Marriage

MARRIAGE

rich perfection. All these women lived in a magic security and abundance, far above the mire and adventure of the world; their knights went upon quests for them and returned with villas and pictures and diamonds and historical pearls. And not one of them all was so beautiful a being as his Marjorie, whom he made his squaw, whom he expected to aid and follow him, and suffer uncomplainingly the rough services of the common life. Not one was half so beautiful as Marjorie, nor half so sweet and wonderful....

If such thoughts came in Lee’s villa, they returned with redoubled force when Trafford found himself packed painfully with Marjorie in the night train to Paris. His head ached with the rattle and suffocation of the train, and he knew hers must ache more. The windows of the compartment and the door were all closed, the litigious little commercial traveller in shiny grey had insisted upon that, there was no corner seat either for Marjorie or himself, the dim big package over her head swayed threateningly. The green shade over the light kept opening with the vibration of the train, the pallid old gentleman with the beard had twisted himself into a ghastly resemblance to a broken-necked corpse, and pressed his knees hard and stiffly against Trafford, and the small, sniffing, bow-legged little boy beside the rusty widow woman in the corner smelt mysteriously and penetratingly of Roquefort cheese. For the seventeenth time the little commercial traveller jumped up with an unbecoming expletive, and pulled the shade over the light, and the silent young man in the fourth corner stirred and readjusted his legs.

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

He watched the dim shape before him and noted the weary droop of her pose. He wished he had brought water. He was intolerably thirsty, and his thirst gave him the measure of hers. This jolting fœtid compartment was a horrible place for her, an intolerably horrible place. And she was standing it, for all her manifest suffering, with infinite gallantry and patience. What a gallant soul indeed she was! Whatever else she did she never failed to rise to a challenge. Her very extravagance that had tried their lives so sorely was perhaps just one aspect of that same quality. It is so easy to be saving if one is timid; so hard if one is unaccustomed to fear. How beautiful she had shone at times in the lights and glitter of that house behind there, and now she was back in her weather-stained tweeds again, like a shining sword thrust back into a rusty old sheath.

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

He had never asked himself before if it was fair to assume she would follow his purpose and his fortunes. He had taken that for granted. And she too had taken that for granted, which was so generously splendid of her. All her disloyalties had been unintentional, indeed almost instinctive, breaches of her subordination to this aim which was his alone. These breaches he realized had been the reality of her nature fighting against her profoundest resolutions.

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

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

His want of chivalry was beyond dispute. And was there not also an extraordinary egotism in this concentration upon his own purposes, a self-esteem, a vanity? Had her life no rights? Suppose now he were to give her – two years, three years perhaps of his life – altogether. Or even four. Was it too much to grudge her four? Solomonson had been at his old theme with him, a theme the little man had never relinquished since their friendship first began years ago, possibilities of a business alliance and the application of a mind of exceptional freshness and penetration to industrial development. Why shouldn’t that be tried? Why not “make money” for a brief strenuous time, and then come back, when Marjorie’s pride and comfort were secure?...

(Poor dear, how weary she looked!)

He wondered how much more remained of this appalling night. It would have made so little difference if they had taken the day train and travelled first-class. Wasn’t she indeed entitled to travel first-class? Pictures of the immense spaciousness, the softness, cleanliness and dignity of first-class compartments appeared in his mind....

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

Outside in the corridor there broke out a noisy dispute about a missing coupon, a dispute in that wonderful language that is known to the facetious as entente cordiale, between an Englishman and the conductor of the train....

XIV

In Paris there was a dispute with an extortionate cabman, and the crossing from Dieppe to Newhaven was rough and bitterly cold. They were both ill. They reached home very dirty and weary, and among the pile of letters and papers on Trafford’s desk was a big bundle of Science Note proofs, and two letters from Croydon and Pinner to alter the hours of his lectures for various plausible and irritating reasons.

The little passage looked very small and rather bare as the door shut behind them, and the worn places that had begun to be conspicuous during the last six months, and which they had forgotten during the Swiss holiday, reasserted themselves. The dining-room, after spacious rooms flooded with sunshine, betrayed how dark it was, and how small. Those Bokhara embroideries that had once shone so splendid, now, after Mrs. Lee’s rich and unlimited harmonies, seemed skimpy and insufficient, mere loin-cloths for the artistic nakedness of the home. They felt, too, they were beginning to find out their post-impressionist picture. They had not remembered it as nearly so crude as it now appeared. The hole a flying coal had

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burnt in the unevenly faded dark-blue carpet looked larger than it had ever done before, and was indeed the only thing that didn’t appear faded and shrunken.

XV

The atmosphere of the Lees’ villa had disturbed Marjorie’s feelings and ideas even more than it had Trafford’s. She came back struggling to recover those high resolves that had seemed so secure when they had walked down to Les Avantes. There was a curiously tormenting memory of that vast, admirable nursery, and the princely procession of children that would not leave her mind. No effort of her reason could reconcile her to the inferiority of Margharita’s equipment. She had a detestable craving for a uniform for May. But May was going....

But indeed she was not so sure that May was going.

She was no longer buoyantly well, she was full of indefinable apprehensions of weakness and failure. She struggled to control an insurgence of emotions that rose out of the deeps of her being. She had now, she knew, to take on her share of the burden, to become one of the Samurai, to show her love no longer as a demand but as a service. Yet from day to day she procrastinated under the shadow of apprehended things; she forebore to dismiss May, to buy that sec- ond-hand typewriter she needed, to take any irrevocable step towards the realization of the new way of living. She tried to think away her fears, but they would not leave her. She felt that Trafford watched her pale face with a furtive solicitude

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and wondered at her hesitations; she tried in vain to seem cheerful and careless in his presence, with an anxiety, with premonitions that grew daily.

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

But soon the matter was beyond all doubting. One night she gathered her courage together suddenly and came down into his study in her dressing-gown with her hair about her shoulders. She opened the door and her heart failed her.

“Rag,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said busily from his desk, without looking round. “I want to speak to you,” she answered, and came slowly,

and stood beside him silently.

“Well, old Marjorie?” he said presently, drawing a little intricate pattern in the corner of his blotting paper, and wondering whether this was a matter of five pounds or ten.

“I meant so well,” she said and caught herself back into silence again.

He started at the thought, at a depth and meaning in her voice, turned his chair about to look at her, and discovered she was weeping and choking noiselessly. He stood up close to her, moving very slowly and silently, his eyes full of this new surmise, and now without word or gesture from her he knew his thought was right. “My dear,” he whispered.

She turned her face from him. “I meant so well,” she sobbed. “My dear! I meant so well.” Still with an averted face her arms came out to him in a desperate, unreasoning appeal for love. He took her and held her close to him. “Never mind, dear,” he said. “Don’t mind.” Her passion now was unconstrained. “I thought – “ he began, and left the thing unsaid.

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“But your work,” she said; “your research?” “I must give up research,” he said.

“Oh, my dearest!”

“I must give up research,” he repeated. “I’ve been seeing it for days. Clearer and clearer. This dear, just settles things. Even – as we were coming home in the train – I was making up my mind. At Vevey I was talking to Solomonson.”

“My dear,” she whispered, clinging to him.

“I talked to Solomonson. He had ideas – a proposal.” “No,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve left the thing too long.”

He repeated. “I must give up research – for years. I ought to have done it long before.”

“I had meant so well,” she said. “I meant to work. I meant to deny myself....”

“I’m glad,” he whispered. “Glad! Why should you weep?” It seemed nothing to him then, that so he should take a long farewell to the rare, sweet air of that wonderland his mind had loved so dearly. All he remembered was that Marjorie was very dear to him, very dear to him, and that all her being was now calling out for him and his strength. “I had thought anyhow of giving up research,” he repeated. “This merely decides. It happens to decide. I love you, dear. I put my research at your feet. Gladly. This is the end, and I do not care, my dear, at all. I do not care at all – seeing I have you....”

He stood beside her for a moment, and then sat down again, sideways, upon his chair.

“It isn’t you, my dear, or me,” he said, “but life that beats us – that beautiful, irrational mother.... Life does not care for

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research or knowledge, but only for life. Oh! the world has to go on yet for tens of thousands of years before – before we are free for that. I’ve got to fight – as other men fight....”

He thought in silence for a time, oddly regardless of her. “But if it was not you,” he said, staring at the fireplace with knitted brows, “if I did not love you.... Thank God, I love you, dear! Thank God, our children are love children! I want to live – to my finger-tips, but if I didn’t love you – oh! love you! then I think now – I’d be glad – I’d be glad, I think, to cheat life of her victory.”

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

“My dear,” she whispered....

XVI

So soon as Trafford could spare an afternoon amidst his crowded engagements he went to talk to Solomonson, who was now back in London. “Solomonson,” he said, “you were talking about rubber at Vevey.”

“I remember,” said Solomonson with a note of welcome. “I’ve thought it over.”

“I thought you would.”

“I’ve thought things over. I’m going to give up my professorship – and science generally, and come into business – if that is what you are meaning.”

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Solomonson turned his paper-weight round very carefully before replying. Then he said: “You mustn’t give up your professorship yet, Trafford. For the rest – I’m glad.”

He reflected, and then his bright eyes glanced up at Trafford. “I knew,” he said, “you would.”

“I didn’t,” said Trafford. “Things have happened since.” “Something was bound to happen. You’re too good – for

what it gave you. I didn’t talk to you out there for nothing. I saw things.... Let’s go into the other room, and smoke and talk it over.” He stood up as he spoke.

“I thought you would,” he repeated, leading the way. “I knew you would. You see, – one has to. You can’t get out of it.”

“It was all very well before you were married,” said Solomonson, stopping short to say it, “but when a man’s married he’s got to think. He can’t go on devoting himself to his art and his science and all that – not if he’s married anything worth having. No. Oh, I understand. He’s got to look about him, and forget the distant prospect for a bit. I saw you’d come to it. I came to it. Had to. I had ambitions – just as you have. I’ve always had an inclination to do a bit of research on my own. I like it, you know. Oh! I could have done things. I’m sure I could have done things. I’m not a born money-maker. But – .” He became very close and confidential. “It’s – them. You said good-bye to science for a bit when you flopped me down on that old croquet-lawn, Trafford.” He went off to reminiscences. “Lord, how we went over! No more aviation for me, Trafford!”

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He arranged chairs, and produced cigars. “After all – this of course – it’s interesting. Once you get into the movement of it, it takes hold of you. It’s a game.”

“I’ve thought over all you said,” Trafford began, using premeditated phrases. “Bluntly – I want three thousand a year, and I don’t make eight hundred. It’s come home to me. I’m going to have another child.”

Solomonson gesticulated a congratulation.

“All the same, I hate dropping research. It’s stuff I’m made to do. About that, Solomonson, I’m almost superstitious. I could say I had a call.... It’s the maddest state of affairs! Now that I’m doing absolutely my best work for mankind, work I firmly believe no one else can do, I just manage to get six hundred – nearly two hundred of my eight hundred is my own. What does the world think I could do better – that would be worth four times as much.”

“The world doesn’t think anything at all about it,” said Solomonson.

“Suppose it did!”

The thought struck Sir Rupert. He knitted his brows and looked hard obliquely at the smoke of his cigar. “Oh, it won’t,” he said, rejecting a disagreeable idea. “There isn’t any world – not in that sense. That’s the mistake you make, Trafford.”

“It’s not what your work is worth,” he explained. “It’s what your advantages can get for you. People are always going about supposing – just what you suppose – that people ought to get paid in proportion to the good they do. It’s forgetting what the world is, to do that. Very likely some day civilization will

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