Nothing could show more clearly just how much he had contrived to fall
in love with Marjorie during his brief sojourn in Buryhamstreet and the
acuteness of his disappointment, and nothing could be more eloquent of
his forcible and undisciplined temperament. And out of ten thousand
possible abusive epithets with which his mind was no doubt stored, this
one, I think, had come into his head because of the alert watchfulness
with which Mr. Magnet followed a conversation, as he waited his chance
for some neat but brilliant flash of comment....
Trafford, like Marjorie, was another of those undisciplined young people
our age has produced in such significant quantity. He was just
six-and-twenty, but the facts that he was big of build, had as an only
child associated much with grown-up people, and was already a
conspicuous success in the world of micro-chemical research, had given
him the self-reliance and assurance of a much older man. He had still to
come his croppers and learn most of the important lessons in life, and,
so far, he wasn't aware of it. He was naturally clean-minded, very busy
and interested in his work, and on remarkably friendly and confidential
terms with his mother who kept house for him, and though he had had
several small love disturbances, this was the first occasion that
anything of the kind had ploughed deep into his feelings and desires.
Trafford's father had died early in life. He had been a brilliant
pathologist, one of that splendid group of scientific investigators in
the middle Victorian period which shines ever more brightly as our
criticism dims their associated splendours, and he had died before he
was thirty through a momentary slip of the scalpel. His wife--she had
been his wife for five years--found his child and his memory and the
quality of the life he had made about her too satisfying for the risks
of a second marriage, and she had brought up her son with a passionate
belief in the high mission of research and the supreme duty of seeking
out and expressing truth finely. And here he was, calling Mr. Magnet a
"beastly little area sneak."
The situation perplexed him. Marjorie perplexed him. It was, had he
known it, the beginning for him of a lifetime of problems and
perplexities. He was absolutely certain she didn't love Magnet. Why,
then, had she agreed to marry him? Such pressures and temptations as he
could see about her seemed light to him in comparison with such an
undertaking.
Were they greater than he supposed?
His method of coming to the issue of that problem was entirely original.
He presented himself next afternoon with the air of an invited guest,
drove Mr. Pope who was suffering from liver, to expostulatory sulking in
the study, and expressed a passionate craving for golf-croquet, in spite
of Mrs. Pope's extreme solicitude for his still bandaged ankle. He was
partnered with Daffy, and for a long time he sought speech with Marjorie
in vain. At last he was isolated in a corner of the lawn, and with the
thinnest pretence of inadvertence, in spite of Daffy's despairing cry of
"She plays next!" he laid up within two yards of her. He walked across
to her as she addressed herself to her ball, and speaking in an
incredulous tone and with the air of a comment on the game, he said: "I
say, are you engaged to that chap Magnet?"
Marjorie was amazed, but remarkably not offended. Something in his tone
set her trembling. She forgot to play, and stood with her mallet hanging
in her hand.
"Punish him!" came the voice of Magnet from afar.
"Yes," she said faintly.