  "Yes," assented Marjorie flatly.

  He watched her downcast face, and then it lifted to him with a helplessappeal in her eyes, and lift in her voice. "But look here, Rag!" shecried--"what on earth am I to _DO?_"

  Sec. 5

  At least there came out of these discussions one thing, a phrase, apurpose, which was to rule the lives of the Traffords for some years. Itexpressed their realization that instinct and impulse had so far playedthem false, that life for all its rich gifts of mutual happiness wasn'tadjusted between them. "We've got," they said, "to talk all this outbetween us. We've got to work this out." They didn't mean to leavethings at a misfit, and that was certainly their present relation. Theywere already at the problem of their joint lives, like a tailor with hispins and chalk. Marjorie hadn't rejected a humorist and all his works inorder to decline at last to the humorous view of life, that ratherstupid, rather pathetic, grin-and-bear-it attitude compounded inincalculable proportions of goodwill, evasion, indolence, slovenliness,and (nevertheless) spite (masquerading indeed as jesting comment), whichsupplies the fabric of everyday life for untold thousands of educatedmiddle-class people. She hated the misfit. She didn't for a momentpropose to pretend that the ungainly twisted sleeve, the puckered back
,was extremely jolly and funny. She had married with a passionateanticipation of things fitting and fine, and it was her nature, in greatmatters as in small, to get what she wanted strenuously before shecounted the cost. About both their minds there was something sharp andunrelenting, and if Marjorie had been disposed to take refuge from factsin swathings of aesthetic romanticism, whatever covering she contrivedwould have been torn to rags very speedily by that fierce and steelyveracity which swung down out of the laboratory into her home.

  One may want to talk things out long before one hits upon the phrasesthat will open up the matter.

  There were two chief facts in the case between them and so far they hadlooked only one in the face, the fact that Marjorie was unemployed to atroublesome and distressing extent, and that there was nothing in hernature or training to supply, and something in their circumstances andrelations to prevent any adequate use of her energies. With the secondfact neither of them cared to come to close quarters as yet, and neitheras yet saw very distinctly how it was linked to the first, and that wasthe steady excess of her expenditure over their restricted means. Shewas secretly surprised at her own weakness. Week by week and month bymonth, they were spending all his income and eating into that littleaccumulation of capital that had once seemed so sufficient against theworld....

  And here it has to be told that although Trafford knew that Marjorie hadbeen spending too much money, he still had no idea of just how muchmoney she had spent. She was doing her utmost to come to anunderstanding with him, and at the same time--I don't explain it, Idon't excuse it--she was keeping back her bills from him, keeping backurgent second and third and fourth demands, that she had no cheque-booknow to stave off even by the most partial satisfaction. It kept herawake at nights, that catastrophic explanation, that all unsuspected byTrafford hung over their attempts at mutual elucidation; it kept herawake 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 hadgot something really settled and defined then it would be time enoughto broach the particulars of this second divergence....

  Talking one's relations over isn't particularly easy between husband andwife at any time; we are none of us so sure of one another as to riskloose phrases or make experiments in expression in matters so vital;there is inevitably an excessive caution on the one hand and an abnormalsensitiveness to hints and implications on the other. Marjorie's billswere only an extreme instance of these unavoidable suppressions thatalways occur. Moreover, when two people are continuously together, it isamazingly hard to know when and where to begin; where intercourse isunbroken it is as a matter of routine being constantly interrupted. Youcannot broach these broad personalities while you are getting up in themorning, or over the breakfast-table while you make the coffee, or whenyou meet again after a multitude of small events at tea, or in theevening when one is rather tired and trivial after the work of the day.Then Miss Margharita Trafford permitted no sustained analysis of life inher presence. She synthesized things fallaciously, but for the timeconvincingly; she insisted that life wasn't a thing you discussed, butpink and soft and jolly, which you crowed at and laughed at andaddressed as "Goo." Even without Margharita there were occasions whenthe Traffords were a forgetfulness to one another. After an ear has beenpinched or a hand has been run through a man's hair, or a pretty bareshoulder kissed, all sorts of broader interests lapse into a temporaryoblivion. They found discussion much more possible when they walkedtogether. A walk seemed to take them out of the everyday sequence,isolate them from their household, abstract them a little from oneanother. They set out one extravagant spring Sunday to Great Missenden,and once in spring also they discovered the Waterlow Park. On eachoccasion they seemed to get through an enormous amount of talking. Butthe Great Missenden walk was all mixed up with a sweet keen wind, andbeechwoods just shot with spring green and bursting hedges and theextreme earliness of honeysuckle, which Trafford noted for the firsttime, and a clamorous rejoicing of birds. And in the Waterlow Park therewas a great discussion of why the yellow crocus comes before white andpurple, and the closest examination of the manner in which daffodils andnarcissi thrust their green noses out of the garden beds. Also theyfound the ugly, ill-served, aggressively propagandist non-alcoholicrefreshment-room in that gracious old house a scandal anddisappointment, and Trafford scolded at the stupidity of officialdomthat 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 fromtheir private thoughts and intentions. They generalized, they discussedMarriage and George Gissing and Bernard Shaw and the suffrage movementand the agitation for the reform of the divorce laws. They pursuedimaginary cases into distant thickets of contingency remotely far fromthe 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 forgothimself, as people say, and swore, and was almost physically violent,and the curious thing was that so he lit up things for her as nopremeditated attempt of his had ever done.

  A copy of the _Scientific Bulletin_ fired the explosion. He sat down atthe breakfast-table with the heaviness of a rather overworked andworried man, tasted his coffee, tore open a letter and crumpled it withhis hand, turned to the _Bulletin_, regarded its list of contents with astart, opened it, read for a minute, and expressed himself with anextraordinary 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 platefrom him.

  "Damn the whole scheme of things!" he said, and met the blank amazementof 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 hardthat the breakfast things seemed to jump together--to Marjorie'sinfinite amazement. "I can't _stand_ it!" he said.

  She waited some moments. "I don't understand," she began. "What has hedone?"

  "Oh!" was Trafford's answer. He got up, recovered the crumpled paper andstood reading. "Fool and thief," he said.

  Marjorie was amazed beyond measure. She felt as though she had beeneffaced from Trafford's life. "Ugh!" he cried and slapped back the_Bulletin_ into the corner with quite needless violence. He became awareof Marjorie again.

  "He's doing my work," he said.

  And then as if he completed the explanation: "And I've got to be inCroydon 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 inbooks,--every bit of it."

  He paused and went on in tones of unendurable wrong. "It isn't as thoughhe 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 sillymuddled technicalities he's invented already! The solemn mess he'smaking of it! And there he is, I can't get ahead of him, I can't get athim. 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 frettingentanglements of lecture and article! I never get the time, I can't getthe time, I can't get my mind clear! I'm worried! I'm badgered! Andmeanwhile Behrens----!"

  "Is he discovering what you want to discover?"

  "Behrens! _No!_ He's going through the breaches I made. He's guessingout what I meant to do. And he's getting it set out allwrong,--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'llbe 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 yourF.R.S.?" she asked.

  "Oh! _that's_ safe enough, and it doesn't matter any
how. The F.R.S.!Confound the silly little F.R.S.! As if that mattered. It's seeing allmy great openings--misused. It's seeing all I might be doing. Thisbrings it all home to me. Don't you understand, Marjorie? Will younever understand? I'm getting away from all _that!_ I'm being hustledaway by all this work, this silly everyday work to get money. Don't yousee that unless I can have time for thought and research, life is justdarkness to me? I've made myself master of that stuff. I had at anyrate. 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 raveagain." He paused. Then with a swift transition: "I suppose I'd bettereat some breakfast. Is that egg boiled?"

  She gave him an egg, brought his coffee, put things before him, seatedherself at the table. For a little while he ate in silence. Then hecursed 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 asthough everything had become clear suddenly." She was weeping. "Oh, mydear! I want to help you. I have so wanted to help you. Always. And it'scome to this!"

  "But it's not _your_ fault. I didn't mean that. It's--it's in the natureof things."

  "It's my fault."

  "It's not your fault."

  "It is."

  "Confound it, Marjorie. When I swear at Behrens I'm not swearing atyou."

  "It's my fault. All this is my fault. I'm eating you up. What's the goodof your pretending, Rag. You know it is. Oh! When I married you I meantto make you happy, I had no thought but to make you happy, to givemyself to you, my body, my brains, everything, to make life beautifulfor 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 youknow, Rag," she said, forcing herself to speak----"Don't you guess? Youdon't know half! In that bureau there----In there! It's stuffed withbills. 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," sherepeated. "More than a hundred pounds still. Yes! Now. _Now!_"

  He drew back, stared at her and with no trace of personal animus, likeone 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 silencebetween them. She produced a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. "That'swhat 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 outthe 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. Theywere not even tidily arranged. That seemed to her now an extremeaggravation of her offence.

  "I ought to be sent to the chemist's," she remarked, "as one sends aworthless cat."

  Trafford weighed this proposition soberly for some moments. "You're abother, Marjorie," he said with his eyes on the desk; "no end of abother. I'd better have those bills."

  He looked at her, stood up, put his hands on her shoulders, drew her tohim and kissed her forehead. He did it without passion, withouttenderness, with something like resignation in his manner. She clung tohim 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. Ishall miss that Croydon lecture!" He pushed her from him. "Where are myboots?..."

  Sec. 7

  Marjorie spent the forenoon and the earlier part of the afternoonrepeating and reviewing this conversation. Her mind was full of the longdisregarded problem of her husband's state of mind. She thought with asympathetic astonishment of his swearing, of his startling blow upon thetable. She hadn't so far known he could swear. But this was the realthing, the relief of vehement and destructive words. His voice, saying"damnation and damnation," echoed and re-echoed in her ears. Somehow sheunderstood that as she had never understood any sober statement of hiscase. Such women as Marjorie, I think, have an altogether keenerunderstanding of people who have lost control of themselves than theyhave of reasoned cases. Perhaps that is because they themselves alwaysreserve something when they state a reasoned case.

  She went on to the apprehension of a change in him that hitherto she hadnot permitted herself to see--a change in his attitude to her. There hadbeen a time when she had seemed able without an effort to nestle insidehis heart. Now she felt distinctly for the first time that that hadn'thappened. She had instead a sense of her embrace sliding over a ratherdeliberately contracted exterior.... Of course he had been in ahurry....

  She tried to follow him on his journey to Croydon. Now he'd have justpassed out of London Bridge. What was he thinking and feeling about herin 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 underhis breath as he entered that tiresome room?...

  It seemed part of the prevailing inconvenience of life that Daffy shouldsee fit to pay an afternoon call.

  Marjorie heard the sobs and uproar of an arrested motor, and glanceddiscreetly from the window to discover the dark green car with itsgreen-clad chauffeur which now adorned her sister's life, and whichmight under different circumstances, have adorned her own. Wilkins--hisname was Wilkins, his hair was sandy and his expression discreet, and heafforded material for much quiet humorous observation--descended smartlyand opened the door. Daffy appeared in black velvet, with a huge blackfur muff, and an air of being unaware that there were such things aswindows in the world.

  It was just four, and the cook-general, who ought to have been now inher housemaid's phase, was still upstairs divesting herself of her moreculinary characteristics. Marjorie opened the door.

  "Hullo, old Daffy!" she said.

  "Hullo, old Madge!" and there was an exchange of sisterly kisses and amutual inspection.

  "Nothing wrong?" asked Daffy, surveying her.

  "_Wrong?_"

  "You look pale and--tired about the eyes," said Daffy, leading the wayinto 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 aholiday, perhaps. How's every one?"

  "All right. _We're_ off to Lake Garda next week. This new play has takenit 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'sstraining him. And people worry him here; receptions, first nights,dinners, speeches. He's so neat, you know, in his speeches.... But itwastes 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 sopretty, and it talks----"

  Margharita dominated intercourse for a time. She was one of thosetactful infants who exactly resemble their fathers and exactly resembletheir mothers, and have a charm and individuality quite distinctly theirown, and she was now beginning to converse with startling enterprise andintelligence.

  "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, smiledunlimited apprecia
tion.

  "Bably," said Margharita.

  "That's herself!" said Marjorie, falling on her knees. "She talks likethis all day. Oh de sweetums, den!" _Was_ it?

  Daffy made amiable gestures and canary-like noises with her lips, andMargharita responded jovially.

  "You darling!" cried Marjorie, "you delight of life," kneeling by thecot 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 infantworship came to an end; "I'm really glad we haven't one--yet. He'd loveit, I know. But it would be a burthen in some ways. They _are_ a tie. Ashe says, the next few years means so much for him. Of course, here hisreputation is immense, and he's known in Germany, and there aretranslations into Russian; but he's still got to conquer America, and heisn't really well known yet in France. They read him, of course, and buyhim in America, but they're--_restive_. Oh! I do so wish they'd give himthe Nobel prize, Madge, and have done with it! It would settleeverything. Still, as he says, we mustn't think of that--yet, anyhow. Heisn't venerable enough. It's doubtful, he thinks, that they would givethe Nobel prize to any humorist now that Mark Twain is dead. Mark Twainwas different, you see, because of the German Emperor and all that whitehair and everything."

  At this point Margharita discovered that the conversation had driftedaway from herself, and it was only when they got downstairs again thatDaffy could resume the thread of Magnet's career, which had evidentlybecome the predominant interest in her life. She brought out all theworst elements of Marjorie's nature and their sisterly relationship.There were moments when it became nakedly apparent that she wasmagnifying Magnet to belittle Trafford. Marjorie did her best tocounter-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 theadvisability of a second motor car--purely for town use. "I tell him Idon't want it," said Daffy, "but he's frightfully keen upon gettingone."

  Sec. 8

  When Daffy had at last gone Marjorie went back into Trafford's study andstood on the hearthrug regarding its appointments, with something of theair of one who awakens from a dream. She had developed a new, appallingthought. Was Daffy really a better wife than herself? It was dawningupon 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 herthat she was neglecting Margharita. This was her husband's study--and itshowed just a little dusty in the afternoon sunshine, and everythingabout it denied the pretensions of serene sustained work that she hadalways made to herself. Here were the crumpled galley proofs of hisscience notes; here were unanswered letters. There, she dare not touchthem, were computations, under a glass paper-weight. What did theyamount to now? On the table under the window were back numbers of the_Scientific Bulletin_ in a rather untidy pile, and on the footstool bythe arm-chair she had been accustomed to sit at his feet when he stayedat home to work, and look into the fire, and watch him furtively, andsometimes give way to an overmastering tenderness and make love to him.The thought of Magnet, pampered, fenced around, revered in hisindustrious tiresome repetitions, variations, dramatizations and soforth of the half-dozen dry little old jokes which the British publicaccepted as his characteristic offering and rewarded him for so highly,contrasted vividly with her new realization of Trafford's thankless workand worried face.

  And she loved him, she loved him--_so_. She told herself in the presenceof all these facts, and without a shadow of doubt in her mind that allshe wanted in the world was to make him happy.

  It occurred to her as a rather drastic means to this end that she mightcommit suicide.

  She had already gone some way in the composition of a touching letter offarewell 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 thatthis exciting farewell epistle had occupied the foreground of herthoughts, her natural lucidity emerged with the manifest conclusion thatshe had to alter her way of living. She had been extraordinarilyregardless of him, she only began to see that, and now she had to takeup the problem of his necessities. Her self-examination now that it hadbegun was thorough. She had always told herself before that she had madea most wonderful and beautiful little home for him. But had she made itfor him? Had he as a matter of fact ever wanted it, except that he wasglad to have it through her? No doubt it had given him delight andhappiness, it had been a marvellous little casket of love for them, buthow far did that outweigh the burthen and limitation it had imposed uponhim? She had always assumed he was beyond measure grateful to her forhis home, in spite of all her bills, but was he? It was like sticking aknife into herself to ask that, but she was now in a phase heroic enoughfor the task--was he? She had always seen herself as the giver ofbounties; greatest bounty of all was Margharita. She had faced pains andterrors and the shadow of death to give him Margharita. Now with Daffy'silluminating conversation in her mind, she could turn the light upon ahaunting doubt that had been lurking in the darkness for a long time.Had he really so greatly wanted Margharita? Had she ever troubled to getto the bottom of that before? Hadn't she as a matter of fact wantedMargharita ten thousand times more than he had done? Hadn't she ineffect imposed Margharita upon him, as she had imposed her distinctiveand delightful home upon him, regardlessly, because these things werethe 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 discussionrecurred to her mind, "the economic dependence of women," and now forthe first time it was charged with meaning. She had imposed these thingsupon him not because she loved him, but because these things that werethe expansions and consequences of her love for him were only obtainablethrough him. A woman gives herself to a man out of love, and remainsclinging parasitically to him out of necessity. Was there no way ofevading that necessity?

  For a time she entertained dreams of marvellous social reconstructions.Suppose the community kept all its women, suppose all property in homesand furnishings and children vested in them! That was Marjorie's versionof that idea of the Endowment of Womanhood which has been creeping intocontemporary thought during the last two decades. Then every woman wouldbe a Princess to the man she loved.... He became more definitelypersonal. Suppose she herself was rich, then she could play the Princessto Trafford; she could have him free, unencumbered, happy and her lover!Then, indeed, her gifts would be gifts, and all her instincts andmotives would but crown his unhampered life! She could not go on fromthat idea, she lapsed into a golden reverie, from which she was rousedby the clock striking five.

  In half an hour perhaps Trafford would be home again. She could at leastbe 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 glancedat an empty copper vase. It ached. There was no light in the room. Therewould be just time to dash out into High Street and buy some flowers forit before he came....

  Sec. 9

  Spring and a renewed and deepened love for her husband were inMarjorie's blood. Her mind worked rapidly during the next few days, andpresently she found herself clearly decided upon her course of action.She had to pull herself together and help him, and if that meant aSpartan and strenuous way of living, then manifestly she must be Spartanand strenuous. She must put an end once for all to her recurrentdomestic deficits, and since this could only be done by getting rid ofMay, she must get rid of May and mind the child herself. (Every da
y,thank Heaven! Margharita became more intelligent, more manageable, andmore interesting.) Then she must also make a far more systematic andthorough study of domestic economy than she had hitherto done, and runthe shopping and housekeeping on severer lines; she bought fruitcarelessly, they had far too many joints; she never seemed able torestrain herself when it came to flowers. And in the evenings, whichwould necessarily be very frequently lonely evenings if Trafford'sresearches were to go on, she would typewrite, and either acquire greatspeed at that or learn shorthand, and so save Trafford's presentexpenditure on a typist. That unfortunately would mean buying atypewriter.

  She found one afternoon in a twopenny book-box, with which she wastrying to allay her craving for purchases, a tattered little pamphletentitled: "Proposals for the Establishment of an Order of Samurai,"which fell in very exactly with her mood. The title "dated"; it carriedher mind back to her middle girlhood and the defeats of Kuropatki andthe 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 shadowof the prig. Its end was the Agenda Club.... She read and ceased toread--and dreamt.

  The project unfolded the picture of a new method of conduct to her,austere, yet picturesque and richly noble. These Samurai, it wasintimated, were to lead lives of hard discipline and high effort, underself-imposed rule and restraint. They were to stand a little apart fromthe excitements and temptations of everyday life, to eat sparingly,drink water, resort greatly to self-criticism and self-examination, andharden their spirits by severe and dangerous exercises. They were todress simply, work hard, and be the conscious and deliberate salt of theworld. They were to walk among mountains. Incidentally, great power wasto 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 saveher life and Trafford's from a common disaster....

  It particularly appealed to her that they were to walk amongmountains....

  But it is hard to make a change in the colour of one's life amidst theroutine one has already established about oneself, in the house that isgrooved by one's weaknesses, amidst hangings and ornaments living andbreathing with the life of an antagonistic and yet insidiously congenialideal. A great desire came upon Marjorie to go away with Trafford for atime, out of their everyday life into strange and cool and spacioussurroundings. She wanted to leave London and its shops, and the home andthe movements and the callers and rivalries, and even dimpled littleMargharita's insistent claims, and get free and think. It was the firstinvasion of their lives by this conception, a conception that was everafterwards to leave them altogether, of retreat and reconstruction. Sheknelt 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 hisvexations, and ripe for this suggestion of an altered life. The Easterholiday was approaching, and nearly twenty unencumbered days. Mrs.Trafford, they knew, would come into the house, meanwhile, and care forMargharita. They would go away somewhere together and walk, no luggagebut a couple of knapsacks, no hotel but some homely village inn. Theywould be in the air all day, until they were saturated with sweet airand spirit of clean restraints. They would plan out their new rule,concentrate their aims. "And I could think," said Trafford, "of this newwork I can't begin here. I might make some notes." Presently came thequestion of where the great walk should be. Manifestly, it must be amongmountains, manifestly, and Marjorie's eye saw those mountains with snowupon their summits and cold glaciers on their flanks. Could they get toSwitzerland? If they travelled second class throughout, and took thecheaper way, as Samurai should?...

  Sec. 10

  That holiday seemed to Marjorie as if they had found a lost andforgotten piece of honeymoon. She had that same sense of freshbeginnings that had made their first walk in Italian Switzerland sounforgettable. She was filled with the happiness of recovering Traffordwhen he had seemed to be slipping from her. All day they talked of theiroutlook, 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 ofhis work to her, and gave her some intimation of its scope and quality.He became enthusiastic with the sudden invention of experimentaldevices, so that it seemed to her almost worth while if instead of goingon they bolted back, he to his laboratory and she to her nursery, andso at once inaugurated the new regime. But they went on, to finish theholiday out. And the delight of being together again with unfetteredhours of association! They rediscovered each other, the same--and alittle changed. If their emotions were less bright and intense, theirinterest was far wider and deeper.

  The season was too early for high passes, and the weather waschangeable. They started from Fribourg and walked to Thun and then backto Bulle, and so to Bultigen, Saanen, Montbovon and the Lake of Geneva.They had rain several days, the sweet, soft, windless mountain rain thatseemed so tolerable to those who are accustomed to the hard and drivendownpours of England, and in places they found mud and receding snow;the inns were at their homeliest, and none the worse for that, and therewere days of spring sunshine when a multitude of minute and delightfulflowers came out as it seemed to meet them--it was impossible to supposeso great a concourse universal--and spread in a scented carpet beforetheir straying feet. The fruit trees in the valleys were powdered withblossom, and the new grass seemed rather green-tinted sunlight thanmerely green. And they walked with a sort of stout leisureliness,knapsacks well-hung and cloaks about them, with their faces fresh andbright under the bracing weather, and their lungs deep charged withmountain air, talking of the new austerer life that was now beginning.With great snow-capped mountains in the background, streaming precipicesoverhead, and a sward of flowers to go upon, that strenuous prospect wasaltogether delightful. They went as it pleased them, making detours intovalleys, coming back upon their steps. The interludes of hot, brightApril sunshine made them indolent, and they would loiter and halt wheresome rock or wall invited, and sit basking like happy, animals, talkingvery little, for long hours together. Trafford seemed to have forgottenall the strain and disappointment of the past two years, to be amazedbut in no wise incredulous at this enormous change in her and in theiroutlook; it filled her with a passion of pride and high resolve to thinkthat so she could recover and uplift him.

  He was now very deeply in love with her again. He talked indeed of hisresearch, 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, hisintense delight in the quality of her voice, his joy in a certainindescribable gallantry in her bearing. He pitied all men whose wivescould not carry themselves, and whose voices failed and broke under thethings they had to say. And then again there was the way she moved herarms, the way her hands took hold of things, the alert lucidity of hereyes, and then that faint, soft shadow of a smile upon her lips when shewalked thinking or observant, all unaware that he was watching her.

  It rained in the morning of their eleventh day and then gave way towarmth and sunshine, so that they arrived at Les Avants in the afternoona little muddy and rather hot. At one of the tables under the treesoutside the Grand Hotel was a small group of people dressed in theremarkable and imposing costume which still in those days distinguishedthe motorist. They turned from their tea to a more or less frankinspection of the Traffords, and suddenly broke out into cries ofrecognition and welcome. Solomonson--for the most part brownleather--emerged with extended hands, and behind him, nestling in themidst of immense and costly furs, appeared the kindly salience andbrightness of his Lady's face. "Good luck!" cried Solomonson. "Goodluck! 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 Solom
onson, and did not add, "the tragichardship!" though her tone conveyed it. She had all the unquestioningbelief of her race in the sanity of comfort. She had ingrained in herthe 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, wasoutside the range of her philosophy. She thought Marjorie's thick bootsand short skirts quite the most appalling feminine costume she had everseen. She saw only a ruined complexion and damaged womanhood inMarjorie's rain-washed, sun-bit cheek. Her benevolent heart rebelled atthe spectacle. It was dreadful, she thought, that nice young people likethe Traffords should have come to this.

  The rest of the party were now informally introduced. They were all verysplendid and disconcertingly free from mud. One was Christabel Morrison,the actress, a graceful figure in a green baize coat and brown fur, wholooked ever so much more charming than her innumerable postcards andillustrated-paper portraits would have led one to expect; her neighbourwas Solomonson's cousin Lee, the organizer of the Theatre Syndicate, abrown-eyed, attenuated, quick-minded little man with an accent thatstruck Trafford as being on the whole rather Dutch, and the third ladywas Lady Solomonson's sister, Mrs. Lee. It appeared they were allstaying at Lee's villa above Vevey, part of an amusing assembly ofpeople who were either vividly rich or even more vividly clever, anaccumulation which the Traffords in the course of the next twentyminutes were three times invited, with an increasing appreciation andearnestness, to join.

  From the first our two young people were not indisposed to do so. Foreleven days they had maintained their duologue at the very highestlevel; seven days remained to them before they must go back to begin thehard new life in England, and there was something very attractive--theydid not for a moment seek to discover the elements of thatattractiveness--in this proposal of five or six days of luxuriousindolence above the lake, a sort of farewell to the worldly side ofworldly things, before they set forth upon the high and narrow path theyhad resolved to tread.

  "But we've got no clothes," cried Marjorie, "no clothes at all! We'vethese hobnail boots and a pair each of heelless slippers."

  "My dear!" cried Lady Solomonson in real distress, and as much aside ascircumstances permitted, "my dear! My sister can manage all that!" Hervoice fell to earnest undertones. "We can really manage all that. Thehouse is packed with things. We'll come to dinner in fancy dress. AndScott, my maid, is so clever."

  "But really!" said Marjorie.

  "My dear!" said Lady Solomonson. "Everything." And she changed placeswith 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 undisguisedappraisement. "He'll be splendid. He'll look like a Soldan...."

  The rest of the company forced a hectic conversation in order not toseem to listen, and presently Lady Solomonson and her sister weretriumphant. They packed Marjorie into the motor car, and Trafford andSolomonson returned to Vevey by train and thence up to the villa by ahired automobile.

  Sec. 11

  They didn't go outside the magic confines of the Lees' villa for threedays, and when they did they were still surrounded by their host'sservice and possessions; they made an excursion to Chillon in hismotor-cars, and went in his motor-boat to lunch with the Maynards intheir lake-side villa close to Geneva. During all that time they seemedlifted off the common earth into a world of fine fabrics, agreeablesounds, noiseless unlimited service, and ample untroubled living. It hadan effect of enchantment, and the long healthy arduous journey thitherseemed a tale of incredible effort amidst these sunny excesses. Theweather had the whim to be serenely fine, sunshine like summer and thebluest of skies shone above the white wall and the ilex thickets andcypresses that bounded them in from the great world of crowded homes andsous and small necessities. And through the texture of it all forTrafford ran a thread of curious new suggestion. An intermittentdiscussion of economics and socialism was going on between himself andSolomonson and an agreeable little stammering man in brown named Minter,who walked up in the afternoon from Vevey,--he professed to be writing anovel--during the earlier half of the day. Minter displayed the keenestappreciation of everything in his entertainment, and blinked cheerfullyand expressed opinions of the extremest socialistic and anarchisticflavour to an accompaniment of grateful self-indulgence. "Your port-wineis wonderful, Lee," he would say, sipping it. "A terrible retributionwill fall upon you some day for all this."

  The villa had been designed by Lee to please his wife, and if it wasneither very beautiful nor very dignified, it was at any rate verypretty and amusing. It might have been built by a Parisiandressmaker--in the chateauesque style. It was of greyish-white stone,with a roof of tiles. It had little balconies and acutely roofedturrets, and almost burlesque buttresses, pierced by doors and gates;and sun-trap loggias, as pleasantly casual as the bows and embroideriesof a woman's dress; and its central hall, with an impluvium that hadnothing to do with rain-water, and its dining-room, to which oneascended from this hall between pillars up five broad steps, wereentirely irrelevant to all its exterior features. Unobtrusivemen-servants in grey with scarlet facings hovered serviceably.

  From the little terrace, all set with orange-trees in tubs, one couldsee, through the branches and stems of evergreens and over a foregroundof budding, starting vineyard, the clustering roofs of Vevey below, anagglomeration veiled ever so thinly in the morning by a cobweb of woodsmoke, against the blue background of lake with its wingedsailing-boats, and sombre Alpine distances. Minter made it allsignificant by a wave of the hand. "All this," he said, and of thecrowded work-a-day life below, "all that."

  "All this," with its rich litter of stuffs and ornaments, its fineprofusion, its delicacies of flower and food and furniture, its frequentinconsecutive pleasures, its noiseless, ready service, was remarkablynovel and yet remarkably familiar to Trafford. For a time he could notunderstand this undertone of familiarity, and then a sunlit group ofhangings in one of the small rooms that looked out upon the lake tookhis mind back to his own dining-room, and the little inadequate, butdecidedly good, Bokhara embroidery that dominated it like a flag, thatlit it, and now lit his understanding, like a confessed desire. Ofcourse, Mrs. Lee--happy woman!--was doing just everything that Marjoriewould have loved to do. Marjorie had never confessed as much, perhapsshe had never understood as much, but now in the presence of Mrs. Lee'saesthetic exuberances, Trafford at least understood. He surveyed thelittle room, whose harmonies he had at first simply taken for granted,noted the lustre-ware that answered to the gleaming Persian tiles, theinspiration of a metallic thread in the hangings, and the exquisitechoice of the deadened paint upon the woodwork, and realized for thefirst time how little aimless extravagance can be, and all the timid,obstinately insurgent artistry that troubled his wife. He steppedthrough the open window into a little loggia, and stared unseeingly overglittering, dark-green leaves to the mysteries of distance in the greatmasses above St. Gingolph, and it seemed for the first time that perhapsin his thoughts he had done his wife a wrong. He had judged her fickle,impulsive, erratic, perhaps merely because her mind followed a differentprocess from his, because while he went upon the lines of constructivetruth, 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 hadreached Les Avants with all his sense of their discordance clean washedand walked out of his mind, by rain and sun and a flow of highresolutions, and the brotherly swing of their strides together. They hadcome to the Lee's villa, mud-splashed, air-sweet comrades, all unawareof the subtle differences of atmosphere they had to encounter. They hadno suspicion that it was only about half of each other that hadfraternized. Now here they were in a company that was not onlyaltogether alien to their former mood, but extremely interesting andexciting and closely akin to the latent factors in Marjorie'scomposition. Their hostess and her sister had the keen, qui
ck aestheticsensibilities of their race, with all that freedom of reading andenfranchisement of mind which is the lot of the Western women. Lee hadan immense indulgent affection for his wife, he regarded herarrangements and exploits with an admiration that was almost American.And Mrs. Lee's imagination had run loose in pursuit of beautiful andremarkable people and splendours rather than harmonies of line andcolour. Lee, like Solomonson, had that inexplicable alchemy of mindwhich distils gold from the commerce of the world ("All this," saidMinter to Trafford, "is an exhalation from all that"); he accumulatedwealth as one grows a beard, and found his interest in his uxorioussatisfactions, and so Mrs. Lee, with her bright watchful eyes, quickimpulsive movements and instinctive command had the utmost freedom torealize her ideals.

  In the world at large Lee and Solomonson seemed both a little short anda little stout, and a little too black and bright for their entirelyconventional clothing, but for the dinner and evening of the villa theywere now, out of consideration for Trafford, at their ease, and far moredignified in Oriental robes. Trafford was accommodated with a long,black, delicately embroidered garment that reached to his feet, andsuited something upstanding and fine in his bearing; Minter, who hadstayed 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 restof the men assembling about an open wood fire in the smaller hall at thefoot of the main staircase. Lee was still upstairs, and Solomonson, witha new grace of gesture begotten by his costume, made the necessaryintroductions; a little man with fine-cut features and a Galway accentwas Rex the playwright; a tall, grey-haired, clean-shaven man was Brightfrom the New York Central Museum; and a bearded giant with a roof of redhair and a remote eye was Radlett Barns, the great portrait-painter, whoconsents to paint your portrait for posterity as the King confers aknighthood. These were presently joined by Lee and Pacey, theblond-haired musician, and Mottersham, whose patents and inventionscontrol electric lighting and heating all over the world, and then, withthe men duly gathered and expectant, the women came down the widestaircase.

  The staircase had been planned and lit for these effects, and Mrs. Leemeant to make the most of her new discovery. Her voice could be heard inthe unseen corridor above arranging the descent: "You go first, dear.Will you go with Christabel?" The conversation about the fire checkedand ceased with the sound of voices above and the faint rustle ofskirts. Then came Christabel Morrison, her slender grace beautifullycontrasted 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 richand splendid. After a brief interval their hostess preceded Marjorie,and was so much of an artist that she had dressed herself merely as afoil to this new creation. She wore black and scarlet, that made thewhite face and bright eyes under her sombre hair seem the face of aninspiring spirit. A step behind her and to the right of her cameMarjorie, tall and wonderful, as if she were the queen of earth andsunshine, swathed barbarically in gold and ruddy brown, and with herabundant hair bound back by a fillet of bloodstones and gold. RadlettBarns exclaimed at the sight of her. She was full of the manifestconsciousness of dignity as she descended, quite conscious and quiteunembarrassed; two borrowed golden circlets glittered on her shiningarm, and a thin chain of gold and garnets broke the contrast of thewarm, 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 heappreciated her beauty. His daily companion had become this splendour inthe sky. She came close by him with hand extended to greet Sir PhilipMottersham. He was sensible of the glow of her, as it were of a scentedaura about her. He had a first full intimation of the cult and worshipof woman and the magnificence of women, old as the Mediterranean and itsgoddesses, and altogether novel to his mind....

  Christabel Morrison found him a pleasant but not very entertaining orexciting neighbor at the dinner-table, and was relieved when the timecame for her to turn an ear to the artistic compliments of RadlettBarns. But Trafford was too interested and amused by the general effectof the dinner to devote himself to the rather heavy business of reallyexhilarating Christabel. He didn't give his mind to her. He found thetransformation of Sir Rupert into a turbanned Oriental who might havecome out of a picture by Carpaccio, gently stimulating and altogetherdelightful. His attention returned again and again to that genialswarthiness. Mrs. Lee on his left lived in her eyes, and didn't so muchtalk to him as rattle her mind at him almost absent-mindedly, as onemight dangle keys at a baby while one talked to its mother. Yet it wasevident she liked the look of him. Her glance went from his face to hisrobe, and up and down the table, at the bright dresses, the shiningarms, the glass and light and silver. She asked him to tell her justwhere he had tramped and just what he had seen, and he had scarcelybegun answering her question before her thoughts flew off to threetrophies of china and silver, struggling groups of china boys bearing upgreat silver shells of fruit and flowers that stood down the centre ofthe table. "What do you think of my chubby boys?" she asked. "They'reGerman work. They came from a show at Duesseldorf last week. Ben saw Iliked them, and sent back for them secretly, and here they, are! Ithought they might be too colourless. But are they?"

  "No," said Trafford, "they're just cool. Under that glow of fruit. Isthis salt-cellar English cut glass?"

  "Old Dutch," said Mrs. Lee. "Isn't it jolly?" She embarked with a rovingeye 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--asort 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, "wasyour wife beautiful like this when you married her? I mean--of courseshe was a beautiful girl and adorable and all that; but wasn't she justa slender thing?"

  She paused, but if she had a habit of asking disconcerting questions shedid not at any rate insist upon answers, and she went on to confess thatshe believed she would be a happier woman poor than rich--"not that Benisn't all he should be"--but that then she would have been a fashionabledressmaker. "People want help," she said, "so much more help than theyget. They go about with themselves--what was it Mr. Radlett Barns saidthe other night--oh!--like people leading horses they daren't ride. Ithink he says such good things at times, don't you? So wonderful to beclever in two ways like that. Just look _now_ at your wife--now I mean,that they've drawn that peacock-coloured curtain behind her. Mybrother-in-law has been telling me you keep the most wonderful andprecious secrets locked up in your breast, that you know how to makegold and diamonds and all sorts of things. If I did,--I should makethem."

  She pounced suddenly upon Rex at her left with questions about theKeltic Renascence, was it still going on--or what? and Trafford was atliberty for a time to enjoy the bright effects about him, the shadowedprofile and black hair of Christabel to the right of him, and thecoruscating refractions and reflections of Lady Solomonson across thewhite and silver and ivory and blossom of the table. Then Mrs. Leedragged 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 anyeconomy of human toil in machinery whatever. I mean that the machineitself really embodies all the toil it seems to save, toil that went tothe making of it and preparing it and getting coal for it...."

  Sec. 12

  Next morning they found their hostess at breakfast in the dining-roomand now the sun was streaming through a high triple window that had beencurtained overnight
, and they looked out through clean, brightplate-glass upon mountains half-dissolved in a luminous mist, and amist-veiled lake below. Great stone jars upon the terrace bore a blazeof urged and early blossom, and beyond were cypresses. Their hostesspresided at one of two round tables, at a side table various breakfastdishes kept warm over spirit lamps, and two men servants dispensed teaand coffee. In the bay of the window was a fruit table, with piledfruit-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 hisovernight Orientalism abandoned, was in outspoken tweeds and quite underthe impression that he was interested in golf. Trafford got frizzledbacon for Marjorie and himself, and dropped into a desultoryconversation, chiefly sustained by Christabel, about the peculiarlyexalting effect of beautiful scenery on Christabel's mind. Mrs. Lee wasas usual distraught, and kept glancing towards the steps that led upfrom the hall. Lady Solomonson appeared with a rustle in a wrapper ofpink Chinese silk. "I came down after all," she said. "I lay in bedweighing rolls and coffee and relaxed muscles against your Englishbreakfast downstairs. And suddenly I remembered your little sausages!"

  She sat down with a distribution of handkerchief, bag, letters, a goldfountain pen and suchlike equipments, and Trafford got her some of thecoveted delicacies. Mrs. Lee suddenly cried out, "_Here_ they come!_Here_ they come!" and simultaneously the hall resonated with children'svoices and the yapping of a Skye terrier.

  Then a gay little procession appeared ascending the steps. First came asmall but princely little boy of three, with a ruddy face and curlyblack hair, behind him was a slender, rather awkward girl of perhapseleven, and a sturdier daughter of Israel of nine. A nurse in artisticpurple followed, listening inattentively to some private whisperings ofa knickerbockered young man of five, and then came another purple-robednurse against contingencies, and then a nurse of a different,white-clad, and more elaborately costumed sort, carrying a sumptuousbaby of eight or nine months. "Ah! the _darlings!_" cried Christabel,springing up quite beautifully, and Lady Solomonson echoed the cry. Theprocession 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 womanof eleven scrutinized Trafford with speculative interest and edgedtowards him coyly, and Mrs. Lee interviewed her youngest born. Theamiable inanities suitable to the occasion had scarcely begun before aviolent clapping of hands announced the appearance of Lee.

  It was Lee's custom, Mrs. Lee told Marjorie over her massively robedbaby, to get up very early and work on rolls and coffee; he neverbreakfasted nor joined them until the children came. All of them rushedto him for their morning kiss, and it seemed to Trafford that Lee atleast was an altogether happy creature as he accepted the demonstrativesalutations of this struggling, elbowing armful of offspring, andemerged 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'shour," she said to Marjorie. "You don't I hope, mind children?"

  "But," said Trafford incredulous, and with a friendly arm about hisadmirer, "is this tall young woman yours?"

  The child shot him a glance of passionate appreciation for this scrap offlattery.

  "We began young," said Mrs. Lee, with eyes of uncritical pride for theungainly 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 hismind.

  "Do you really care?" asked Mrs. Lee. "You know, I'm so proud of theirnursery. 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 overwhelmedMarjorie with inquiries as she followed her husband. Every one joinedthe nurseryward procession except Rex, who left himself behind with anair of inadvertency, and escaped to the terrace and a cigar....

  It was a wonderful nursery, a suite of three bedrooms, a green andwhite, well-lit schoolroom and a vast playroom, and hovering about thepassage Trafford remarked a third purple nurse and a very efficient andserious-looking Swiss governess. The schoolroom and the nurserydisplayed a triumph of judicious shopping and arrangement, the best ofGerman and French and English things had been blended into a harmony atonce hygienic and pedagogic and humanly charming. For once Marjorie hadto admire the spending of another woman, and admit to herself that evenshe 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 andshoulders and eyes; there were artistically coloured and artisticallyarranged pictures, and a little library held all the best of Lang andLucas, rare good things like "Uncle Lubin," Maurice Baring's story of"Forget-me-not," "Johnny Crow's Garden," "The Bad Child's Book ofBeasts," animal books and bird books, costume books and story books,colour books and rhyme books, abundant, yet every one intelligentlychosen, no costly meretricious printed rubbish such as silly Gentilemothers buy. Then in the great nursery, with its cork carpet on whichany toy would stand or run, was an abundance of admirable possessionsand shelving for everything, and great fat cloth elephants to ride, andgo-carts, and hooks for a swing. Marjorie's quick eye saw, and sheadmired effusively and envied secretly, and Mrs. Lee appreciated herappreciation. A skirmishing romp of the middle children and Lee went onabout the two of them, and Trafford was led off by his admirer into acubby-house in one corner (with real glass windows made to open) and themuslin curtains were drawn while he was shown a secret under vows. LadySolomonson discovered some soldiers, and was presently on her knees in acorner with the five-year old boy.

  "These are like my Teddy's," she was saying. "My Billy has some ofthese."

  Trafford emerged from the cubby-house, which was perhaps a littlecramped for him, and surveyed the room, with his admirer lugging at hisarm unheeded, and whispering: "Come back with me."

  Of course this was the clue to Lee and Solomonson. How extremely happyLee appeared to be! Enormous vistas of dark philoprogenitive parents andhealthy little Jews and Jewesses seemed to open out to Trafford,hygienically reared, exquisitely trained and educated. And he andMarjorie had just one little daughter--with a much poorer educationaloutlook. She had no cloth elephant to ride, no elaborate cubby-house toget into, only a half-dozen picture books or so, and later she wouldn'twhen she needed it get that linguistic Swiss.

  He wasn't above the normal human vanity of esteeming his own race andtype the best, and certain vulgar aspects of what nowadays one callsEugenics crossed his mind.

  Sec. 13

  During those few crowded days of unfamiliar living Trafford accumulateda vast confused mass of thoughts and impressions. He realized acutelythe enormous gulf between his attitudes towards women and those of hishost and Solomonson--and indeed of all the other men. It had neveroccurred to him before that there was any other relationship possiblebetween a modern woman and a modern man but a frank comradeship andperfect knowledge, helpfulness, and honesty. That had been the continualimplication of his mother's life, and of all that he had respected inthe thought and writing of his time. But not one of these men in theirplace--with the possible exception of Minter, who remained brilliant butambiguous--believed anything of the sort. It necessarily involved inpractice a share of hardship for women, and it seemed fundamental tothem that women should have no hardship. He sought for a word, and hungbetween chivalry and orientalism. He inclined towards chivalry. Theirwomen were lifted a little off the cold ground of responsibility. Charmwas their obligation. "A beautiful woman should be beautifully dressed,"said Radlett Barns
in the course of the discussion of a contemporaryportrait painter. Lee nodded to endorse an obvious truth. "But she oughtto dress herself," said Barns. "It ought to be herself to the points ofthe 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 itsend and lit it, while his mind went off to gnaw at: "A beautiful womanshould be beautifully dressed," as a dog retires with a bone. Hecouldn't escape from its shining truth, and withal it was devastating toall the purposes of his life.

  He rejected the word orientalism; what he was dealing with here waschivalry. "All this," was indeed, under the thinnest of disguises, thecastle and the pavilion, and Lee and Solomonson were valiant knights,who entered the lists not indeed with spear and shield but withprospectus and ingenious enterprise, who drew cheques instead of swordsfor their ladies' honour, who held "all that" in fee and subjection thatthese exquisite and wonderful beings should flower in rich perfection.All these women lived in a magic security and abundance, far above themire and adventure of the world; their knights went upon quests for themand returned with villas and pictures and diamonds and historicalpearls. And not one of them all was so beautiful a being as hisMarjorie, whom he made his squaw, whom he expected to aid and followhim, and suffer uncomplainingly the rough services of the common life.Not one was half so beautiful as Marjorie, nor half so sweet andwonderful....

  If such thoughts came in Lee's villa, they returned with redoubled forcewhen Trafford found himself packed painfully with Marjorie in the nighttrain to Paris. His head ached with the rattle and suffocation of thetrain, and he knew hers must ache more. The windows of the compartmentand the door were all closed, the litigious little commercial travellerin shiny grey had insisted upon that, there was no corner seat eitherfor Marjorie or himself, the dim big package over her head swayedthreateningly. The green shade over the light kept opening with thevibration of the train, the pallid old gentleman with the beard hadtwisted 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 thecorner smelt mysteriously and penetratingly of Roquefort cheese. For theseventeenth time the little commercial traveller jumped up with anunbecoming expletive, and pulled the shade over the light, and thesilent young man in the fourth corner stirred and readjusted his legs.

  For a time until the crack of light overhead had widened again every onebecame a dark head-dangling outline....

  He watched the dim shape before him and noted the weary droop of herpose. He wished he had brought water. He was intolerably thirsty, andhis thirst gave him the measure of hers. This jolting foetidcompartment was a horrible place for her, an intolerably horrible place.And she was standing it, for all her manifest suffering, with infinitegallantry and patience. What a gallant soul indeed she was! Whateverelse she did she never failed to rise to a challenge. Her veryextravagance that had tried their lives so sorely was perhaps just oneaspect 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 attimes in the lights and glitter of that house behind there, and now shewas back in her weather-stained tweeds again, like a shining swordthrust back into a rusty old sheath.

  Was it fair that she should come back into the sheath because of thispassion of his for a vast inexhaustible research?

  He had never asked himself before if it was fair to assume she wouldfollow his purpose and his fortunes. He had taken that for granted. Andshe too had taken that for granted, which was so generously splendid ofher. All her disloyalties had been unintentional, indeed almostinstinctive, breaches of her subordination to this aim which was hisalone. These breaches he realized had been the reality of her naturefighting against her profoundest resolutions.

  He wondered what Lee must think of this sort of married life. How uglyand selfish it must seem from that point of view.

  He perceived for the first time the fundamental incongruity ofMarjorie's position, she was made to shine, elaborately prepared andtrained to shine, desiring keenly to shine, and then imprisoned andhidden in the faded obscurity of a small, poor home. How conspicuously,how extremely he must be wanting in just that sort of chivalry in whichLee excelled! Those business men lived for their women to an extent hehad hitherto scarcely dreamt of doing....

  His want of chivalry was beyond dispute. And was there not also anextraordinary egotism in this concentration upon his own purposes, aself-esteem, a vanity? Had her life no rights? Suppose now he were togive her--two years, three years perhaps of his life--altogether. Oreven four. Was it too much to grudge her four? Solomonson had been athis old theme with him, a theme the little man had never relinquishedsince their friendship first began years ago, possibilities of abusiness alliance and the application of a mind of exceptional freshnessand 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 wouldhave made so little difference if they had taken the day train andtravelled first-class. Wasn't she indeed entitled to travel first-class?Pictures of the immense spaciousness, the softness, cleanliness anddignity of first-class compartments appeared in his mind....

  He would have looked at his watch, but to get at it would meandisturbing the silent young man on his left.

  Outside in the corridor there broke out a noisy dispute about a missingcoupon, a dispute in that wonderful language that is known to thefacetious as _entente cordiale_, between an Englishman and the conductorof the train....

  Sec. 14

  In Paris there was a dispute with an extortionate cabman, and thecrossing from Dieppe to Newhaven was rough and bitterly cold. They wereboth ill. They reached home very dirty and weary, and among the pile ofletters and papers on Trafford's desk was a big bundle of Science Noteproofs, and two letters from Croydon and Pinner to alter the hours ofhis lectures for various plausible and irritating reasons.

  The little passage looked very small and rather bare as the door shutbehind them, and the worn places that had begun to be conspicuous duringthe last six months, and which they had forgotten during the Swissholiday, reasserted themselves. The dining-room, after spacious roomsflooded with sunshine, betrayed how dark it was, and how small. ThoseBokhara embroideries that had once shone so splendid, now, after Mrs.Lee's rich and unlimited harmonies, seemed skimpy and insufficient, mereloin-cloths for the artistic nakedness of the home. They felt, too, theywere beginning to find out their post-impressionist picture. They hadnot remembered it as nearly so crude as it now appeared. The hole aflying coal had burnt in the unevenly faded dark-blue carpet lookedlarger than it had ever done before, and was indeed the only thing thatdidn't appear faded and shrunken.

  Sec. 15

  The atmosphere of the Lees' villa had disturbed Marjorie's feelings andideas even more than it had Trafford's. She came back struggling torecover those high resolves that had seemed so secure when they hadwalked down to Les Avantes. There was a curiously tormenting memory ofthat vast, admirable nursery, and the princely procession of childrenthat would not leave her mind. No effort of her reason could reconcileher to the inferiority of Margharita's equipment. She had a detestablecraving 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 indefinableapprehensions of weakness and failure. She struggled to control aninsurgence of emotions that rose out of the deeps of her being. She hadnow, she knew, to take on her share of the burden, to become one of theSamurai, to show her love no longer as a demand but as a service. Yetfrom day to day she procrastinated under the shadow of apprehendedthings; she forebore to dismiss May, to buy that secon
d-hand typewritershe needed, to take any irrevocable step towards the realization of thenew way of living. She tried to think away her fears, but they would notleave her. She felt that Trafford watched her pale face with a furtivesolicitude and wondered at her hesitations; she tried in vain to seemcheerful and careless in his presence, with an anxiety, withpremonitions that grew daily.

  There was no need to worry him unduly....

  But soon the matter was beyond all doubting. One night she gathered hercourage together suddenly and came down into his study in herdressing-gown with her hair about her shoulders. She opened the doorand 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 stoodbeside him silently.

  "Well, old Marjorie?" he said presently, drawing a little intricatepattern in the corner of his blotting paper, and wondering whether thiswas 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, turnedhis chair about to look at her, and discovered she was weeping andchoking noiselessly. He stood up close to her, moving very slowly andsilently, his eyes full of this new surmise, and now without word orgesture 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! Imeant so well." Still with an averted face her arms came out to him in adesperate, unreasoning appeal for love. He took her and held her closeto him. "Never mind, dear," he said. "Don't mind." Her passion now wasunconstrained. "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 werecoming home in the train--I was making up my mind. At Vevey I wastalking 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 doneit long before."

  "I had meant so well," she said. "I meant to work. I meant to denymyself...."

  "I'm glad," he whispered. "Glad! Why should you weep?" It seemed nothingto him then, that so he should take a long farewell to the rare, sweetair of that wonderland his mind had loved so dearly. All he rememberedwas that Marjorie was very dear to him, very dear to him, and that allher being was now calling out for him and his strength. "I had thoughtanyhow of giving up research," he repeated. "This merely decides. Ithappens 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 notcare 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--thatbeautiful, irrational mother.... Life does not care for research orknowledge, but only for life. Oh! the world has to go on yet for tens ofthousands of years before--before we are free for that. I've got tofight--as other men fight...."

  He thought in silence for a time, oddly regardless of her. "But if itwas not you," he said, staring at the fireplace with knitted brows, "ifI did not love you.... Thank God, I love you, dear! Thank God, ourchildren are love children! I want to live--to my finger-tips, but if Ididn't love you--oh! love you! then I think now--I'd be glad--I'd beglad, I think, to cheat life of her victory."

  "Oh, my dear!" she cried, and clung weeping to him, and caught at himand sat herself upon his knees, and put her arms about his head, andkissed him passionately with tear-salt lips, with her hair falling uponhis face.

  "My dear," she whispered....

  Sec. 16

  So soon as Trafford could spare an afternoon amidst his crowdedengagements 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--andscience generally, and come into business--if that is what you aremeaning."

  Solomonson turned his paper-weight round very carefully before replying.Then he said: "You mustn't give up your professorship yet, Trafford. Forthe 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. Ididn't talk to you out there for nothing. I saw things.... Let's gointo the other room, and smoke and talk it over." He stood up as hespoke.

  "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 allthat--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. Isaw you'd come to it. _I_ came to it. Had to. I had ambitions--just asyou have. I've always had an inclination to do a bit of research on myown. I _like_ it, you know. Oh! I could have done things. I'm sure Icould have done things. I'm not a born money-maker. But----." He becamevery close and confidential. "It's----_them_. You said good-bye toscience for a bit when you flopped me down on that old croquet-lawn,Trafford." He went off to reminiscences. "Lord, how we went over! Nomore aviation for me, Trafford!"

  He arranged chairs, and produced cigars. "After all--this ofcourse--it's interesting. Once you get into the movement of it, it takeshold of you. It's a game."

  "I've thought over all you said," Trafford began, using premeditatedphrases. "Bluntly--I want three thousand a year, and I don't make eighthundred. 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 acall.... It's the maddest state of affairs! Now that I'm doingabsolutely my best work for mankind, work I firmly believe no one elsecan do, I just manage to get six hundred--nearly two hundred of my eighthundred is my own. What does the world think I could do better--thatwould 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 hardobliquely at the smoke of his cigar. "Oh, it won't," he said, rejectinga disagreeable idea. "There isn't any world--not in that sense. That'sthe mistake you make, Trafford."

  "It's not what your work is worth," he explained. "It's what youradvantages can get for you. People are always going aboutsupposing--just what you suppose--that people ought to get paid inproportion to the good they do. It's forgetting what the world is, to dothat. Very likely some day civilization will get to that, but it hasn'tgot to it yet. It isn't going to get to it for hundreds and hundreds ofyears."

  His manner became confidential. "Civilization's just a fight,Trafford--just as savagery is a fight, and being a wild beast is afight,--only you have paddeder gloves on and there's more rules. Wearen't out for everybody, we're out for ourselves--and a few friendsperhaps--within limits. It's no good hurrying ahead and pretendingcivilization's something else, when it isn't. That's where all thesesocialists 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 an
dthe artists' wives and the actors and actresses, and none of them takemuch account of me because I'm just a business man and rather dark andshort, and so I get a chance of looking at them from the side that isn'ton show while the other's turned to the women, and they're just asfighting as the rest of us, only they humbug more and they don't seem tome to have a decent respect for any of the common rules. And that'sabout what it all comes to, Trafford."

  Sir Rupert paused, and Trafford was about to speak when the formerresumed again, his voice very earnest, his eyes shining with purpose. Heliked Trafford, and he was doing his utmost to make a convincingconfession of the faith that was in him. "It's when it comes to thewomen," 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 ofHumanity in general. You'll find Humanity in particular, in the shape ofall the fine, beautiful, delightful and desirable women you come across,preferring a narrower turn of devotion. See? That's all. _Caeterisparibus_, of course. That's what I found out, and that's what you'vefound out, and that's what everybody with any sense in his head findsout, 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 afact when I see it. I'm here with a few things I want and a woman or soI have and want to keep, and the kids upstairs, bless 'em! and I'm inleague with all the others who want the same sort of things. Against anyone or anything that upsets us. We stand by the law and each other, andthat's what it all amounts to. That's as far as my patch of Humanitygoes. Humanity at large! Humanity be blowed! _Look_ at it! It isn't thatI'm hostile to Humanity, mind you, but that I'm not disposed to gounder as I should do if I didn't say that. So I say it. And that's aboutall it is, and there you are."

  He regarded Trafford over his cigar, drawing fiercely at it for somemoments. Then seeing Trafford on the point of speaking, he snatched itfrom 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 theopen-minded tell-everybody-every-thing scientific attitude if you comeinto 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, butthat 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 likeabout you. I tell you, Trafford, I don't believe that the majority ofpeople who make money help civilization forward any more than the smokethat comes out of the engine helps the train forward. If you put it tome, I don't. I've got no illusions of that sort. They're about as muchhelp 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 ofparadox. If you've got big gifts and you choose to help forward theworld, if you choose to tell all you know and give away everything youcan do in the way of work, you've got to give up the ideas of wealth andsecurity, 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 aboutyour 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 yourresearches, there'll be little mean sharp active beasts making money allover you like maggots on a cheese. And if everybody who'd got gifts andaltruistic ideas gave themselves up to it, then evidently only the meanand 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. Andthe other chaps would produce the art and the science and theliterature, 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'show things are made...."

  "But it isn't worth it. It isn't worth extinguishing oneself in order tomake 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 athing 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 thatTrafford had worked out the problem of synthesizing indiarubber. He haddone so with an entire indifference to the commercial possibilities ofthe case, because he had been irritated by the enormous publicity givento Behrens' assertion that he had achieved this long-sought end. Ofcourse the production of artificial rubbers and rubber-like substanceshad been one of the activities of the synthetic chemist for many years,from the appearance of Tilden's isoprene rubber onward, and there wasalready a formidable list of collaterals, dimethybutadiene, and soforth, by which the coveted goal could be approached. Behrens had boldlyadded to this list as his own a number of variations upon a theme ofTrafford's, originally designed to settle certain curiosities aboutelasticity. Behrens' products were not only more massively rubber-likethan anything that had gone before them, but also extremely cheap toproduce, and his bold announcement of success had produced a check inrubber sales and widespread depression in the quiveringly sensitivemarket of plantation shares. Solomonson had consulted Trafford aboutthis matter at Vevey, and had heard with infinite astonishment thatTrafford had already roughly prepared and was proposing to complete andpublish, unpatented and absolutely unprotected, first a smashingdemonstration of the unsoundness of Behrens' claim and then a lucidexposition of just what had to be done and what could be done to make anindiarubber absolutely indistinguishable from the natural product. Thebusiness man could not believe his ears.

  "My dear chap, positively--you mustn't," Solomonson had screamed, andhe had opened his fingers and humped his shoulders and for all hispublic school and university training lapsed undisguisedly into theOriental. "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 hadembarked upon a long rambling discussion of that issue of publication, adiscussion they were now taking up again. "When men dropped that idea ofconcealing knowledge, alchemist gave place to chemist," said Trafford,"and all that is worth having in modern life, all that makes it betterand safer and more hopeful than the ancient life, began."

  "My dear fellow," said Solomonson, "I know, I know. But to give away thesynthesis 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 admirationfor Trafford, and it was no new thing that he should desire a businessco-operation. He had been working for that in the old days at Riplings;he had never altogether let the possibility drop out of sight betweenthem in spite of Trafford's repudiations. He believed himself to be ascientific man turned to business, but indeed his whole passion was fororganization and finance. He knew he could do everything but originate,and in Trafford he recognized just that rare combination of an obstinateand penetrating simplicity with constructive power which is theessential blend in the making of great intellectual initiatives. ToTrafford belonged the secret of novel and unsuspected solutions; whatwere fixed barriers and unsurmountable conditions to trainedinvestigators and commonplace minds, would yield to his gift of magicinquiry. He could startle the accepted error int
o self-betrayal. Othermen might play the game of business infinitely better thanhe--Solomonson knew, indeed, quite well that he himself could play thegame infinitely better than Trafford--but it rested with Trafford byright divine of genius to alter the rules. If only he could be inducedto alter the rules secretly, unostentatiously, on a business footing,instead of making catastrophic plunges into publicity! And everythingthat had made Trafford up to the day of his marriage was antagonistic tosuch strategic reservations. The servant of science has as such noconcern with personal consequences; his business is the steady,relentless clarification of knowledge. The human affairs he changes, thewealth he makes or destroys, are no concern of his; once these thingsweigh with him, become primary, he has lost his honour as a scientificman.

  "But you _must_ think of consequences," Solomonson had cried duringthose intermittent talks at Vevey. "Here you are, shying this cheapsynthetic 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 goodof saying you don't care about the market-place, that _your_ business isjust to make bombs and drop them out of the window? You smash up thingsjust the same. Why! you'll ruin hundreds and thousands of people, peopleliving on rubber shares, people working in plantations, old, inadaptableworkers in rubber works...."

  Sir Rupert was now still a little incredulous of Trafford's change ofpurpose, and for a time argued conceded points. Then slowly he came tothe conditions and methods of the new relationship. He sketched out ascheme 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 onlythat catalytic process which was his own originality, the process thatwas to convert the inert, theoretically correct synthetic rubber, with amysterious difference in the quality of its phases, into the real rightthing. With Behrens exploded, plantation shares would recover, and whiletheir friends in the city manipulated that, Trafford would resign hisprofessorship and engage himself to an ostentatious promotion syndicatefor the investigation of synthetic rubber. His discovery would followimmediately the group had cleared itself of plantation shares; indeed hecould begin planning the necessary works forthwith; the large scaleoperations in the process were to be protected as far as possible bypatents, but its essential feature, the addition of a specific catalyticagent, could be safely dealt with as a secret process.

  "I hate secrecy," said Trafford.

  "Business," interjected Solomonson, and went on with his exposition ofthe relative advantages of secrecy and patent rights. It was all amatter of just how many people you had to trust. As that numberincreased, the more and more advisable did it become to put your cardson the table and risk the complex uncertain protection of the patentlaw. They went into elaborate calculations, clerks were called upon tohunt up facts and prices, and the table was presently littered withwaste 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 betweenhis teeth, "so soon, that is, as we deal in quantity. Tenpence! We canlower the price and spread the market, sixpence by sixpence. In theend--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 withthis. 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 andsparkle. This enterprise, he declared, was to be only the first of aseries of vigorous exploitations. The whole thing warmed him. He wouldrather make ten thousand by such developments, than a hundred thousandby mere speculation. Trafford had but scratched the surface of his mineof knowledge. "Let's think of other things," said Sir Rupert Solomonson."Diamonds! No! They've got too many tons stowed away already. A diamondnow--it's an absolutely artificial value. At any time a new discoveryand one wild proprietor might bust that show. Lord!--diamonds! Metals?Of course you've worked the colloids chiefly. I suppose there's beenmore done in metals and alloys than anywhere. There's a lot of othersubstances. Business has hardly begun to touch substances yet, you know,Trafford--flexible glass, for example, and things like that. So farwe've always taken substances for granted. On our side, I mean. It'sextraordinary how narrow the outlook of business and finance is--still.It never seems to lead to things, never thinks ahead. In this case ofrubber, for example----"

  "When men fight for their own hands and for profit and position in thenext 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 hisvoice dropped a little lower. "But what a pull they get, Trafford, ifperhaps--they don't, eh?"

  "No," said Trafford with a smile and a sigh, "the other sort gets thepull."

  "Not _this_ time," said Solomonson; "not with you to spot processes andme to figure out the cost--" he waved his hands to the litter that hadbeen removed to a side table--"and generally see how the business end ofthings is going...."

  BOOK THE THIRD MARJORIE AT LONELY HUT