After that Mr. Trafford had one clear desire in his being which ruled
all his other desires. He wanted a long, frank, unembarrassed and
uninterrupted conversation with Marjorie. He had a very strong
impression that Marjorie wanted exactly the same thing. For a week he
besieged the situation in vain. After the fourth day Solomonson was only
kept in Buryhamstreet by sheer will-power, exerted with a brutality that
threatened to end that friendship abruptly. He went home on the sixth
day in his largest car, but Trafford stayed on beyond the limits of
decency to perform some incomprehensible service that he spoke of as
"clearing up."
"I want," he said, "to clear up."
"But what _is_ there to clear up, my dear boy?"
"Solomonson, you're a pampered plutocrat," said Trafford, as though
everything was explained.
"I don't see any sense in it at all," said Solomonson, and regarded his
friend aslant with thick, black eyebrows raised.
"I'm going to stay," said Trafford.
And Solomonson said one of those unhappy and entirely disregarded things
that ought never to be said.
"There's some girl in this," said Solomonson.
"Your bedroom's always waiting for you at Riplings," he said, when at
last he was going off....
Trafford's conviction that Marjorie also wanted, with an almost equal
eagerness, the same opportunity for speech and explanations that he
desired, sustained him in a series of unjustifiable intrusions upon the
seclusion of the Popes. But although the manner of Mr. and Mrs. Pope did
change considerably for the better after his next visit, it was
extraordinary how impossible it seemed for him and Marjorie to achieve
their common end of an encounter.
Always something intervened.
In the first place, Mrs. Pope's disposition to optimism had got the
better of her earlier discretions, and a casual glance at Daphne's face
when their visitor reappeared started quite a new thread of
interpretations in her mind. She had taken the opportunity of hinting at
this when Mr. Pope asked over his shirt-stud that night, "What the devil
that--that chauffeur chap meant by always calling in the afternoon."
"Now that Will Magnet monopolizes Marjorie," she said, after a little
pause and a rustle or so, "I don't see why Daffy shouldn't have a little
company of her own age."
Mr. Pope turned round and stared at her. "I didn't think of that," he
said. "But, anyhow, I don't like the fellow."
"He seems to be rather clever," said Mrs. Pope, "though he certainly
talks too much. And after all it was Sir Rupert's aeroplane. _He_ was
only driving it to oblige."
"He'll think twice before he drives another," said Mr. Pope, wrenching
off his collar....
Once Mrs. Pope had turned her imagination in this more and more
agreeable direction, she was rather disposed, I am afraid, to let it
bolt with her. And it was a deflection that certainly fell in very
harmoniously with certain secret speculations of Daphne's. Trafford,
too, being quite unused to any sort of social furtiveness, did perhaps,
in order to divert attention from his preoccupation with Marjorie,
attend more markedly to Daphne than he would otherwise have done. And so
presently he found Daphne almost continuously on his hands. So far as
she was concerned, he might have told her the entire history of his
life, and every secret he had in the world, without let or hindrance.
Mrs. Pope, too, showed a growing appreciation of his company, became
sympathetic and confidential in a way that invited confidence, and threw
a lot of light on her family history and Daffy's character. She had
found Daffy a wonderful study, she said. Mr. Pope, too, seemed partly
reconciled to him. The idea that, after all, both motor cars and
monoplane were Sir Rupert's, and not Trafford's, had produced a reaction
in the latter gentleman's favour. Moreover, it had occurred to him that
Trafford's accident had perhaps disposed him towards a more thoughtful
view of mechanical traction, and that this tendency would be greatly
helped by a little genial chaff. So that he ceased to go indoors when
Trafford was there, and hung about, meditating and delivering sly digs
at this new victim of his ripe, old-fashioned humour.
Nor did it help Trafford in his quest for Marjorie and a free, outspoken
delivery that the pseudo-twins considered him a person of very
considerable charm, and that Theodore, though indisposed to "suck up" to
him publicly--I write here in Theodorese--did so desire intimate and
solitary communion with him, more particularly in view of the chances of
an adventitious aeroplane ride that seemed to hang about him--as to
stalk him persistently--hovering on the verge of groups, playing a
waiting game with a tennis ball and an old racquet, strolling artlessly
towards the gate of the avenue when the time seemed ripening for his
appearance or departure.
On the other hand, Marjorie was greatly entangled by Magnet.
Magnet was naturally an attentive lover; he was full of small
encumbering services, and it made him none the less assiduous to
perceive that Marjorie seemed to find no sort of pleasure in all the
little things he did. He seemed to think that if picking the very best
rose he could find for her did not cause a very perceptible brightening
in her, then it was all the more necessary quietly to force her racquet
from her hand and carry it for her, or help her ineffectually to cross a
foot-wide ditch, or offer to read her in a rich, abundant, well
modulated voice, some choice passage from "The Forest Lovers" of Mr.
Maurice Hewlett. And behind these devotions there was a streak of
jealousy. He knew as if by instinct that it was not wise to leave these
two handsome young people together; he had a queer little disagreeable
sensation whenever they spoke to one another or looked at one another.
Whenever Trafford and Marjorie found themselves in a group, there was
Magnet in the midst of them. He knew the value of his Marjorie, and did
not mean to lose her....
Being jointly baffled in this way was oddly stimulating to Marjorie's
and Trafford's mutual predisposition. If you really want to throw people
together, the thing to do--thank God for Ireland!--is to keep them
apart. By the fourth day of this emotional incubation, Marjorie was
thinking of Trafford to the exclusion of all her reading; and Trafford
was lying awake at nights--oh, for half an hour and more--thinking of
bold, decisive ways of getting at Marjorie, and bold, decisive things to
say to her when he did.
(But why she should be engaged to Magnet continued, nevertheless, to
puzzle him extremely. It was a puzzle to which no complete solution was
ever to be forthcoming....)