Mrs. Pope was of course among the first to visit the new home so soon as
it was open to inspection. She arrived, looking very bright and neat in
a new bonnet and some new black furs that suited her, bearing up bravely
but obviously in a state of dispersed and miscellaneous emotion....
In many ways Marjorie's marriage had been a great relief to her mother.
Particularly it had been a financial relief. Marjorie had been the most
expensive child of her family, and her cessation had led to increments
both of Mrs. Pope's and Daphne's all too restricted allowances. Mrs.
Pope had been able therefore to relapse from the orthodox Anglicanism
into which poverty had driven her, and indulge for an hour weekly in the
consolations of Higher Thought. These exercises in emancipated
religiosity occurred at the house of Mr. Silas Root, and were greatly
valued by a large circle of clients. Essentially they were orgies of
vacuity, and they cost six guineas for seven hours. They did her no end
of good. All through the precious weekly hour she sat with him in a
silent twilight, very, very still and feeling--oh! "higher" than
anything, and when she came out she wore an inane smile on her face and
was prepared not to worry, to lie with facility, and to take the easiest
way in every eventuality in an entirely satisfactory and exalted manner.
Moreover he was "treating" her investments. Acting upon his advice, and
doing the whole thing quietly with the idea of preparing a pleasant
surprise for her husband, she had sold out of certain Home Railway
debentures and invested in a company for working the auriferous waste
which is so abundant in the drainage of Philadelphia, a company whose
shareholders were chiefly higher thought disciples and whose profits
therefore would inevitably be greatly enhanced by their concerted mental
action. It was to the prospective profits in this that she owed the new
black furs she was wearing.
The furs and the bonnet and the previous day's treatment she had had,
all helped to brace her up on Marjorie's doorstep for a complex and
difficult situation, and to carry her through the first tensions of her
call. She was so much to pieces as it was that she could not help
feeling how much more to pieces she might have been--but for the grace
of Silas Root. She knew she ought to have very strong feelings about
Trafford, though it was not really clear to her what feelings she ought
to have. On the whole she was inclined to believe she was experiencing
moral disapproval mixed up with a pathetic and rather hopeless appeal
for the welfare of the tender life that had entrusted itself so
recklessly to these brutal and discreditable hands, though indeed if she
had really dared to look inside her mind her chief discovery would have
been a keenly jealous appreciation of Trafford's good looks and generous
temper, and a feeling of injustice as between her own lot and
Marjorie's. However, going on her assumed basis she managed to be very
pale, concise and tight-lipped at any mention of her son-in-law, and to
put a fervour of helpless devotion into her embraces of her daughter.
She surveyed the house with a pained constrained expression, as though
she tried in vain to conceal from herself that it was all slightly
improper, and even such objects as the Bokhara hangings failed to extort
more than an insincere, "Oh, very nice, dear--_very_ nice."
In the bedroom, she spoke about Mr. Pope. "He was dreadfully upset," she
said. "His first thought was to come after you both with a pistol.
If--if _he_ hadn't married you----"
"But dear Mummy, of _course_ we meant to marry! We married right away."
"Yes, dear, of course. But if he hadn't----"
She paused, and Marjorie, with a momentary flush of indignation in her
cheeks, did not urge her to conclude her explanation.
"He's _wounded_," said Mrs. Pope. "Some day perhaps he'll come
round--you were always his favourite daughter."
"I know," said Marjorie concisely, with a faint flavour of cynicism in
her voice.
"I'm afraid dear, at present--he will do nothing for you."
"I don't think Rag would like him to," said Marjorie with an unreal
serenity; "_ever_."
"For a time I'm afraid he'll refuse to see you. He just wants to
forget----. Everything."
"Poor old Dad! I wish he wouldn't put himself out like this. Still, I
won't bother him, Mummy, if you mean that."
Then suddenly into Mrs. Pope's unsystematic, unstable mind, started
perhaps by the ring in her daughter's voice, there came a wave of
affectionate feeling. That she had somehow to be hostile and
unsympathetic to Marjorie, that she had to pretend that Trafford was
wicked and disgusting, and not be happy in the jolly hope and happiness
of this bright little house, cut her with a keen swift pain. She didn't
know clearly why she was taking this coldly hostile attitude, or why she
went on doing so, but the sense of that necessity hurt her none the
less. She put out her hands upon her daughter's shoulders and whimpered:
"Oh my dear! I do wish things weren't so difficult--so very difficult."
The whimper changed by some inner force of its own to honest sobs and
tears.
Marjorie passed through a flash of amazement to a sudden understanding
of her mother's case. "Poor dear Mummy," she said. "Oh! poor dear Mummy.
It's a shame of us!"
She put her arms about her mother and held her for awhile.
"It _is_ a shame," said her mother in a muffled voice, trying to keep
hold of this elusive thing that had somehow both wounded her and won her
daughter back. But her poor grasp slipped again. "I knew you'd come to
see it," she said, dabbing with her handkerchief at her eyes. "I knew
you would." And then with the habitual loyalty of years resuming its
sway: "He's always been so good to you."...
But Mrs. Pope had something more definite to say to Marjorie, and came
to it at last with a tactful offhandedness. Marjorie communicated it to
Trafford about an hour later on his return from the laboratory. "I say,"
she said, "old Daffy's engaged to Magnet!"
She paused, and added with just the faintest trace of resentment in her
voice: "She can have him, as far as I'm concerned."
"He didn't wait long," said Trafford tactlessly.
"No," said Marjorie; "he didn't wait long.... Of course she got him on
the rebound."...